The Family Guy and the Democratic Party

Take a moment and enjoy this clip from The Family Guy: 

Besides being pretty funny, this clip resonated with me quite a bit because it brings together a few things on politics that I’ve read in a number of books over the past few months, most notably The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation by Drew Westen and The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies by Bryan Caplan.

In the clip above, Lois Griffin tries responding to a question about law enforcement from an undecided voter by going through her entire 12-point plan that answers the question in detail. She is buzzed out after 20 seconds and can’t even get to the first point and ends up being booed by the debate crowd for her efforts. The other candidate receives a question and responds by striding out into the audience, sitting on the questioner’s lap, and giving him a ridiculous non-answer. The questioner is wowed by this display (”He looked me in the eye”), and others are similarly impressed (”I’d like to have a beer with him”). According to Westen’s book, Lois is the democrat while the other guy, the one who can “connect” with the voters despite being an empty suit, is the republican.

The main thrust of Westen’s book is that democratic candidates and their advisors fail to grasp how voters really decide who to vote for. Polls show that dems beat repubs on the issues, so with that in mind, democratic candidates think they can win by throwing plans, programs, policies, and powerpoint presentations at voters, confident that they can win by simply reasoning with the electorate. Unfortunately, voters aren’t won over by dispassionate appeals to their intellect, but instead rely on feelings and gut instincts when casting their votes. Westen argues that voters ask the following questions when deciding who to vote for:

• How do I feel about the candidates’ parties and their principles?
• How does this candidate make me feel?
• How do I feel about this candidate’s personal characteristics, such as integrity, leadership and empathy?
• How do I feel about this candidate’s stands on issues that matter to me?

According to Westen, voters, for a number of reasons related to human pyschology, work from the top down when making voting decisions. The dem’s problem, Westen says, it that they assume voters start from the bottom and work their way up, which almost always dooms them to failure against the more savvy republican campaigns that better understand this hierarchy.

A common criticism, from both the right and the left, is that the Democratic Party lacks any over-arching themes that tie together policy positions into a coherent whole. The GOP, on the other hand, has done an excellent job of branding itself with a few main themes - lower taxes, smaller government, fiscal discipline, culture of life, etc. - that stands out in the minds of voters. Absent detailed knowledge of any particular issues, voters can vote for the GOP candidate because they have a more general sense of what the GOP stands for.

(Mind you, it’s important to note that the ideas a party embraces and the policies it actually implements don’t need to be consistent. The GOP claims to be the party of life, liberty, smaller government, and fiscal discipline, but the current GOP president continues policies that result in the deaths of thousands, trample civil rights at home, and increase the size of the government and our national debt; so much for political principles!)

Meanwhile, the democrats are known as a party with no message, no meaning. What exactly does the Democratic Party stand for? I’m sure many pro-dem partisans might have a hard time answering that question. I bet that to many, the Democratic party seems to represent nothing more than a loose coalition of single-issue voters (pro-choice, pro-union, anti-war) who have been driven out of the GOP camp. What can be done about this and other challenges the dems face?

Westen offers a few suggestions:

• Make enemies: It’s easier to stand for something when you are standing against something. The GOP has turned liberal into a dirty word with its incessant slandering of the left and the progressive movement. They have no problems attacking entire American states (”Taxachuesetts”) and cities (”Hollywood liberals”) because they know it’s red meat for their base. It’s time the dems stop pussy-footing around for fear of offending this or that group of voters; they need to write off the demographic that will never vote for them under any circumstances: the anti-science, fag-hating American Taliban of the far right. These people make up a good chunk of the GOP’s base and no doubt the democrats would benefit greatly by tying the radical Christian right’s un-American agenda as closely as possible to their representatives in the GOP.
• Find some themes: The dems need to stand for something more than just a disaparate collection of issues. What ideas or themes can be branded by the dems to tie it all together?
• Get dirty: Westen writes that the two most decisive events in the 2004 election were when Kerry’s team responded limply to the flip-flopper charge and the Swift Boat attacks. Both cases show how the dems still haven’t figured out a good, effective way to deal with the inevitable smear tactics of the GOP. The dems have a bad habit of wimpy responses to these attacks, such as taking the high road in hopes of looking good to the voters or appealing to the voters’ sense of fair play. While such notions make for a nice sentiment, they simply don’t work, and it’s time the dems learn that the only response to a cheap shot is to punch back harder. This will send two messages: to their opponents, it’s a warning that they really don’t want to go down that path; and to the voters, it shows that the dems of balls.
• Take it up a notch: To paraphrase a line from Training Day, the dems are out there playing checkers while the repubs are playing chess. Across the board, the GOP and their advisors show a much more sophisticated understanding of the entire political process, whether it’s media control, the use of language, or understanding how voters think and vote. I’ve read numerous books over the years that offer solid advice to the Democratic Party (which I’ll list below), yet the dems seem tied to the same old tactics espoused by the same old establishment consultants election after election and refuse to learn from their losses (”Sure, let’s have Bob Shrum run our campaign again”). The dems need to find their A game and bring it.

Bottom line: the Democratic Party needs to jettison its antiquated  approach to campaining and heed advice from modern linguists, psychologists, and political scientists who offer cutting-edge advice that can help the dems win elections. My hope is to see the dems win in 2008 (ideally with Gore or Edwards as the nominee with Obama as the veep candidate), demonstrate competent governance (remember that?) for 8 years, and then win again with Obama as the nominee in 2016.

Here’s a list of some of the books that came to mind while writing this post:

• American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America by Chris Hedges
• Talking Right: How Conservatives turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show by Geoffrey Nunberg
• Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism by Michelle Goldberg
• What’s the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank
• Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy by Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson

Moral Dilemmas

There is a widely-held belief that religious people are more ethical than the non-religious. This notion is based on the idea that religious people, whether Christian, Buddhist, or Moslem, have clear and unambigious “rules” about what is right and what is wrong, while the non-religious live in a shadowy world of ambiguity and confusion with any and all moral “rules” being completely arbitrary. Supporters of this belief would point out that while a Christian could say “murder is wrong” because the Bible says so, a secular agnostic, such as myself, has no such authority to appeal to to support the same rule of conduct. In other words, a religious person has an answer to the question, “Why is X wrong?” while a non-religous person is on shaky ground when it comes to finding an answer to such a question.

That’s the belief, anyway, but it doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny.

Richard Dawkins dissects that very question with a look at a study on ethics done by Marc Hauser at Harvard University. Dr. Hauser created a series of moral dilemmas that reveal some very interesting tidbits of knowledge that show that human morality is somehow instinctual, that it doesn’t require an appeal to some otherwordly god to claim that murder is wrong.

They’re quite interesting to read and ponder on one’s own, so here are the moral dilemmas as written in Dr. Hauser’s study:

Scenario 1: Denise is a passenger on a train whose driver has just shouted that the train’s brakes have failed, and who then fainted of the shock. On the track ahead are five people; the banks are so steep that they will not be able to get off the track in time. The track has a side track leading off to the right, and Denise can turn the train onto it. Unfortunately there is one person on the right hand track. Denise can turn the train, killing the one; or she can refrain from turning the train, letting the five die.

Is it morally permissible for Denise to switch the train to the side track? (85%)

Scenario 2: Frank is on a footbridge over the train tracks. He knows trains and can see that the one approaching the bridge is out of control. On the track under the bridge there are five people; the banks are so steep that they will not be able to get off the track in time. Frank knows that the only way to stop an out-of-control train is to drop a very heavy weight into its path. But the only available, sufficiently heavyweight is a large man wearing a backpack, also watching the train from the footbridge. Frank can shove the man with the backpack onto the track in the path of the train, killing him; or he can refrain from doing this, letting the five die.

Is it morally permissible for Frank to shove the man? (12%)

Scenario 3: Ned is taking his daily walks near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Ned sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and they will not be able to get off the tracks in time. Fortunately, Ned is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will temporarily turn the train onto a side track. There is a heavy object on the side track. If the train hits the object, the object will slow the train down, thereby giving the men time to escape. Unfortunately, the heavy object is a man, standing on the side track with his back turned. Ned can throw the switch, preventing the train from killing the men, but killing the man. Or he can refrain from doing this, letting the five die

Is it morally permissible for Ned to throw the switch? (56%)

Scenario 4: Oscar is taking his daily walk near the train tracks when he notices that the train that is approaching is out of control. Oscar sees what has happened: the driver of the train saw five men walking across the tracks and slammed on the brakes, but the brakes failed and the driver fainted. The train is now rushing toward the five men. It is moving so fast that they will not be able to get off the track in time. Fortunately, Oscar is standing next to a switch, which he can throw, that will temporarily turn the train onto a side track. There is a heavy object on the side track. If the train hits the object, the object will slow the train down, thereby giving the men time to escape. Unfortunately, there is a man standing on the sidetrack in front of the heavy object, with his back turned. Oscar can throw the switch, preventing the train from killing the men, but killing the man. Or he can refrain from doing this, letting the five die

Is it morally permissible for Oscar to throw the switch? (72%)

If you click and drag across the area in parantheses you can see the percentage of respondents who said “yes.” The full study can be found here.

As for my answers to the questions above, I voted yes, no, yes, and yes.

Most interesting about the results of his study is that:

“…across a variety of nationalities, ethnicities, religions, ages, educational backgrounds [including exposure to moral philosophy], and both genders, shared principles exist.”

If the “religion as the foundation of morality” argument were true, we should able to find evidence of non-religious people with moral compasses drastically out of wack with standard Judeo-Christian tenents. Instead, we see some moral evaluations holding true regardless of a wide variety of factors. This indicates that morality could be hard-coded in our DNA, giving us solid, non-religious reasons for saying things like “murder is wrong.”

They conclude:

In conclusion, our results challenge the view that moral judgments are solely the product of conscious reasoning on the basis of explicitly understood moral principles. Though we sometimes deliver moral judgments based on consciously accessed principles, often we fail to account for our judgments. When we fail, it appears that operative, but not expressed principles, drive our moral judgments.

Most religions have surprisingly similar rules of conduct (don’t murder, don’t steal, etc.). According to this study, these similarities could be explained by viewing religious moral edicts as confirmations of fundamental beliefs rather than the explanation of them.

On Memorial Day…

From Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun:

You can always hear the people who are willing to sacrifice somebody else’s life. They’re plenty loud and they talk all the time. You can find them in churches and schools and newspapers and legislatures and congress. That’s their business. They sound wonderful. Death before dishonor. This ground sanctified by blood. These men who died so gloriously.

They shall not have died in vain. Our noble dead.

Hmmmm.

But what do the dead say?

Did anybody ever come back from the dead any single one of the millions who got killed did any one of them ever come back and say by god I’m glad I’m dead because death is always better than dishonor? Did they say I’m glad I died to make the world safe for democracy] Did they say I like death better than losing liberty? Did any of them ever say it’s good to think I got my guts blown out for the honor of my country? Did any of them ever say look at me I’m dead but I died for decency and that’s better than being alive? Did any of them ever say here I am and I’ve been rotting for two years in a foreign grave but it’s wonderful to die for your native land? Did any of them say hurray I died for womanhood and I’m happy see how I sing even though my mouth choked with worms?

Nobody but the dead know whether all these things people talk about are worth dying for or not. And the dead can’t talk. So the words about noble deaths and sacred blood and honor and such are all put into dead lips by grave robbers and fakes who have no right to speak for the dead. If a man says death before dishonor he is either a fool or a liar because he doesn’t know what death is. He isn’t able to judge. He only knows about living. He doesn’t know anything about dying. If he is a fool and believes in death before dishonor let him go ahead and die. But all the little guys who are too busy to fight should be left alone. And all the guys who say death before dishonor is pure bull the important thing is life before death they should be left alone too. Because the guys who say life isn’t worth living without some principle so important you’re willing to die for it they are all nuts. And the guys who say you’ll see there’ll come a time you can’t escape you’re going to have to fight and die because it’ll mean your very life why they are also nuts. They are talking like fools. They are saying that two and two make nothing. They are saying that a man will have to die in order to protect his life. If you agree to fight you agree to die. Now if you die to protect your life you aren’t alive anyhow so how is there any sense in a thing like that? A man doesn’t say I will starve myself to death to keep from starving. He doesn’t say I will spend all my money in order to save my money. He doesn’t say I will burn my house down in order to keep it from burning. Why then should he be willing to die for the privilege of living There ought to be at least as much common sense about living and dying as there is about going to the grocery store and buying a loaf of bread.

And all the guys who died all the five million or seven million or ten million who went out and died to make the world safe for democracy to make the world safe for words without meaning how did they feel about it just before they died? How did they feel as they watched their blood pump out into the mud? How did they feel when the gas hit their lungs and began eating them all away? How did they feel as they lay crazed in hospitals and looked death straight in the face and saw him come and take them? I! the thing they were fighting for was important enough to die for then it was also important enough for them to be thinking about it in the last minutes of their lives. That stood to reason. Life is awfully important so if you’ve given it away you’d ought to think with all your mind in the last moments of your life about the thing you traded it for. So did all those kids die thinking of democracy and freedom and liberty and honor and the safety of the home and the stars and stripes forever?

You’re goddamn right they didn’t.

They died crying in their minds like little babies. They forgot the thing they were fighting for the things they were dying for. They thought about things a man can understand. They died yearning for the face of a friend. They died whimpering for the voice of a mother a father a wife a child They died with their hearts sick for one more look at the place where they were born please god just one more look. They died moaning and sighing for life. They knew what was important They knew that life was everything and they died with screams and sobs. They died with only one thought in their minds and that was I want to live I want to live I want to live.

He ought to know.

He was the nearest thing to a dead man on earth.

He was a dead man with a mind that could still think. He knew all the answers that the dead knew and couldn’t think about. He could speak for the dead because he was one of them. He was the first of all the soldiers who had died since the beginning of time who still had a brain left to think with. Nobody could dispute with him. Nobody could prove him wrong. Because nobody knew but he.

He could tell all these high-talking murdering sonsofbitches who screamed for blood just how wrong they were. He could tell them mister there’s nothing worth dying for I know because I’m dead.

There’s no word worth your life. I would rather work in a coal mine deep under the earth and never see sunlight and eat crusts and water and work twenty hours a day. I would rather do that than be dead. I would trade democracy for life. I would trade independence and honor and freedom and decency for life. I will give you all these things and you give me the power to walk and see and hear and breathe the air and taste my food. You take the words. Give me back my life. I’m not asking for a happy life now. I’m not asking for a decent life or an honorable life or a free life. I’m beyond that. I’m dead so I’m simply asking for life. To live. To feel. To be something that moves over the ground and isn’t dead. I know what death is and all you people who talk about dying for words don’t even know what life is.

There’s nothing noble about dying. Not even if you die for honor. Not even if you die the greatest hero the world ever saw. Not even if you’re so great your name will never be forgotten and who’s that great? The most important thing is your life little guys. You’re worth nothing dead except for speeches. Don’t let them kid you any more. Pay no attention when they tap you on the shoulder and say come along we’ve got to fight for liberty or whatever their word is there’s always a word.

Just say mister I’m sorry I got no time to die I’m too busy and then turn and run like hell. If they say coward why don’t pay any attention because it’s your job to live not to die. If they talk about dying for principles that are bigger than life you say mister you’re a liar Nothing is bigger than life There’s nothing noble in death. What s noble about lying in the ground and rotting. What’s noble about never seeing the sunshine again? What’s noble about having your legs and arms blown off? What’s noble about being an idiot? What’s noble about being blind and deaf and dumb? What’s noble about being dead. Because when you’re dead mister it’s all over. It’s the end. You’re less than a dog less than a rat less than a bee or an ant less than a white maggot crawling around on a dungheap. You’re dead mister and you died for nothing.

You’re dead mister. Dead.

Tolerate Intolerance?

After reading Chris Hedges’ American Fascists and Michelle Goldberg’s Kingdom Coming, two books about the militant Christian Right and its efforts to expand its political reach, I find myself genuinely frightened by these people. They really are out to take over this country, and would no doubt gleefully take over the entire world if they could somehow get their hands on a super-powered pagan-busting bomb. They really are the American Taliban.

Hedges raises the interesting philosophical point, via a quote from Karl Popper, of whether or not there should be any limits to what is actually tolerated in a society that prides itself as “tolerant”:

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them… We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

As a proud liberal, I consider tolerance to be a first-order virtue, but should my commitment to tolerance be unlimited and unconditional? Will I “tolerate” myself right into being a persecuted minority in some near-future dystopia run by Christian fascists? It’s a tough question.

Hedges gives the following bit of advice for dealing with these people:

“Debate with the radical Christian right is useless. We cannot reach this movement. It does not want a dialogue. It is a movement based on emotion and cares nothing for rational thought and discussion. It is not mollified because John Kerry prays or Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday school. Naive attempts to reach out to the movement, to assure them that we, too, are Christian, or we, too, care about moral values, are doomed. This movement is bent on our destruction. The attempts by many liberals to make peace would be humerous of the stakes were not so deadly. These dominionists hate the liberal, enlightened world formed by the Constitution, a world they blame for the debacle of their lives. They have one goal - it’s destruction.”

Especially scary is that these people vote, and that the Republican candidates actually bend over backwards to appeal to these types.

Retort of the day

Being back home in Seattle now, I have access to all my old books from college that I don’t bother taking with me to Korea. There’s a lot of religion, philosophy, and a bit of politics to which I I have recently added all the books I’ve picked up in Korea over the years. For old times’ sake, I picked up one of these older classics for a read: David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. I picked this book out because it seems especially relevant today with these fundamentalist “creationists” running around the country trying to get ”scientific creationism” elevated to one theory among several so it will be taught side-by-side with the theory of evolution. Hume, in Dialogues, breaks in half (and breaks in halves again, then throws the pieces on the ground and kicks dirt on top of them) one arrow in the quiver of scientific creationists: the argument from design.

Anyway, one line in the book made me chuckle way more than a classic in philosophy should. From part seven:

But here, continued Philo, in examining the ancient system of the soul of the world, there strikes me, all on a sudden, a new idea, which, if just, must go near to subvert all your reasoning, and destroy even your first inferences, on which you repose such confidence. If the universe bears a greater likeness to animal bodies and to vegetables, than to the works of human art, it is more probable that its cause resembles the cause of the former than that of the latter, and its origin ought rather to be ascribed to generation or vegetation, than to reason or design. Your conclusion, even according to your own principles, is therefore lame and defective.

That last line struck me as an excellent retort to the stupid things one simply cannot avoid hearing these days. See for yourself:

• “We’re fighting the terrorists there so we don’t have to fight them here.” Your conclusion is lame and defective.
• “The person obviously died from fan death.” Your conclusion is lame and defective.

Works pretty well, don’t you think. It’s quick, easy off the tongue, and has good stopping power. I like it…

Scary…

I wonder if the creepy, zombie-like appearance of the people on the cover of this new book is an accident:

It's on my wish list…

Still the same Korea…

Some choice passages from Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles by Simon Winchester:

'The rules for mountain climbing,' one writer on Korea noted, 'demand not that you climb a mountain, but that you dress up in heavy boots, alpine hat, coloured jacket, and have a knapsack or pack over your shoulder. If you are thus equipped you are "mountain climbing," even if you get on the wrong bus and end up at the seaside.'

And another:

But my strong impression then on the road to Kwangju… was that the Korean driver is a very dangerous animal indeed, a beast totally without understanding of speed, pathologically incapable of steering, utterly ignorant of the width of his vehicle, and eternally forgetful of such luxuries as the brakes and mirrors with which his car is invariably equipped. He knows only one device, and that is the horn, on which he seems to spend most of his time sitting, if not standing.

And this was written in 1988. The more things change…

Oddest Book Title of the Year

The winner of the Oddest Book Title of the Year award is:

The living dead beat rhino horn to be named Oddest Book Title of the Year.

Bookseller magazine gave the award Friday to a self-help book on being haunted entitled “People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It.”

In a close fight, the runner-up was “Rhino Horn Stockpile Management: Minimum Standards and Best Practices from East and Southern Africa.”

Previous winners have been “Bombproof Your Horse” and “Greek Rural Postmen and their Cancellation Numbers.”

Zombies. A subject matter that always stays fresh.

So fresh, in fact, that now philosophers are tackling the zombie problem:

By definition, zombies would be behaviourally and physically just like us, but not conscious. If a zombie world is possible, then physicalism is false. Just as importantly, the seductive conception of phenomenal consciousness embodied by the zombie idea is fundamentally misconceived. One of this book’s two main aims is to bring out the incoherence of the zombie idea with the help of an intuitively appealing argument (the ’sole-pictures argument’). The other is to develop a fresh approach to understanding phenomenal consciousness by exploiting two key notions: that of a ‘basic package’ of capacities which is necessary and sufficient for perception in the full sense; and that of ‘direct activity’, which, when combined with the basic package, is necessary and sufficient for perceptual consciousness. These definitions may apply to quite humble creatures, and even to suitably constructed artefacts.