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January 27, 2009

A Fiscal Churchill

I'm not feeling particularly eloquent right now, so I'll be blunt: Churchill was Churchill for two reasons: (1) he was always Churchill; that is, on the defining issue of his time, he held a consistent position for more than a decade before that position became politically popular; and (2) Munich; that is, Churchill's position only became politically popular because, for a decade, everyone else tried everything else, until only Churchill was left. (And even then he nearly didn't become premier.)

My point is that right now we're going through a period when everyone, but everyone, has subscribed to neo-Keynesean counter-cyclical fiscal principles. As of today, that includes the ostensibly-conservative Harper Tories. I understand the criticism Harper's taking from the right; but the fact is that Harper couldn't take a (deeply) fiscally conservative approach in this political climate, at least not without being flung to the very margins. There simply isn't an appetite for Freidman-esque fiscal policy right now.

But there will be. There will be, that is, if Keynesean policy fails - as a Freidmanian must believe will happen. But for the same reason the British public resisted Churchillian confrontation until every other path had been trod, the Canadian public will, I suggest, resist Freidmanian fiscal conservatism until "stimulus" has been tried and found lacking.

Maybe that day won't come; all but the ideologues can hope that stimulus will work, that we'll come out of this recession sooner than we otherwise would have, and will move forward on surer footing. But if stimulus doesn't work - if, as a fiscal conservative would anticipate, spending shallows but exacerbates the downturn, and expanding the money base triggers significant inflation - if, in the end, Liberal Keyneseanism and Tory Kenyeseanism fail - then there will, finally, ultimately, and if the stars align, be an appetite for conservatism.

But the time to stand for conservatism is not then, at the end; the time to stand is now, and throughout. Canada needs a fiscal Churchill; it needs someone who will speak out for fiscally conservative principles clearly and consistently, someone who's willing to be a political pariah, lampooned on the CBC and exiled by his party - and who, when everything else is tried, and fails, can lead the way out.

Posted by David Mader at 11:17 PM | (0) | Back to Main

So Confused...

For two and a half years we were told that the Tories were bad because they were too ideological. But now we're being told that they're bad because they're not at all ideological. Wh-wh-gaaa!

I mean, either is a fair critique, in the abstract. And you could argue - as I'm sure many a tired media voice will - that the Tories themselves have gone from being ideological to being non-ideological in whiplash fashion.

I just want to know what the Goldilocks option was. What could the Tories have done that their media critics would have given them credit for?

Which is not to say I approve of the budget. I'm just calling a little BS on the predictably predictable coverage.

Posted by David Mader at 02:09 PM | (0) | Back to Main

January 16, 2009

One of These Things is Not Like the Others

1) "The Star Tribune, saddled with high debt and a sharp decline in print advertising, filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition Thursday night."

2) "The Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy protection in a federal court in Delaware on Monday, as the owner of The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Cubs baseball team struggled to cope with mountains of debt and falling ad revenue."

3) "[W]hat if The New York Times goes out of business—like, this May? It’s certainly plausible. Earnings reports released by the New York Times Company in October indicate that drastic measures will have to be taken over the next five months or the paper will default on some $400 million in debt."

4) "Executives from Canwest Global Communications Corp. said yesterday that for the first time in its 10-year history the National Post newspaper turned an operating profit."

The Post isn't out of the woods, of course--no newspaper is, these days. The market was changing even before the slump; the slump has just highlighted and exacerbated this change. Unless and until all newspapers figure out how to be interesting and relevant in the internet age, profits will be elusive.

But those of us who think the Post is a healthy part of the national dialogue will be forgiven if we take a moment to lord the news over those who've been predicting the paper's demise since its inception.

Posted by David Mader at 12:08 AM | (0) | Back to Main

January 08, 2009

The Canaries Are Chirping

Denmark:

A number of school administrators have come forth in recent days to confirm that they recommend Jewish children should not enrol at their schools.

According to school administrators, law enforcement officials and social workers, the on-going conflict in Gaza has led to heightened tensions between Jews and Arabs - particularly Palestinians - here in Denmark.

And although few headmasters of schools have faced the situation, most of those at schools with a high percentage of children of Arab descent say they try to prevent Jewish parents from enrolling their children there.

On Monday, headmaster Olav Nielsen of Humlehave School in Odense publicly admitted he would refuse Jewish parents' wish to place their child at his school.

Apprentice star Sir Alan Sugar has been said to be among a list of top British Jews thought to be targeted by extremists over Israel's Gaza onslaught.

According to a newspaper, the multi-millionaire businessman was named on an Islamic website along with pop producer Mark Ronson, Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Labour peer Lord Levy.

One strand on the site asks for help compiling a list of "those who support Israel", the paper said, while another asks: "Have we got a list of top Jews we can target?"

A website has defended a message urging British Muslims to contact prominent British Jews to protest at the Israeli attacks on Gaza. The post was made during a discussion on Ummah, an Islamic internet forum. A member suggested that people who featured a list of influential Jews - including David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary - should be reminded of the plight of the Palestinian people.

Among other prominent Jews featured on the list were Lord Levy, the pop music producer Mark Ronson, the lawyer Anthony Julius, and the businessman and television personality Alan Sugar.
A link to the list, which was first published by the Jewish Chronicle newspaper, was posted by a member of the forum using the name Saladin1970.

He wrote: "It would be beneficial to start compiling a list so that we can write polite letters reminding them of the injustices of Israel and to stop supporting Israel."

After some discussion, another member, using the name Abuislam, asked: "Have we got list of top Jews and supporters yet we can target? Can someone start posting names and addresses."

Saladin1970 later replied: "The best thing to do is not to contact them directly", adding that Muslim groups should boycott those named and connected businesses.

A spokesman for the website denied claims made in a newspaper report that the post represented a "Hate hit list" and that it encouraged readers to attack those named.

He claimed that an examination of the website's records showed that the username Abuislam was registered to a freelance journalist, whose real name was known to them and who had "decided to pose as a Muslim to make Muslims look bad".

In a statement, he said: "Like most Muslims, and a great number of non-Muslims across the world, many of our users are currently engaged in various kinds of protest and campaigning against the massacre of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli Forces.

"Clearly, most people will realise that this thread is about a peaceful form of campaigning against the state of Israel by writing 'polite' letters to well-known and wealthy supporters of the state asking them to withdraw that support and encouraging Muslims not to do business nor work with them until they do."

Posted by David Mader at 12:17 AM | (0) | Back to Main

January 07, 2009

Posted Without Comment

Like many other protests of Israel's campaign in Gaza, this one ended badly — police had to cool an ugly fight between supporters of Israel and Gaza, breaking up the warring sides as their screaming and chanting threatened to turn into something worse.

But some protesters at this rally in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., took their rhetoric a step further, calling for the extermination of Israel — and of Jews.

Separated by battle lines and a stream of rush-hour traffic outside a federal courthouse last week, at least 200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators faced off against a smaller crowd of Israel supporters.

Most of the chants were run-of-the-mill; men and women waving Palestinian flags called Israel's invasion of Gaza a "crime," while the pro-Israel group carried signs calling the Hamas-run territory a "terror state."

But as the protest continued and crowds grew, one woman in a hijab began to shout curses and slurs that shocked Jewish activists in the city, which has a sizable Jewish population.

"Go back to the oven," she shouted, calling for the counter-protesters to die in the manner that the Nazis used to exterminate Jews during the Holocaust.

"You need a big oven, that's what you need," she yelled.

Millions of Jews were gassed and burned in crematoria throughout Europe during Adolf Hitler's rule of Germany. The protest organizers, asked to comment on the woman's overt call for Jewish extermination, said she was "insensitive" but refused to condemn her statement.

"She does not represent the opinions of the vast majority of people who were there," said Emmanuel Lopez, who helped plan the event, one of many sponsored nationwide on Dec. 30 by the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism ) Coalition.

Lopez, a state coordinator for ANSWER, admitted there is a problem with anti-Semitism within his organization's ranks. But then he went on to call the supporters of Israel across the street "barbaric, racist" Zionist terrorists.

Posted by David Mader at 02:17 PM | (0) | Back to Main

January 02, 2009

Warning

I'm going to try to upgrade my blogging software this weekend. I've done this, I believe, three times. Every time I've had some sort of minor disaster, which is why I haven't done it since July, 2003. So I'm sort of anticipating that something will go horribly wrong. I've backed up all the substantive material, and I'll import it all back in when this thing becomes stable again - but between then and now, expect some wacky design issues, some dead pages, and some busted RSS and XML feeds.

See you on the flip side. And wish me luck!

Posted by David Mader at 11:26 PM | (0) | Back to Main

On Abortion and Equal Rights

Colby Cosh claims that pro-lifers are hypocrites to support life-of-the-mother exceptions to abortion restrictions, on the ground that such exceptions place one life (the mother's) over another (the fetus's) -- which, he says, is precisely what pro-lifers object to in the first place. I've thought about the issue Cosh raises, and I'm pretty sure he's wrong.

Let's concede, for the sake of argument, that the question of abortion is a question of competing rights - the rights of the mother and the rights of the fetus. In other words, let's put aside any free-standing moral consideration - whether, for instance, abortion is prohibited (or compelled) by a religious text; and let's concede for now that a fetus has standing to claim any rights at all. In a situation of competing rights, the task of the law as neutral arbiter is to consider the rights claimed by each party, and the circumstances surrounding the claims, and to identify the just or equitable result.

Let's consider a hypothetical mid-second trimester abortion wherein the fetus is developing normally and poses no immediate health risk to the mother. (I use "immediate" to exclude, for instance, the psychological cost of bearing and raising an unwanted child.) We can identify, to a fair degree of certainty, the rights at issue. The mother claims a right to terminate the pregnancy, which might in turn be characterized as a right to determine when and whether to bear a child, or as a right to sexual autonomy, or even simply as a right to choose. The fetus claims a right to live, or at least to continue to develop towards birth.

If we treat the mother and fetus as having equal status to claim rights - as the moralist pro-lifers argue, and as Cosh concedes for purposes of his critique - then we can adjudicate this dispute as we would any dispute between people making similar claims. And taking the strongest rights claim on either side - the mother's claimed right to determine when and whether to bear a child, and the fetus's claimed right to live - it seems clear, in the abstract, that the right to live trumps the right to determine the conditions of pregnancy and childbirth. (This assumes that the right to life is paramount - a fair claim in modern democratic nations, I think.)

Now take an alternative hypothetical - a mid-second trimester abortion wherein the fetus is developing normally with regard to its own health but whose development poses a mortal risk to the mother. The claimed rights are now different: the fetus still claims a right to live, or at least to continue to develop, but the mother now also claims a right to live. The two claims are the same, but both cannot be vindicated: if the fetus wins the right to live, the mother dies; if the mother wins the right to live, the fetus dies.

This is where Cosh claims hypocrisy: he says that to prefer the mother in this instance, but not in the prior hypothetical, is inconsistent. After all, he claims, this simply "puts one life above another," and is therefore no different than the first circumstance - where the pro-lifer would undoubtedly have preferred the fetus.

But I think my presentation of the two hypotheticals illustrates why Cosh is wrong. Put simply, in circumstances where the health of the mother is in jeopardy (or at least in mortal jeopardy), the fetus's claimed right - to life - is no longer superior to the mother's claimed right; it is, at best, equal. Of course with an equal right the fetus might still prevail; but there is one strong principle that justifies vindicating the mother's right to live over the fetus's right to live in this circumstance. That principle is self defense.

I can't speak for the state of law in Canada, but as a general proposition common law jurisdictions protect an individual's right to defend him or herself against immediate harm. This right is a dynamic one, in that the scope of the right depends on the type of harm faced. Faced with ordinary force - a slap or a punch, for instance - a person is justified in using ordinary force to protect himself; but he is not justified in using deadly force. You can't bring a knife to a fist-fight. Deadly force is justified only to defend against a threat of deadly force (though different jurisdictions place different additional restrictions on this right). But - in at least most common law jurisdictions - deadly force is justified in these narrow circumstances.

And that's the circumstance presented by my second hypothetical. The mother faces a threat to her life - a threat of deadly force. She is justified in using force - including deadly force - to defeat that threat. So it's not at all hypocritical for a pro-lifer to support a health of the mother exception, at least in cases of mortal risk; on the contrary, it is solidly libertarian.

There are myriad caveats to my argument, of course. For one thing, I've operated on the presumption that the mid-second trimester fetus has rights. That's controversial, and reasonable people can disagree. Most people agree that a late third-trimester fetus has rights, and most people agree that an early first-trimester fetus does not have rights (or at least has very few, not including a right to life). The abortion "debate," such as it is, is a disagreement about when, if at all, a fetus attains personhood such that it has a claim to any rights. Moralist pro-lifers generally believe personhood occurs at conception, such that an early first-trimester fetus has a claim to life (which would trump more or less any countervailing right a mother could claim at that stage of the pregnancy); absolutist pro-choicers generally argue that personhood occurs at birth, such that any claim by the mother to any right will trump the fetus's claims up to the moment of birth itself. So to an absolutist pro-choicer, my entire line of argument is flawed: the mother need never rely on a right of self-defense.

But my purpose here is not to argue for a particular understanding of personhood and a consequent approach to the regulation of abortion; my purpose is simply to rebut Cosh's claim that pro-lifers are hypocrites to favor health-of-the-mother exceptions to whatever restrictions they favor. That's wrong, at least where the health risk to the mother is mortal (and possibly even just severe), as long as we recognize a general right to self defense. Cosh may not believe in such a right; he may believe that a person must keep his sidearm holstered, Ghandi-like, no matter how many times an assailant stabs him. But that's another discussion for another day.

Post Script: Eugene Volokh, law professor and blogger extraordinaire, has published a law review article expanding on this idea of abortion as self-defense, which can be downloaded here. And apologies for the use of the Americanese "defense" rather than the proper Canadian "defence" - my job involves writing in American legalese all day, every day, and it rubs off.

Posted by David Mader at 12:40 PM | (0) | Back to Main

Pro·jec·tion (\prə-ˈjek-shən\)

Adj. The act of attributing one's own ideas, feelings, or characteristics to other people.

Posted by David Mader at 12:36 PM | (0) | Back to Main