Let's have at it!

Are you kidding me? I missed my chance to have the last word in a thread?

Ya know, you dream, you hope, you offer up indulgences all in the vain dream that someday you, yes you, will be the one to have the final say in a hundred page thread. But no.

Wow.

Guess I better refocus my energies toward my more achievable goal of winning a gold in Brazil in 2016.

Dang nabbit.

Since homosexuals in the military has been brought up a few times I pose a question...

If a unit suffers casualties and has a homosexual member in the unit that is responsible for the caualties (for whatever reason) is it because he/she is homosexual or is it because of poor training in bootcamp and beyond?

The whole point of bootcamp is to break you down and build you back up into a soldier, correct? Sexual orientation should not matter at that point.

tommythecat78 wrote:Since homosexuals in the military has been brought up a few times I pose a question...

If a unit suffers casualties and has a homosexual member in the unit that is responsible for the caualties (for whatever reason) is it because he/she is homosexual or is it because of poor training in bootcamp and beyond?

The whole point of bootcamp is to break you down and build you back up into a soldier, correct? Sexual orientation should not matter at that point.

I think part (or most) of it is the fear that they might be distracted if they are involved with someone else in the unit, as similarly if there were coed units on the front line.


Edit: Just in case someone wants to look at the old Poli-ticks thread. Didn't see a link below.

MarkDaSpark wrote:I think part (or most) of it is the fear that they might be distracted if they are involved with someone else in the unit, as similarly if there were coed units on the front line.

I didn't know that there weren't coed units on the front line. But I fail to see how this is better than if they were secretly involved. At least if they were open they could separate them much like they do people that are related to each other to avoid situations like these arising.

tommythecat78 wrote:Since homosexuals in the military has been brought up a few times I pose a question...

If a unit suffers casualties and has a homosexual member in the unit that is responsible for the caualties (for whatever reason) is it because he/she is homosexual or is it because of poor training in bootcamp and beyond?

The whole point of bootcamp is to break you down and build you back up into a soldier, correct? Sexual orientation should not matter at that point.

I think the only way to test the theory is with a large-scale statistical analysis. Given current policies, we have one side of the comparison but not the other, making the test rather difficult. It seems that the current policy relies on the historical "ick" factor, fear of getting negative results, and ignoring the fact that countries that allow homosexuals into their armed forces have found no negative results.

MarkDaSpark wrote:I think part (or most) of it is the fear that they might be distracted if they are involved with someone else in the unit, as similarly if there were coed units on the front line.

The issue with homosexuals serving openly is all about unit cohesion and trust. Warriors don't fight (in the actual thick of battle) for the abstract ideals (democracy, freedom, the Reich, what-have-you) but because of their immediate comrades in arms. The bonds are extraordinarily close, and probably cannot be well understood by those who have not served, or who have not gone through any truly rigorous initiation rituals. Loss of unit cohesion is devastating, and (other than totally incompetent leadership -- which often has an effect on cohesion) is probably the single greatest factor in a military loss, and it's what turns a defeat into a rout involving the destruction of the force. (Example: the Iraqi forces loss of cohesion in Gulf I and their panicked abandonment of weapons and equipment in a rush to flee)

There are concerns (not unreasonable in this veteran's view) that openly-serving homosexuals will undermine those bonds and trust on at least two levels: peer-to-peer trust and chain of command trust.

While ours is a volunteer military, and some sorts of units require a second or even third level of volunteer self-selection and selection by the military (e.g. SEALS, Rangers, Airborne, etc.), the soldier does not have a choice who will be in his or her unit. (Oh, it's probably possible to rearrange things within a platoon to accommodate individuals, but typically assignments are based on the commander's assessment of needs and capabilities) And, of course, in times when mobilization requirements include a draft, the level of choice decreases dramatically.

So, you don't have a choice who's in your small unit and, if units are to be effective, they must be highly cohesive.

On a peer-to-peer level, the introduction of homosexuals is viewed as introducing a level of sexual tension which tends to reduce cohesion: consensual relationships creating jealousy, cliques, lovers' quarrels, pressure for nonconsensual relationships, and a general loss of intangible trust.

On the chain of command level, those same factors come in to play, and are exacerbated by rank disparities, concerns about playing favorites, even greater pressures for subordinates to acquiesce to sexual demands from superiors.

One can point out that all of these issues can be present with mixed heterosexual units, which is true, although on a trust level there seems to be a difference. Additionally, while it is not talked about openly because of political correctness, the introduction of women into combat support units (they are still not in direct combat units) has created problems -- anecdotally, one notes that Doonesbury has been dealing with some of these issues. In the Navy, in particular, having women on shipboard has cause significant increased costs and loss of readiness result from high pregnancy rates and the need to replace pregnant sailors, even in the middle of deployments or combat operations.

As hard as it is for civilians to understand, there really are intangibles that affect how well units perform. It is in our national interest -- absolutely essential to our long term national survival -- that our military be effective. To that end, things that military professionals reasonably believe are likely to adversely affect unit cohesion and performance should be avoided unless absolutely necessary.

tommythecat78 wrote:I didn't know that there weren't coed units on the front line. But I fail to see how this is better than if they were secretly involved. At least if they were open they could separate them much like they do people that are related to each other to avoid situations like these arising.

It depends what you mean by the front line: there are women aboard combat ships, and women who fly combat aircraft. On the ground, the military distinguishes three broad categories of 'branches' : combat (direct combat units such as infantry, armor, cavalry, field and air defense artillery, special forces), combat support (units which directly support combat units (e.g. engineers, military police, military intelligence, signal corps, chemical corps, aviation), and combat service support (quartermaster, transportation, medical, ordnance, finance, adjutant general, judge advocate general, chaplain). Women do not serve in combat arms in the United States (other than combat aviation), but they do serve in combat support units which can bring them into harms way.

My own view on this, having served as an artillery officer, is that you can't really make a blanket policy that works: there are some women I'd be perfectly happy to serve in combat with, but probably the majority of women could not physically handle the demands of service in a field artillery unit (basic 155mm rounds weigh close to 100 lbs, and other munitions are heavier). Similarly, some women are, and others are not, suited psychologically for combat. Likewise, there are some men who cannot handle the physical or the psychological demands. In any case, I would not want anyone in a unit who could not handle either the physical or psychological demands of combat.

coynedj wrote:I think the only way to test the theory is with a large-scale statistical analysis. Given current policies, we have one side of the comparison but not the other, making the test rather difficult. It seems that the current policy relies on the historical "ick" factor, fear of getting negative results, and ignoring the fact that countries that allow homosexuals into their armed forces have found no negative results.

This is an area where I don't think statistics are particularly useful. It's what Nassim Taleb would call a fat-tail situation. The professionals have identified the risks and the negative consequences if the risks are realized. We don't know what the probability of the risks occurring is, but, we do know that the negative consequences if they occur are catastrophic (i.e. losing a battle or even a war).

The simple fact is that while the European military forces mostly allow openly serving homosexuals, other than Britain, no modern power that allows open service by homosexuals has engaged in serious combat operations in which the issues can truly be tested on a large scale.

MarkDaSpark wrote:I think part (or most) of it is the fear that they might be distracted if they are involved with someone else in the unit, as similarly if there were coed units on the front line.

I know most joyous guys would have to be first out of the foxhole. Otherwise the sight of all those, sculpted by hours of PT, mens butts might prove a fatal distraction. I think its much ado about nothing. Like openly joyous players in professional sports. If Lebron James came out as joyous next week do you think that would stop any team from signing him?

rpm wrote:It depends what you mean by the front line: there are women aboard combat ships, and women who fly combat aircraft. On the ground, the military distinguishes three broad categories of 'branches' : combat (direct combat units such as infantry, armor, cavalry, field and air defense artillery, special forces), combat support (units which directly support combat units (e.g. engineers, military police, military intelligence, signal corps, chemical corps, aviation), and combat service support (quartermaster, transportation, medical, ordnance, finance, adjutant general, judge advocate general, chaplain). Women do not serve in combat arms in the United States (other than combat aviation), but they do serve in combat support units which can bring them into harms way.

My own view on this, having served as an artillery officer, is that you can't really make a blanket policy that works: there are some women I'd be perfectly happy to serve in combat with, but probably the majority of women could not physically handle the demands of service in a field artillery unit (basic 155mm rounds weigh close to 100 lbs, and other munitions are heavier). Similarly, some women are, and others are not, suited psychologically for combat. Likewise, there are some men who cannot handle the physical or the psychological demands. In any case, I would not want anyone in a unit who could not handle either the physical or psychological demands of combat.

You address the physical limitations of having women serve without addressing the morale ones (ie, the introduction of sexual situations within a combat unit), which, I would believe to be not a terrible test case to having happy folks serve openly - ie, not an issue.

I would also suspect that very few people know ahead of time whether they can handle the psychological aspects of serving in the military.

canonizer wrote:You address the physical limitations of having women serve without addressing the morale ones (ie, the introduction of sexual situations within a combat unit), which, I would believe to be not a terrible test case to having happy folks serve openly - ie, not an issue.

I would also suspect that very few people know ahead of time whether they can handle the psychological aspects of serving in the military.

I addressed the other issues in a previous reply to another poster: the issues are somewhat similar to the ones with homosexuals.

It is true that it's not easy to know in advance who can and who cannot handle the psychological aspects of combat. (Merely serving in the military is not a proxy for combat). That's the reason good training is both physically and psychologically as rigorous as possible. When people are both physically and mentally stressed, one can often (but not always) see who cannot stand up to the stress and who can.

That's why the selection process and the training for elite units, such as SEALs, Rangers, Special Forces, and the like are so rigorous, even harsh, beyond the obvious need to become absolutely expert with difficult-to-perfect skills and able to employ them under adverse conditions. And, it's the reason the traditional first year at the federal and state military colleges has been centered around a thorough-going hazing process (mostly mental, but also often physical). (I speak from experience at The Virginia Military Institute in the later half of the 1960s)

These processes are not infallible, but have worked historically because they are more likely to give false negatives (i.e., washing out some people who would be OK in combat) than false positives (i.e., passing people who break in combat). Of course, given the consequences of losing wars, if one has to err in selection of officers or elite troops, it's far better to miss a few good ones than it is to let bad apples in....

I personally have mixed feelings about women in the military colleges and in combat. As I mentioned in the post to which you are replying, I think some women -- not a very large number -- both want to be, and are capable physically and psychologically of being, competent warriors. Most women, I daresay, don't want to, and would be either physically or psychologically unsuitable, or both. Most men don't want to either, but I think a larger percentage of men do want to be, and are both physically and psychologically capable of being, competent warriors. It's just biology.

What is undisputed, is that the introduction of women first to the federal academies and subsequently to the state military colleges, has resulted in the watering down of the "adversative" freshman systems. Female cadets are held to different physical standards, and many of the traditional hazing practices have been curtailed. And, despite the best efforts of the administrations, some of the issues of sexuality and command abuse of position have surfaced.

Whether this will ultimately result in less effective selection of officers over time, I don't know. I do know one must guard oneself against the tendency to look on one's own experience as definitive and anything else as the world going to hell in a handbasket. Or, as VMI alumni say, when discussing issues of this sort (and it has become a cliche....) Back in Old Corps, when we really had a Ratline....

The question for the military, and society, is whether the risk of reduction in warfighting ability -- given the imperative that one cannot afford to lose wars -- is worth taking to accommodate the small number of women or homosexuals who want to serve. You say you believe...having happy folks serve openly - ...[is] not an issue.. Maybe you're right. But, then again, maybe you're not. From the standpoint of the risk to society, continuing present policy presents no additional risk. Changing the policy adds risk. Even if the risk is small, with catastrophic potential consequences, prudence suggests not taking the risk.

People treat this as if it were an intellectual game, to be solved by coming up with the best arguments or statistics. It's not a game. Real lives are at stake in combat, and, ultimately, the security of our society, depends on our ability to defend ourselves.

Combat is not more forgiving of women than of men.

First, I want to remark that people my age and level of cynicism, at best, pay little more than lip service appreciation to our military. Without respect to the Constitutionality of it, I would be in favor of a 1 or 2 year mandatory service (not necessarily military though not in any way excluding it) at age 18 or 19 as a means of improving our safety and infrastructure, as well as our sense of nationalism and pride.

I think that may facilitate "testing" some of the theories discussed above. It's very difficult, in 2010, to trust that the people who are older, wiser, superior or more experienced (ie, the people entrusted with our defense, security and purpose) have the best interest of the country, or the individuals selected to protect our country, at heart, which is why it is so easy to object to every policy.

canonizer wrote:First, I want to remark that people my age and level of cynicism, at best, pay little more than lip service appreciation to our military. Without respect to the Constitutionality of it, I would be in favor of a 1 or 2 year mandatory service (not necessarily military though not in any way excluding it) at age 18 or 19 as a means of improving our safety and infrastructure, as well as our sense of nationalism and pride.

I think that may facilitate "testing" some of the theories discussed above. It's very difficult, in 2010, to trust that the people who are older, wiser, superior or more experienced (ie, the people entrusted with our defense, security and purpose) have the best interest of the country, or the individuals selected to protect our country, at heart, which is why it is so easy to object to every policy.

Mandatory national service that is not purely military service (which is within Congress' Article I, Section 8 powers) is almost certainly unconstitutional as a violation of the 13th Amendment ban on involuntary servitude (the legality of the post-13th Amendment draft was determined during WWI Selective Draft Law Cases, 245 U.S. 366 (1918)).

Beyond that, I don't favor a military draft. I served with both draftees and volunteers, and there was a huge difference between people who wanted to be in the military and those who did not. I suppose a draft may be necessary in an all out war requiring full mobilization -- we needed it in the War of the Rebellion, and the World Wars, and, regardless of true need, continued it through Korea and Vietnam -- but otherwise conscription is antithetical to liberty.

This is not to say that I don't also believe that a willingness to defend our country is necessary to its long term existence, and that I believe every citizen has a moral responsibility to server in the military (at least in the National Guard, our modern equivalent of the militia), but I don't believe the government should coerce military service outside of the gravest emergencies.

My generation, I think, had our share of cynicism, but I don't think (before the current regime's ascension) that I ever believed that the people charged with our defense did not have the best interests of the country at heart. I may well have questioned their judgment in many cases, but never their patriotism.

Why'd they shut us down, btw? Does W00T hate freedom? I'd ask a constitutionality question but I fear that it's well within their rights to do so.

canonizer wrote:Why'd they shut us down, btw? Does W00T hate freedom? I'd ask a constitutionality question but I fear that it's well within their rights to do so.

Apparently the software gets very cranky when threads get past 10^2 pages.

rpm wrote:The question for the military, and society, is whether the risk of reduction in warfighting ability -- given the imperative that one cannot afford to lose wars -- is worth taking to accommodate the small number of women or homosexuals who want to serve. You say you believe...having happy folks serve openly - ...[is] not an issue.. Maybe you're right. But, then again, maybe you're not. From the standpoint of the risk to society, continuing present policy presents no additional risk.

*I am going to preface this by saying that I mean no offensive and I may be wrong in my observation.*

It seems to me that in this discussion, as well as the homosexual marriage one (perhaps in others, but these are the two that come to mind at the moment), that there is a common thread: you fear (for lack of a better word) change for what that change may bring. While I understand this sentiment and at times, agree,(indeed, there is comfort in the familiar) I think that there is also a potential danger to continuing the status quo. By doing so, you (not you specifically, but whomever is continuing it, of course) is not changing with the times. And indeed, the times are 'a changing. While I understand that change comes with a risk, I wonder at what cost the lack of change comes with. IMO, it is a different risk and that risk may be paid for by those whose liberties are being denied because of what mighthappen.

I suppose that this is a decision each of us must make for ourselves -- which risk/danger/etc. we prefer, perhaps understanding that neither is necessarily desirable.

Again, I want to be careful, here and in general, to not suppose or misinterpret anyone's posts, but there is a lot of erudition being shared, so if I do so, it is completely unintentional.

kylemittskus wrote:*I am going to preface this by saying that I mean no offensive and I may be wrong in my observation.*

It seems to me that in this discussion, as well as the homosexual marriage one (perhaps in others, but these are the two that come to mind at the moment), that there is a common thread: you fear (for lack of a better word) change for what that change may bring. While I understand this sentiment and at times, agree,(indeed, there is comfort in the familiar) I think that there is also a potential danger to continuing the status quo. By doing so, you (not you specifically, but whomever is continuing it, of course) is not changing with the times. And indeed, the times are 'a changing. While I understand that change comes with a risk, I wonder at what cost the lack of change comes with. IMO, it is a different risk and that risk may be paid for by those whose liberties are being denied because of what mighthappen.

I suppose that this is a decision each of us must make for ourselves -- which risk/danger/etc. we prefer, perhaps understanding that neither is necessarily desirable.

Again, I want to be careful, here and in general, to not suppose or misinterpret anyone's posts, but there is a lot of erudition being shared, so if I do so, it is completely unintentional.

The underlying assumptions in your post are that 'change' (whatever that means) is (1) good, and (2) in any event, inevitable, so to resist it is both futile and bad. I think you also unconsciously assume a fairly strong form of the idea of progress, but that is not entirely clear.

Having spent a considerable amount of my time studying the Enlightenment in my callow youth, these are ideas and debates I wrestled with at length, both as they applied historically to understanding 18th century thought, and in light of the paradoxically dismal and glorious history of the 20th century, which combined scientific progress that was almost (if not literally) inconceivable in 1900 with human behavior of a level of depravity and cruelty unsurpassed in its deadly effects.

Without getting into the nuances -- which would take a 100+ page thread and rereading probably 250+ serious books by itself -- I do not subscribe to a 'strong' version of the idea of progress. Rather, I subscribe to a weaker version, which I would argue was far closer to the view of sophisticated Enlightenment thinkers than the popular caricature the semi-educated take away from an undergraduate reading of Candide. That is, I think that progress, specifically scientific and technological progress, is possible given the right conditions and attitudes. Such progress is not inevitable. Changes may, or may not, be good. Progress in terms of human behavior is far more problematic, because I do not believe that human nature has changed significantly within historical memory: we are still motivated by the same passions and, to a lesser extent, reason, as were our ancestors.

In this regard, I note that the ancients (and the Chinese until the 20th century, perhaps to their regret) viewed change with great suspicion. Perhaps the best know formulation in the Western canon is that of Solomon in Ecclesiastes 1:9-10, 14 (in the Authorized Version):

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us. ....
I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

And, the Chinese stressed harmony and to wish someone to live in interesting times is reputed to be a serious insult.

And yet, all of the foregoing is by way of a preface to what I think is the fundamental difference in our thinking here, which relates to how one conceives of risk and how one reacts to it. This, again, is a discussion which can be had on many levels, which range from anecdotal to the highly mathematical involving game theory and chaos theory (fractal geometry, perhaps) as well as probability theory. On this, I will only say that a purely technical understanding of statistics and probability on the level one encounters it in undergraduate econometrics, engineering statistics, or business school finance courses may well be more harmful than helpful to the understanding of risk in the world.

Perhaps the simplest way to illustrate the way I think about this is to use Pascal's bet (in the popular form) on the existence of the traditional Christian god, with a bit of probability thrown in: as generally formulated, Pascal argues that we can't know whether god exists or not, but there are only two possibilities. Likewise, we have a choice to either believe or not believe in this existence. And, assume, for the sake of the argument that belief is not mere assent, that is, it will change our behavior.

So, how is one to assess the risks here. Well, consider the consequences: if you do not believe, and god exists, then you will suffer eternally. A catastrophic negative consequence. On the other hand, if god exists and you do believe (questions of whether you're in a Calvinist elect aside), you will be rewarded with eternal bliss. By contrast the consequences of belief if god does not exist are smaller - you may forgo certain actions or gains that are contrary to the teachings - and there are essentially no consequences of nonbelief if god does not exist. If the probabilities were equal of any outcome, the expected value of the outcomes would suggest belief.

However, we do not know the probabilities. It may well be that the probability that god exists is very small, way out in the statistical 'tail' as it were. This would obviously affect our ordinary expected value calculations. Yet, even so, the catastrophic consequences of unbelief in the face of god's existence is so great that no rational creature would fail to believe.

While this is overly simplified Pascal (and grossly oversimplified generally), I think it is useful for understanding how I think about things like homosexual marriage and homosexuals openly serving in the military. I don't know what the consequences will be, and I don't know what the probability is that the consequences will be as thoroughly negative as some with expert knowledge believe. However, the magnitude of the negative consequences, even if the probability is small, militates against the experiment without any dire necessity to undertake it. As Justice Jackson put it, dissenting in Terminiello v. City of Chicago 337 U.S. 1 (1949) at 37:

There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.

Another useful illustration may be the recent flooding in Tennessee, where Nashville has been devastated by a '500 year' flood. A rare event, so rare that in the development of the city it was ignored, yet, an event with catastrophic consequences.

Here, I am informed not only by philosophy, but by the study of history and the rather dismal results of the past three centuries, the baleful history of the French Revolution, the World Wars, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, Cambodia, not to mention Mussolini's fascism, Hitler's National Socialism, Japanese imperial aggression, Soviet/Communist aggression and the like.

Where one can experiment with changes, and reverse them with relative ease if they don't work out well, I am far more comfortable with change than I am in circumstances more akin to Pandora's box (amazing how the ancients touched on so many of these issues) which, once opened to release its contents, cannot put them aright. I am much more comfortable with Burkean 'organic' change that develops over time, gathering assent from broad swathes of civil society before it is reflected in legal arrangements than with change imposed by government (which includes judicial) fiat.

If you want to call this all "fear" then consider that even paranoids sometimes have enemies. Rather, I think what I have is a very healthy skepticism about any tiny minority demanding that society (potentially) dramatically alter the way it conducts itself to accommodate the minority.

Couldn't agree more with RPM's lengthy post. I'm not particularly whiggish, nor am I necessarily afraid of change, but the insights of evolutionary biology suggest that a change from a stable, working system is more likely than not to be negative on balance. This is because there are a lot more ways to break a functioning complex system by changing one thing or element (think of your eye, for example) than ways to improve it.

Great article on inJustice Stevens that captures his contempt for private property. I wish I saw something similar on antitrust.

PetiteSirah wrote:Couldn't agree more with RPM's lengthy post. I'm not particularly whiggish, nor am I necessarily afraid of change, but the insights of evolutionary biology suggest that a change from a stable, working system is more likely than not to be negative on balance. This is because there are a lot more ways to break a functioning complex system by changing one thing or element (think of your eye, for example) than ways to improve it.

Do I really come off that Whiggish? I suppose it's a fair cop....

rpm wrote:Do I really come off that Whiggish? I suppose it's a fair cop....

Politically, yes. Historiographically, no (though Kyle definitely is). Both the Luddite (idealizing a primitive fantasy of a past, free of technology) and the Whiggish (every change from the past is positive progress) views of history are silly. We've mostly gotten rid of the Luddite view, but the Whiggish one is far more pernicious.

PetiteSirah wrote:Politically, yes. Historiographically, no (though Kyle definitely is). Both the Luddite (idealizing a primitive fantasy of a past, free of technology) and the Whiggish (every change from the past is positive progress) views of history are silly. We've mostly gotten rid of the Luddite view, but the Whiggish one is far more pernicious.

Gad, it's been so long since I read Butterfield's 1931 essay, almost as long as the time between when he published it and when I read it preparing for my exams in philosophy of history. And I haven't much thought about it since then. We're all quasi-Whigs now.....? (Curiously, I thought his main book, The Origins of Modern Science (which I read before I read the essay on the Whig interpretation of history and thought was pretty good), was rather an example of Whig history....)

I don't think the Luddite view is so vanquished, especially not in its Rousseauian strain as transmogrified through Hegel and Marx/Engels and post-modern predilections for wholistic social engineering through deconstruction.

PetiteSirah wrote:Politically, yes. Historiographically, no (though Kyle definitely is). Both the Luddite (idealizing a primitive fantasy of a past, free of technology) and the Whiggish (every change from the past is positive progress) views of history are silly. We've mostly gotten rid of the Luddite view, but the Whiggish one is far more pernicious.

I certainly do not think that every change from the past is positive progress.

I am going to disagree with one of your main premises you proposed just a few posts ago: "a change from a stable, working system is more likely than not to be negative on balance. "

I question the stability of the current system (I have returned to the marriage debate, by the way). The current system is claiming numbers of close to 50% of first-time marriages end in divorces, and the number goes up with second and third marriages, etc.

I assume that one of the potentially damaging effects that could presumably come from legalizing same-sex marriage is that a same sex couple could then adopt children. However, I challenge the stability of this current system as well. Lesser of two evils, possibly. But, there are exponentially more children in foster care than are being adopted and I would rather have a same sex couple adopt than have a child bounce around from home to home within the foster care system.

Aside from this, I am curious as to what potentially damaging effects may follow the legalization of joyous marriage. To use RPM's flood example, the effects of not erring on the side of caution could have easily been guessed: water is going to flood the city. What are they (possibly) here?

To juggle another conversation, I agree, RPM, that human nature has not inherently changed. However, good or bad, the discourses that govern that behavior have. Foucault and his theories seem to apply rather well here, particularly since he was himself homosexual and wrote about sexuality in The History of Sexuality. So, while we haven't changed inherently, we have changed as per the discourses have guided us to do so and necessarily, those discourses at times can be forced to change for what may or may not be the better. Pre-18708ish when the term "homosexual"came about, homosexual behavior was far more socially accepted, although granted there was no talk of socialized marriage among same sex.

rpm wrote:My own view on this, having served as an artillery officer, is that you can't really make a blanket policy that works: there are some women I'd be perfectly happy to serve in combat with, but probably the majority of women could not physically handle the demands of service in a field artillery unit (basic 155mm rounds weigh close to 100 lbs, and other munitions are heavier). Similarly, some women are, and others are not, suited psychologically for combat. Likewise, there are some men who cannot handle the physical or the psychological demands. In any case, I would not want anyone in a unit who could not handle either the physical or psychological demands of combat.

This, I think is the point. It's the judgment of the ability/fitness of an individual to accomplish the tasks they are assigned. Many jobs have bona fide requirements, and this certainly applies to military jobs. None of what you've highlighted here applies to an entire class of people - and that's exactly why I agree with you here.

kylemittskus wrote:I certainly do not think that every change from the past is positive progress.

I am going to disagree with one of your main premises you proposed just a few posts ago: "a change from a stable, working system is more likely than not to be negative on balance. "

I question the stability of the current system (I have returned to the marriage debate, by the way). The current system is claiming numbers of close to 50% of first-time marriages end in divorces, and the number goes up with second and third marriages, etc.

Sigh. PS didn't say the current system was stable, so you're not questioning his premise; you're setting up a straw man.

I hope you find someone to continue the marriage debate, as you put it, but I have no interest in revisiting it.

kylemittskus wrote:
To juggle another conversation, I agree, RPM, that human nature has not inherently changed. However, good or bad, the discourses that govern that behavior have. Foucault and his theories seem to apply rather well here, particularly since he was himself homosexual and wrote about sexuality in The History of Sexuality. So, while we haven't changed inherently, we have changed as per the discourses have guided us to do so and necessarily, those discourses at times can be forced to change for what may or may not be the better. Pre-18708ish when the term "homosexual"came about, homosexual behavior was far more socially accepted, although granted there was no talk of socialized marriage among same sex.

Unfortunately, there's not much to be said here either: I found Foucault unreadable and cannot take him or his work seriously. Typically French, logic and cleverness over sense. He's fashionable on the left, though Rorty and Habermas criticize him, but that doesn't make his work any less nonsense. I daresay that in 50 years he'll be no more read than Henri Bergson is today.

Foucault is a product of (among other things) the Ecole Normal Superieure. I have had some experience with graduates of ENS, and, frankly, other than a young woman whose pulchritude and willingness to share her enthusiasm for sensual exploration far outweighed her academic brilliance, I have not been particularly impressed. I'm much too much an Anglo-Saxon philosophically.

klezman wrote:This, I think is the point. It's the judgment of the ability/fitness of an individual to accomplish the tasks they are assigned. Many jobs have bona fide requirements, and this certainly applies to military jobs. None of what you've highlighted here applies to an entire class of people - and that's exactly why I agree with you here.

Sorry I missed this earlier. Unfortunately, in this best of all possible worlds [/sarcasm], where we have limited resources, we don't spend infinite amounts (it only seems like it). Defense is a particularly expensive, but particularly necessary, bundle of things we buy.

One of the reasons the issue of women in the military (combat in particular) is so difficult is that there are very real costs involved - both measurable economic costs (separate facilities, logistical differences, how you deal with pregnancies, etc., etc.) and intangible costs (to potential combat effectiveness) from changes to training and officer selection.

I think that a fair amount of the opposition to women in the military generally, and in the service academies and combat in particular, was based on a perception that given that really very few women wanted to, and probably even fewer could, meet the physical and psychological demands, it was a great deal of trouble and a great deal of cost, and some risk, for not a whole lot of benefit at all -- no military benefit and no cost benefit.

Of course, some of opposition also represents traditional social mores -- which may or may not have ultimate biological as well as social bases -- and some represents a visceral reaction that women will reduce combat effectiveness.

Again, it's very complicated. My military service predates the expanded role of women and women in the academies. I have followed the debate with some interest, especially when there was litigation over admitting women to VMI. Two of my Brother Rats (classmates) were on the Board of Visitors when VMI came within one vote of going private or closing rather than admit women. VMI tried very, very hard when it did admit women to avoid making changes to the Ratline (the 'adversative' freshman hazing system) and the Institute. The only analogous change at the I came with the admission of blacks during my cadetship, which was a major event in a school that still celebrates the Corps' winning the battle of New Market on May 15, 1864 with a heroic charge into the face of Yankee artillery.

VMI was relatively successful in both cases, but in both cases, the Institute was no longer the same place it was before. After a number of years of trying to hold women to the same physical standards as men -- on the theory that if you want what VMI has to offer, you take as you find it -- they had to use lower standards for women because so few of the self-selected women (about 5% of any class). And, the Ratline has been shortened by several months and made easier. Opinion on whether this really matters is divided. I'm somewhat agnostic.

rpm wrote:The underlying assumptions in your post are that 'change' (whatever that means) is (1) good, and (2) in any event, inevitable, so to resist it is both futile and bad. I think you also unconsciously assume a fairly strong form of the idea of progress, but that is not entirely clear.

Having spent a considerable amount of my time studying the Enlightenment in my callow youth, these are ideas and debates I wrestled with at length, both as they applied historically to understanding 18th century thought, and in light of the paradoxically dismal and glorious history of the 20th century, which combined scientific progress that was almost (if not literally) inconceivable in 1900 with human behavior of a level of depravity and cruelty unsurpassed in its deadly effects.

Without getting into the nuances -- which would take a 100+ page thread and rereading probably 250+ serious books by itself -- I do not subscribe to a 'strong' version of the idea of progress. Rather, I subscribe to a weaker version, which I would argue was far closer to the view of sophisticated Enlightenment thinkers than the popular caricature the semi-educated take away from an undergraduate reading of Candide. That is, I think that progress, specifically scientific and technological progress, is possible given the right conditions and attitudes. Such progress is not inevitable. Changes may, or may not, be good. Progress in terms of human behavior is far more problematic, because I do not believe that human nature has changed significantly within historical memory: we are still motivated by the same passions and, to a lesser extent, reason, as were our ancestors.

In this regard, I note that the ancients (and the Chinese until the 20th century, perhaps to their regret) viewed change with great suspicion. Perhaps the best know formulation in the Western canon is that of Solomon in Ecclesiastes 1:9-10, 14 (in the Authorized Version):

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us. ....
I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.
And, the Chinese stressed harmony and to wish someone to live in interesting times is reputed to be a serious insult.

And yet, all of the foregoing is by way of a preface to what I think is the fundamental difference in our thinking here, which relates to how one conceives of risk and how one reacts to it. This, again, is a discussion which can be had on many levels, which range from anecdotal to the highly mathematical involving game theory and chaos theory (fractal geometry, perhaps) as well as probability theory. On this, I will only say that a purely technical understanding of statistics and probability on the level one encounters it in undergraduate econometrics, engineering statistics, or business school finance courses may well be more harmful than helpful to the understanding of risk in the world.

Perhaps the simplest way to illustrate the way I think about this is to use Pascal's bet (in the popular form) on the existence of the traditional Christian god, with a bit of probability thrown in: as generally formulated, Pascal argues that we can't know whether god exists or not, but there are only two possibilities. Likewise, we have a choice to either believe or not believe in this existence. And, assume, for the sake of the argument that belief is not mere assent, that is, it will change our behavior.

So, how is one to assess the risks here. Well, consider the consequences: if you do not believe, and god exists, then you will suffer eternally. A catastrophic negative consequence. On the other hand, if god exists and you do believe (questions of whether you're in a Calvinist elect aside), you will be rewarded with eternal bliss. By contrast the consequences of belief if god does not exist are smaller - you may forgo certain actions or gains that are contrary to the teachings - and there are essentially no consequences of nonbelief if god does not exist. If the probabilities were equal of any outcome, the expected value of the outcomes would suggest belief.

However, we do not know the probabilities. It may well be that the probability that god exists is very small, way out in the statistical 'tail' as it were. This would obviously affect our ordinary expected value calculations. Yet, even so, the catastrophic consequences of unbelief in the face of god's existence is so great that no rational creature would fail to believe.

While this is overly simplified Pascal (and grossly oversimplified generally), I think it is useful for understanding how I think about things like homosexual marriage and homosexuals openly serving in the military. I don't know what the consequences will be, and I don't know what the probability is that the consequences will be as thoroughly negative as some with expert knowledge believe. However, the magnitude of the negative consequences, even if the probability is small, militates against the experiment without any dire necessity to undertake it. As Justice Jackson put it, dissenting in Terminiello v. City of Chicago 337 U.S. 1 (1949) at 37:

There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact.

Another useful illustration may be the recent flooding in Tennessee, where Nashville has been devastated by a '500 year' flood. A rare event, so rare that in the development of the city it was ignored, yet, an event with catastrophic consequences.

Here, I am informed not only by philosophy, but by the study of history and the rather dismal results of the past three centuries, the baleful history of the French Revolution, the World Wars, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, Cambodia, not to mention Mussolini's fascism, Hitler's National Socialism, Japanese imperial aggression, Soviet/Communist aggression and the like.

Where one can experiment with changes, and reverse them with relative ease if they don't work out well, I am far more comfortable with change than I am in circumstances more akin to Pandora's box (amazing how the ancients touched on so many of these issues) which, once opened to release its contents, cannot put them aright. I am much more comfortable with Burkean 'organic' change that develops over time, gathering assent from broad swathes of civil society before it is reflected in legal arrangements than with change imposed by government (which includes judicial) fiat.

If you want to call this all "fear" then consider that even paranoids sometimes have enemies. Rather, I think what I have is a very healthy skepticism about any tiny minority demanding that society (potentially) dramatically alter the way it conducts itself to accommodate the minority.

The second half of your post is where the meat is, as I read it, so I’ll concentrate my response on that part (with one small exception, at the end of this post).

You posit a potential negative consequence that is of such overwhelming size that, even if it holds a small probability, should dominate our analysis. If that negative consequence could be shown to be there, then I would have no choice but to agree. But to merely suggest an overwhelming negative consequence is not sufficient to end the argument; the existence and magnitude of the consequence must comport with the evidence. An obvious example would be in the physical realm – those who feared that the supercollider in Europe would create a black hole that would destroy the earth, and therefore said the collider should be stopped, got a fair bit of press a while back, but they ignored the fact that the type of molecular collisions that would be created happen millions of times daily in close proximity to the earth, and the feared black holes never do appear. The negative consequence was great, but it flew in the face of abundantly available evidence. I could come up with an overwhelming negative consequence for just about any action anyone might suggest, and if we bowed to those potential consequences without evidence to support them we would never do anything at all. So, the negative consequence we shrink from surely must have evidence to support it.

The first question is, what is this negative consequence that should have such a large impact on our analysis? Is it that homosexuals would cause our military forces to be so ineffective that our ability to wage military operations at all would be severely compromised? If so, then our continuation as a nation would be at risk, and I would not want to see that happen. But if it is that military units might be “less effective”, then it may or may not be an issue. How is effectiveness measured? What type of effectiveness are we talking about? There are degrees of effectiveness, and minor differences can easily be overwhelmed by other factors, or be explained as statistical variations.

We must also look at the negative consequences to not allowing homosexuals to serve. I don’t have any data at hand, but I’ll bet that the elite forces such as the Navy Seals and the Green Berets are more effective than regular troops. In times of war, we greatly increase the number of “regular” troops at our disposal – might it not increase overall effectiveness if we instead increased the number of Green Berets? But not all soldiers can meet the standards of the Green Berets, and the cost and training time necessary for building a larger special forces contingent prevents us from having a military that meets the extremely high effectiveness standard those special forces demonstrate. We need troops, and are willing to make some sacrifices to get them. Denying a portion of the population the right to serve reduces the pool of available troops, some of whom probably would even go on to join the elite forces. When we limit the pool, we run the risk of having units that are undersized, calling upon soldiers to perform above their ability, or having units in active duty for so long that they lose effectiveness through physical or mental exhaustion. When we expand the pool, we reduce those risks. This policy, as with most everything else, involves a balancing – what are the consequences of saying “yes”, balanced against the consequences of saying “no”? Rarely is there an issue which has risks on only one side of the balance. And of course there is the question of reversibility – if something doesn’t work out, can it be quickly identified and reversed? You seem to assume that, even if homosexual troops were shown to cause great harm to the effectiveness of our armed forces, they could never again be removed from service. Why?

So, if we need our fears to be supported by the evidence (or at least not be contrary to the evidence), where can we turn? Well, one place to look (for imperfect but still usable evidence) is the performance of military personnel who are revealed after service to have been homosexual, or who have been removed from service because of homosexuality. Have they performed so badly that unit performance is compromised? Have their units underperformed? Another place to look is at our existing forces, which certainly have some who followed the “don’t tell” part of “don’t ask, don’t tell”. Are there some units which perform poorly, and the cause of this poor performance cannot be attributed to anything else? After all, we’re talking about overwhelming consequences here, not tiny differences, and if the existence of acknowledged homosexuals would be greatly destructive, then it would make sense that unacknowledged homosexuals would also be destructive. A third place to look is at other armed forces in which homosexuals are allowed to serve. Have they seen any adverse effects?

A quick google search turned up a number of studies, and the evidence looks to be strongly against the claims of negative consequences. Samples can be found here and here, both from the same source but useful in that one is a recent study and the other a listing of previous studies.

As said before, if the evidence showed that allowing homosexuals to serve had a measurable detrimental effect on the performance of our military, then I would say they should not serve. But the evidence seems to say that this is not the case. When there is evidence on one side of a discussion, and suppositions on the other side, I will side with the evidence.

Oh, I almost forgot the one thing in the first part of your message I wanted to mention. It’s the Chinese curse, “may you live in interesting times”. It doesn’t exist. It was traced to an investment newsletter in the late 80s if I remember correctly, in which the writer was talking about a volatile market and someone’s calling it an “interesting time”. The newsletter writer said that “interesting” was a curious choice of words, and that “may you live in interesting times” sounded like a Chinese curse. No such curse existed, but it took on a meme-like existence and has probably been cited millions of times. It’s veracity is akin to the allegations of Proctor & Gamble’s devil-worshipping practices (though not as stupidly destructive).

coynedj wrote:Oh, I almost forgot the one thing in the first part of your message I wanted to mention. It’s the Chinese curse, “may you live in interesting times”. It doesn’t exist. It was traced to an investment newsletter in the late 80s if I remember correctly, in which the writer was talking about a volatile market and someone’s calling it an “interesting time”. The newsletter writer said that “interesting” was a curious choice of words, and that “may you live in interesting times” sounded like a Chinese curse. No such curse existed, but it took on a meme-like existence and has probably been cited millions of times. It’s veracity is akin to the allegations of Proctor & Gamble’s devil-worshipping practices (though not as stupidly destructive).

You mean P&G isn't run by devil worshippers? Who knew.*

I did say it was reputed to be an insult... and the late '80s attribution is undoubtedly not the source of it, because I remember having heard it in the late '60s, and I noted it at the time because it was consistent with my understanding if the I Ching, which I spent some time studying around that time. Apparently, it's been bandied about much longer. Wikipedia May You Live In Interesting Times suggests it was current in the 1930s and the source (according to Austen Chamberlain) was a British diplomat in China. Who knows....

*Full Disclosure, SWMBO works for Colgate-Palmolive...

coynedj wrote:The second half of your post is where the meat is, as I read it, so I’ll concentrate my response on that part (with one small exception, at the end of this post).

You posit a potential negative consequence that is of such overwhelming size that, even if it holds a small probability, should dominate our analysis. If that negative consequence could be shown to be there, then I would have no choice but to agree. But to merely suggest an overwhelming negative consequence is not sufficient to end the argument; the existence and magnitude of the consequence must comport with the evidence. An obvious example would be in the physical realm – those who feared that the supercollider in Europe would create a black hole that would destroy the earth, and therefore said the collider should be stopped, got a fair bit of press a while back, but they ignored the fact that the type of molecular collisions that would be created happen millions of times daily in close proximity to the earth, and the feared black holes never do appear. The negative consequence was great, but it flew in the face of abundantly available evidence. I could come up with an overwhelming negative consequence for just about any action anyone might suggest, and if we bowed to those potential consequences without evidence to support them we would never do anything at all. So, the negative consequence we shrink from surely must have evidence to support it.

The first question is, what is this negative consequence that should have such a large impact on our analysis? Is it that homosexuals would cause our military forces to be so ineffective that our ability to wage military operations at all would be severely compromised? If so, then our continuation as a nation would be at risk, and I would not want to see that happen. But if it is that military units might be “less effective”, then it may or may not be an issue. How is effectiveness measured? What type of effectiveness are we talking about? There are degrees of effectiveness, and minor differences can easily be overwhelmed by other factors, or be explained as statistical variations.

We must also look at the negative consequences to not allowing homosexuals to serve. I don’t have any data at hand, but I’ll bet that the elite forces such as the Navy Seals and the Green Berets are more effective than regular troops. In times of war, we greatly increase the number of “regular” troops at our disposal – might it not increase overall effectiveness if we instead increased the number of Green Berets? But not all soldiers can meet the standards of the Green Berets, and the cost and training time necessary for building a larger special forces contingent prevents us from having a military that meets the extremely high effectiveness standard those special forces demonstrate. We need troops, and are willing to make some sacrifices to get them. Denying a portion of the population the right to serve reduces the pool of available troops, some of whom probably would even go on to join the elite forces. When we limit the pool, we run the risk of having units that are undersized, calling upon soldiers to perform above their ability, or having units in active duty for so long that they lose effectiveness through physical or mental exhaustion. When we expand the pool, we reduce those risks. This policy, as with most everything else, involves a balancing – what are the consequences of saying “yes”, balanced against the consequences of saying “no”? Rarely is there an issue which has risks on only one side of the balance. And of course there is the question of reversibility – if something doesn’t work out, can it be quickly identified and reversed? You seem to assume that, even if homosexual troops were shown to cause great harm to the effectiveness of our armed forces, they could never again be removed from service. Why?

So, if we need our fears to be supported by the evidence (or at least not be contrary to the evidence), where can we turn? Well, one place to look (for imperfect but still usable evidence) is the performance of military personnel who are revealed after service to have been homosexual, or who have been removed from service because of homosexuality. Have they performed so badly that unit performance is compromised? Have their units underperformed? Another place to look is at our existing forces, which certainly have some who followed the “don’t tell” part of “don’t ask, don’t tell”. Are there some units which perform poorly, and the cause of this poor performance cannot be attributed to anything else? After all, we’re talking about overwhelming consequences here, not tiny differences, and if the existence of acknowledged homosexuals would be greatly destructive, then it would make sense that unacknowledged homosexuals would also be destructive. A third place to look is at other armed forces in which homosexuals are allowed to serve. Have they seen any adverse effects?

A quick google search turned up a number of studies, and the evidence looks to be strongly against the claims of negative consequences. Samples can be found here and here, both from the same source but useful in that one is a recent study and the other a listing of previous studies.

As said before, if the evidence showed that allowing homosexuals to serve had a measurable detrimental effect on the performance of our military, then I would say they should not serve. But the evidence seems to say that this is not the case. When there is evidence on one side of a discussion, and suppositions on the other side, I will side with the evidence.

Only a few quick points on this:

1. Other militaries are not analogous because, with the exception of the British and the Israelis, they do not much engage in serious combat and haven't in generations. The British experiment is worth watching, but the jury is out. The Israelis are a special case.

2. The 'available manpower' pool point is nonsense as applied to homosexual service, though not as applied to women serving (in noncombat positions). Most reasonable estimates of the size of homosexual population run around 2-3%. In the context of a volunteer service where there is little difficulty meeting recruiting requirements, excluding the undoubtedly very small minority who would want to serve of the already tiny minority of the population, the actual number of recruits lost is infitesmal.

3. There is a difference between your 'coming up with' a potential harm to something and the professionals who have spent their lives in the military believing there are potential harms.

4. I find the arguments about 'how much' effectiveness would be tolerable to be absurd: virtually any preventable loss of effectiveness ought be avoided. You never know when even a small incremental difference will be the difference that determines the winner or loser in combat. Surely, as a child you learned the nursery rhyme:

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

5. Your point that if open homosexual service were a problem, so would closeted homosexual service be, simply doesn't follow.

6. Reversibility is less the issue with military service, though it is an issue with homosexual marriage. You would have questions of settled expectation. So far, it seems to have been a one way street.

7. The Palmer Center is dedicated to furthering homosexual issues, and can hardly be regarded as an objective source.

rpm wrote:3. There is a difference between your 'coming up with' a potential harm to something and the professionals who have spent their lives in the military believing there are potential harms.

Only one small point to contribute to an otherwise very interesting discussion.

I think you're making an incorrect distinction here. People who've spent their lives in the military derived their "belief of potential harm" somewhere. Is it from evidence? Surely it can't be, as openly joyous soldiers have not existed in the US. So if they believe there are potential harms, they need to have a factual basis if I'm to agree with them. There may very well be such a basis, but I have not yet heard it. I would hazard a guess that much of this "potential harm" is born out of fear of the unknown, and that could easily be what's led them to "come up with" a potential harm.

I can spend my life as a professional jazz musician believing that rock and roll is devil music and will cause society to crumble (OK, Brittney might, but still ). That doesn't make my belief correct.

rpm wrote:One of the reasons the issue of women in the military (combat in particular) is so difficult is that there are very real costs involved - both measurable economic costs (separate facilities, logistical differences, how you deal with pregnancies, etc., etc.) and intangible costs (to potential combat effectiveness) from changes to training and officer selection.

I think that a fair amount of the opposition to women in the military generally, and in the service academies and combat in particular, was based on a perception that given that really very few women wanted to, and probably even fewer could, meet the physical and psychological demands, it was a great deal of trouble and a great deal of cost, and some risk, for not a whole lot of benefit at all -- no military benefit and no cost benefit.

Of course, some of opposition also represents traditional social mores -- which may or may not have ultimate biological as well as social bases -- and some represents a visceral reaction that women will reduce combat effectiveness.

...And, the Ratline has been shortened by several months and made easier. Opinion on whether this really matters is divided. I'm somewhat agnostic.

If you're talking about monetary cost vs. monetary benefit the analysis is easy. If you're talking about social cost vs social benefit, it's pretty tough. But now you're talking about a mixture of monetary and intangible cost weighed against a benefit that is quite difficult to quantify. I like the idea of trying to apply this analysis, but I'm getting hopelessly lost right at the start. As you've mentioned several times, it's complicated.

Now when you're talking about the opposition being due, at least in part, to social mores, you hit on the part I find objectionable. If the powers that be can make a sound cost/benefit argument against a change then so be it. But adherence to the old way of doing things largely out of an unsubstantiated fear is unfair.

I have no way of knowing how much of the opposition to openly joyous military service is based on which of these factors. However, most of what I'm hearing (not so much here, but in the media) about sounds like the latter. Should people have cogent arguments using the former, then so be it, and I will be happy to weigh that evidence. RPM, you've definitely been trying to do the former and highlight what you do and don't have evidence for, and I thank you for that. It's a pleasure to see these discussions almost always remain civil, respectful, and thoughtful.

klezman wrote:Only one small point to contribute to an otherwise very interesting discussion.

I think you're making an incorrect distinction here. People who've spent their lives in the military derived their "belief of potential harm" somewhere. Is it from evidence? Surely it can't be, as openly joyous soldiers have not existed in the US. So if they believe there are potential harms, they need to have a factual basis if I'm to agree with them. There may very well be such a basis, but I have not yet heard it. I would hazard a guess that much of this "potential harm" is born out of fear of the unknown, and that could easily be what's led them to "come up with" a potential harm.

I can spend my life as a professional jazz musician believing that rock and roll is devil music and will cause society to crumble (OK, Brittney might, but still ). That doesn't make my belief correct.

Again, this is not all simple. In fact, it's very complex, and I'm sure most military people's views involve as mixture of bases. About all I can say here is that not everything is susceptible to 'factual' demonstration, and that, in warfare, the intangibles are terribly important. In 1940, the French had more men, more and (surprisingly, if you weren't a student of such matters) better tanks and as many (and almost as good) planes, as the Germans, but they were still crushingly defeated in a few weeks. The Poles put up more effective resistance, considering they were outnumbered. So, many of these things are as much matters of intuition and judgment as anything else, and in this, based on my own experiences in and around the military, I prefer to trust the military rather than those with an agenda that does not place the defense of the country above all other considerations.

I suspect we've about exhausted this topic, or at least reached the point at which we agree to disagree.

As I’ve said before in this thread, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know the full process for a lot of the legal decisions handed down in this country. But, of course, that doesn’t stop me from thinking “this one is right” or “this one is wrong”.

I wish someone could explain one of today’s Supreme Court decisions to me. Way back in civics class, if I recall, I was taught that if someone committed a crime, that person was charged and tried for that crime. If found guilty, a sentence was handed down, which could be for a fixed time period; let’s say 10 years, as an example. Once those ten years of imprisonment were completed, that person had served the sentence given and was released from prison.

I am no fan of sex offenders; I have children, and that colors one’s thinking about a lot of things. But I have two problems with today’s ruling that Congress could give prison officials the power to decide that a sex offender is a danger to society and should continue to be kept behind bars, potentially for life. First, this amounts to a new sentence, in my mind, and thus should go through the judicial system, with all of the requirements for evidence and judgment by one’s peers that that system requires. Second, these people are being incarcerated not for any crime committed (that sentence will have already been served), but for crimes that someone thinks they may commit in the future. If one can be kept in prison out of fear of a future crime in the case of sex offenders, what other types of criminals might fall under this same process? I see no reason to not answer with “everybody”.

I’m sure I’ll surprise no one by admitting that I don’t always agree with Justices Thomas and Scalia, especially when they are the lone dissenters in a 7-2 decision. But at first blush, I find myself agreeing with them on this case. I’m sure there is a strong reason behind this decision – if not, it wouldn’t have been 7-2. Maybe it’s one of those cases where someone (Congress in this case) has the legal authority to make a bad decision. Maybe I’m just misinformed about the details of the decision. If the lawyers out there could explain this to me, I would appreciate it.

coynedj wrote:As I’ve said before in this thread, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know the full process for a lot of the legal decisions handed down in this country. But, of course, that doesn’t stop me from thinking “this one is right” or “this one is wrong”.

I wish someone could explain one of today’s Supreme Court decisions to me. Way back in civics class, if I recall, I was taught that if someone committed a crime, that person was charged and tried for that crime. If found guilty, a sentence was handed down, which could be for a fixed time period; let’s say 10 years, as an example. Once those ten years of imprisonment were completed, that person had served the sentence given and was released from prison.

I am no fan of sex offenders; I have children, and that colors one’s thinking about a lot of things. But I have two problems with today’s ruling that Congress could give prison officials the power to decide that a sex offender is a danger to society and should continue to be kept behind bars, potentially for life. First, this amounts to a new sentence, in my mind, and thus should go through the judicial system, with all of the requirements for evidence and judgment by one’s peers that that system requires. Second, these people are being incarcerated not for any crime committed (that sentence will have already been served), but for crimes that someone thinks they may commit in the future. If one can be kept in prison out of fear of a future crime in the case of sex offenders, what other types of criminals might fall under this same process? I see no reason to not answer with “everybody”.

I’m sure I’ll surprise no one by admitting that I don’t always agree with Justices Thomas and Scalia, especially when they are the lone dissenters in a 7-2 decision. But at first blush, I find myself agreeing with them on this case. I’m sure there is a strong reason behind this decision – if not, it wouldn’t have been 7-2. Maybe it’s one of those cases where someone (Congress in this case) has the legal authority to make a bad decision. Maybe I’m just misinformed about the details of the decision. If the lawyers out there could explain this to me, I would appreciate it.

I haven't read the decision, but intuitively, I'm not comfortable with it. If you want to permanently incarcerate sex offenders, sentence them to life. I suppose it depends on what you think the purpose of incarceration is: protecting society from the criminal or rehabilitating the criminal.

A hundred years ago and more, child molesters and rapists were usually executed, whether judicially, by near relatives of the victim or, in the case of child molesters, by other prisoners, or sentenced to terms that were effectively life.

Then people became far more interested in rehabilitating criminals. In a sense, the whole problem arises as a result of lenient sentencing and the theory that criminals can be rehabilitated.

I think the theory of holding sex criminals after the end of a formal sentence is that research suggests that sex offenders - at least some classes such as pedophiles and serial rapists -- cannot be 'cured' and therefore, to protect other children (we've long since given up on the notion of protecting adults....), they must continue to be held.

It's dishonest, IMHO. I think we have to disaggregate "sex offenders" -- the 18 year old who has consensual sex with another teen just under the age of consent (by a fortnight, say) is not the same as the 25 or 40 year old who rapes an 8 year old. The former -- if we're going to punish them at all, and I guess we do have to draw lines -- should not be treated as monsters, because they're not. The latter, in my view, should be put away permanently, and I think execution may be a better way to take care of the problem than locking them up for 50 years at state expense.

coynedj wrote:
I’m sure I’ll surprise no one by admitting that I don’t always agree with Justices Thomas and Scalia, especially when they are the lone dissenters in a 7-2 decision. But at first blush, I find myself agreeing with them on this case. I’m sure there is a strong reason behind this decision – if not, it wouldn’t have been 7-2. Maybe it’s one of those cases where someone (Congress in this case) has the legal authority to make a bad decision. Maybe I’m just misinformed about the details of the decision. If the lawyers out there could explain this to me, I would appreciate it.

This is, again, the difference between the right and the left, more broadly. (And I agree wholeheartedly with the dissenters, WIW). At the risk of painting with that broad brush, the right believes in process over result and the left believes in result over process.

Scalia and Thomas are usually the most vigorous defenders of procedural protections for those accused of a crime (I don't recall Thomas's vote in Crawford atm) -- restoring the confrontation clause, requiring that all sentences & related *GOVERNMENT-imposed* conditions be the result of a jury decision. But if/once the accused has been properly convicted, and a valid sentence has been issued, despite the formidable procedural protections they support, they believe that the book is closed. Thus, to them, the process (which should be vigorously and procedurally pro-defendant on the front end) has run its course, and for good or for ill, should only be reopened in extraordinary circumstances (and not, contra the left, every possible argument that the defense attorney should have raised with 20+ years of hindsight), and wide discretion should be given to the state and the jury among the range of allowable punishments. So here, because the sentence is up, the state's role is done (again, ignoring the valid role of parole/early release conditions)

The left, again, cares much less about the conviction process (and much more about the exoneration process, probably because, like Martha Coakley or Mike Nifong, they're so willing to throw innocents in jail to prove that they're "tough on crime"). They're the ones who led the unsuccessful charge to gut the confrontation clause (thankfully unsuccessfully at the moment) and put in snuffleupagus shield laws to hamstring the relevant evidence that somebody can bring in his (and it's invariably a he) own defense. (Not that the right is wholly innocent of this (see, e.g., Joe Arapaio and his cronies).) Maybe it's because they don't really value the process of conviction, but to them, just about any excuse is valid in an attempt to exonerate a convict (including a defense lawyer's tactical decision to not raise a defense of IQ, childhood circumstances, yada yada). This way is much more costly, both in terms of a higher error rate of conviction, more people in trial for longer, and a horde of ancillary habeas litigation.

I much prefer "measure twice, cut once" to trying to stitch and cut for decades.

rpm wrote:I haven't read the decision, but intuitively, I'm not comfortable with it. If you want to permanently incarcerate sex offenders, sentence them to life. I suppose it depends on what you think the purpose of incarceration is: protecting society from the criminal or rehabilitating the criminal.

A hundred years ago and more, child molesters and rapists were usually executed, whether judicially, by near relatives of the victim or, in the case of child molesters, by other prisoners, or sentenced to terms that were effectively life.

Then people became far more interested in rehabilitating criminals. In a sense, the whole problem arises as a result of lenient sentencing and the theory that criminals can be rehabilitated.

I think the theory of holding sex criminals after the end of a formal sentence is that research suggests that sex offenders - at least some classes such as pedophiles and serial rapists -- cannot be 'cured' and therefore, to protect other children (we've long since given up on the notion of protecting adults....), they must continue to be held.

It's dishonest, IMHO. I think we have to disaggregate "sex offenders" -- the 18 year old who has consensual sex with another teen just under the age of consent (by a fortnight, say) is not the same as the 25 or 40 year old who rapes an 8 year old. The former -- if we're going to punish them at all, and I guess we do have to draw lines -- should not be treated as monsters, because they're not. The latter, in my view, should be put away permanently, and I think execution may be a better way to take care of the problem than locking them up for 50 years at state expense.

Dealing with this problem by executing sex offenders is distasteful to me, for three reasons.

1 – The death penalty is a tough sentence to pass down. My father was a police officer for 35 years, rising to a high level in the police department of a top-40 population city. He was no coddler of criminals, but opposed the death penalty. He knew how easy it was to convict an innocent man, not through the active conspiracy so popular in movies and the hyperactive minds of many “advocates” but through procedural errors that any reasonable person would go along with every step of the way. More executions means more literally grave errors.

Also, you might recall the witch-hunt-like hysteria back in the 1980s, when day care providers were wrongly convicted of conducting devil-worship and child-sex rituals based on the flimsiest of fabricated evidence – how many of these people, who were later found to have been completely innocent, would have been executed before the mania passed? If we are to have a death penalty, it should be reserved for clear and extreme cases – we should not go down the path of England in the 1700s (?), when the battle against the “criminal classes” eventually led to even trivial crimes being punishable by death.

2 – Sex crimes are underreported as it is. Make execution a common penalty for sex crimes, and they’ll be reported even less often. A large number of molestation cases involve relatives, and just imagine the pressure on a young girl if she knew that reporting her father or uncle might well result in his going to the electric chair. Sex crimes tear families apart, but this would tear them even further.

3 – I have trouble with executing people because we’ve decided that they, as a class, are “incurable” and there is no point to even trying to make respectable citizens of them. Maybe I’m incurably optimistic myself, but I bristle at the thought that society might be willing to totally give up on a large group of people, based on a presumed group characteristic, and conclude that we’d all be better off if we just killed them (humanely, of course, and only after a guilty verdict). Abhorrent historical comparisons abound.

PetiteSirah wrote:This is, again, the difference between the right and the left, more broadly. (And I agree wholeheartedly with the dissenters, WIW). At the risk of painting with that broad brush, the right believes in process over result and the left believes in result over process.

Scalia and Thomas are usually the most vigorous defenders of procedural protections for those accused of a crime (I don't recall Thomas's vote in Crawford atm) -- restoring the confrontation clause, requiring that all sentences & related *GOVERNMENT-imposed* conditions be the result of a jury decision. But if/once the accused has been properly convicted, and a valid sentence has been issued, despite the formidable procedural protections they support, they believe that the book is closed. Thus, to them, the process (which should be vigorously and procedurally pro-defendant on the front end) has run its course, and for good or for ill, should only be reopened in extraordinary circumstances (and not, contra the left, every possible argument that the defense attorney should have raised with 20+ years of hindsight), and wide discretion should be given to the state and the jury among the range of allowable punishments. So here, because the sentence is up, the state's role is done (again, ignoring the valid role of parole/early release conditions)

The left, again, cares much less about the conviction process (and much more about the exoneration process, probably because, like Martha Coakley or Mike Nifong, they're so willing to throw innocents in jail to prove that they're "tough on crime"). They're the ones who led the unsuccessful charge to gut the confrontation clause (thankfully unsuccessfully at the moment) and put in snuffleupagus shield laws to hamstring the relevant evidence that somebody can bring in his (and it's invariably a he) own defense. (Not that the right is wholly innocent of this (see, e.g., Joe Arapaio and his cronies).) Maybe it's because they don't really value the process of conviction, but to them, just about any excuse is valid in an attempt to exonerate a convict (including a defense lawyer's tactical decision to not raise a defense of IQ, childhood circumstances, yada yada). This way is much more costly, both in terms of a higher error rate of conviction, more people in trial for longer, and a horde of ancillary habeas litigation.

I much prefer "measure twice, cut once" to trying to stitch and cut for decades.

All right-leaning judges decide on the facts and laws, and all left-leaning judges decide based on who they like the best? Yes, you are once again painting with a mighty broad brush.

coynedj wrote:All right-leaning judges decide on the facts and laws, and all left-leaning judges decide based on who they like the best? Yes, you are once again painting with a mighty broad brush.

You're putting words in my mouth yet again. I never said "all", but I'll say it right now -- that was "all" you. Feel free to retract that (or, alternatively, to celebrate your victory over that pesky straw man).

And you didn't even accurately encapsulate my argument. Judicially-right judges (which, in the criminal context, may include Obamanation -- that's a portomanteau of "Obama Nomination", in this context -- finalist Merrick Garland) prefer to have one vigorous process to establish guilt or innocence and then let the system have at it, while the left-leaning types in the judicial system (the current leftist judges viz-a-viz things like the Confrontation Clause) curiously favor weaker initial protection from criminal conviction but much more lenient standards for exoneration (particularly where the Constitutionally-authorized death penalty is concerned).