Reality-based conservatism

[nancylebov]

David Frum concludes that same sex marriage doesn't damage heterosexual marriage.

Is there anything else in American politics which is dependent on as weak an argument as opposition to same sex marriage? The war on drugs is based on a wild over-estimation of government power, but it doesn't quite have that weird "I'll make up a definition and insist that it's realer than what can be observed" quality.

Link thanks to nwhyte.

Comments

[twistedchick]

How about the inadequate and idiotic rationales given for paying women and men differently for the same job? Misogyny is stupid.

[lightningbug]

"conservative economics" seems to translate into "give Government money to rich white men who hire lobbyists" and not much else.

[arashinomoui.livejournal.com]

Laffer-curve based economic policy?

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

The Laffer curve doesn't seem as crazy to me, but maybe I'm missing something. The messy thing about the Laffer curve is that it seems like it's hard to say where you are on it.

[arashinomoui.livejournal.com]

That would be the insanity/inanity of it - without numbers it is useless as a metric, which is what people try to use it as.

[andrewducker]

Have some numbers:
http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/6700

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I am reluctant to pursue your question for I fear it will lead me into insanity, or at least render me even less fit for American life. I feel OK about deconstructing categories like "liberal" and "conservative", but once you get me going on what electoral politics actually means, and the terms of public debate, and prisons and trial by jury and state-by-state moral legislation and all that, I won't know how to stop.

My 9 year old son doesn't like gay marriage. If he ruled the world he would disallow it. I have no idea why, his total argument is "it's just wrong." That's what I think we're up against here. I think the appeal of this particular argument is that it seems irrefutable, but only contingently. That is, it seems like we ought to be able to find out if it's true, but not unambiguously. We can demonstrate that gay marriage doesn't sour the milk, so that's no good. And we think we know already that it won't be possible to tell if it damages your immortal soul, so that's a big chunk of the electorate not mystified there, but threatening to do something mysterious but bad to a common social institution? That's like, well, maybe, y'know? cf arguments about the evils of socialized housing projects.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

...ie it's perfect food for FUD, of the kind that psychologists and sociologists can be employed to spread. Which makes me wonder if there's a link between your previous post and this one.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Not a strong link, except that both aren't far off from the way I usually think about things. They may be more vehement than usual because I'm in a bad mood.

I hope to return to the more usual mixture of cheering videos and political outrage.

[madfilkentist]

A while back, at least 10 years ago, there was a bill in the NH legislature against same-sex marriage, and the argumentation in the bill said outright that the purpose of marriage was to breed new taxpayers, so infertile marriages were contrary to proper marriage. The bill went nowhere. It didn't say anything about infertile opposite-sex marriages.

I don't know whether that's a widespread motive for opposition to same-sex marriage, but I don't think so. With most opponents, I think the basic motive is that they're convinced that homosexuality is evil, and legalizing same-sex marriage legitimizes it. Yet there's much more talk about "defense of marriage" than about the evil of leading people down the slippery slope of sodomy. I really don't understand why that is, since the latter argument would seem to be more effective if anything.

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

It was an anti argument, but it fell apart when it became obvious that one of the main reasons people in same-sex couples wanted to marry was because they were raising children together.

There is a good reason why defense of marriage is the argument. If marriage is a voluntary contract between equals who choose each other, then same-sex marriage makes sense. If marriage is a holy mandate in which the female wife is subordinate to the male head of household to whom she is beholden for financial support, then same-sex marriage does not make sense. Allowing same-sex marriage puts a civil stamp on companionate marriage as a concept. Women in traditional marriages have a lot to gain from the legalization of same-sex marriage. People who think of this as defense of marriage may or may not realize what kind of marriage they're defending.

[madfilkentist]

Hmmm ... That would be consistent with the widespread argument against polygamy. It's assumed that in a polygamous marriage the wives (it's stereotypically assumed that polygamy means one husband, many wives) would be just chattels, so they have to be protected. The underlying assumption is that marriage isn't really a voluntary agreement between (or among!) equals.

I go further than most people in thinking that polygamy should also be legal; or rather, that the government's role in marriage should be only to make sure that the contract is recognized, the rights of all concerned upheld, and the children not abused or neglected.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Marriage is traditionally a method of transferring property and managing inheritance, of ensuring that the right person gets your shit when you die.

Adding a third person breaks a TON of assumptions built in to marriage laws. I've got nothing against it - in fact, I think multiple marriage seems a perfectly reasonable thing to let people who want to do it do. The catch is, it *will* require a complete rewrite from the ground up of a metric ton of law, to eliminate all of the situations where the inherent assumption of two-and-only-two breaks something.

As such, polygamy and polyandry are MUCH harder to work than jsut letting any two adults be the two adults in question.

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

Also, traditional polygyny hasn't been all that egalitarian--current poly models are hindered by that history. Or I should say, by that backstory, since we still have more traditional polygynous marriages in many countries. I think I'm like David Frum on this one--I could see being swayed in favor of poly marriage if I saw a whole lot of them that were awesome. (Well, my standard might be higher than his! He changed his mind on same-sex marriage after it turned out not to hurt marriage as an institution.)

[(Anonymous)]

At a trivial level I think people are misusing Kant's categorical imperative - if everyone got same sex marriages the human race would go extinct, therefore same sex marriages must be bad. Silly argument, which is why few people make it explicitly.

I hear a fair bit in my O community about same sex marriage being part of the 'homosexual agenda'. Of course, that agenda allegedly includes promiscuity of exactly the sort that marriage is meant to limit. Also, as someone pointed out, in politicly conservative Jewish circles 'gay activists' seem to be as powerful as 'the Jews' are in anti-Semitic circles.

[llennhoff.livejournal.com]

At a trivial level I think people are misusing Kant's categorical imperative - if everyone got same sex marriages the human race would go extinct, therefore same sex marriages must be bad. Silly argument, which is why few people make it explicitly.

I hear a fair bit in my O community about same sex marriage being part of the 'homosexual agenda'. Of course, that agenda allegedly includes promiscuity of exactly the sort that marriage is meant to limit. Also, as someone pointed out, in politicly conservative Jewish circles 'gay activists' seem to be as powerful as 'the Jews' are in anti-Semitic circles.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Arguing that sodomy is wrong inherently requires making a RELIGIOUS argument for law, which means you begin your argument by admitting you're wrong on First Amendment grounds.

So they don't do that. The argument is still reilgious, and it's still wrong for the same reasons, but now it's got a patina of legitimacy. Like "intelligent design" rather than "creationism".

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've heard it argued on the basis of "spreading disease".

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Except that explanation doesn't actually address what they want to do. It's like arguing that "marriage is about chilll-druuuun" without complaining about childless straight couples.

If they were ACTUALLY concerned about disease, their position would be different. Their position is not different, therefore "we're concerned about disease" is a lie.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

*nod* I've only heard that one from non-religious people who want to give their ook a rational sounding excuse.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

That sort of analysis applies to a lot of laws about sexual conduct.

* Laws against bestiality are often explained on the grounds of "cruelty to animals" or "animal rights." But consider: Granted that a man who forces sex on a woman ought to be punished; if instead he killed her, cut her body up, and ate it, he would be punished much more harshly. But killing animals, cutting them up, and eating them is an entire industry in the United States! The majority of people don't see it as abusive; even some people who do find our current slaughterhouses appalling want them to convert to more humane methods.

* There is also the argument that animals are incapable of consent. But that argument doesn't apply only to sex with humans! If a mare is incapable of consenting to sex with a man, she is surely also incapable of consenting to sex with a stallion; and yet stallions are not forbidden to mate with mares, or human owners to aid and abet their doing so. Indeed, I've read that dog breeders sometimes find that a bitch dislikes the dog they've picked to father her pups, and that a common expedient is to put her in restraints; if "consent" meant anything that would be a criminal offense.

* Incest is argued against as likely to produce reinforcement of bad recessive genes. Well, I knew a woman who was a carrier for a genetic condition that would make any son she bore at 50% risk for an incapacitating and life-shortening condition; she was not legally forbidden to get pregnant or to bear sons. A couple can have one child with birth defects that indicate that they are at risk for more such children; they are not forced to break up, or punished as criminals for failing to do so.

In all these cases, the supposed "reasons" for banning the conduct aren't applied to similar conduct. So those reasons don't actually explain the laws; they're after-the-fact rationalizations. There may be explanations in terms of cultural or even genetic evolution, but the proximate mechanism seems to be that many people saw "EWWW!" about the conduct in question.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

Throwing a couple more links into the soup:

"Why my view on same-sex marriage has changed" (http://www.oneiowa.org/news-events/guest-opinion-why-my-view-same-sex-marriage-has-changed), abstract from an op-ed piece in The Des Moines Register, by former Iowa Sen. Jeff Angelo.

"The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage" (http://www.newsweek.com/2010/01/08/the-conservative-case-for-gay-marriage.html) by Theodore B. Olsen.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Conservatism isn't so much an argument as an attitude. Arguing is much more the style of liberals and of libertarians . . . and, I suppose, of Marxists, but there's not really a live Marxist tradition in the United States.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I was at a conference with them last month!

Oh, you don't mean academic Marxists? Yeah, the 80s pretty much did for the rest of them.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell, academic Marxists in the United States vote either Democratic or Green. Functionally they're mostly a splinter group of liberals.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

There are two obvious ones that are also conservative bastions and also provably incorrect:

Global climate change is not real &/or is not caused by human activity

Private healthcare is more efficient, cheaper, and more effective than state-sponsored or controlled healthcare.

A wealth of hard data exists about both, and the conclusions are quite clear.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Can you point to a document that sets out the scientific evidence for global warming, fair and square with no contradictions, in a rigorous manner? I haven't been convinced by it, but what I've seen is popularizations and appeals to the Authority of Science; that's not a proper basis for judging whether the science makes sense.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised and puzzled, there's a rather impressive wealth of evidence out there.

Hmm, as for solid data, have you looked at the information about worldwide losses to glaciers? Here's one useful site (of many) for this info. If the fact that glaciers have been retreating worldwide since around 1980s and this retreat is increasing doesn't seem reasonable to you, then we're operating from sufficiently different perspectives that I'm not at all certain that we have any basis for useful communication.

However, if this seems reasonable (not the cause, merely the fact that glaciers are retreating and that this is increasing), then I recommend the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. I have only read excerpts (both directly from the report and in various articles), but everything I've seen looks rigorous and solid and is the most comprehensive survey of the data and analysis of the data that I've seen.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Well, a big part of it is that I'm not looking to read a lot of empirical data in a mass of scattered reports. I'm not a skilled enough statistician to do a meaningful analysis. And I don't know that literature enough to pick a good comprehensive study, especially one that actually discusses the theoretical and methodological questions. I had a book on the subject assigned to me for editing not long ago, but it was all just "scientists have found X," and I'm not prepared to accept that as conclusive; there are too many cases of scientists supporting politically motivated ideas that turned out to be false, from the necessity of legally compulsory eugenics to the denial of hereditary factors in personality. So I'd like to see at least a serious textbook treatment.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

If you find the IPCC report intimidating--I do, and I've been doing intensive reading in this area--you might prefer Climate Change: Science and Policy. The first section brings together the many converging lines of evidence on anthropogenic climate change, in a way I found fairly straightforward. (I'm an experimental psychologist interested in how public opinion develops around major policy issues, so I'm familiar with the area but not a trained climate scientist.)

I also found this summary of the history of climate change science to be helpful for context.

There are many cases of scientists supporting politically motivated ideas, but few with the level of agreement among in-area researchers, or the diversity of evidence, that attend climate change. Eugenic claims, for example, were opposed by a large number of credible researchers--notably behavioral psychologists, who were well aware of the degree to which environment shapes capability.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Any recommendations for information about opposition to eugenics when it was popular? The only thing I've read is GK Chesterton's Eugenics and Other Evils, he was a journalist rather than a scientist, and I don't remember his arguments.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

Steven J. Gould's The Mismeasure of Man includes excellent coverage of the intelligence-related research around eugenics. Fact from this book that has stuck in my head for years: back when skull volume was assumed to be related to intelligence, "researchers" measured it by filling skulls from different races with grain. They stuffed the Caucasian skulls to the bursting point, but the African-American skulls very loosely... Good scientists questioned these methods even at the time, although much of the general populace was very willing to go along with the "findings" that supported their assumptions.

Watson (of the infamous Little Albert experiment) spent a lot of time arguing with eugenicists as well--some of his writings may relate to that. They may also demonstrate the degree to which he was a complete asshole, but support for eugenics was not one of his flaws. His quote about "Give me a dozen well-formed infants..." is from a debate on the topic.

That's what I can think of off the top of my head. I'm afraid all my literature on the topic is currently packed and in another state, and will be till August.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

There is a recent study that reports that Gould's evidence is historically unsound; a new investigation actually got out all of those skulls, remeasured their volumes, and found that the error was minimal, and that to the extent that there was bias, it was toward reporting slightly higher volumes for African-American skull than the new measurements indicated. The Wikipedia article on Gould's book sums it up as "In another study, published in 2011, Jason E. Lewis and colleagues remeasured Morton's skulls and reexamined both Morton's and Gould's analyses, concluding that, contrary to Gould's claims, Morton did not manipulate his results to support his preconceptions. To the extent that Morton's measurements were erroneous, they were in the direction opposite of his supposed bias."

The actual paper, if you want to read it (it has open access), concludes that Morton did have racist biases, but that his published data were not affected by them: "Science does not rely on investigators being unbiased “automatons.” Instead, it relies on methods that limit the ability of the investigator's admittedly inevitable biases to skew the results. Morton's methods were sound, and our analysis shows that they prevented Morton's biases from significantly impacting his results. The Morton case, rather than illustrating the ubiquity of bias, instead shows the ability of science to escape the bounds and blinders of cultural contexts."

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Footnote: It was actually 308 skulls out of a sample of over 600; so not "all of those skulls."

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Just as a minor note, by the way, there cannot possibly be hard data about free market health care, because there is no developed country with free market health care. The United States has a huge share of health care provided through Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA, and most of the rest is provided through prepaid group care places that receive massive government subsidies through tax expenditures, and that are also sheltered from competition by state-level regulation of health insurance. That's not remotely what libertarians like me want; we're in favor of changes in American health care roughly as radical as going over to the Canadian approach would be. I understand that this is not what you would want, but if we were going to debate it (which I don't propose to do here), it would have to be on theoretical grounds, because there simply are no observational data on free market systems for you to appeal to.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Two points:

1) Given that we're talking about hard facts and not speculation, what we know for certain is that the more privatized US system is both more expensive (by at least a factor of 2), less effective (in coverage of the populace, effectiveness per insured individual) and less popular and satisfying to users than the state-run healthcare systems of Western Europe. That's data that is exactly as solid as the data on marriage equality. Thus it's clear that if the US adopted a model like the UK healthcare system, costs would drop, while effectiveness and patient satisfaction would increase.

2) In terms of evaluating what we do know about free-market healthcare, the existence of Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA should all actually make other healthcare less expensive in the US, since what is happening is that most of the people in the poorest health (the old, the poor, and many people with serious injuries) are not driving up the cost of more privatized healthcare. Instead, what we have is a system where the rest of US healthcare is only responsible for the people who are in the best health and thus on average require less healthcare.

While it's true that the remainder of US healthcare isn't a complete free market, if you ignore Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA (which as I mentioned above does not either drive up costs or reduce efficiency for the rest of healthcare in the US and in fact should serve to do the reverse), then we have the closest thing to free market healthcare that exists in the first world, and it's utterly dismal (in terms of costs per capita, effectiveness per insured individual, & patient satisfaction) compared to all comparable (ie other first world) alternatives. Given that this is by far the best data we have, that's hardly a glowing argument for free-market healthcare. Combine this with the fact that it's equally clear that it's possible to provide excellent healthcare that is both relatively inexpensive, highly effective, and very well-regarded by users via the Western European model (which slightly is different from the Canadian model), and any argument that purely free-market healthcare would be better than the current US system and at least as good as the various systems in use in Western Europe demands extraordinary proof. I see a remarkable lack of evidence of such proof.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

The point is that what we have is as far away from a free market in health care as it is from a single payer system like the UK or Canada. Therefore making inferences about the failure of free market health care from what the United States has is exactly as intellectually sound as making inferences about the failure of socialist health care from what the United States has.

I don't propose to argue the substantive points, or the broader questions of economic theory they raise. Let it stand that we flatly disagree. And I don't really care if you share my views or not; I'm simply pointing out that your conclusions are not based on anything within miles of proper empirical evidence.

Years ago, I read a book on experimental archaeology that discussed the massive inferiority of bronze to iron and steel as material for armor and shields, based on testing a bronze shield. But then I read carefully and saw that the experimenter had not been able to obtain bronze for some reason, and had substituted copper! Because, well, copper was sort of like bronze and was the closest thing to it he could find.

[subnumine.livejournal.com]

There is plenty of evidence about the non-existence of general healthcare in developed countries circa 1925.