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Why I’m a libertarian feminist atheist skeptic

Why I’m a libertarian feminist atheist skeptic published on 6 Comments on Why I’m a libertarian feminist atheist skeptic

…in four paragraphs:

Libertarian: I mistrust government, a whole lot. I believe that market forces are preferable to legislation when it comes to getting things done, because they are more voluntary (consent is always best) and more easily reversible. I believe that the pursuit of happiness is a personal thing and takes different forms for different people, and the government’s main job should be to allow us room to conduct our individual pursuits. It should prevent us trampling on each other in the process and enable those of us who by circumstances of birth or misfortune have been denied the ability, but otherwise stay the hell out of the way. I am a left-libertarian, not a paleoconservative, states’ rights, or Ayn-Rand-worshiping libertarian.

Feminist: Sexism is a bigotry that generally takes the form of explicit assertion or implicit suggestion that men must be one thing and women another, and that women exist for men (as ornamentation or care-givers, means of reproduction, and so on) rather than for themselves. I oppose any attempt to institutionalize this idea via law, and argue against the endorsement of it in culture. I am an individualist feminist, not a difference feminist or misandrist.

Atheist: I consider it highly unlikely that our great big messy very old universe came into being via the deliberate machinations of an infinite mind, much less the kind usually asserted to be responsible for doing so. And if the complexity of this universe, and of us specifically, requires explanation by appeal to such agency, then surely the agency itself demands such all the more. I believe that supernatural beings are neither required nor sufficient to supply existence with meaning or morality. I am a “good without gods” atheist, not a “believers are stupid” or “believers are evil” atheist.

Skeptic: Science is a tool for knowing the empirical world– the best one we have. Considering that, it would be a shame not to use it whenever possible and when we do forget to use it, it’s always to our detriment. I view mystery as a door to open and explore beyond rather than to hammer shut with nails marked cultural reverence, tradition, religion, or magic. I believe reality is always more fascinating than the myths we make up to replace it, but imagination is important because it’s our ability to wrap our minds around what is really real. I am a “let’s find out the truth” skeptic, not a cynic, pessimist, or “You must share my other ideologies or else you’re not really a skeptic” skeptic.

Note: This post brought to you by two discussions I’ve read recently in which at least two of the above were alleged to be incompatible. I am convinced that they are not, or at least don’t need to be.

The perils of confusing libertarians and right-wingers

The perils of confusing libertarians and right-wingers published on 1 Comment on The perils of confusing libertarians and right-wingers

Exhibit A: You might make as big a fool of yourself as Lawrence O’Donnell did.

See, there is this video making the rounds of a reporter from Reason magazine talking to Matt Damon (the actor) about incentives to perform one’s job, comparing actors to teachers. But much more important than this exchange was O’Donnell’s reaction to it:

After casually labeling the Reason Foundation as a right wing Republican group he says: The right-wing attackers of teachers have never even shown the slightest curiosity about the job performance of another group of government workers who have very, very high job security, police officers. And police officers carry guns instead of textbooks. And as we`ve seen in New Orleans after Katrina and in countless other cases around the country, police officers have sometimes used those guns to shoot and kill innocent people.

Reason’s editor-in-chief Nick Gillespie fired back:

Reason.tv’s video featuring Matt Damon from Saturday’s “Save Our Schools” rally is making the rounds. In the vid, Matt Damon tees off on the “shitty” salaries that teachers make and argues that teachers do what they do out of love, so that structural arrangement such as early-and-easy-to-get tenure have no impact on what sort of job educators may do in the classroom. As a point of fact, Damon’s understanding of teacher compensation relative other professionals is wrong. It turns out that when you control for education level and hours worked, public school teachers do quite well (especially compared to private school teachers, who on average make $13,000 a year less). And that’s before fringe benefits, such as employer-paid health care and retirement packages are tossed in to the mix. Or job security. But we were talking about Lawrence O’Donnell, host of MSNBC’s Last Word, who used his “Rewrite” segment to question not simply whether public-school teachers should be scrutinized but whether Reason is anything more than a Republicanoid hack factory that would never dare question, say, the police. After showing a part of the Reason.tv video in which host Michelle Fields questions Damon about whether the relative insecurity of acting jobs pushes him to a higher level of performance, the wise and all-knowing – and, according to his Wikipedia page, exclusively privately educated – O’Donnell delivers the following screed: 

[This is] how crazy the attack on teachers has become. Comparing public school teachers work incentives to the work incentives of movie stars. It has never occurred to the teacher haters that teachers want to be teachers for any reason other than job security. It has never occurred to them that teachers might want to be teachers because they like teaching, because they love teaching, and because they care about their students. The right-wing attackers of teachers have never even shown the slightest curiosity about the job performance of another group of government workers who have very, very high job security, police officers. And police officers carry guns instead of textbooks. And as we`ve seen in New Orleans after Katrina and in countless other cases around the country, police officers have sometimes used those guns to shoot and kill innocent people. They have done so accidentally, which is in some cases understandable and forgivable. And some of the them — statistically very few to be sure — have done so deliberately, maliciously, with full criminal intent. They have summarily executed people. The worst teacher in America could never do as much damage as the worst police officer in America. But the right wing has never even been slightly curious about evaluating the job performance of police officers. Never once has Republican world said hey, maybe we should look into how police officers are carrying out their solemn public responsibility to serve and protect. No — no right wing website in America is investigating or will ever investigate how well police officers do their jobs. The targeting of teachers has been a vicious and politically deliberate action. And it has been so successful that many of its fundamental falsehoods are accepted as true by both Republicans and Democrats in our ongoing dialogue about public Education. 

 . . .while I realize that being Lawrence O’Donnell means never having to say you’re sorry, let me add some emphasis to the plain truth:Because Reason magazine, Reason.com, Reason.tv and Reason Foundation (the nonprofit that publishes all these things, including this blog) are not right-wing or Republican, I can’t speak for those groups or folks inclined those ways.However, I can and will gently direct O’Donnell to have at least some goddamn inkling of what he’s talking about:Reason has been all over issues of police abuse like those Fullerton, California cops were all over the homeless man they beat to death.Or the other California cops who killed Allen Klephart following a traffic stop.Or who illegally detained DC-area journalist Justin Vorus because he snapped photos of cops at work.Or all the other law enforcement types who are waging a War on Cameras because it makes them have to respect civil liberties.And while I’m sure that O’Donnell has guests up the ying-yang for his show, he might want to think about asking Cory Maye, the Mississippi man who was first taken off death row and then released from prison altogether in large part due to the efforts of Reason journalist Radley Balko, along with Reason.tv’s Drew Carey and Paul Feine, whose “Mississippi Drug War Blues” documentary is a must-watch to any American interested in how the criminal justice system has major problems. Balko, now with the Huffington Post, was even named “Journalist of the Year” this year by the Los Angeles Press Club due to his Reason work on the Cory Maye and other cases.

And when O’Donnell is done digesting all that, he can relax with Reason magazine’s July issue, which was dedicated to what we called Criminal Injustice: Inside America’s National Disgrace. It’s online right now. For free. He just has to click the link.Or maybe, like Matt Damon, a truly gifted actor who is totally untroubled by the basic facts when it comes to questions of teacher compensation, O’Donnell will elect to live exclusively in a world of his own making.Make no mistake: Reason in all its iterations supports and applauds the work that the law enforcement system – from the U.S. Supreme Court down to the most local of meter maids and the least-honored of rent-a-cops – does to help keep the country and its citizens safe. Like good teachers, good cops have a tough-as-hell job that is made immeasurably harder by all the bad ones out there. And make no mistake, too, that Reason has been and will continue to look at ways to identify and call out bad actors in public and private life. And suggest ways in which education and law enforcement can be improved to better serve the citizens who pay for both.

Radley Balko writes on his own blog:

Of course, I’m not the only one who writes about this stuff. Maybe O’Donnell has had other people on. So I did a search of O’Donnell’s archives to see how many times he has addressed police abuses. I found one instance, and even that one had a partisan angle. O’Donnell actually acknowledged on Twitter yesterday that he could only think of a single story about police abuse he has addressed since he started hosting the show. (Though he did write a book several years ago about a police abuse case his father handled as an attorney.) Reason has run dozens of articles, videos, and blog posts over that period. So what sorts of important issues does O’Donnell think are more deserving than police abuse? Sarah Palin, apparently. He has discussed her more than 50 times. She even gets her own topic tag. And O’Donnell isn’t just wrong about Reason. The conservative-learning libertarian Glenn Reynolds have been outspoken and critical of police on issues like no-knock raids, citizens’ right to record police officers, and even ending qualified immunity for cops, a pretty radical (though in my opinion correct) position that I doubt you could find ten members of Congress to support. Sites like Lew Rockwell also run pieces by adamant police critics like William Grigg. So not only did O’Donnell deliver an ad hominem attack, it was an attack that was also embarrassingly wrong on the facts, which he’d have discovered had he done 20 seconds of research. And it doesn’t look like he’ll be issuing a correction. His only response yesterday was the Tweet linked above and to re-Tweet others’ weak defenses of him. If O’Donnell really gave damn about police abuse, he’d be looking to forge alliances across partisan and ideological lines to build support for reform. Meaning he’d be reaching out to places like Reason. Instead, in just the second time he has mentioned police abuse in his eight months of hosting a national TV show, it was to use the issue as an ideological cudgel to smack around people with whom he disagrees . . . on a completely unrelated issue.

Ed Brayton agrees:

Balko is absolutely right, progressives should be building alliances with groups like Reason on the issues where we agree. And there are lots of such issues beyond criminal justice, including executive power (which real progressives agree should be limited and subject to checks and balances, while the president and the Democratic leadership only thinks those things matter when a Republican is in the White House), torture and extraordinary rendition, opposition to constant military interventions abroad, the need to cut defense spending, warrantless wiretaps, opposition to the Patriot Act and other constitutional overreaches, and much more. Disagreeing with the libertarian positions on environmental regulation and similar issues is just fine; I’ll gladly join you in arguing against them. But casually lumping all libertarians — and this group in particular — in with the “right wing” and pretending that they all take the same position on every other issue is shallow and sloppy thinking.

I used to listen to Penn Jillette’s radio show daily. If you’ve heard Jillette opine on politics for more than a few minutes or watch a single episode of Bullshit, it becomes obvious that his is vehement libertarian of the first order. Lawrence O’Donnell is a good friend of Jillette, and was a guest on that show….maybe five times? Possibly more? He really should know better.

What’s wrong with The Marriage Vow

What’s wrong with The Marriage Vow published on 6 Comments on What’s wrong with The Marriage Vow
This is not a marriage. No matter what
it might look like. No siree-bob. If they have
kids, they will not be a family.  Nope.
This message brought to you by a lot of
organizations with the word “family”
in their names, so they know what
they’re talking about.

So far, Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann are the two presidential candidates (wow; it’s still strange to say that) who have signed something called The Marriage Vow. What is this vow, you ask? Well, it’s a pledge conceived by a Christian organization called The Family Leader, based in Iowa and associated with Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council. Because by golly, you don’t care about families if you don’t have “Family” right there in your name.

And the word “family,” of course, means something very specific: a church and state-authorized union of two people who were born biologically male and female respectively, who were virgins until marriage and maintain a strict monogamous relationship, would never divorce unless perhaps one of them beat the other to a pulp, and whose sexual relations (which involve no consumption of pornography) have produced at least one child containing their shared genetic lineage. Or to use the Vow’s terms, “innocent fruit of their conjugal intimacy.”

Having clarified that, let’s get to the Vow itself. The purpose of this pledge is to outline a set of stances a presidential candidate will promise to support and uphold in defense of the Institution of Marriage, which is critical to maintaining that of Family (TM) outlined above.  If a candidate refuses to sign, then of course we need no more evidence whatsoever to conclude that he or she is anti-Marriage and anti-Family (TM) and therefore presumably in support of every brand of debauchery, perversity, and hedonism that you can imagine. He/she probably holds nightly screenings of Caligula for the neighborhood children during which they are encouraged to suck on vodka-flavored phallus-shaped lollipops. Or worse, he/she supports gay marriage. Which is not Marriage, regardless of what the government might say. Unless the government agrees with The Family Leader and passes a federal prohibition on gay marriage (support for which is included in the Vow) in which case the law is presumably binding and just.

So. Let’s fisk The Family Leader’s Marriage Vow for candidates, shall we?

Therefore, in any elected or appointed capacity by which I may have the honor of serving our fellow citizens in these United States, I the undersigned do hereby solemnly vow to honor and to cherish, to defend and to uphold, the Institution of Marriage as only between one man and one woman. I vow to do so through my:

  • Personal fidelity to my spouse
This goes to hypocrisy. It’s typical for conservatives to accuse everyone else of hypocrisy for not properly upset about the dalliances of people like John Edwards, Bill Clinton, or Anthony Weiner, but the reason why we aren’t is because those aren’t the politicians who were going on about the sanctity of marriage as an inviolate institution which no one deserves but people like them. That is, they’re not hypocrites. The number of Republicans, on the other hand, who have made precisely such speeches and advocated legislation in “protection” of this institution?  Caught red-handed all of the time. So often it has become a joke– identify the ones speaking most loudly about the sanctity of marriage, and they will be the next one caught cheating. Sexting, hiking the Appalachian Trail, affecting a wide stance in an airport restroom….I can understand why advocates of The Marriage Vow would want to ensure that such embarrassments are not recruited to their cause. I am also skeptical that they can attract anyone else.  
  • Respect for the marital bonds of others
…unless they’re gay, or their marriage is otherwise not officially condoned as supportive of Family (TM).
  • Official fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, supporting the elevation of none but faithful constitutionalists as judges or justices
This one struck me as out of place, considering that the Constitution says exactly nothing about marriage. Then I read the footnote to this provision: 

It is no secret that a handful of state and federal judges, some of whom have personally rejected heterosexuality and faithful monogamy, have also abandoned bona fide
constitutional interpretation in accord with the discernible intent of the framers.  In November, 2010, Iowa voters overwhelmingly rejected three such justices from the
state Supreme Court in retention elections.  Yet, certain federal jurists with lifetime appointments stand poised, even now, to “discover” a right of so-called same-sex
marriage or polygamous marriage in the U.S. Constitution.      

Aha! Yes, that pesky 14th Amendment. The reasons for eliminating that bothersome guarantee of the equality of all American citizens to be protected at both state and federal levels just keep adding up, don’t they?  After all, it has been used as justification for ending segregation and legalizing miscegenation. First the blacks got to marry whites, and now the gays are getting to marry each other. Clearly this amendment must be eliminated. In order to protect the Constitution from those who would change it, we must…change it first, before they can get to it.

  • Vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage– faithful monogamy between one man and one woman– through statutory-, bureaucratic-, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex, etc.
Or, conservatives from 1967 would like to note, mixed-race.  
The definition of the Institution of Marriage used here strikes me as odd….it uses a non-legal concept of marriage (faithful monogamy not being a requirement) to enforce a legal prohibition.  If the authors of the Vow want non-monogamy to be outlawed, they’ve chosen a very roundabout way of expressing that. As it is, the mention of monogamy here is superfluous at best. Certainly it wouldn’t be a surprise to find that they would like to lock up adulterers, but perhaps refrained from including that because it would be impossible to find anyone willing to sign off on it.  After all, it’s one thing to pledge to be true to your spouse– it’s quite another to agree to your own arrest and prosecution if you fail.  
Also, including both polygamy and polyandry is redundant, polygamy being the word for multiple spouses in general and polyandry for multiple husbands specific. Bigamy is okay to include as to my knowledge it refers to duplicitously marrying multiple spouses. But that goes to the issue of consent, and people making this argument generally don’t seem to factor in consent at all.  That’s how they can compare gay marriage not just to polygamy but also pedophilia and bestiality, as signatory Rick Santorum has done.  
  • Recognition of the overwhelming statistical evidence that married people enjoy better health, better sex, longer lives, greater financial stability, and that children raised by a mother and a father together experience better learning, less addiction, less legal trouble, and less extramarital pregnancy. 
The footnote to this rather startling claim cites Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-Six Conclusions From the Social Sciences, a 2005 report from the Institute for American Values. As its sole evidence. This report is also entirely about comparing the welfare of children raised by two parents as opposed to a single parent, rather than those raised by married straight parents as opposed to married gay parents. An omission about as subtle as a freight train.
  • Support for prompt reform of uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and marital/divorce law, and extended “second chance” or “cooling-off” periods for those seeking a “quickie divorce.”
Well, I suppose making it harder for people to get divorced certainly supports the goal of marriage as an end unto itself. In the same way that opposing assisted suicide for terminally ill patients who are in great pain supports the goal of preserving life as an end unto itself.  
  • Earnest, bona fide legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) at the federal and state levels.
Of course. Even rabid states’ rights advocate Ron Paul (whom The Family Leader supports) has abandoned that position to advocate for a federal ban on same-sex marriage. I am not a states’ rights supporter myself and in fact consider the notion to be abhorrent, but it’s particularly sad to see a libertarian abandoning principles in favor of personal prejudice. When your entire claim to legitimacy is based on the fact that you stick to your principles come hell or high water, and can at least be consistent if nothing else, and then you take a stance like this, well…you’re no longer even a stopped clock, are you?
  • Steadfast embrace of a federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which protects the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman in all of the United States.
Yes, yes….and a big banner across the White House that reads “Adam and Eve; not Adam and Steve,” and a formal repudiation of rainbows, triangles, and the color pink to be included in the presidential oath of office, and the establishment of internment camps for anyone found to be in possession of a Barbara Streisand album, and a national ban on mullets for women. We get it already.

  • Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy– our next generation of American children– from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion, and other types of coercion or stolen innocence. 

The mind boggles on how a provision such as the above could be enforced. I wonder if The Family Leader even know(s)? The footnote to this plank doesn’t specify– it just contains a very thorough and detailed rejection of abortion and infanticide. Okay, so the latter is already illegal and we’ll outlaw the former. Then what? Human trafficking is already illegal. Slavery, sexual or otherwise, also illegal. Prostitution is illegal. How do you ban pornography and “seduction into promiscuity”? At least, without turning into Saudi Arabia?  
And what counts as “stealing innocence”?  Can I bring charges against George Lucas for bringing the first three chapters of Star Wars into the world?  How about the creation of Garfield, the movie?
  •  Support for the enactment of safeguards for all married and unmarried U.S. Military and National Guard personnel, especially our combat troops, from inappropriate same-gender or opposite-gender sexual harassment, adultery or intrusively intimate commingling among attracteds (restrooms, showers, barracks, tents, etc.); plus prompt termination of military policymakers who would expose American wives and daughters to rape or sexual harassment, torture, enslavement or sexual leveraging by the enemy in forward combat roles.
But not, presumably, when such acts are committed by our guys.
  • Rejection of Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control.
…such as laws banning abortion, pornography, adultery, prostitution, and gay marriage. All of which Sharia Islam also forbids, does it not? What a coincidence.
  • Recognition that robust childbearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial health and security. 
Clearly the most controversial and divisive plank by far. With their record on emphasizing the importance of raising children properly and healthily, Democrats would never sign off on something like this.
  • Commitment to downsizing government and the enormous burden upon American families of the USA’s $14.3 trillion public debt, its $77 trillion in unfunded liabilities, its $1.5 trillion federal deficit, and its $3.5 trillion federal budget.
Smaller government = happier families. Umm, okay? I suppose that means happier advocates for smaller government, and therefore they will be kinder to their spouses and children, and so….wait a minute; this argument could work for committing to anything at all that will make anyone with a family happy!  By that rationale all presidential candidates should commit to legalizing marijuana, because Willie Nelson has seven kids who could sure use some bonding time with Dad. Get on it!
  • Fierce defense of the First Amendment’s rights of Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech, especially against the intolerance of any who would undermine law-abiding American citizens and institutions of faith and conscience for their adherence to, and defense of, faithful heterosexual monogamy.

Great! Fantastic. I’m glad to hear that The Family Leader and all signatories of The Marriage Vow are fully behind protecting freedom of of expression for everyone who agrees with them on everything. Now let’s hear how they feel about those who don’t.

Who do you admire?

Who do you admire? published on 3 Comments on Who do you admire?

At The Daily Dish, Conor Friedersdorf contemplates the results of a recent Gallup poll asking Americans which men and women they most admire.  Barack Obama won out for men, whereas Hillary Clinton came out on top for women.  Friedersdorf thinks the fact that politicians make up the majority of people on both lists is “all about” name recognition, and I agree. He also says that “I’d never cite a living politician if asked who I admired most,” and I agree with that too.  Nor would I cite a religious leader who is heavily involved in politics, several of whom also figured highly in the ranks (Billy Graham, Pope Benedict XVI, the Dalai Lama).  In fact, the only people at the top who wouldn’t qualify for either of those two descriptions are Angelina Jolie, Oprah, and…Glenn Beck.  Dear god.

The poll asks “What man/woman have you heard or read about, living today in any part of the world, do you admire most?  And who is your second choice?”  I admit that if you called me on the phone and asked me this question impromptu, I would have some trouble coming up with my “best” answers.  I don’t keep a list of heroes in my head, because usually it’s not something important to consider unless you are asked for a Gallup poll, or, say, a job interview (why having a good answer to this question is an important quality in a receptionist, I’m not sure).  I couldn’t tell you my top five movies or bands, either.  It’s not because I’m apathetic or without preferences, just that ranking such things never really seemed that important.  But since I’m pooh-poohing the top answers given by the Americans polled, it seems like I should be able to come up with some I might actually give, at least for right now.  Such as…

Radley Balko:  Radley is a journalist.  To sum him up as a journalist, however, would be a little like summing up Norman Borlaug (someone who would absolutely be on my list, if he hadn’t died last year) as a farmer.  Radley’s work is decidedly political, but it is the kind of politics which any person with an ounce of compassion should praise, yet of which most are completely ignorant– seeking out and revealing the cases of people who have been oppressed by America’s justice system, whether by oversight or quite deliberately.   He’s written extensively about the harm caused by no-knock drug raids, prosecutorial cover-ups, asset forfeiture, the necessity of access to DNA testing for convicts, and general police malfeasance.  His work bring injustices to public attention– “My reporting helped get a guy off death row, helped win a new trial and acquittal for a 13-year-old murder suspect, and led to the firing of a corrupt medical examiner in Mississippi.”  His blog, as you can probably imagine, is frequently a depressing read.  But it’s a necessary one, and I admire him for doing this sometimes very dirty work.

Joel Salatin:  Joel is a farmer– but not a regular one.  To quote Wikipedia, he is
“a self-described ‘Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-capitalist-lunatic-Farmer'” who “produces high-quality ‘beyond organic’ meats, which are raised using environmentally responsible, ecologically beneficial, sustainable agriculture.”  To unpack that, it means that he doesn’t just farm without using pesticides or genetically modified animal foods, which is what “organic” usually implies.  Hence the ‘beyond organic’– the goal of Polyface Farms is to start with grass and build a progressive and decidedly non-industrial food chain off of it.  Cows, chickens, turkeys, rabbits, and pigs, all living off and contributing to the grass and each other’s…err…products.  No pollution production, no pesticide runoff, no tight confinement of animals in dark spaces eating food that makes them sick.  No docking of tails for depressed pigs.  No government subsidies, because the government doesn’t subsidize growing grass, or cows that were fed only grass or chickens that were fed only grass and the grubs of other animals that ate grass. Just a circular, self-perpetuating cycle of food production– something you’d think was the norm until you found out otherwise.  I admire that immensely. I also admire Michael Pollan for making sure the world has the opportunity to know who Salatin is.

Eugenie Scott:  Eugenie, who sometimes goes by “Genie,” is an anthropologist who heads up the NCSE (National Center for Science Education) and is, incidentally, one of the biggest fighters against creationism in public schools and promoters of evolution in America.  See Kitzmiller v. Dover.  Eugenie generally operates behind the scenes, but she is probably the foremost authority on the evolution/creationism controversy in the country.  And it’s not just about Dover– it’s about a country-wide ongoing tireless battle to make sure that what is taught in public school science classrooms is actually science, and she’s been contributing toward that effort for more than 20 years.  I find a lot to admire in that kind of dedication. I also admire Lauri Lebo for writing about the Dover trial in a way that could make everyone understand it and feel like they know everyone involved in it, because that’s absolutely necessary if people are expected to care. 

Carol Tavris:  Carol is a social psychologist who studies human bias.  She is co-author of a very important book entitled Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts, which is a lesson in intellectual humility that everyone– everyone— needs.  I could make a list of science-based books that have made my head spin with possibility…and will, at some point.  But reading this one, and hearing Carol talk about it in the interview below and this one, really punched through for me.   As often as people throw around the term “cognitive dissonance,” they don’t really seem to understand it.  It’s not the simple fact of holding contradictory views– it’s the discomfort that arises from realizing that your views are contradictory.  Intellectually honest people feel cognitive dissonance and seek to resolve it by changing their views.  Intellectually dishonest people either don’t feel it to begin with or they find a way to avoid the discomfort by rationalizing their views to make them seem consistent, which is what Mistakes Were Made is all about.  We’re all regularly intellectually dishonest– it’s the norm, not the aberration.  Bias is in our nature, and bias is, in my view, infinitely fascinating.  That willingness to brave that chasm of human folly and make it easier for the rest of us to do so as well is why I find Carol so admirable.