29.1.05

Illiberal Sweden

Swede's Sermon On Gays: Bigotry Or Free Speech? One Sunday in the summer of 2003, the Rev. Ake Green, a Pentecostal pastor, stepped into the pulpit of his small church in the southern Swedish village of Borgholm. There, the 63-year-old clergyman delivered a sermon denouncing homosexuality as "a deep cancerous tumor in the entire society" and condemning Sweden's plan to allow gays to form legally recognized partnerships. ... With these words, which the local newspaper published at his request, Green ran afoul of Sweden's strict laws against hate speech. He was indicted, convicted and sentenced to 30 days in jail. He remains free pending appeal. ... U.S. gay rights groups "are not interested in forcing any churches to do anything they don't want to do theologically," [Lambda Legal executive director Katherine] Cathcart said. Evangelical Christians who think Green's case is what the future holds for them "may be right," he said, "but only if they move to Sweden."

The hand-washing response from Lambda, which seems more focused on dismissing US conservatives' concerns than staking out a clear position on Sweden's policy (which is desired by some in the US) is disappointing.

The law can be an important tool for safeguarding the rights of minorities. But there are certain issues on which the law is an inappropriate tool, and speech is the foremost example of that territory. I'll skip over the moral issue, as you've all heard the quote from Voltaire. Pragmatically, a ban on anti-gay speech seems to feed the anti-gay movement. Conservative Christians have constructed an ideology of persecution, telling themselves that they are under assault by both the culture and law of modern society. Laws restricting free speech justify their fears that the "homosexual agenda" is being forced on them. It makes it that much harder to win someone over with arguments when you seem willing to resort to the law not only to enforce the consequences of your belief (e.g. non-discrimination policies) but also to enforce the holding and spreading of your belief. It shows a lack of trust in your arguments and a lack of respect for the rules of discourse.

It's especially strange that Sweden has banned anti-gay speech before it has even instituted full legal equality for homosexuals. It's understandable (though wrongheaded) to ban people from questioning the status quo, as is the case with European bans on pro-Nazi speech. But it's quite another thing to ban speech that would weigh against a proposed reform.
Stentor Danielson, 11:51, ,

27.1.05

Fire Experience

I don't have time for much of a comment on this, but I thought these remarks by fire ecologist Phil Cheney on the importance of tacit environmental knowledge were worth quoting:

I haven't talked in any detail to the guys that investigated the Eyre Peninsula [site of a recent deadly fire], but what I understand from them is that most of the situations were ones that shouldn't have happened, if people had applied what we already know. Here we have, you know, continual turnover of people coming increasingly from the cities and going out into the bush, and really not understanding the environment that they're going out into and not preparing themselves adequately for that. ... [Education] would have a terrific impact if they went about it the right way. But one of the problems with teaching people about fire is the practical exposure to demonstrate what you're teaching, and I found this when I was lecturing in fire control at university. People could come up with all the right answers, but they didn't understand the relativities of the problem and what really mattered.

Stentor Danielson, 02:45, ,

26.1.05

Mary Douglas, Hierarchist

In an earlier post I engaged in a bit of speculative meta-Cultural Theory. I observed that Aaron Wildavsky -- one of the founders of Cultural Theory -- and Virginia Postrel -- who invented a system quite like Cultural Theory -- would both fall into the "individualist" cultural camp, and wondered whether Cultural Theory itself might not be especially appealing to individualists. After all, it does envision a competition among visions of the world that is consonant with individualists' love of the market. Sadly, it seems the situation is more complex. Today I came across a passage (in Risk and Blame) in which Mary Douglas, the central figure in Cultural Theory, asserts herself to be a hierarchist.
Stentor Danielson, 21:40, ,

A Proposal On CEO Salaries

One often-overlooked outrage of our modern society is the growing gap between the earnings of the upper management of corporations and those of the workers. Shareholder activism has led to a few prominent victories, but it's difficult to organize that kind of action. The incestuous nature of the upper management class leads to endemic back-scratching at the expense of the workers, and even of the solvency of the corporation.

But what if control of CEO pay was held by the workers? Out of a simple sense of fairness the workers would be disinclined to lavish the big bucks on their supervisors, especially given the lack of a correlation between pay and performance (i.e. you don't need to offer a huge salary to attract a good manager). This would further give management an incentive to raise workers' pay and benefits, since generosity is more likely to be repaid with generosity. If they want to cut pay and benefits, they'd have to go to the workers and make a convincing case that it's the only way to keep the company afloat, or risk their own benefits being cut. It would also rein in outsourcing, as CEOs planning to move operations overseas would still be subject to the control of their American employees, who would be understandably unhappy.
Stentor Danielson, 10:21, ,

24.1.05

Wow

I've hit another blogging milestone. I'm now able to write one of those "go vote for the best entry *wink**wink**nudge**nudge* in this blog awards thing that I've been nominated for" posts. The awards thing in question is the first annual UU blog awards. The nominees are selected from a pretty small set of blogs, as evidenced by the fact that I was nominated in three categories -- Best Non-UU-Themed Blog by a UU, Best Design, and Best Review or Cultural Commentary for this post. I don't know the other nominees for Best Non-UU-Themed Blog well enough to vote in that category, but my personal picks are Cáliz Azul for Best Design and Life in Privatopia I and II for Cultural Commentary.
Stentor Danielson, 17:16, ,

Mistaken Obituaries

I finally got around to reading the infamous Death of Environmentalism paper, and I have to say that I don't get what the big fuss is. The authors, Shellenberger and Nordhaus, argue in the specific case of environmentalism what every left-leaning pundit (and many right-leaning ones) has argued about the Democratic party, and liberalism in general, since November 3. The problem is an excess of piecemeal wonkery, and the solution is a grand vision.

The title is somewhat misleading, because the picture Shellenberger and Nordhaus paint of the environmental movement is not of a movement that is dead and whose ultimate goals must be abandoned. Rather, they argue that the movement is stagnant and ineffective as it is currently constituted. And while harshly critical of the narrowness of environmentalism as we know it, they strongly urge a reformulation of vision as part of a revived progressive coalition -- and even point to some examples of current initiatives that are moving in the right direction.
Stentor Danielson, 14:35, ,