The full-throated howl of the uncompromising advocate

I’m going to rudely hijack one political issue to make a point about another. I think you’ll quickly figure out what it is.

NARAL has been undermining their own relevance by failing to support pro-choice positions in a misguided attempt to court moderates—basically, as Ezra Klein points out, they’re failing to recognize their role in the political ecosphere. They’re an advocacy group for a specific range of policies, not a politician who has to balance constituencies—they are supposed to be spokespeople for one particular constituency.

…one thing groups like NARAL have a tendency to do is accept vaguely acceptable-sounding or politically popular bills in an effort to remain in the center, believing their group’s moderate credentials — see also their early endorsement of Lincoln Chafee — somehow important. The alternative strategy — practiced by the NRA, among others — would be to wage all-out war on even these minor encroachments, thus fighting to shift the center left.

This strategy of trying to join the center rather than move it is a damaging one. If NARAL were totally dogmatic and absolutist, that would make life much easier on Democrats who could occasionally show their “centrism” by voting against NARAL-opposed legislation that actually doesn’t much matter. Instead, however, to demonstrate independence on choice, Democrats end up supporting much more onerous and repulsive legislation, because just aping NARAL’s priorities line doesn’t win them any points in the media. Elected politicians, after all, often have to remain “in the center.” Independent interest groups, on the other hand, can spend their time trying to redefine what “the center” is. NARAL — and others on the left — should do more to exploit that freedom.

Digby also reiterates this very important point.

I do not think NARAL understands its function anymore. It is not a politician from a conservative district who won with only a few percentage points and needs to pander. It is not a political party that needs to gloss over differences to come to consensus. It is an advocacy organization. Its job is to hold the line and then move the debate their way.

If this is true for NARAL, how much more appropriate is it for the independent voices we look for on blogs? The job of the blogger is not to triangulate and strain to express some hypothetical view of some nebulous ‘moderate’—it’s to state his or her opinion, unmellowed by that fawning desire to appeal to a majority. Our readers are presumably sampling multiple online sources, and what we have to expect is that they will make up their own minds on the basis of those many inputs, and the real arrogance is to pretend that we can read those minds and aspire to represent a majority. We can’t and we don’t. We are nothing but the enabled and accessible voices for nations of one.

I am strongly pro-choice, so much so that my views probably make many other pro-choice people uncomfortable…and that should be OK. I am not trying to stand for a consensus, I am staking out my position.

This is also true for my views on other aspects of the political argument, on science and evolution, and on religion vs. atheism. I simply do not understand why apologists for religion, for instance, think they need to carp at me and tell me to be less radical, to moderate my stance and to quit alienating those hypothetical fence-sitters that they are trying to woo. That’s not my job. My goal is to shift the debate towards my position (without expecting that everyone will adopt my specific views), and I can’t accomplish that by letting the rope go slack and drifting towards someone else’s position.

So, loud and proud, baby. Fight for your ideas, not those that someone else tells you are examples of what the majority wants to hear. Majorities are made of individuals, and the only way we’ll ever get an honest consensus is if everyone is singing out frankly for their own beliefs.

The science is in: the Tripoli Six are innocent

Go read Effect Measure on the recent events in the case of the Tripoli Six. This is the story of a team of health care workers who were blamed for an outbreak of HIV among young patients at a Libyan hospital—they’ve been tried in a kangaroo court and face very unpleasant prospects.

Now, in a powerful reply to the Libyan accusations, Nature has published the results of a detailed analysis of the viruses afflicting the children, and the story is clear: the cause of the outbreak was the poor hygiene present at the hospital before the six workers arrived. Here are the major conclusions of the paper:

In 1998, outbreaks of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection were reported in children attending Al-Fateh Hospital in Benghazi, Libya. Here we use molecular phylogenetic techniques to analyse new virus sequences from these outbreaks. We find that the HIV-1 and HCV strains were already circulating and prevalent in this hospital and its environs before the arrival in March 1998 of the foreign medical staff (five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor) who stand accused of transmitting the HIV strain to the children.

The strains present were also traceable to North Africa and at least one was prevalent in Egypt. They also found that the timing was off: the outbreak had begun before the workers had arrived.

We found that, irrespective of which model was used, the estimated date of the most common recent ancestor for each cluster pre-dated March 1998, sometimes by many years. In most analyses, the probability that the clusters from the Al-Fateh Hospital originated after that time was almost zero. For the three HCV clusters, the percentage of lineages already present before March 1998 was about 70%; the equivalent percentage for the HIV-1 cluster was estimated at about 40%.

Apparently, the scientific evidence which would have exonerated the accused was not allowed in the court. The Gaddafi government continues to live up to its reputation.

There is a fine line between traitor and patriot, I guess

Since Wilkins, Lynch, and Mike are doing this, I must follow (my mom said something about friends and cliffs once…I’m hoping that they don’t ever decide to jump off one). The two mad biologists achieve parity!

Your ‘Do You Want the Terrorists to Win’ Score: 100%

 

You are a terrorist-loving, Bush-bashing, “blame America first”-crowd traitor. You are in league with evil-doers who hate our freedoms. By all counts you are a liberal, and as such cleary desire the terrorists to succeed and impose their harsh theocratic restrictions on us all. You are fit to be hung for treason! Luckily George Bush is tapping your internet connection and is now aware of your thought-crime. Have a nice day…. in Guantanamo!

Do You Want the Terrorists to Win?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

I can’t gloat too much, though. This is one of those skewed tests where I think you’d have to be certifiably insane to score below 90%.

Our judiciary at work

Justice Scalia: “I told you I’m not a scientist. That’s why I don’t want to deal with global warming.”

He’s quite right, actually: he’s not a scientist, nor should we expect him to be. That’s why our government ought to be served by competent scientific advisors…and why it’s a shame that Scalia will probably think he’s doing his job if he listens to people from hack tanks like CEI and the Heritage Foundation.

☮ Peace, man ☮

There is this woman in Colorado who’s being sued for displaying a peace symbol on her home—it’s very weird.

A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti-Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan.

Well, it is a peace symbol, you know, so it is rather abstractly against the Iraq war. There was also this long-dead Jewish rabbi that some people call the “Prince of Peace”, and I understand he’s having a holiday sometime soon…I wonder if the homeowner’s association will be policing the housing development for Christian symbols, too? Probably. These guys do sound hardcore.

I’ve never heard of the peace symbol being associated with Satan. I think someone’s making stuff up. Couldn’t they have just said it was a symbol for those damned dirty long-haired hippies, and left it at that?

Also, look at this: it’s pathetic.

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Here, let me show you how it’s done. I think she needs to escalate.

This is a house down the street from me, here in the red state wilderness of western Minnesota. This display has been up every year that I’ve been here—that peace symbol must be about 12 feet in diameter.

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See? That’s how you flaunt a peace symbol. It makes me feel a little better every time I walk by it.

Ah, the power of the news and internet. The tinpot dictators realized that they were looking like pathetic, petty wankers to the entire world, and they’ve withdrawn their demands. I think Mr Kearns, the Homeowners Association GOD, has received a spanking.

None of the three members of the board in the scenic town 270 miles southwest of Denver was available for comment late Monday. Kearns and colleague Jeff Heitz both had their phone numbers changed to unlisted numbers Monday. Tammy Spezze, the third board member, did not return a call seeking comment.

Unfair!

Jesus’ General is poking fun at Mitt Romney’s weird religious doctrines (he’s a Mormon). This isn’t right. I demand that he give equal time to pointing out the silliness of Hillary Clinton’s (Methodist), John Kerry’s (Catholic), Russ Feingold’s (Jewish), and John McCain’s (whatever will get him the nomination) religion. There’s goofiness galore in all of those, too, and it’s unfair to leave them out.

What’s up, NSTA?

This is a troubling development, and perhaps some members of the National Science Teachers Association in the readership here know something about it. They seem to be in the pocket of the oil industry.

In tomorrow’s Washington Post, global warming activist Laurie David writes about her effort to donate 50,000 free DVD copies of An Inconvenient Truth (which she co-produced) to the National Science Teachers Association. The Association refused to accept the DVDs:

In their e-mail rejection, they expressed concern that other “special interests” might ask to distribute materials, too; they said they didn’t want to offer “political” endorsement of the film; and they saw “little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members” in accepting the free DVDs. …

[T]here was one more curious argument in the e-mail: Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place “unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters.”

As it turns out, those supporters already include “special interests,” including Exxon-Mobil, Shell Oil, and the American Petroleum Institute, which have given millions in funding to the NSTA.

This is not merely an attempt to avoid entanglement in a “controversial” (not that global warming is actually controversial among scientists), since the article mentions that the NSTA has distributed PR for the oil companies. I like the NSTA and I read their newsletter…but this sounds like they’ve been bought and paid for by Exxon-Mobil, and it casts an unfortunate shadow on their reputation. Can we please have a science advocacy group we can trust?

I like the way Sara Robinson’s mind works.

Memo to the Christian Coalition: The NSTA is for sale. For a mere million bucks a year, I’ll bet you could get them on board with Intelligent Design, too.

Memo to parents: It might be time to find out if your kids’ science teachers are members of this group, and have a word with them about it. If you — or the teachers — want to complain directly to the NSTA, the complaint form is here. They need to hear from everyone who still thinks that scientific truth shouldn’t be auctioned off to the highest donor.