Redistricting update

In Wednesday's post about a new redistricting algorithm, I focused on the technical specifics of the proposed method, and the pros and cons that made it different from previous proposals.

I deliberately avoided delving into all the standing arguments about how best to draw districts, largely because I've discussed them in tedious detail before. But judging by the comments and e-mails I've received, a quick overview would be useful.

The complicating factor is that there are situations where gerrymandering produces a better result than a purely nonpartisan approach. That's because redistricting involves several legitimate but competing principles:

1. District boundaries should make geographic sense.

2. District boundaries should be nonpartisan.

3. The makeup of Congress should reflect the makeup of the citizenry. If a given group makes up 15 percent of the citizens, it should probably have about 15 percent of the Congressional seats.

4. Districts should be socially coherent, so that their representative can truly represent them. A suburban neighborhood on the edge of the city, for instance, is better grouped with a suburban district with similar demographics than an urban district with which it has nothing in common.

The problem is that #4 is highly subjective, and it's hard to get #3 if you want both #2 and #1. For instance, assuming minorities are somewhat evenly spread through the population, a totally nonpartisan approach would create zero districts where blacks, say, are a majority -- greatly reducing the political power of black voters.

So one consequence of a completely objective method for drawing districts would probably be a steep drop in the number of minority members of Congress.

That doesn't feel right. That's why increasing minority representation is one of the few legal exceptions to the "no excessive gerrymandering" rules.

Besides leading to travesties like District 12 on the above map of North Carolina, such efforts created a whole new set of problems. Republicans, for instance, found that if you draw those minority districts right you not only get more minorities but you also get more safe Republican seats. Republicans gained 10 House seats in the 1992 elections -- 12 of them in states where minority districts had been created. Gains in those states, in other words, offset losses elsewhere.

This, in turn, has contributed to careerism and the alarming polarization of national politics, because someone with a safe seat is free to demagogue as much as they like, and it's harder to find common ground with other legislators. Why would a representative from poor inner-city Detroit care about the issues most dear to people in suburban Orange County, Calif.? Or vice versa? Their constituents have almost nothing in common.

If more districts were politically and racially mixed, you might find more legislators with direct experience and interest in a range of issues, making sane policy and pragmatic compromises more likely.

The problems don't end there.

Once you allow gerrymandering for one purpose, it opens the door for a whole host of questions, like: How much gerrymandering is too much? If it's okay to gerrymander for race, how about gender or religion or other demographic features? You end up having to engage in a lot more arbitrary, complicated and difficult-to-defend line-drawing than if you simply ban the practice altogether.

And while we must recognize race as a political force, why should we encourage it? Being willfully color-blind often disguises residual racism, but that doesn't mean we should build racial assumptions into the very structure of our political system. Perhaps if we stop reinforcing the idea that race should be a factor in politics, it will stop being as much of a factor.

In the end, while #3 and #4 are commendable ideals, in my book they come in second to #1 and #2. As an extension of adjusting the algorithm to account for existing political boundaries I'm willing to accept very minor adjustments to a district's boundaries in order to nudge it over into "minority" status. That will result in fewer minority districts, but more than if no adjusting were done at all.

To minorities who say that such a move destroys their political power, I'd say "join the club." Speaking as an agnostic political moderate, I can confidently say my views aren't proportionately represented in Congress, either.

The solution to that is to organize politically to create a voice out of proportion to your numbers. It worked for the religious right; it works for unions; it can work for racial groups, too. And it has the added advantage of making a given minority's concerns part of the political calculus of a far larger number of Congressmembers. Sufficiently organized, that could result in far greater political influence than could every be achieved by packing minorities into their own districts.

Even better would be to stop viewing representation through the prism of race and start organizing around specific issues instead. Symbolically important as minorities in Congress can be, would black voters, for instance, really prefer a black representative with whom they totally disagree, or a white representative whose positions they support?

Here in Minnesota, one of the main political divides is rural vs. urban. I find it difficult to believe that a rural black has more in common politically with an urban black than with a fellow rural dweller of any color.

In sum, then, the collective good of removing politics from the redistricting process generally outweighs the collective good of proportional representation. The first should be the priority, while the second should be a bonus to be added where possible -- but only if it doesn't derail the whole shebang.

redistricting, politics, midtopia

Nonpartisan redistricting

Last week, Simon over at Stubborn Facts linked to a group that has developed a mathematical algorithm for drawing Congressional districts -- one that would make gerrymandering a thing of the past.

The so-called splitline algorithm follows a few simple rules to divide up a state using the fewest number of straight lines as possible.

For example, here's how Tennessee looks now:


And here's how it would look if the algorithm were used:


Obviously, the computer-generated map seems far more in keeping with the spirit of geographical representation.

But just as obviously, the upside of total nonpartisanship is gained at the expense of ignoring all existing natural and political boundaries. The district lines would arbitrarily split cities, neighborhoods, even streets. It would be technically simple to determine what district you were in using a GPS device, but it would be hard to do so simply looking at a map.

That said, gerrymandering often produces the same result, and for far less defensible reasons.

Such a problem seems solvable, however. The algorithm could be linked to a database of geographical and political boundaries, and modified to draw the simplest districts while giving maximum deference to those boundaries. The key point -- automated, nonpartisan district drawing -- would be retained. All that would change is that the district borders would get a little more complicated in order to be easier to understand.

Like Simon says, it's a start, not a finish. But it's a promising one.

BTW, here's how Minnesota might look.



redistricting, politics, midtopia

The Book of Mitt

Will the candidacy of Mitt Romney produce -- dare I say it -- a teachable moment?

I've written before about my perspective on the state of Islam, the existence of moderate Muslims and the illogic of people who say "Islam, not Muslims, is the problem."

First, to make such a claim one must ignore all the real-life examples of moderate Muslims -- such as the moderate Muslim who helped the British foil a plot to bomb transatlantic jetliners. If they exist, it stands to reason that there can be moderate interpretations of Koran.

Second, the holy books of most major religions contain violent passages, passages depicting horrific punishments for nonbelievers or outsiders, passages rife with misogynism, racism and fourth-grade ethics. That's what you get from books written between 1,400 and 4,000 years ago.

It makes no sense to point to such passages in the Koran and say all Muslims are violent or evil without applying the same logic to Christians and Jews and Hindus. The latter have (mostly) managed to overcome the violence and tribalism built into their books; it stands to reason that Muslims can, too -- and have.

Which brings us to Romney. Because in his case I'm starting to see the roles reversed: Some liberals/Democrats bashing Mormonism (using sites such as this one) and conservatives/Republicans defending him.

All of which, with luck, gives us an opportunity to pause and think. Liberals should realize that by adopting the tactics of Islamaphobes, they become no better than those they oppose. Conservatives should realize that if the tactic is illegitimate when directed at Romney, it's also illegitimate when directed at Muslims.

Some bloggers point to time as an important distinction: Christianity's violence is in its past, while Islam's is in the present. They are right, but that still does not make Islam the problem; the problem is certain medieval interpretations of Islam that still hold sway in some areas. Instead of attacking Islam as a whole, we should be attacking those vile interpretations. That way we get to be intellectually consistent, logically correct, and as a practical matter it minimizes the number of enemies we have to deal with (some Muslims instead of all Muslims).

As for Romney, he's not in my top five list of candidates I would vote for. I find his new-found conservative views both wrong and a fine example of gross pandering. But who the heck cares if he's a Mormon? Even if he was deadset on creating a Mormon version of Sharia law, does anyone seriously think he could do so? You think the distinctly non-Mormon Congress and courts would go along with him, not to mention the American populace and those trial lawyers that Republicans love to hate? I have yet to see any plausible scenario wherein Romney's faith could have any meaningful impact on his presidency, and thus be a legitimate factor in his presidential campaign.

If we can absorb that lesson in tolerance (and the limits of power) and then transfer it to other religions, Romney's campaign will have performed a public service, win or lose.

religion, Romney, politics, midtopia

The evolution of religion

As a follow-up of sorts to my genetics of altruism post, The New York Times magazine had a fascinating, thought-provoking piece on the evolutionary advantages of belief.

Turns out that some scientists have been studying religion from an evolutionary perspective, trying to figure out why religion is universal when it is seemingly maladaptive to survival: usually, believing in nonexistent things and expending energy on nonproductive pursuits will make it harder to survive, not easier.

First the science, then my two cents.

The science is split into two camps. There's the "byproduct" school, which says religion is not in itself an evolutionary advantage, but is a byproduct of a complex and imaginative brain that is. Then there's the "adaptionist" school, which argues that religious belief is in fact advantageous by promoting trust and cooperation within a group.

The byproduct folks have some fascinating bits of data to work with. Their main ones are three recognized human traits:

Agent detection: The ability to infer the presence of organisms that intend to harm us. If we see motion out of the corner of our eye, our mind tends to assume it is a potential hostile organism and react accordingly. We assume the motion is guided by a mind rather than assuming benign causes like wind blowing leaves around. This makes evolutionary sense: If we're wrong about it being hostile, we're still alive. If we're wrong about it being benign, we're dead or injured. But it predisposes us to see intelligent agents behind every observed phenomenon.

Causal reasoning: The ability to "impose a narrative" on seemingly unrelated events. I tend to describe this as "pattern detection", the ability to see patterns even where none exists. Again, this is evolutionarily advantageous: it helps us solve puzzles and figure out cause and effect even with scant evidence, and is largely harmless when applied incorrectly. But it, too, predisposes us to see order and causation where there is none.

Theory of mind: This is simply the recognition that other people have their own viewpoint and do not know everything we know; it's the ability to imagine yourself in other people's heads. It lets us anticipate the actions of other people based on our knowledge of their knowledge. The survival advantage is obvious. The link to religion is a little more complex. Experiments show that children do not develop "theory of mind" until they are 4 years old or so. Until then, they believe others -- and especially their parents -- are omniscient. In other words, we are born believing in omniscient, invisible minds, which paves the way for a belief in God.

Then come the adaptationists. They argue that while the byproduct school might help explain some of the biochemistry of belief, belief itself is also favored by evolution. Some of my thoughts on altruism closely reflect adaptationist arguments. Religion can make people feel better by worrying less about death, letting them focus on living and the future. By reinforcing desirable behavior, it helps them attract better mates. It makes groups more cohesive, allowing them to outcompete nonreligious groups. It makes individuals more willing to sacrifice themselves, again increasing the survivability of the group. Such advantages outweigh the evolutionary costs of religion, which is measured in the time and resources devoted to ritual.

Adaptationists also note that this doesn't have to be an either-or thing. All species contain a range of various traits: height, strength, speed, disease resistance, etc. Why should belief be any different? In that view, theists and atheists aren't enemies; they represent a socially healthy mix. "What seems to be an adversarial relationship between theists and atheists within a community is really a division of cognitive labor that keeps social groups as a whole on an even keel," to quote the article's paraphrase of David Sloan Wilson.

Me, I don't see the two schools as necessarily being in conflict. Humans are social creatures by design, and the idea that we're wired to view the world in a certain way makes sense. Further, anything that promotes social cooperation is evolutionarily advantageous. Religion is an effective tool to that end, so it's easy to see why it would be so ubiquitous.

I would add that belief is advantageous for a reason not cited in the article: because it gives us a sense of control. Early humans were surrounded by deadly things they didn't understand. That could be debilitating to a mind imaginative enough to envision all the horrible things that could happen. But if we think we know why lightning strikes or earthquakes happen or people die, then we can develop rituals and practices to control or appease them. If we think we know what the stars are, we can use them to store our hopes and dreams. Belief is just one more tool to help us order our surroundings, giving us a framework that lets us live our lives more successfully by explaining away the unexplainable.

Believers may be offended by this whole discussion, as if God can be reduced to a particular brain structure or random chance. But that's not necessarily the case. Knowing the mechanism by which humans experience God does not prove God doesn't actually exist. To quote Justin Barrett, a prominent member of the byproduct school and a practicing Christian:

"Christian theology teaches that people were crafted by God to be in a loving relationship with him and other people. Why wouldn’t God, then, design us in such a way as to find belief in divinity quite natural?”

This is a variation of "evolution is the tool by which God created humans" argument. And it works just as well. We believe because God gave us the ability to believe when He created us.

Anyway, it's a fascinating article, far more interesting than I can do justice to here. Give it a read before it disappears behind the Times Select wall.

evolution, religion, politics, midtopia

Where's the truth in Iraq?

One of the ongoing themes in the Iraq debate is the argument that the "true" picture of life in Iraq is not reaching Americans. Either it's better than portrayed (the prowar argument) or worse (the antiwar argument). Any report one way or another is dismissed either as biased in its own right, or simply "missing the bigger picture."

Some examples of the whiplash of conflicting reports:

Bush's recent trip to Iraq. On the one hand you have people hailing Bush's recent trip to Iraq as a sign of the improving security situation, since he was able to fly by helicopter over Baghdad to reach the Green Zone. The last time he visited, he landed and stayed at a military base.

Critics point out that we are in the midst of an offensive to "retake" Baghdad, 3 years after the end of the invasion, which certainly doesn't imply progress. And Bush didn't even tell the Iraqi prime minister he was coming, which certainly doesn't imply trust.

But then we get reports of coalition forces handing control of parts of Iraq over to Iraqi forces, which indicates that the security situation is improving.

Ignoring the good news. Reporters are criticized for not covering "good news", while others counter by pointing to the high death toll among journalists in Iraq, and note that if Iraq is so dangerous reporters can't leave the Green Zone, that says all we need to know about the security situation.

There's probably some truth to the "not reporting good news" argument, for a couple of mundane reasons: the inability of reporters to get out and witness such occurrences, and the fact that a school opening simply isn't as interesting or important as the ongoing violence. Reconstruction statistics tend to get reported as roundups, with such things as "3,000 schools have been renovated in the last year", rather than as 3,000 separate stories. It's fair to say that that lessens the impact of the good news.

But such complaints need to be taken with a grain of salt as well; a raw number like "3,000 schools renovated" or "100 playgrounds have been built" doesn't say much about what is meant by "renovated", doesn't say whether a playground is actually used, and doesn't mean anything unless we have some context: how many schools are there?

Last year a reporter (CNN, I think; the story has aged off the Web) traveled to several of these "renovated" schools and found that many of them had been superficially repaired but lacked supplies or electricity or functioning toilets or many of the other things one needs to have a working school.

Also last year, the New York Times did a short piece on a playground in Baghdad. U.S. troops spent $1.5 million in 2004 building it in a nice spot along the banks of the Tigris. A year later the playground was abandoned, the grass dead, because it was simply too dangerous to go there. But I'll bet that playground is still listed among successfully completed reconstruction projects.

We have undoubtedly renovated a substantial number of schools, and repaired a substantial number of sewer lines, and rebuilt a substantial number of electrical systems. But what that number is, and what it actually means as far as the quality of life in Iraq, is far more complicated than the bland "renovated schools" count suggests.

And here's another thought: you may think the media underreports the good news, but they also underreport the bad news. There's only so much space in any given newspaper or so much airtime on TV. The vast majority of photos never get seen by the vast majority of people, who also are not confronted with the vast majority of daily outrages. They, too, get aggregated into statistics. If you want a taste of just how much bad news you're not bombarded with each day, check out this site.

Economic measures. These are things like electricity and oil production, both of which have struggled to reach prewar levels. That may sound like we're not doing well, despite pouring billions into reconstruction. But the insurgency has diverted much of that spending to security, and it's difficult to increase electricity production when insurgents keep blowing up power lines and distribution stations. On the other hand, our inability to establish a secure environment is the reason the insurgency is able to do so much damage.

The fact is that Iraq is not one place, but multiple places. Outside of the Sunni Triangle, there is not much of an insurgency. What you do have, though, is sectarian violence, including Shiite death squads and security forces infiltrated by militia members. And in all places violence and corruption make rebuilding difficult.

Within the Sunni Triangle, the insurgency makes meaningful reconstruction especially difficult. But that just highlights one of the main criticisms of the occupation -- that it was poorly planned, and we've never had enough troops to do the job properly. Which is why we find ourselves retaking the same cities again and again, and spending more on providing security for construction projects than we do on the actual construction.

Is Iraq getting better? In places. Is it getting worse? In places. Is it safe and secure? Not even close, unless you're a Shiite in a predominately Shiite area or a Sunni in a predominately Sunni area. And that will remain the case until we have enough boots on the ground -- coalition or Iraqi -- to reestablish the governmental monopoly on violence that is essential to a secure state.

terrorism, reconstruction, security, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Privacy is a basic human need

Bruce Schneier at Wired magazine has a must-read discussion of the need to protect privacy.

Cardinal Richelieu understood the value of surveillance when he famously said, "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." Watch someone long enough, and you'll find something to arrest -- or just blackmail -- with. Privacy is important because without it, surveillance information will be abused: to peep, to sell to marketers and to spy on political enemies -- whoever they happen to be at the time.

Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need.

That's just a taste. Read the whole thing.

civil liberties, privacy, politics, midtopia

Discriminating against poor students?

A California judge has suspended a statewide exam that high school students must pass to receive their diploma.

Today's Star Tribune had a brief on it, mentioning that the judge concluded the exam discriminated against "poor students" and those with limited English skills.

My first reaction was "Poor students? Isn't that the point of such an exam, to weed out the bad students?"

But upon further research, the judge meant students who are economically poor. And the argument there is an interesting one.

The lawsuit claimed that many students have not had the opportunity to learn the material on the exit exam because they went to substandard schools with unqualified teachers, insufficient textbooks and squalid conditions.

Freedman agreed, saying, "Students in economically challenged communities have not had an equal opportunity to learn the materials tested."

Freedman wrote in his opinion that the "record is replete" with evidence of California's underfunded schools and said his decision applies to students statewide.

Few people would disagree that students should graduate with certain basic skills. And a graduation exam is a good way to test whether they have those skills.

But as this lawsuit highlights, if a student has not acquired those skills, whose fault is it: the student's or the school system's? Who do you punish, the student or the school?

On the other hand, if you can get a diploma without learning those basic skills, what value does the diploma have?

It might come down to cases. But it seems to me the problem can be solved by focusing on the goal: turning out an educated populace.

If a student fails the exam, they don't get a diploma: they get shunted into a high-quality, well-funded remedial program that will bring their skills up so that they *can* pass the exam.

Meanwhile, if a school has a large percentage of students failing to pass the exam, it gets scrutinized. If the problem is funding, it gets more resources. If the problem is staff competence, it gets a housecleaning. If the problem is simply a highly challenged student body -- poor, large number of non-English speakers, unstable homes -- it gets something tailored to that.

Focus on the goal: A diploma should mean something, and if students are failing to learn we should place the blame -- and the resources -- where it belongs.

education, California, politics, midtopia

Gas prices start to pinch

The Star Tribune today had a big A1 centerpiece on how higher gas prices are affecting homeowners and commuters.

The main revelation to me is that some people spend $500 a month on gas alone, not to mention the hour or two spent in traffic each day. That doesn't count the cost of buying, maintaining and insuring a car or two.

Are they insane?

It also cites a couple of studies that try to measure the transportation cost of living in various parts of the Twin Cities. One is by the Center for Neighborhood Technology; the other is by the Brookings Institution.

A lot of people decided to buy in the far-flung exurbs because the houses were a lot cheaper there. But there's a reason they're cheap, and many homeowners are now figuring out why.

If gas prices remain high, home prices will rise in the central cities and decline further in the sticks. But they're not going to fall enough to totally offset the ongoing cost of commuting, year after year.

The long-term implications could be interesting.

For starters, the "sweet spot" -- where combined housing and commuting costs are the most affordable -- will move inward somewhat. If mass transit gets a renewed lease on life, it will move in even closer, as those "expensive" homes in the city turn out to be cheaper in the long run. Even far-flung development will be affected, as it follows bus and rail lines rather than highways. That's one reason communities along the proposed Northstar commuter line strongly support its creation.

Meanwhile, businesses may seek to reduce transportation costs by locating near a rail line in the exurbs. That will allow residents to stop commuting into the city and instead drive to a local workplace. The small-town downtown may flourish again, creating a ring of minicities around the large central ones.

High gas prices may, in the end, achieve what government could or would not: curbing sprawl and the inefficient use of resources that goes with it. Yet another example of how dealing with the true cost of gasoline helps society as a whole make more rational choices.

Separately, MPR's Midmorning show had an interview with Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer, who's in town to take part in the Great Conversations series at the University of Minnesota. Blumenauer helped develop the Portland, Ore., transit system and is something of an expert on urban management and growth. They discussed several things, but Blumenauer made two points that resonated with me:

Zoning laws need to change. As long as we require people to drive to the mall or strip mall to shop, car usage remains necessary. A better idea is to have local stores within neighborhoods for small needs, and transit-linked shopping destinations for more regional draws. Right now, though, that's almost impossible because many zoning laws -- most of them drawn up decades ago and altered little since then -- still require sharp separations between commercial and residential districts.

Commuters deserve options. Blumenauer noted that the Twin Cities are less densely populated than Portland and have far more miles of highway. Yet we have more traffic congestion. That should be a flashing red sign that more highways are not a solution.

He expressed surprise that the Twin Cities is so far behind the rest of the country in the adoption of light rail, when even once-adamant opponents such as Phoenix, Denver and Houston now have systems. He said the goal should not be to force people to use mass transit; it should be to give them options, so they can decide what to use. Over time it leads to fewer roads, less traffic and less sprawl.

We have high gas prices to thank for the re-emergence of this sort of conversation. And it's yet one more reason why we should not be trying to lower those prices.

light rail, mass transit, Blumenauer, energy, oil, transportation, gas prices, sprawl, politics, midtopia

The problem with parties

Diverse and Contradictory has a post discussing why political parties are congenitally incapable of governing.

The Republicans and Democrats have tried so hard to be the party of everyone, that it's impossible to gain any real consensus among their members.

Republicans have fought this weakness by creating polarizing issues and then standing for them. The Democrats haven't fought that weakness, which leads to a muddled message and no clear direction. The only thing this leads to is the ability of the opposing party to point out the weaknesses of the other's strategy.

Parties are literally unable to do this and remain the large, overarching, all-issue, conglomerates they want to be. They squabble internally, and rip themselves apart by overindulging in the stands they think they want to take. There can actually be no strategy for them to implement.

The solution is the obvious one: vote for the individual, not the party.

The problem, of course, is that doing so takes a bit more work than simply walking into the booth and voting the straight party ticket. And as economists point out, there are no tangible cost-benefit incentives to go vote. Thus a lot of people don't bother to vote, and many of those who do don't bother to educate themselves. It's quite rational, if a little sad, and destructive to democracy in the aggregate.

So let's make things easy on voters. Specifically:

Make election day a holiday, so people don't have to take time off work to vote. And what about holding them earlier in the year, when the weather is better? Then we could put on ice-cream socials or something at voting stations, making going to vote an event rather than the rather beige experience it is now.

Implement instant-runoff voting, so voting for the individual has more meaning.

Make ballots easy to read. I'm not a big one for micromanagement of local elections, but it's high time we paid a competent graphic designer to create a standardized, easy-to-understand ballot that can be adapted for use in every race. Think of the nutrition labels on food as a model: the same information presented the same way no matter what product you're buying, making it easy to understand and compare.

Lower barriers to voting, notably by not forcing people to stand in line for hours to cast their ballot.

We could also try lots of little things to help people vote and vote intelligently: street signs with "Election Day today!" and arrows pointing to the local voting site; standardized reference sheets at voting stations, listing the candidates and their positions on key issues so people can refresh their memory; things like that.

Very few of these ideas are attractive to parties in general or incumbents in particular. So they won't happen without serious pressure from below. But since elections are implemented by local governments, a small number of voices can make a difference.

Election Day, instant-runoff voting, parties, voting, politics, midtopia

Off the road

My wife and I like trains. So whenever we travel, we try to take the train. Part of it is that my wife doesn't like to fly. Part if it is that I'd rather gnaw my own leg off than spend eight hours driving on the freeway. But when we need to take a trip, our first thought is, "can we take the train?"

The answer is not as easy as it should be, because often it is "no." And therein lies a tale.

But first, let me tell you how it should be. Because it happened to us on this trip.

The trip we're on is business for my wife: a gigantic interior-design convention in Chicago. I'm along because I'm a design groupie, and having remodeled three houses I have more than a passing interest in sinks and ovens and other home furnishings. Plus it's close to our anniversary, and this was a chance to spend three nights in a four-star hotel on the Chicago River without any rugrats underfoot.

Step One was to dump the munchkins with my parents, who live near Madison, Wis. So bright and early on Wednesday morning we bundled everyone into the car and made the five-hour pilgrimage to Grandma's house.

The kids were well-behaved, traffic was light, the weather was good. So we arrived five hours later hungry, tired and stiff, and the kids fairly exploded out of the car and began finding randomly destructive ways of working off their pent-up energy.

We spent the night, and the next morning said goodbye to parents and offspring. Then my wife and I drove about 30 miles to Columbus, Wis., to catch the train to Chicago.

We got there about noon. The train was running about half an hour late, and wouldn't be there until 1 p.m. We sat on the platform and ate lunch. It wasn't particularly busy, so about 10 minutes later the stationmaster joined us, and we spent the next half an hour watching freight trains barrel through (hauling coal and what looked like Ford Ranger pickups from the soon-to-be-closed St. Paul plant), amiably discussing trains, the weather and local politics (Columbus' City Council tried to fire the mayor, it turns out, and in response the citizens voted out half of the Council. The legal and political fallout is still expanding. All this in a town of 4,400).

When the train arrived, we got on board and found a pair of empty seats. And what seats! Comfortable, able to lean way, way back, and gobs of leg room. Truly unbelievable amounts of leg room, in fact. I'm tall, and used to being folded up like a pretzel on airplane flights and even bus trips. Here there was so much space that I didn't have to use the foot rests on the seat in front of me. My wife, who is shorter, couldn't even reach her foot rest unless she slumped way down and stretched her legs all the way out. Did I mention the mindblowing amounts of leg room?

We had barely gotten underway when the conductor came through with a plate of strawberry cheesecake. "This cake," he said, "goes to the first person who can correctly answer a trivia question." He told us the question, the answer to which was "Stephen Ambrose." So within five minutes of boarding I was munching on a piece of very good cheesecake while watching the scenery go by.

And it was pretty decent scenery. Because trains don't travel on six-lane highways. They travel on tracks that take you along highways and byways you'll never see otherwise. The land comes right up to the tracks, and there are no gas stations or minimalls lining the roadway to get in your way. You don't look out your window and see one endless commercial strip; you look out your window and see America, up close and personal.

I had some work to do, though, so after a while I pulled out my laptop and got busy. I can't do that in a car or bus, because trying to read in a vehicle makes me motion sick (I get seasick easily, too, which makes for some pretty great stories when we go scuba diving in 7-foot seas....). But a train's motion is so gentle and rocking that it doesn't bother me. It's quiet, too.

Three hours later we pulled into Union Station in Chicago. We debarked and headed up to street level, intending to catch a cab to our hotel. But along the way we noticed a big map showing bus routes, and saw that an express bus ran from the station to the hotel -- for $2 a person. We decided to make this an entirely mass-transit trip, and hoofed it around the corner to the bus stop.

The bus was waiting; we got seated and the driver took off. The other riders were regulars, so they kept up a running patter with the bus driver as we went. For his part, the driver was apparently a taxi owner in a past life, because we went fast and changed lanes on rather short notice. I quickly learned to tune out the sound of angry car horns that seemed to follow us wherever we went.

Ten minutes later the bus screeched to a halt in front of our hotel. We climbed to our feet, thanked the driver for getting us there alive and descended to the pavement. 20 minutes after that we were unpacking our things in our hotel room, with a view of the Chicago River and the new Trump building going up on the far bank.

Total elapsed time from door to door: 5 hours, including the one-hour wait at the station in Columbus. Total one-way cost: $27 each. We arrived fresh, relaxed and unfrazzled, and with a couple of hours worth of work out of the way.

Had we driven or taken a bus it would have taken about 4 hours. But we would also have had to deal with driving and parking in downtown Chicago, and the trip time would have been a total waste, a black hole in the history of my life marked "time spent getting there." The bus would have cost about the same; the car would have been more expensive, the slightly lower per-mile cost offset by the high cost of parking downtown. And that ignores all the hidden costs of driving, such as oil dependency and the cost of building, maintaining and policing highways.

Flying would have been substantially more expensive and not all that much faster, the extremely short flight time being offset by long waits at either end.

I have a dream, a dream that such an experience might someday be the norm in this country, if we ever build (or rather, rebuild) a robust passenger rail system -- at least in regional networks. But alas, it is far from the norm now. And so we get to the meat of my tale.

Our passenger rail system is in tatters, for reasons that have very little to do with how hard or how well Amtrak works, or the public demand for rail travel.

It is not at all uncommon, for instance, for the Empire Builder (the train that runs from Chicago to the West Coast) to arrive two days late. This happens for two main reasons: limited routes (if an accident or landslide block the tracks, the trains stop), and the fact that Amtrak doesn't own the track. Passenger trains are often forced to pull over and wait so that freight trains can go past, and that plays havoc with the schedule.

Even when it's running on time the trip is a long one. And if it's a long trip the train starts to lose its cost advantage over flying, as the need to feed and house passengers for days at a time starts to overwhelm the far cheaper per-mile cost of transportation. Unless you count the trip as part of your vacation, nobody will pay $1,000 and take three days to get to Seattle if you can pay the same amount to fly and arrive the same day you left.

Then there's the service interval. Most lines see one train going each way per day, period. And if your geographic luck is poor, that train may come through at 2 a.m.

Then there are the routes. Amtrak uses a hub-and-spoke system, just like the major airlines. So the Empire Builder, for instance, runs to Chicago. If we want to go to someplace in Iowa, we have to first take the train to Chicago, then change trains for the line that runs through Iowa.

But because of that one-train-per-day service interval, connections stink. We once tried to get to LIttle Rock, Ark., by train. That meant going to Chicago, changing trains, and going on to Little Rock, then reversing the procedure to come home. In both directions, our train would have arrived an hour after the connecting train left, requiring a 23-hour layover in Chicago both going and coming. Not wanting to spend four of our seven days traveling, we took the train to Memphis and then drove to Little Rock.

Finally, there are politics (check out this excellent CBO analysis of the issues). Ask yourself this question: Why is the train station in Columbus rather than in Madison, a city of 200,000? Because that's where the track goes. But, you might think, it surely makes economic sense to run a spur to a city the size of Madison. Well, yes it would. Except Amtrak doesn't own track (except in very small areas of the Northeast). And laying track is expensive. And Congress, many members of which are actively trying to kill Amtrak, won't pay to lay new track for Amtrak -- even if (or perhaps, especially if) that investment would pay off in the long run.

What about bullet trains? Those might make long-haul trips more competitive, right? Well, yes they would (though they're expensive to operate). But Amtrak doesn't own track, so it can't do the track upgrades that high-speed trains require.

Why not kill Amtrak and let a private company run passenger rail service, if the market exists? Because starting up a private service would be almost prohibitively expensive, assuming a new railroad even could acquire the necessary rights-of-way for its track. I think we could privatize the industry eventually, but first we have to remove the senseless barriers we've erected over the past 50 years.

Long-haul train service will always have a difficult time competing with air travel. And for trips of less than an hour it has difficulty competing with the convenience of driving. And there will always be routes that aren't particuarly economical because of low ridership.

But for intermediate trips -- say, 1 to 6 hours in length -- rail is cheaper, more convenient and far more pleasant than the alternatives. If Amtrak were allowed to improve reliability and frequency in a variety of medium-haul markets, the benefits might be huge, reducing car use and the need for ever-more highways.

Because one great thing about rail lines is that they're scalable. A rail line can be expensive to put in, but after that adding capacity is very, very cheap, since trains can run minutes apart without slowing the system down. So instead of constantly adding new highways to handle more and more cars, you just add more cars to an existing train or add more frequent train service on the existing track. And with more frequent service you provide even more incentive for travelers to leave the car at home.

If we want to start weaning ourselves off of oil, we need to find alternative ways for average citizens to get to where they need to go. Air travel is simply too expensive (and oil-hungry) to fill the gap. But picture this: establish regional networks of rail lines connecting population centers within a region, so that people have rail as a viable choice. A three-way connection between Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago, for instance. Or in Minnesota, regular service connecting Duluth, Rochester and the Twin Cities. All with intermediate stops to provide at least some service to the communities in between.

Tie that into a viable light-rail system in the Twin Cities, and suddenly someone from Duluth could take the train down to the Cities for the weekend instead of driving. Or Twin Citians could take the train to the North Shore. Or college students could travel by train. Or patients at the Mayo Clinic. And so on.

I don't blame people who refuse to ride Amtrak in its present state. But maybe we should demand that passenger rail be given a chance to show what it can do before we pull the plug, free of the conflicting demands that have hampered it ever since Amtrak was created in the 1960s.

And maybe millions of new riders would rediscover just how pleasant mass transit can be.

railroads, trains, transportation, Amtrak, politics, midtopia

How to manage illegal immigration

Watching the furor over immigration policy during the past week, I felt strangely uninvolved. I heard the arguments on both sides, I saw the protesters, I read the commentary. But up here in Minnesota it's not a burning issue, so I've never had to resolve the conflicting impulses that the subject raises for me.

The only thing that was clear was that the subject is far more complex than activists on either side admit. So I decided it was high time I developed a position on the subject.

First I did some thinking. Then I did some research.

THE BASICS
It seems to me that any immigration policy should recognize the following facts:

1. Every country has a right to control the flow of immigrants into it.

2. In the aftermath of 9/11 border control is a security issue, not just an economic issue.

3. The cost of the solution should not exceed the cost of the problem.

4. Barring seriously drastic measures, illegal immigration will never be eradicated. We need to manage the problem rather than trying to eradicate it.

5. The best way to fight illegal immigration is to give people incentives, both positive and negative, not to come here illegally.

6. It makes no sense to crack down on illegal immigrants without cracking down on the businesses and individuals that employ them.

THE CURRENT DEBATE
Starting from those facts, let's address some of the common arguments used in the immigration debate.

Illegal immigrants are criminals. While technically true, it's a gross oversimplification of the debate. For most illegal immigrants, the only crime they ever commit is crossing the border without permission. Labeling them criminals is a bit like subjecting serial jaywalkers to a "three strikes" rule.

Further, there are huge gray areas that such a simplistic approach does not handle very well. What about the teenager whose parents brought him across the border when he was an infant? He's been raised in America, and culturally is as American as anyone. Is he a criminal? Is justice served by deporting him back to a country he has no connection to?

Then there are the cases where illegal immigrants have children here in the States. Those children are citizens. Do we really support breaking up families by deporting the parents?

Illegal immigrants are a drain on our resources. Like any new arrival in our country, illegal immigrants use a disproportionate share of social services. And that is a cost that should really be borne by the entire nation, not the border communities that are home to the largest populations of illegals.

But that's only part of the picture. Every wave of immigrants starts out poor. What such accounting doesn't reflect is that by the second or third generation most immigrant families are established and moving up the economic ladder. And they bring with them the energy and desire to improve their lives that has powered the United States since its inception. So focusing on the short-term costs misses the larger point. Such a selective analysis could be used to support a total ban on immigration, which clearly wouldn't be in our best interests.

Besides, the cost of illegal immigration are likely overstated.

Mr. Borjas and Mr. Katz ... found that the surge in illegal immigration reduced the wages of high school dropouts by just 3.6 percent. Across the entire labor force, the effect of illegal immigrants was zero, because the presence of uneducated immigrants actually increased the earnings of more educated workers, including high school graduates. For instance, higher-skilled workers could hire foreigners at low wages to mow their lawns and care for their children, freeing time for these workers to earn more. And businesses that exist because of the availability of cheap labor might also need to employ managers.

Illegal immigrants are lazy spongers. Fact is, other than their illegal arrival, illegal immigrants are precisely the sort of people we should want to have coming here. They don't just decide to cross the border on a lark one day and start sucking at the teat of American welfare. These are people who see such limited opportunity in their home country -- for both them and their children -- that they are willing to leave everything they know in search of a better life. They pay smugglers thousands and thousands of dollars to sneak them across the border, risking death, injury and capture. All so they can work for $3 an hour in near-slave conditions, with a built-in ceiling on economic advancement thanks to their illegal status. How desperate would you have to be before you considered doing something like that? And isn't that sort of pluck exactly what we claim as the benefit of being a nation of immigrants?

We should not crack down on immigrants, illegal or otherwise, who are simply trying to make a life for themselves and their families. While illegals should be treated humanely, they are here illegally, and they do have unwanted economic effects. We should have a rational method for cracking down on illegal immigration, but we should not simply turn a blind eye or enact elaborate restrictions that make it unnecessarily difficult to identify and arrest illegals.

We should deny illegal immigrants access to public services and schools. This is just plain stupid from a public policy perspective. They're here; we do ourselves no favors by preventing them from getting an education or other kinds of help. Cutting them off would have the effect of turning them into criminals in the full sense of the word, forced to steal and defraud in order to survive. Cutting them off from public health services would just increase our overall health bill in the end. Let's not cut off our nose to spite our face.

Americans don't want the jobs that illegal immigrants do. This isn't provably true, there will always be exceptions, and even if it is true the reason may be less the work involved than the pay rate. A more accurate assessment might be that without the cheap labor of illegals, those jobs wouldn't be in this country in the first place. But either way, it seems clear that illegal immigration does affect the job and earning prospects of American workers at the bottom of the education ladder.

America can't handle too many immigrants at once. In a theoretical sense, this is true; if 1 million illegal Mexican immigrants suddenly descended on Luxembourg, for instance, it would overnight become a Mexican-majority country. But the United States has 300 million people; we're not so easily overwhelmed. WIth the INS estimating there are only about 9 million illegal immigrants in the United States as of 2005, the "we can't handle it" argument starts to look very weak. Looking at history, it gets even weaker. Between 1905 and 1914, an average of 1 million people a year immigrated to this country -- at a time when the population of the United States was about 90 million. Somehow we absorbed that. To achieve the same relative disruption today, we'd have to be letting in 3.3 million immigrants a year. We're not even close to that. In 2004 we admitted fewer than 1 million legal immigrants. Add to that the INS estimate of 500,000 illegal immigrants a year, and it's clear we're not even close to reaching the limits of our absorption rate -- whatever that rate might be.

(For a wealth of information on immigration, check out Homeland Security's 2004 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. It's a pdf; on page 11 is a chart showing immigration by year going back to 1820).

A SOLUTION
The problem with illegal immigrants, then, is not the cost, nor the number of immigrants, nor the immigrants themselves. It's that it is uncontrolled, which makes establishing policy difficult and poses a security risk.

The value of closing that security hole is subjective, but the relatively small objective costs of illegal immigration suggest that spending huge buckets of money to stop it just doesn't pass the cost-benefit test. Any solution should either be cost-effective by itself or have other benefits that justify the expense.

We need a comprehensive approach, not piecemeal solutions. Any attempt to address the immigration problem should include stricter enforcement in this country coupled with incentives to keep people from wanting to come here illegally in the first place.

1. Manage the demand side. Crack down on employers as well as their illegal employees, to reduce the demand side of the illegal labor problem. Fines alone won't do it; that just becomes a cost of doing business. If a business is a chronic employer of illegal workers, there should be jail terms for company executives.

We don't even come close to doing this now:

The lack of vigorous enforcement against employers who hire illegal workers has been widely viewed as the main reason that 850,000 immigrants cross the border illegally each year. Facing little in the way of penalties, employers feel few qualms about hiring them for meatpacking, construction, agriculture and janitorial work....

The number of federal immigration agents who focus on work-site enforcement plunged to 65 nationwide in 2004, from 240 in 1999, according to the Government Accountability Office. Moreover, the government reduced the number of notices of intent to fine employers who hired illegal immigrants to just 3 in 2004 from 417 in 1999.

65 agents nationwide? That's the first mistake.

We may want to tread carefully in this area, because as I noted above some of these industries only exist because of the cheap labor of illegals. But if we're going to arrest the workers, we should arrest the employers as well -- be they a corporation or a private individual with an illegal gardener. A few high-profile examples might have a big deterrent effect -- and would certainly reveal whether we as a country have the stomach for such tactics. If we don't, we need to adjust our strategy to that reality.

2. Work with the Mexican government to increase economic opportunity in Mexico. This may seem counter to our national economic interests -- helping set up Mexican workers to compete against us in the global market -- but the best way to persuade people to stay home is to give them some reason to do so. Assuming cultural and family ties are important, most people would prefer to build a life in Mexico than in the United States. Even slight improvements in economic opportunity in Mexico should have an impact on the flow of illegal immigrants.

3. Increase our legal immigrant quota. It's way too low anyway. And by giving people a reasonable chance of being able to immigrate legally, we reduce their incentive to immigrate illegally in the meantime. I'd consider doubling the quota to 2 million a year, with half of it earmarked for Mexico.

4. Implement selective amnesty programs. Have ways to help illegal immigrants become citizens -- if they go home first. Provide amnesty to children who were raised here and are substantially American, perhaps with requirements that they graduate from high school and hold a steady job. A general amnesty is a bad idea. But allow humane exceptions to a general deportation rule.

5. Border security. If we can reduce the flow of illegal immigrants, that makes it easier to monitor our borders for security risks. Building a fence isn't an answer; it would be hugely expensive and easily circumvented. The only way we get a reasonable chance of catching infiltrating terrorists is if they can't hide in a flood of illegal immigrants. So while we should increase our patrol efforts, improved border security will really be a side effect of the other strategies listed above.

6. Sharing the costs. The federal government should provide aid to border cities and states to help shoulder the cost of providing services to illegal aliens.

7. Education assistance for American workers. This is totally off the cuff, but the study I cite above indicates that the only workers adversely affected by illegal immigration are high school dropouts. Given that, we could lessen the impact by moving at least some of those workers up the educational and professional ladder so they no longer have to compete with low-wage illegals.

Adopting just some of these proposals would be a mistake; they're a package deal. They may not be as emotionally satisfying as walling off our southern border, but it would be a whole lot cheaper and far more practical. The Great Wall didn't work for China; it won't work for us.

As long as America is a land of opportunity, we will have people trying to get into the country any way they can. A rational, humane policy that seeks to manage rather than stop that flow will pay off in both the economic and security arenas -- and perhaps the political and diplomatic as well.

border security, illegal immigrants, illegal aliens, immigration, politics, midtopia

Islam's Reformation

I recently had an e-mail exchange with a reader who said that the problem facing the world today is Islam. Not radical Islam, not Islamic terrorists, but Islam itself.

He pointed out, correctly, that much of the violent behavior is justified by either the Koran or the Hadiths (collections of sayings and deeds attributed to Muhammad). His main thesis was that Islam is not a peaceful religion, it is a violent one, and thus cannot be accomodated; it must be opposed.

Even if you believe this, there are lots of reasons not to act on that belief -- not making instant enemies of the world's 1 billion Muslims, for example. I know moderate Muslims, so they do exist. Even "battle of civilizations" proponents should want such Muslims on their side, simply because it makes the battle more winnable.

But that's not the point of this article. What I'm reaching for here is historical context. I do not pretend to be a religious scholar, but this is what I see unfolding in Islam today.

Most major religions are born out of conflict and tribulation. Judaism arose from the beliefs of the wandering tribes of Israel; Christianity arose from the torture-death of a Jewish heretic and rabblerouser; Islam arose among the warring nomadic tribes of the Middle East. The notable exception to that rule is Buddhism -- which is also, not coincidentally, the most peaceful of the major religions.

Thus Jewish scripture is full of stories of conquering land, slaughtering enemies, condoning polygamy and slavery, and horrific punishments for violation of minor religious laws. Christianity, being an offshoot of Judaism, adopted those same stories, renaming them the Old Testament. And despite the New Testament being a modification or even wholesale replacement for the Old, the Old Testament is still cited on such matters as homosexuality and adultery, as well as when invoking the awesome power of God and the penalties for defying him.

Islam, too, contains a contradictory mix of violence and peacemaking, a product of the tribal culture it sprang from, as well as the practical realities that Muhammad straddled the secular/sectarian line. He founded a major religion, but he was also heavily involved in efforts to unite the tribes and turn their violent energies outward, into a conquering force that swept the region. It's no coincidence that the Koran is more forgiving and peaceful than the Hadiths. The task is trying to separate the words of Muhammad the prophet from the words of Muhammad the general and tribal nationalist.

Admittedly, it's more complicated than that. The Koran and the Hadiths are somewhat similar to the Jewish Torah and Talmud. One is the core religious text; the other is a collection of explanations and traditions. But in the case of the Hadith, the authenticity of many sayings is suspect, and as a result there are many different Hadiths. Reconciling them will be a major challenge. But the main point is that the Hadiths are less authoritative than the Koran.

From those usually violent beginnings, most religions seem to undergo a predictable growth arc -- from persecuted sect to evangelical expansion to established religion that persecutes its own sects in turn. At some point there is a schism among believers, which is either settled -- violently, for the most part -- or results in a split, such as the Protestant/Catholic split in Christianity or the Sunni/Shiite split in Islam.

Eventually a religion has to reconcile its violent, expansionistic origins with the reality of being part of the establishment. And that means repudiating the more extreme aspects of their origins. Hence no mainstream Christian denomination follows Jewish dietary law, even though Jesus was a devout Jew. No Jew or Christian thinks slavery is divinely approved, even though the Old Testament had no problem with it. Most of Leviticus has been discarded wholesale.

In addition, most religions discover that religion and secular power don't mix well, nor does intolerance and enforced orthodoxy. So over time most religions get out of the governing business, and allow all believers to follow their conscience. Christianity managed that trick just a couple of centuries ago -- and still hasn't shaken the impulse entirely.

Such growth didn't happen easily, and it didn't happen overnight. It takes a long time for a religion to mature. It's no coincidence that the oldest major Western religion, Judaism, is also the least evangelical and most tolerant; Jews resolved their major schism thousands of years ago. Christianity is younger, and resolved its contradictions just a few hundred years ago, although the effects linger in certain quarters.

Islam is the youngest of the three. I submit that what we are seeing today is Islam passing through the same painful adolescence that both Judaism and Christianity endured centuries ago.

Let's look at the timeline. Christianity was born in the 1st Century. The Reformation came 1,500 years later, and took a century of warfare to resolve -- and was preceded by centuries of religious warfare, such as the Crusades.

Islam was founded in the 7th Century. And now, 1,500 years later, it is at the same stage of development as Christianity was 600 years ago.

The parallels are striking. The 1400's began with the Spanish Inquisition, which eventually led to the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain. Elsewhere there was a brisk business in burning heretics at the stake, notably John Huss and Jerome of Prague, burned for spreading the writings of John Wycliffe.

This led to the rise of the Hussites, which in turn prompted the first interChristian Crusade, a 13-year war between the church and the Hussites that the Hussites won.

All this bloodshed merely laid the foundation for the Reformation, which would convulse the entire 16th Century in violence and horror. And religious wars also marked the 17th Century, notably the Thirty Years' War that began in 1618.

But Christianity emerged from all that a more mature religion. Split, of course, between Catholics and Protestants, but with armed force no longer a desirable option for enforcing orthodoxy. Two centuries of war had, quite simply, worn everybody out. They were ready to embrace tolerance if that was the price of peace.

And so it is, I believe, with Islam. We are unfortunate enough to be alive during Islam's bloody transition from its medieval origins to modernity. The good news is that eventually moderate theology should win the day: the more violent parts of the Koran will be devalued, and any conflict between the Koran and the Hadith will be resolved in favor of the Koran, since the Koran is God's word and the Hadith is not.

The bad news is that it could take 100 years or more, and the fallout and human cost could be very, very high.

There is reason for optimism. The world is not as backward a place as it was in the 15th Century. The West has learned the lessons of religious violence, and can serve as an example and guide for resolving Islam's internal conflicts. So while the Islamic Reformation is and will be violent, it can be expected to take less time than the Christian Reformation did.

Our job, therefore, is to encourage and support the moderate reformers while opposing and undermining the medievalists. It will take patience, money, intellectual firepower and an acknowledgement that it will proceed in fits and starts. But the entire world will benefit from Islam shedding its medieval past. If ever there was a project well worth undertaking, this is it.


terrorism, history, Reformation, religion, Christianity, Islam, politics, midtopia

Massachusetts tries health insurance for everyone

The Massachusetts legislature has passed a bill requiring everyone in the state to buy health insurance, much the way car insurance works in most places.

Under the bill, the state would offer subsidies to private insurers to cover more low-income families. Companies with more than 10 workers that don't offer health insurance to their workers would pay $295 to the state for each worker, money that will be used to subsidize the health insurance of others.

Something to watch; it's one of several models of universal health care being bandied about. This is one of the most market-oriented ones. And being pushed by Mitt Romney, a Republican governor in a blue state. If it works, it could find national support -- and could fuel Romney's presidential aspirations.

For a more comprehensive take on health care, here's what I wrote a few weeks ago.

Romney, health insurance, health care, Massachusetts, politics, midtopia

An agnostic defense of religion

You may not know it to look at me, but I am an enemy of religion.

Well, some people say that anyway, based on two simple facts: I'm agnostic, and I believe the government should stay as far away from religious speech as it can.

This seems to be a sectarian version of "if you're not with us, you're against us." To true believers even a declared neutral on religion is an adversary. By such logic, there is no such thing as neutral. "Neutrality" is simply code for "doesn't support", which of course means "opposes."

That may be helpful when trying to construct an "us against the heathen hordes" mindset, but it doesn't really comport well with reality. I send my children to Lutheran preschools; I have written frequently about Abdul Rahman, and will write about other religious freedom cases in the future; I strongly support individual religious liberty. I respect the role of religion in society. I have tossed change into Salvation Army kettles.

I just happen to think that religion is not a government concern. It's one of a whole host of things -- like, say, clothing styles -- where government should not have a role. As citizens, we all have a right to practice our religion as we see fit. What we do not have is the right to use the government to promote our religion.

An agnostic who supports religion
I was raised Presbyterian, so I have more than a passing familiarity with Christianity. But I'm an agnostic for the classic reason: I don't believe the existence or nonexistence of God can be proven, so why waste time on an unsolvable puzzle? It's fun to noodle on, but not really worth the investment of serious study. If He exists, great. If He doesn't, okay. I guess I'll find out when I'm dead.

Same thing with "Is there an afterlife?" Nobody knows, so any attempt to reason it out or "prove it" inevitably devolves into finding an explanation that is comforting to you. I sincerely hope there is an afterlife, and we all owe religion a "thank you" for coming up with the concept; but believe in it? Can't do it.

Does that mean I think believers are gullible, easily deluded saps? Hardly. Just because they cannot prove to me that God exists doesn't mean that they have not had His existence proven to their own satisfaction. Perhaps they've had a personal experience with God. Perhaps they see God's presence in the structure of the world around them. Who am I to say they're wrong?

So though I'm agnostic, I'm not hostile to religion. We discuss religious topics with our children, including the main tenets of the major religions. Why? Because I want my children to be able to make their own religious choices. As they get older we'll discuss religion in greater detail, even take them to church/synagogue/temple if they want. I see my role as providing information, not telling them what to believe.

Government, belief, and public policy
I think people should be free to worship as they please. And I respect religion's role in society. Why, then, do I think government should be studiously neutral on religion?

Two reasons: public policy must have a rational, logically defensible basis; and government is for all people, not just the adherents of any single religion or group of religions.

Public policy: Personal, untestable, unprovable beliefs have no place in formulating government policy. As an individual, I'm free to believe that redheads are agents of God's evil twin. Does that give me the right to enact anti-redhead laws? Not in a country that respects individual rights. In order to discriminate against a group or behavior, I must mount a logical public-policy case for doing so. Religious belief may inform my views as a voter or a legislator, but it cannot by itself be a basis for law.

Government for all people: If the government expresses a preference for certain religions, it is by necessity excluding those who believe differently. Our government belongs to all of us, in all our myriad beliefs or nonbeliefs; and thus it should not express a preference for any particular religion.

Blue laws -- which force businesses to close on Sundays -- are a perfect example of laws with no rational reason for existing, and which put government muscle behind one particular religion. If you don't believe in working on the Sabbath, then don't -- but don't use the government to force everyone else to take the day off, too.

Does this mean I'm trying to push religion out of the public square? No. Because individuals are free -- nay, encouraged -- to keep religion in the public square. Only the government should remain neutral and silent.

An analogy: If I don't want cars driving on the sidewalk, am I anticar? No. I just believe they belong on the road, not on the sidewalks. Similarly, religion belongs in individual discourse, not government discourse.

There are gray areas, of course. Religion should not be discriminated against, either. Religion plays a role in our society; its contribution can be recognized and acknowledged by the government just like the government recognizes the contributions of other groups. But the emphasis should be on recognizing the contribution, not the religion.

This, by the way, is why I generally support Bush's push to make faith-based organization eligible for government grants. Religious groups should be treated just like everybody else; they should receive neither favorable nor unfavorable treatment merely because they are religious.

As the above example demonstrates, trying to find the proper place for religion in a religiously diverse society is not an "attack on God." It's common sense, the accomodations that allow us to coexist peacefully with our neighbors as equal citizens.

Religious issues
Being agnostic, or defending everyone's right to believe what they want, doesn't mean I lack opinions on religious issues. I frankly enjoy religious discussions because of the big questions they raise. But these are debates about the shape of religion, not its existence.

For example, I'm not a huge fan of organized religion. Organized religion is all about claiming stewardship of the One True God. Since that's an unprovable claim on the face of it, they have to resort to secondary measures to attract and keep a following. Eventually the church's continued existence becomes an end in itself -- an end that while not totally separate from honoring God is at least distinct from it.

The whole concept of Hell is a great example. Many religions claim something along the lines of "we are the one true faith; believe in us or suffer for all eternity." This has always struck me as a transparent organizational tactic, not something that God would do. What kind of God would create a world that contains thousands of religions, and then say to each of us: "Pick wisely, because only one of them will get you into heaven"? If that is indeed the kind of God we have -- petty and sadistic -- then I for one choose not to worship Him even if He exists. No God worth the name plays shell games with people's souls.

I choose to believe that if there is an afterlife, and the entrance requirement is based on what you do on earth, then the criteria will be things like living a good, honorable life, regardless of what particular creed you subscribe to.

(To be fair, I think the common depiction of Hell is a distortion. The most reasonable definition of Hell I've come across describes it simply as "the absence of God." That's simply a truism: If I don't believe in the Christian God, then when I die I will not go to the Christian heaven. It does not imply, however, that Hell is unpleasant: fire, brimstone, devils, demons. And it leaves open the possibility of me going to a different heaven, or the Elysian Fields, or Limbo, or whatever. Or being reincarnated.)

Or you can get into a discussion of why we should worship God. Doing so voluntarily out of simple joy or gratitude makes sense. But few religions present worship as merely an option; it's the whole point, and often demanded by the God in question. Yet it seems to me that any God worth having wouldn't care a whit about being worshipped, and thus Gods that demand worship probably don't deserve it.

Is evolution opposed to God? Only if you think that God couldn't have chosen evolution as one of the mechanisms of creation. Is science opposed to God? No; science looks at the how of things, not the who or the why behind it. It's only a conflict if your faith requires belief in easily disprovable things.

The questions go on and on. They're great; they're interesting; they make us think. They are why religion exists: to try to tackle the big questions, explain the unexplainable. It's an ambitious undertaking, and it produces some first-class philosophy. And the redemptive power of religion has transformed lives and societies.

That is what religion does for us, and why it is valuable.

But religion, like any social tool, can also be used for ill. The religious wars that wracked Europe, the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch burnings, Islamic terrorism, militant Jewish settlers -- all show belief being twisted to bad ends. And it usually occurs when one religion gains undue influence in secular government and starts using that government to further its own agenda.

So let each religion compete in the public marketplace of ideas. Let us build a society that knits together fervid and disparate beliefs into a vibrant whole. But let us agree that for any of us to be free, all of us have to be free. And that means keeping the government out of religion. For the government that today promotes your religion can tomorrow suppress it -- and society will be the poorer for that.

church and state, establishment of religion, religion, politics, midtopia

Hunting, with a helping of guilt

In Sunday's New York Times magazine, Michael Pollan takes what might be the most tortured excursion into hunting that I've ever read.

Pollan, who had never hunted before in his life, says he wanted to prepare a meal from the ground up: kill the food, prepare it, eat it. His goal was to experience the full karmic consequences of the food chain.

What followed was a sort of "Gomer Pyle goes hunting" escapade, infused with atavistic thrills, guilt and disgust.

Very few things, least of all hunting, lend themselves to overanalysis. And the article, while it contained some interesting points, had overanalysis in spades.

I grew up hunting squirrels and deer with my dad and brothers. I didn't always look forward to it, because it meant getting up before dawn and heading out into the cold woods to wait for first light. And during deer season there were so many other hunters that it felt a bit like a war zone. That's what made us eventually give it up: walking along just below a ridge line and listening to bullets whizzing overhead. Venison steak just wasn't worth the risk of being shot by morons.

But once the sun came out and it warmed up, hunting was full of simple pleasures. Companionship, for one; the challenge, for another: spotting game, walking quietly, sitting so still that the animals forget you're there, and of course shooting accurately. A walk in the woods on a beautiful fall day, but a walk with a purpose -- something that was very appealing to me as a teenager.

But the ultimate purpose was food, not killing. I've never understood simple sport hunting, killing things for the sake of killing things. But I've always been comfortable about my place atop the food chain. Shooting a squirrel is little different from catching a fish or buying a steak. You catch it, you gut it, you eat it. I see little moral difference between buying a roast in the supermarket and killing the roast myself.

Pollan goes on about how disgusting it was to gut the pig and see its insides, and cites some credible arguments about the evolutionary advantages of disgust. But I think he overprojects from his single experience. The first time I had to gut a fish, it was disgusting. The 50th time, it was routine. When my dad and I gutted a deer for the first time, he pointed out all the organs as we worked. It was a biology lesson, not a moral one.

I wonder if Pollan could write such a lengthy self-examination on fishing, and for some reason I think no. Shooting a pig (as Pollan does) has some moral attraction/repellant for him that catching and gutting a bass would not. But they are the same act, just with different tools. A deer rifle isn't any more or less immoral or mysterious than a fishing pole. But it seems to hold a lot more mystique for people unfamiliar with either. Which leads me to think that Pollan's discomfort has more to do with guns than hunting.

Pollan makes one good point: hunting makes you appreciate where your food comes from. You understand why ancient hunters all over the world considered hunting almost a religious experience, and gave thanks to their quarry for giving up its life so the hunter could live. Supermarkets let us take for granted what perhaps shouldn't be, both because we don't appreciate it and because the hidden nature of the modern food chain gives rise to things like factory farms -- things that produce far worse moral dilemmas than gunning down a mammal.

I haven't hunted since I became an adult, not because of any moral qualms but because of lack of opportunity or abiding interest. I still fish, though, and the reason remains the same: I am an omnivore, and nothing tastes better than fresh-caught fish, lightly breaded and cooked over a fire. And the day spent walking the shore or drowsing in a canoe, line dangling in the water with a worm or casting a lure toward likely hiding spots, is a day of relaxation and being a part of nature, not just an observer of it.

Update: Here's what another blogger thought of Pollan's piece.

Michael Pollan, food chain, hunting, fishing, midtopia

The wealth gap and the estate tax

From the New York Times comes yet more evidence of the growing concentration of wealth in America, this time from an analysis of inheritances.

In 2004 median inheritances — half were bigger and half were smaller — amounted to about $29,000 in today's money, according to a Federal Reserve analysis of the Survey of Consumer Finances. That is enough for the heirs to buy a new Pontiac Coupe. But for almost all, it is hardly life-changing money.

Nor are inheritances likely to increase. According to the analysis of the Fed data by Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com, 30 years ago the median inheritance was about $10,000 more, adjusted for inflation.

Yes, big money is being passed down. According to the Fed data, the overall pie of inheritances has grown to nearly $200 billion annually — more than three times the amount that was passed down in the mid-1970's, after accounting for inflation. ... But the typical American is seeing little of this wealth. Mr. Schervish and Mr. Havens found that most money would go to a few lucky heirs: 7 percent of the estates would account for half the aggregate bequests.

There are several reasons for shrinking inheritances, starting with basic demographic changes: parents are living longer and spending more of their money themselves, and most people do a lousy job of saving for retirement at a time when fewer and fewer people can rely on pensions and other traditional sources of retirement income. So what money they do save gets spent.

But simple demographics cannot explain the increasing concentration of wealth reflected in the statistic that 7 percent of estates account for half of the money being passed down.

The story notes that wealthy heirs are seeing more and more money:

"We are seeing bigger-sized estates," said Myra Salzer, president of the Wealth Conservancy in Boulder, Colo., which helps heirs manage their inherited wealth.

"Wealth is just exploding," said Daniel FitzPatrick, chief executive of Citigroup Trust, whose clients typically have hundreds of millions of dollars.

Add this to all the other evidence of wealth concentration in America, and other measures of disparity such as CEO pay, which now averages 500 times the wages of average workers. 15 years ago the ratio was 140 to 1; 40 years ago it was 40 to 1.

I don't believe in "punishing the rich" simply for being rich; I'd like to be rich someday, after all. But I do think that it's fair to tax someone's second $300,000 at a higher rate than everyone's first $300,000. And I think we all have an interest in the ill effects of excessive wealth concentration.

Tie up too much wealth in the hands of the few and you damage the economy, limiting opportunity and driving social unrest. For extreme examples look at France during the runup to the French Revolution, or Victorian and Edwardian England, or parts of South America today, where the wealthy live in fortresses, drive armored cars and employ bodyguards while the poor scavenge for food in city dumps. This is how revolutions are born.

Which brings us to the estate tax -- or, as Republicans like to spin it, the "death tax." Along with the Bush tax cuts that provided disproportionate relief to the wealthy, the gradual repeal of the estate tax plays a large part in increasing the concentration of wealth.

Republicans cast it as simple fairness: why should someone's money be taxed twice? It's a fair argument, but it ignores several things:

1. A lot of money is taxed twice, through sales taxes, for example. Or consider the gift tax. Give someone more than $10,000 a year and it's subject to tax. Why, then, does it make sense to exempt a gift from taxation simply because the giver has died?

2. The estate tax brings in about $70 billion a year. In a time of war and budget deficits, is it really good policy to blow another gigantic hole in the budget for a law that only benefits the very very rich?

3. What is the social benefit of allowing heirs to receive millions of unearned dollars tax-free?

4. The government taxes nearly every transfer of money. What is the rationale for refusing to tax this transfer of money? What separates it from all the other transfers of money that we do tax?

It makes no sense to worsen our budget situation in order to provide a tax benefit to the least needy -- especially when doing so actively harms society and the economy. I'll give Bush the benefit of the doubt and call it a case of following a principle out the window instead of simply pandering to wealthy supporters. But it's a move we simply cannot afford -- in any sense of the word.

economy, estate tax, taxes, politics, midtopia

I'm shocked; shocked!

Another British memo makes even more clear that Bush was determined to invade Iraq regardless.

During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.

"Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," David Manning, Mr. Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides.

"The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. "This was when the bombing would begin."

Assuming the memo is genuine -- and it appears to be -- this would seem to be the "smoking gun" indicating that Bush was hellbent to invade Iraq, and all of his publicly stated reasons and rationales were so much window dressing. Having decided to invade, he then proceeded to develop rationales to justify the decision.

That's an indefensible way to conduct foreign policy. At the very least, he was required to level with the American people about his reasons for invading. Even better would have been to develop general criteria for pre-emptive war, then see if those criteria applied to Iraq. That way we could at least claim to be following a set of rules that other people could examine so as to know which side of the "eligible for invasion" line they fall on.

I often describe myself as something of a "baby neocon." I support the idea of America being a force for good in the world. I cheered the first Gulf War and the intervention in Kosovo. Why? Because I thought (and still think) that it's high time the world got off its butt and did something about the bad guys. Sure, the Gulf War was probably about oil, but I was able to support it because it was opposing aggression. And this was while many of my friends were active duty military and in harm's way.

I would support a doctrine that called for taking out bad guys like Saddam. However, such a doctrine requires a few key things:

1. An actual doctrine. We asserted our right to do as we wanted and not wait for U.N. approval. I have no problem with that. BUT: you have to lay down the ground rules, make it clear that *this* might get you invaded while *this* will not. Otherwise we're just throwing our weight around, knocking over whomever we feel like, and the rest of the world is justified in wondering if we're just being self-interested bullies. I think most of the world would support us taking out bad guys, as long as we had a clear and compelling definition of "bad guy".

2. At least the appearance of listening to the rest of the world. We went out of our way to anger the rest of the world in the run-up to Iraq. Sometimes that's necessary. More often, it comes back to bite us in the keister, as it did this time.

3. Capabilities that match our doctrine. The reason we haven't tried to overthrow every bad actor in the world is because we can't. Afghanistan and Iraq already have us overstretched. We either add more capability (and accept the attendant cost), or we accept that we have limits and set our doctrine accordingly. Not overstretching is another reason to have a doctrine; that way, you think about what you're going to do ahead of time.

4. The support of the American people. You can have any doctrine you want, but if the voters won't support it, it's a non-starter. The thing that most irks me about the neo-cons is they *knew* that the voters wouldn't support an attack on Iraq simply because he was a repressive dictator. So they tried to link him to terrorism and breathe life into old reports about WMDs. It's only *after* the war that they've switched mostly to talking about what a bad guy Saddam was, as if that alone were reason enough to have taken him out. I happen to agree that that should be reason enough, but that's for the voters to decide. They had no right to lie about it in the beginning. The American people had a right to decide whether this was how they wanted to spend their blood and treasure.

So without a doctrine , the Bush administration unnecessarily angered the world and misled the American public in order to prosecute a war they wanted to prosecute. They didn't have the guts to make their true case to the public; they didn't trust the public to support them. That's unforgivable.

If Bush had made a forthright case for invading Iraq as part of a new "get the bad guys" doctrine, I would have supported that case. I might still have argued that the invasion was ill-advised for several reasons, starting with "it has nothing to do with the war on terror" and seguing to the incredible cost and the fact that we had not yet built the military needed to support such a doctrine, and finishing with the fact that Saddam wasn't at the top of the bad-guy list. But I would have applauded his effort to engage the American people in a grand and worthy endeavor to make the world a better and freer place.

Instead, it increasingly appears that he misled America and the world because he didn't trust them or didn't think they had a right to weigh in on what he was doing. But laudable goals aren't good enough, especially when incompetently executed for crass reasons under cover of lies and half-truths. Because the lack of matching capability pretty much ensures the venture will flounder, and once people figure out the truth the rug gets yanked out from under the effort, leaving the soldiers hanging high and dry.

Nice work, Mr. President.

British memo, Bush, Iraq, politics, midtopia