Enjoy Every Sandwich

Posting from: Philipsburg, MT

There has been a dearth of posts, lo, these last few months, such that I deserve to be on my Blogs in Hibernation list. I have been traveling a lot, working a lot, and generally trying to spend less time “living in my head” and just “living.” It has been very enjoyable. I have been taking a lot of pictures and a little bit of video, though, and I’ve been trying to edit it all together into something presentable. Two of those efforts are ready to go, and this is the first.

This is a slideshow from a winter bonfire I attended in January near Helena. Photos were taken by me and E. who was nice enough to take a turn handling the camera. If you’re able to view it full screen, I think it’s really worth it. Click the button in the lower right corner with the four arrows to go to full screen. This was meant to be viewed to a particular tune I picked out for it, but I’m not willing to risk thousands of dollars in fines for the privilege of sharing music I’ve already paid for once. If I see you in person, though, and you would like to see it as it was meant to be seen, just let me know.

A friend of ours has been having all manner of trees on her property, which have died due to bark beetle infestation, cut down and stacked as firewood. This bonfire was one of many she has had to burn the limbs and pine needles left behind. Quite a beautiful sight in photos; even more amazing in person.

I have a post on one of the people who did NOT win the Nobel Peace Prize- a Bozeman, MT resident named Greg Mortenson- up over at FR33 Agents:

How NOT to Win the Nobel Peace Prize

Catching up on a few articles I didn’t post here plus a new one published today at Fr33 Agents:

Calling Off the Wolf at the Door- A look at Defenders of Wildlife’s strategies with respect to grey wolf reintroduction and management.

American Violet- The story of a woman who was falsely arrested in a race- and class-based drug sweep, refused to take a plea bargain and fought back at great risk.

Immigration, Property Rights, and Freedom- The first in a series of posts on immigration and freedom. This one addresses the excuse of tax-funded social services as a reason for keeping the borders relatively closed.

You can comment here if you want, but I’ll keep my discussion limited to the comments sections for those posts at Fr33 Agents so I recommend posting over there instead. No registration is required.

I recently was invited to become a regular blogger for fr33agents.com. My first regular post was last week and I have at least one being published this week. I’m shooting for 2-3 posts per week on liberty-related topics. I’m trying to decide whether to
(a) cross post my fr33agents posts here and allow comments here,
(b) cross post my fr33agents posts here but close comments on those specific posts directing conversation over to fr33agents.com, or
(c) only post links/teasers here directing readers to fr33agents.com to read and comment.

Does anyone who cares have a particular preference? Registration is not required to read or comment at fr33agents.com.

I spent a recent evening at the University of Montana attending a lecture and discussion led by Dalia Mogahed, senior analyst and executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies and co-author with John L. Esposito of Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think. This book presents the results of the first ever data-based analysis of the points of view of more than 90% of the global Muslim community. It was funded 100% by Gallup as part of its R&D. I haven’t read the book yet, but after the talk it is certainly going on my reading list near the top. In the meantime, perusing Muslim West Facts Project (their website with a lot of the lecture material on it) has been quite fascinating.

I have had many discussions with people who harbor anti-Muslim prejudice over the last few years, and I have long felt inadequate in holding up my argument. I am disturbed that many of the folks I’ve talked to are unable to see past a billion person mass collective of Muslims and view them all in one bad light. I felt it simply wasn’t possible that a billion people- or even a significant majority of a billion people- hate their daughters enough to sell them into marriage or kill them for some fucked up notion of honor or that sort of thing. Yes, I was sure that went on, but is that horrifying portrayal representative of Islam? I doubted it.

I went to an all-female Catholic high school in the 1980s. A girl named Susan was in my class and was one of my acquaintances. We didn’t do things socially outside of school, but we chatted at lunch and in homeroom and that sort of thing. Early in my freshman year I learned that she was not Catholic when she got stuck with extra work in religion class memorizing the Holy Mary and the Our Father and things like that. It wasn’t until later in the year that I learned she was Muslim when I asked why she hadn’t been eating lunch the last few days (fasting during Ramadan).

This girl’s Muslim family was paying thousands of dollars a year to put her through a Catholic school because it was the only college preparatory school available to their daughter at the time. Obviously they valued education for their daughter and were not terribly hostile toward her learning in depth about a conflicting faith. She took four years of Catholic theology classes right along with the rest of us. She wore the same uniform as the rest of us with plenty of arms, legs, face, neck and her hair showing. Like the rest of us, some of her classes included guys from the all-male Catholic school next door. If she or her family harbored some deep hatred of us, our religion, or our culture, it was sufficiently well-hidden as to be completely undetectable to my 13-17 year old self. To this day, I cannot resolve this family with a picture of Islam as a religion of hatred, intolerance and violence.

Admittedly, this was just a data point. But those I talk to likewise tend to fall back on anecdotes that fail to provide a big picture. This kind of discussion is not terribly useful, and I have been meaning to educate myself on the issue in more depth for some time.

This fairly brief yet deeply informative talk by Ms. Mogahed provided an inspiring yet evidence-based introductory picture of the Muslim world. I have never been so deeply moved by simple data. I am more optimistic about the future of the world than I have been in a long time- certainly the most I’ve been since 11 September 2001. I would like to share a few highlights of why I was so encouraged.

1. When asked, “What do you admire most about the West?” Muslims surveyed ranked technology first and liberty/democracy second. Americans surveyed shared these same top two answers but in the reverse order. Further, when asked that if they were drafting a constitution for a new country, would they guarantee freedom of speech, defined as “allowing all citizens to express their opinions on political, social, and economic issues of the day,” a vast majority of Muslims said they would include that.

Why I am encouraged by this: This flies in the face of the hard-peddled notion that “they hate us for our liberty” and instead demonstrates evidence of common ground.

2. When asked whether the 9/11 attacks were justified (scale of 1-5), Muslims who responded that the attacks were completely justified represented just 7% of respondents. 55% said that the attacks were completely unjustified. Moreover, of the group who believed the attacks to be completely justified, not a single respondent, when asked about the reasoning for their response, gave a religious reason. The reasons of all these respondents were secular, for example, political grievances. On the other hand, moral/religious objections were common among respondents who said that the attacks were in any degree unjustified, with many of them citing specific passages in the Koran to support their objections.

Why I am encouraged: The data indicates that sympathy for terrorism does not correlate with religiosity. We are not going to change the religion of a billion people any time soon. On the other hand, political grievances can be addressed and alleviated much more quickly. The thing that is more resistant to change is actually a benefit to the world in this case, conflicting with extremism, whereas the problem is much more susceptible to change.

3. Mainstream media portrayals of Muslims have failed to represent the Muslim world with any reasonable degree of accuracy. In a survey of the U.S. media, 53% of the time Muslims were represented by militants whereas 62% of the time Christians were represented by religious leaders. Yet militants are only a tiny, tiny fraction of the more than 1 billion people in the Islamic faith community. Further, in answer to a question from an audience member regarding why he heard no widespread condemnation of the attacks of 9/11 in the Muslim community, Ms. Mogahed pointed out that the leaders of virtually all major Muslim organizations around the world were quick to condemn the attacks, but clearly that did not get through to the public via the media.

Why I am encouraged: The mainstream media is losing its undeserved role as a gatekeeper of the flow of information. We have more opportunities than ever today to fact check the mainstream media and bypass it altogether in favor of primary sources. Pretty much anyone can disseminate information via the internet, and government is much less able to control and spin it. As an insomniac kid seriously worried about nuclear war, I would secretly stay awake late and eavesdrop from my bedroom while my parents watched Nightline because that was the only time it was on, and it was one of a very few sources of information available to me. That is no longer the case, and that has much improved prospects for the possibility of accurate information coming to light. More and more of us have an opportunity to make ourselves heard and to seek out others speaking on their own behalf. I think the gate has been opened, will continue to open even wider, and will be damned hard to shut at this point.

4. I want to briefly touch on a few points Ms. Mogahed made regarding the topic of the rights and status of women in the Muslim world. The gender gap in higher education varies dramatically in predominanty Muslim countries from one to another. It is virtually non-existant in Iran, for example, yet dramatically large in Pakistan. The overwhelming majority of Muslim women throughout predominantly Muslim countries believe they should be able to work at any job they are qualified for, vote without influence and enjoy the same legal rights as men. A smaller majority of Muslim men also share these beliefs. What is interesting here is that broken down by country, the gender gap again varies widely. Very small to no gender gaps were found in Turkey and Lebanon whereas relatively large gender gaps were found in Morocco.

Why I am encouraged: The wide variation in the size of the gender gaps from country to country illustrates that second class citizenship for women is not a fundamental element of Islam. Rather it is driven by some other force such as politics, culture, economics, etc. or some combination, and that can change quickly. Ms. Mogahed pointed out that some perversion of Islam may be the tool used to oppress women, but as women are gaining in literacy in some of the more oppressed areas and actually reading the Koran for themselves, they are able to use their interpretation of their scripture to fight for their own rights. For example, Ms. Mogahed stated that selling young daughters into involuntary marriages is specifically prohibited in the Koran. And as Ms. Mogahed further pointed out, interracial marriage between blacks and whites was approved by only 4% of Americans in 1958 compared with 80% in 2007. In just a generation this completely turned around. Change for the better can happen relatively quickly.

There was so much, much more I got out of this talk though it lasted only a little more than an hour including questions from the audience. These are only a few of the more memorable highlights for me, and I hope they pique someone else’s interest as they have done mine. I really hope all of us will educate ourselves where we believe we are lacking in knowledge about the Muslim world, and further, will re-examine what we think we know from our limited experiences and really try to get a better handle on the big picture. I believe better understanding of the Muslim world is an important tool for pro-freedom individuals to use to push back against government’s pursuit of anti-liberty ends via exploition of ignorance.

I don’t recall what I stumbled across this week, but something I read referenced the Sorens and Ruger publication entitled Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic Freedom which was published by the Mercatus Center earlier this year.

I am kind of aggravated by this study which, in my mind, has a glaring and quickly identifiable fatal flaw. I noticed it almost immediately upon browsing the introductory material in this report shortly after it was published. I initially just let it go, but it is once again causing me mental discord so I’m writing it up. According to the Mercatus Center:

This paper presents the first-ever comprehensive ranking of the American states on their public policies affecting individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres. We develop and justify our ratings and aggregation procedure on explicitly normative criteria, defining individual freedom as the ability to dispose of one’s own life, liberty, and justly acquired property however one sees fit, so long as one does not coercively infringe on another individual’s ability to do the same.

Using that definition of individual freedom, one cannot rank states based solely on state public policies and expect me to take the following conclusion seriously:

We find that the freest states in the country are New Hampshire, Colorado, and South Dakota, which together achieve a virtual tie for first place. All three states feature low taxes and government spending and middling levels of regulation and paternalism.

For a good counterpoint to this claim that the three states are virtually tied for the title of Most Free State, I refer to the American Civil Liberties Union which in October 2008 published the following map. This map illustrates the 100-mile “Constitution-Free” zone in which the United States Border Patrol has essentially been given legal carte blanche to conduct operations without regard for the so-called highest law of the land:

Note that the entire state of New Hampshire falls within this “Constitution-Free” zone whereas the entire state of Colorado and the entire state of South Dakota fall outside this zone. And the implications for individual freedom depending on whether you live inside or outside this zone are rather weighty. This is just one example of how Federal policy is clearly not equal, let alone equally applied, across all states, and cannot be neglected in a comprehensive state-vs-state evaluation individual freedom.

It certainly was a major factor in my decision to move from my former home in southern Arizona 45 miles north of the Mexican border to my current location in southern Montana. I am confused as to how this could have been so thoroughly blown off in this study. I would think that most people are more concerned with their overall experience of individual freedom rather than specifically with the portion of their oppression that they will endure via their state’s public policy.

Posting from: Philipsburg, MT

Autumn is my favorite season. Montana is one of my favorite places to spend it. Yesterday I was gifted by nature by some incredible sights. On my drive home from Missoula to Pburg, I saw seven- SEVEN- rainbows. I even captured a few photographically. Here’s the best one- a panorama comprised of four or five photos:

I think it’s worth clicking the image for the larger size image.

Posting from: Philipsburg, MT

I recently had my credit card number stolen. Now today I have received something in the mail which may be related to that. If you have sent me something recently without including your name somewhere on or in the shipment, please let me know so that I don’t turn over what you shipped me as evidence in a fraud case.

Thanks.

Posting from: Missoula, MT
Listening to: Aretha Franklin, Respect

I’ve been reading the November 2009 issue of Astronomy magazine today- specifically, Bob Berman’s “Strange Universe” column. This month he asks us, “Can you imagine?”

An excerpt regarding advanced topics in science such as string theory or quantum theory which cannot be imagined:

Picture this: You’re an astronaut on a planet with red polka-dot clouds. The surface is a vast rubber sheet. As you bounce along, you suddenly see a flock of flying bulldogs. The pack leader hovers in front of you like a hummingbird and speaks perfect English: “Welcome, Can you help settle a debate we’re having?”

“Um, sure,” you say.

The alpha bulldog whispers: “Who was the greatest baseball player of all time?”

You guess, “Ruth?”

And that’s what they all wanted to hear. The dogs excitedly bark, “Ruth! Ruth!” as they lick your face until you’re covered with slobber.

The point isn’t that I’ll never make a living writing fiction. It’s this: There’s no such thing as polka-dot clouds, rubber planets, or flying dogs. Yet you had no trouble picturing the whole thing. That’s because our minds easily weave familiar elements into a new context. Titan’s surface or flying dogs present no challenge for our imaginations.

But now consider Galileo’s observations of Saturn’s rings. Even after decades of studies, he never figured out what he was seeing. He thought the rings were like teacup handles. It took nearly half a century before Christiaan Huygens finally got it right. That’s because Saturn’s shape lay outside human experience. On Earth, there is no example of a ball surrounded by unattached rings. Spiral galaxies resemble nautilus shells, nebulae look like clouds, star clusters like spilt sugar. Alone among nature’s marvels, Saturn had no analog.

A bear wanders past my window once or twice each year. At first glance, I always think: huge black dog. Then the truth hits. One’s initial impulse is to perceive the familiar.

We are all prisoners of our backgrounds and experiences. Conceptual struggles arise when, as with Galileo, there are no associations, no past experience. You cannot explain the color blue to a person born blind.

Equally inconceivable are any extra dimensions beyond the width, depth, and height of everyday 3-D objects. If additional “string” dimensions exist, they cannot be pictured-by anyone. We’ve all been “born blind” to them.

I’ve often wondered to myself why freedom is so much easier to sell as fiction- Heinlein, Firefly/Serenity and the like are great examples. How many people have been introduced to ideas about freedom first in fictional form and only later seriously considered it in terms of real life applications?

I believe Bob Berman- though writing about a totally different topic- has written something very insightful about advancing pro-freedom ideas.

We live in a world where more and more people are being “born blind” to freedom. With children being brought under government influence earlier and earlier in their lives and that influence growing more and more extensive, what associations, what past experience with freedom do they have? And without that past experience, how much harder is it for people to wrap their heads around notions such as that taxes are theft, that government is just legalized thuggery, that we are responsible for caring for each other rather than government, etc.? It’s somewhat easier for many people to get to minarchism than voluntaryism, but even that can be difficult when the idea is ingrained in our culture that we turn to government to solve our problems first rather than leaving it as a last resort.

I think back to my most outstanding memory of the 2005 Freedom Summit in Phoenix, AZ. Jane Shaffer gave a talk on raising libertarian children which I almost skipped because I don’t have and don’t plan to have any kids. However, I was glad I stayed for her talk as it turned out to be one of the best of the entire summit. The most memorable (for me) point made that weekend came at the conclusion of her talk. As I recall, she wrapped up by recommending that parents make sure that their children get some taste of freedom as they are growing up. Once they taste it, she said, they will not forget it.

I think that is true of children but also of adults, and I think that is why pro-freedom arts are some of our most effective modes of communicating pro-freedom ideas. They allow us to contextualize these ideas in a non-threatening, fictional form- a form which approaches the audience on the premise that it need not be believed. And then, not threatened or challenged, the audience takes it in, allowing a seed to be planted. In some form, they have tasted freedom. And once they taste it, it can be very, very hard to forget.

Posting from: Philipsburg, MT

I am in the throes of a grammatical crisis. For a variety of reasons, I have found myself reviewing the Parts of Speech. I learned that there were eight parts of speech. Purdue’s Online Writing Lab agrees with that number. However, its list of the parts of speech didn’t match what I recalled from grade school. Purdue lists articles as a part of speech but not interjections. Several other sources I’ve looked at list interjections but not articles.

This is an unacceptable situation. What is the correct answer here? What would be a definitive source on this?