Comments Posted By Oecolampadius
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THE TERRORISM CONUNDRUM FOR DEMOCRATS
Excellent points, Bill! It seems to me that we are caught up in a silly debate over whether terrorism is a police problem or a military problem, when it really is a NEW problem that requires something different. I see it as a problem best handled by a special combination of FBI and CIA efforts, but we need to establish new rules that address the issue in a way that respects the Constitution. The rush to circumvent the Bill of Rights is a stain on our Republic; we can have security without abusing the Constitution.
I have some odd views on privacy: I believe that there is no such thing as privacy in the public environment, and so I am happy to install video cameras all over the place and record everybody's public activities. However, I also believe that private activities really should be left private.
One solution to our problems with intercepting electronic communications would be to delegate most of the work to computer algorithms. Congress passes enabling legislation that stakes out the broad parameters of the algorithms, then a group of experts create (in secrecy) the actual algorithms, with a Congressional oversight committee confirming that the intent of the enabling legislation is respected. Then we turn the computers loose on all electronic communications. The trick is that there are also strong strictures against human access to the intercepted data. Only the computers monitor the data streams; they kick out only that tiny fraction of data that meets the criteria of "suspiciousness"; only then does a human get to see it. This could actually work -- IF we have sufficiently selective algorithms. Unfortunately, I fear that our body politic is too ignorant of computer science to appreciate that this process can be made both fair and effective.
Comment Posted By Oecolampadius On 2.03.2008 @ 12:10
John, threat is a matter of perception and is therefore inherently subjective. You see big threat from Islamic terrorists, and I see little threat. There is no way we can resolve that difference of opinion. Therefore we have to use more objective terms. One objective term we can both agree on is body count. And that number, as I have demonstrated, is very low compared to many other threats to American lives.
You cite several nasty terrorist possibilities. As I wrote earlier, those possibilities are real but they are of low probability. High-cost, low probability events are some of the toughest policy issues to deal with, largely because people get so upset about them. If we remove the emotional aspect and look at it in terms of probable body count, these possibilities always vanish into insignificance. For example, let's do a fake calculation on a terrorist attack with a makeshift nuclear weapon. Let's say that such an attack would kill a million people, and there's one in a million chance of it happening per year. Then the mathematical calculation says that the effective threat of this event is 1 dead American per year -- not much to worry about at all.
Of course, this is a fake calculation -- neither of us know the real numbers. But my point is that, if you look at these things rationally, they just don't add up to much because the probabilities are certainly low.
You might respond with the observation that a nuclear weapon detonating in an American city would trigger mass political hysteria. Yes, it would, just as 9/11 triggered political hysteria. But do you approve of that hysteria? Are you asserting that the American people are too emotional to respond rationally to such an event? Do you believe that we should abandon rationalism in the event of such an attack?
You ask me,
" Would you have argued in 1941 that Japan and Germany were not major threats because fewer than 3000 Americans had been killed by them… yet?"
Not at all. The basis for continuing attacks from Japan and Germany was clear to see. The probability that they could execute such attacks was high. There were good objective reasons to assess the danger posed by these powers as very serious. And there AREN'T good objective reasons to assess the danger posed by Islamic terrorists as very serious.
You write,
"Imagine what the political scene would look like right now if the 2006 plot to blow up a dozen jumbo jets over American cities had not been thwarted?"
And was that plot thwarted by the troops in Iraq? By the troops in Afghanistan? Was it thwarted by warrantless wiretapping? Was it thwarted by any of the extreme measures taken since 9/11? Or was it thwarted by the same kind of diligent work that we were using prior to 9/11?
You complain that the Democrats have crippled our intelligence efforts. Can you demonstrate that 9/11 would have been thwarted had we tortured people in our custody? Can you demonstrate that 9/11 would have been thwarted by warrantless wiretapping? Can you demonstrate that any of the impediments created by the Democrats prevented our intelligence agencies from thwarting the 9/11 plot?
Comment Posted By Oecolampadius On 1.03.2008 @ 15:22
Ike Andrews, you raise two points:
1. The distinction between a personal crisis and a national crisis. I see no justification for that distinction. Yes, 9/11 generated a lot more news stories than the everyday accidents that kill more people. But we should found our policies on reality, not perception. The fact that millions of Americans were shocked by 9/11 while they are blase about traffic deaths does not mean that a policymaker should concentrate on the former and ignore the latter.
2. The question of whether more attacks would have taken place had we not responded so vigorously. My response to this is to point out that there are degrees of response, from no response up to the full-tilt War on Terror with accompanying invasions, etc. I believe that, had we implemented only minor tightening of our security protocols, we would have been just as successful in preventing acts of terror as we are now. Of course, all these considerations are speculative. They're rather like the old joke about the fellow waving his arms and quacking. When asked why he was engaging in such odd behavior, he replied "To keep the elephants away." When reminded that there were no elephants nearby, he triumphantly replied "See? It works!"
Valerie, you accuse me of advocating lawlessness. Your further accuse me of ignoring the needs of those I don't know. This is poppycock; nothing I have written suggests any of those conclusions. You are indulging in wild hyperbole.
Comment Posted By Oecolampadius On 1.03.2008 @ 13:40
Rick, I disagree with you on the fundamental point that terrorism is an issue. You write, "The threat of terrorism is real and immediate." I suggest that we just look at the numbers. How many Americans have been killed by terrorists? That depends a great deal on what time window you select, but if you take it all the way back to, say, 1968, the total is under 5,000. That's 125 people per year. Let's bias it and take a window starting on 9/11. That's 3,000 people over 6 years -- about 500 people per year. That's a pinprick, a number so tiny as to be lost in the statistics of American mortality. Here's a table of selected entries from a standard table of mortality in the USA for the year 2005, expressed in terms of total American deaths that year. I'm skipping a lot, just to give you an idea of relative magnitudes:
Heart Disease 652,091
Malignant neoplasms 559,312
Unintentional injury 117,809
Influenza and Pneumonia 63,001
Auto accident 43,667
Septicemia 34,136
Suicide 32,637
Unintentional poisoning 23,618
Accidental fall 19,656
Homicide 18,124
HIV 12,543
Homicide with firearm 12,352
Unintentional firearm 789
Terrorism 500The list goes on and on. In terms of threat, terrorism is a nothingburger, a nonentity; we lose more people to machinery accidents than to terrorism. Do you want to have a War on Machinery Accidents? How about a War on Firearms -- they're 25 times more dangerous than terrorists.
People have lost perspective on terrorism. It's spectacular, but just not very important in the larger view of American life and death.
Yes, there is the counter that terrorists could do something far worse -- set off a nuclear device in a big city, that kind of thing. But there are lots of low-probability events that could kill large numbers of people: a one-in-a-million accident at a nuclear power plant; a dam failure; a military accident with a nuclear bomb; a chemical plant failure like Bhopal. The odds against any one of these things happening are millions to one, but they can't be ruled out. In the same way, the odds of terrorists actually pulling off a spectacular attack killing tens of thousands of Americans are millions to one. Yes, we want to minimize those odds, just as we want to minimize the odds of other catastrophes. But there millions of millions-to-one catastrophe scenarios, and we simply can't afford to have a War On Each and Every One of Them.
The terrorists have achieved their greatest victory among conservatives, not liberals, for the conservatives are the ones who are truly terrorized.
Comment Posted By Oecolampadius On 29.02.2008 @ 18:24
MY TOP TEN FAVORITE DOOMSDAY SCENARIOS OF ALL TIME
I like the scenarios but why did you confine yourself to fantasy scenarios? There are so many good ones that really are plausible. Like the asteroid hitting the earth, which we know has already happened. Or the terrorist building a killer virus scenario. Or any of the economic collapse scenarios. I realize that these would not destroy all life or even all humanity, but hey, wiping out civilization is a pretty good disaster, too.
You really blew it with the Obama/Canada story. That has already been debunked by both the Canadians and the Obama campaign. Just one of those examples of how "I heard it on the Internet" doesn't prove much.
Comment Posted By Oecolampadius On 28.02.2008 @ 19:35
WHAT YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT OBAMA AND REZKO
Rick, I went through your article at Pajamas Media and I think you have not been fair. At no point do you ever come up with any solid evidence of unethical behavior on Mr. Obama's part. Your claims are full of "probably" and "may have" and "likely" -- speculative but never probative. One's man's speculation is another man's lie. I was particularly suspicious of your heavy use of insinuation and slanted wording: putting scare quotes around words to suggest something shady about a "loan", for example. If you want your piece to stand up to scrutiny, you have to strip out the taint of insinuation and stick to the facts.
At no point in the article do you present a clear factual statement that supports a claim of unethical behavior on Mr. Obama's part. You have assembled a great deal of innuendo, but nothing substantive. While I agree that the information you present does justify further investigation, I think that for the moment there is no foundation for suggestions of unethical behavior on Mr. Obama's part.
It is instructive, I think, to compare your piece with the NYT piece on Mr. McCain. Like you, the NYT made an unjustified insinuation in its suggestion of a romantic relationship between Mr. McCain and the lobbyist. However, the NYT (and others) did clearly establish several points:
1. Mr. McCain had many contacts with the lobbyist and her clients.
2. Mr. McCain received campaign contributions from those clients.
3. Mr. McCain used his office to provide extraordinary services to at least one of the clients.
4. Mr. McCain falsely denied meeting with one of the clients.Now, if you can dig up something as solid as this, you'll have an interesting case to present. But, whatever standards we apply to political corruption reports, let's use the same standards for Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama.
Comment Posted By Oecolampadius On 28.02.2008 @ 12:47
I'd like to add my own tribute to Mr. Buckley. I am most definitely not a conservative, and I often disagreed with Mr. Buckley, but I never doubted his intellectual integrity or the solidity of his thinking. The man really was a phenomenon, and he always gave me good reasons to question my own thinking. You learn the most from the people with whom you disagree, and I think I learned a lot from Mr. Buckley. Modern American conservatism falls well short of the high intellectual standards Mr. Buckley lived by. The world is a lesser place with his passing.
Comment Posted By Oecolampadius On 27.02.2008 @ 15:55
STILL AT RISK: THE SHOCKING IGNORANCE OF OUR YOUNG
bab, your argument suffers from a fatal weakness. You assert:
"I believe it [teaching to the test] has only furthered our abilities to analyze and synthesis information on a deeper level than that of previous generation."
Tests don't do a good job of measuring a student's ability to analyze and synthesize information, because the measurement of such skills is unavoidably subjective. Tests are best at measuring a student's accumulation of facts. Thus, teaching to the test has exactly the opposite effect you posit.
Comment Posted By Oecolampadius On 1.03.2008 @ 00:52
Whoa, Joe! I think you're showing some serious cultural narrowness here. I agree that there's artistic merit to The Matrix, but your low opinion of The Decameron (relative to The Matrix) is truly narrow-minded. And let's not make this a young-versus-old battle, especially at a personal level. Yes, the times, they are a-changin, and the Internet especially is changing a great deal. But some things are perennial. Shakespeare is still the greatest dramatist in the English language, and you really wouldn't want to put yourself in the position of elevating the Wachowskis over Shakespeare.
I agree that the teaching of history is plagued by testing. I agree that the exact dates of the Civil War are meaningless. Unfortunately, coming to understand the eternal human truths that generated the Civil War (and still apply today) requires a broad understanding of many historical events. History is not a collection of individual facts; it is a gigantic painting of human triumphs and foibles, all interrelated. You just can't understand the Civil War until you've seen a goodly portion of that canvas.
And the Civil War is only relevant to us today because many of the same social, political, and economic forces that led to that catastrophe are still at work today. The thought processes that stampeded us into a disastrous war in Iraq share elements with the thought processes that stampeded the North and the South into war. Indeed, I am absolutely certain that a solid understanding of history would have saved us from that blunder. Our lack of education has now cost us about 4,000 lives and at least a trillion dollars in expenses and liabilities. What would it have cost us to educate our citizenry to a level sufficient to have saved us from that mistake? Certainly a great deal less than a trillion dollars. If ever you needed a justification for more education, you can find it scattered all over the cemeteries of America.
Comment Posted By Oecolampadius On 29.02.2008 @ 11:12
I'd like to offer an observation regarding joe5348's comment regarding the attitude of modern children that they don't need to know the facts, they just need to know where to find the facts. There is some truth to this, as joe5348 acknowledges. And the concept is not new. Caesar, in his Gallic Wars, notes that the Celtic learned men (whom we now refer to as Druids) disdained reading because they felt that all knowledge was useless unless it was memorized. They felt that using books to learn from would weaken the memory and lead to less understanding.
The final score: Books 1, Druids 0.
Comment Posted By Oecolampadius On 28.02.2008 @ 01:00
