Ally, my dear, I’m not piling on. I’m just digging my way to China right beside you.
Quotes from Ally’s musings will appear in bold - I will hit a few points that don’t follow her paragraph arrangement exactly. The reshufling is not intended to misrepresent any of Ally’s points, but rather to try to make my responses follow some kind of coherent thread (there is a first time for everything). If you distrust Smallholder’s intentions, you can read her article the way she wrote it at the link above. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
Ally writes:
Smallholder, whose logic and wit I enjoy immensely, has posted in response to an e-mail/posting of mine. You can read his response here. My original damning post can be read here. The next good couple of feet of my hole was dug here. Can I just keep my mouth shut and not respond? Oh, dear readers - that I could. However, my intrinsic make-up is not one that can stay quiet.
And that’s why your readers love you. Don’t go changin’ to try to please me!
First, let me show my bias: Keith Burgess-Jackson is who got me started blogging. Without his input and talent, I would never have found my passion of writing. It was long lost, and would have stayed that way, I’m sure, due to my incredible insecurity over my literary skills. In addition, he was kind enough to help me get started, and plugged me at every opportunity. In a world that was young at the time, giving a fellow blogger a plug was no big deal. Now, in the much harsher, near-regulated world of blogging, any comment by a blogger of note is hard-won. Keith has been graciousness itself. As anyone will tell you, I am intensely loyal. Keith is still one of my favorite bloggers, and I admire his tenacity and discipline.
I applaud you for your loyalty to friends (in this case KBJ). This is an admirable trait - one I hope my friends would agree that I share.
In the situation of the gays marrying and adopting….I can’t honestly make that kind of judgment. I have found Keith’s logic on the situation interesting, though not convincing.
Being charitable towards others is another positive personal attribute, and I can only say that you are exhibiting charity when you continue to describe KBJ’s position on gays as logical after conceding several points from my extensive indictment:
Okay, onto digging my own grave: Smallholder has several excellent points. (One of my favorite things about this blogging cowboy is his logic and talent at expressing it.)
I would humbly posit, however, that sometimes we ought to challenge our friends when they do wrong: “My friend, it saddens me when you do X. You are better than that.” Much of the wonderful progress in this country hasn’t been made by the flashy figures in the history books. It has been made by good people who turn to their friends and say: “How can you continue to support Jim Crow when the racists are trning dogs on children?” or “I love you honey, and I hope you can start putting down the bottle and become the man and father I know you can be” or “You know Jim, telling those jokes in the breakroom probably makes some of our female coworkers uncomfortable - perhaps we ought to consider their feelings.” You can’t always change a bigot, but subtle social pressure from friends is probably more effective than government regulation or condemnation from strangers.
Returning to the topic of the Vulcanness of Smallholder:
To his credit/downfall, Smallholder relies on data and research to uphold his beliefs. In many ways, he is the wiser of any of us for doing so. I tend to rely on my inner logic and experience in life to determine my beliefs. In my jaded view, data is easily tweaked to say what we want it to say, so I tend to be resistant to such things. I rely on observation and some data to determine my thoughts and opinions.
On the issue of tweaked data, I agree that it exists. But that doesn’t mean that we ought to throw up our hands and proclaim that no data is valid. People of good conscience will take the time and examine the how the data is compiled and look for the proverbial “finger on the scale.” Some data sets are better than others. Some organizations purposefully put out phoney statistics to flood the marketplace of ideas and make it impossible for the casual citizen to discriminate between real data and junk. Think of all the medical studies commissioned by Philip Morris. Think of a majority of the statistics put out by both sides of the gun debate. (The best numbers I have seen about the relative safety of gun ownership are in “Freakonomics” by Steven Levitt. Controlling for a wealth of variables, he concludes that having a gun in the house is not particularly dangerous, especially compared with other controllable factors like pool ownership. This is not to say that I have used Levitt’s book as a justification for leaving loading firearms in my daughter’s toybox) If we are going to make good public policy or even good choices in our personal life, we have to have access to good data.
For instance, little Johnny is contemplating smoking because it will increase his coolness quotient. Mon and Dad warn him of the health dangers. They point out all the medical literature about life expectancy, lung disease, and premature aging. Johnny replies: “Well, Jenny’s great-grandmother has been smoking for 80 years and she’s still alive.” Johnny’s data set doesn’t make evidence a wash, eliminating evidence from consideration and freeing him to use his own “inner logic” which is largely driven by his adolescent desire to look cool at parties. Anecdotal “observation” is much more subject to pre-existing bias and is much harder to refute if we refuse to distinguish between data sets of differing values.
If the personal example doesn’t float your boat, consider a public policy issue. Gender equality is a laudable goal (though we may differ on what “equality” means in practice). If we are to achieve our variously defined goal of equality, we actually have to understand how the inequality is addressed. One classic, well-”known” example of gender equality is the “wage gap.” This is based on the average salary paid to all men and women in the workforce. The wage gap varies based on who is pushing the numbers, but generally we are told that women earn around 75 cents on the dollar. Those of us who believe you should receive equal pay for equal work are appalled! Sexism is rampant! Man the barricades.
But, uh, that is NOT what the wage gap measures. It measures the average pay of all people in the workforce and does NOT provide a job by job comparison. If one controls for time in the workforce (women often take time off from their careers to care for their children), occupation (women are more likely to pursue careers in the “helping” fields which traditionally pay less), and number of work hours (women as a group average shorter work weeks), the wage gap vitrually disappears. But try saying that in public -you will be excoriated. My wife tans my hide whenever the subject comes up. Early on in her career, she did actually work for a paper that openly paid men more than women. But individual, anecdotal evidence does not matter more than real statistics. There are sexist employers. But pretending that the sexist morons are the norm rather than the anecdotal exception means that we can’t target the real problem. But perhaps NOW is more interested in receiving membership dues than addressing real instances of workplace discrimination.
The same might be said for the NAACP’s claims that the disproportional representation of African-Americans in the justice system shows systemic racism within the judicial system. I’ll not quibble with the statement that there are racist cops, lawyers, judges, and jurors out there. But if we are to address the real problem of black-on-black crime, we need to look at single parenthood, attitudes about education, improving inner-city schools, and a dysfunctional youth subculture that glorifies thuggery. All hard and tough issues that need to be and ought to be tackled. And we’re not tackling them if we just blame the judicial system and the mythic “man.”
Admit it Ally: You know that the world would be a better place if we were all amenable to statistical persuasion and were able to analyze data in order to separate the wheat from the chaff. Of course, you don’t believe that, having written:
I think there is room in this world for those who are bigots, vs. those who are open to change. I would rather have someone like Keith, from whom I can always know what to expect (let’s not forget that his conservatism has been a hard-won journey), AND some like Smallholder, from whom I get discussion and debate, than lose either one of those personalities. I guarantee, the founding of this country was based more on those who lived by the conviction of their beliefs, without being persuaded otherwise, than those who were open to changing their minds. So I’ll take both, and learn from both.
I would argue that our great founding fathers were both great and successful at founding our nation because they believed in enlightened reason. They did shift positions as new data appeared - the most famous being Benjamin Franklin’s public shift in a British courtroom. Washington’s shift began as he tried to pull Braddock’s demolished force out the woods in the face of haughty British officers resentful of taking directions from a yokel. Look at the Constitutional Convention - it was a place where men argued, changed positions, and compromised for the greater good - in some cases even compromising essential principles for the sake of the country (particularly on the issue of slavery).
Maybe that last paragraph will sway you away from steadfastness in your belief.
Ally also wants to throw another iron into the fire:
On another end, I’m not letting Smallholder out of this one. You thought I missed it, dear friend, but you failed to comment on whether or not women who are surrogates is a concerning practice, or one which we should embrace. Hit me with your logic.
I’ll not wiggle on the surrogacy issue; I just saw it as subsidiary to the bone of contention. I have not thought much about the surrogacy issue. My thumbnail reaction is that it is a shame that folks who can’t have children naturally but want them anyway would serve society better by adopting unwanted children. However, it is hard for me to condemn people who want to make sure they have healthy children who have proper prenatal care, nutrition, and mental stimulation from the very beginning - and potential adoptees generally lack one or all of those traits. But that’s just my knee-jerk reaction. I promise to contemplate the issue more deeply and will try to do a post next week.
Everything above is just my opinion. I might be wrong. I’m open to persuasion.
