I’m no expert on the Terri Schiavo case, and I don’t want to be one.

My semi-informed take on this is that Congress is out of line interfering in this case. It seems to come down to a factual dispute about whether her husband is accurately portraying her wishes to not live as a vegetable. I don’t think Congress has more insight into this than the several courts that have already ruled; and the role of fact-finder is supposed to reside with the courts.

It seems to me that many are trying to force the result they emotionally prefer, rather than to respect her previously expressed wishes. The terrible comments I’ve seen about Mr. Schiavo remind me of the people who wanted Martha Stewart to go to jail, mostly because they didn’t like her rather than any knowledge of facts of the case.

On the bright side, the more time Congress spends debating whether baseball players used steroids and whether individual court cases have been rightly decided the less time they’ll have to pass stupid laws that will harm the rest of us. So they can get invoved in every traffic stop for all I care. I’d prefer that they appease the religious extremists by intervening in one woman’s treatment than work to pass anti-abortion or anti-gay constitutional amendments.

It may be stupid, but it will probably be less damaging than what they’d otherwise be doing.

Eugene Volokh has stirred up a hornets’ nest with a recent series of posts.

Basically, he commented about this story that he actually happened to agree that human monsters such as the one in the story did deserve brutal, painful, public executions and that the families of victims deserve to participate.

Eugene is a brilliant guy, and a good friend, and he knows that his opinion is controversial in this culture (to say the least). He was honest and brave enough to declare his genuine, considered, opinion that his instincts about what would actually constitute justice for vicious mass murderers should be official policy. He understands the many objections and is thusfar unpersuaded by them.

I can certainly understand his emotional reaction to these crimes, and the feeling that these monsters deserve to suffer greatly, and that the families of the victims should be permitted to get comfort from participating. I understand what he means when he indicates that it slights the victims and their families to not have the culprit suffer. I also feel that there’s a tragic moral imbalance in the universe if the killer isn’t getting the horror he deserves.

BUT…

I have to disagree with him on this one.

While they are sometimes right, I think that our initial instincts are often wrong about what actions are proper, and they’re very often wrong about what actions to establish and institutionalize as public policy. Just as I think that the collectivist instinct that tells many that people should be forced to share their wealth is disasterous public policy, I also think that the universal instinct to make those who caused suffering to experience suffering themselves would likewise be a very bad policy.

First, let me say that I am not impressed by the argument that treating murderers cruelly brings us to their level and makes us monsters ourselves. And I also don’t think that the example of official infliction of pain will cause private citizens to be much more likely treat their non-criminal peers that way. Furthermore, I don’t think that even the worst criminals deserve respect for their human dignity; I think they forfeit their right to that from decent people.

The argument that does impress me is that no matter how carefully such a policy is drafted, it is very likely that it will be misapplied and expanded to be used in many cases other than the narrow ones it was initially intended to cover. I would much rather see criminals treated too leniently than to see innocents, or people guilty of lesser crimes (or merely taboo violations) subjected to horrible infliction of pain. The biggest problem with governments is that there are many factors that lead them to grow beyond their proper scope and increase their abuse of power. The policy change Eugene suggests will make this problem worse.

Additionally, the more I think about vengeance, the less I think it makes sense for us to want it.

I’d be the first to admit that if somebody viciously killed someone I loved, or even just empathized with, part of my initial reaction would be to want him to suffer horribly himself. I think this is a very natural and superficially reasonable reaction.

But, does it make sense?

Is it really in our interests to place a high importance on what’s going on inside the head of some warped scumbag? Why should it matter to us whether he feels pain and regret? He’s an asshole!

What if we beat him and he just laughs and declares that this helps to confirm his theory that life is all about exploiting your power over others when you have the advantage? He could go on to say that obviously that’s the official position because that’s what society is doing right now. He could declare that each blow he receives only serves to entrench his theory that the only thing he did wrong was to get caught.

If he reacts that way should we feel bad?

I don’t think it makes any sense to pin our happiness on our ability to mold the experience and theories of a psychopathic monster. Fuck him! He’s not that important. The main thing about him that we should care about is that he never gets a chance to repeat his crimes. Perhaps we can also learn something about his psychology to help prevent others from getting as screwed up as he is.

Other than that, I think we should focus on furthering our own goals and values, and not make our success dependent on the experiences and ideas of the worst among us.

UPDATE: Eugene seems to have changed his mind about whether we should adopt deliberately painful executions for practical, institutional, reasons. But, he continues to defend his view that retribution is a legitimate goal of criminal justice.

I completely agree with Don Boudreaux’s reaction to an anecdote about Robert Bork.

Bork so hates modern American pop culture that he’s ambivalent about the fall of the Berlin Wall. The reason is that its destruction permitted blue jeans, rock music, and the rest of the panoply of American decadence to spill eastward into countries once protected from this scourge. Opines Bork: “You almost began to want to put the wall back up.”

Even allowing for rhetorical overstatement, what kind of person would harbor such a sentiment? I emphatically do not share in Bork’s assessment of modern American pop culture as uniformly degenerate and debauched, but even if I did agree with Bork on this matter, I can’t imagine being anything but overjoyed at the fact that the Iron Curtain is in shreds.

What kind of person entertains the possibility that access to Sunday shopping, rap music, sit-coms, and even pornography might be worse than institutionalized murder, torture, mind-control, and impoverishment?

….

The Democrats’ single greatest contribution to America during the 1980s was to keep Bork off of the U.S. Supreme Court.

I suspect that Bork wasn’t completely serious. But, you have to have a severe moral handicap to think that whatever problems there are with our popular culture compare at all to the oppression that existed in East Germany.

Remember, also, that Bork sold his support to Microsoft’s competitors in their anti-trust attacks on the company.

He may be a darling of the right-wing, but he’s no friend of mine.

I’ve already mentioned it, but Mark Alexander‘s comment in the previous post (alerting us to the fact that he is transcribing an interview with Richard Mitchell) compels me to repeat myself and urge you to explore Mitchell’s writing at Mark’s Underground Grammarian website.

It’s difficult to describe Mitchell’s work adequately, so I urge you to check it out for yourself. But for a taste, you might want to read this chapter from his The Graves of Acadame that Mark recently posted at his blog.

If you’re as interested in education and politics and their relationships as I am, I’m sure you’ll enjoy the chapter and I hope you’ll read more of what Mitchell had to say.

I’m very grateful to Mark for making this wonderful collection available.

There are many reasons to dislike yesterday’s Supreme Court Roper v.
Simmons decision banning the execution of people who committed their crimes before their 18th birthdays. I agree with Justice Scalia that the Court
overstepped its bounds by overriding the judgments of legislatures and juries and imposing “The subjective views of five members of this court and like-minded foreigners.” I also agree with those like Orin Kerr that the majority’s argument that they are merely reflecting changing standards is a very weak (bordering on incompetent, in my opinion) one.

But, strangely enough, the main reason I don’t like the decision is that I think it establishes a position that is unfair and disrespectful to children (re-reading that makes me feel like Judge Smails from Caddyshack).

I understand that there may be efficiency reasons for setting arbitrary age limits to certain things (like drivers’ licenses), where the consensus is that many people below the age are insufficiently mature, and it’s impractical to discover exceptions. But, it seems to me that criminal justice is an area where it’s worth taking the time and effort to determine what punishment is appropriate for a particular criminal and crime. Juries spend a lot of time and effort doing just that. If the defense thinks that the criminal was not sufficiently responsible to face the ultimate punishment, then they should make that case to the jury.

I am certain that there are many 16 and 17-year-olds who are completely competent to be held responsible for their actions, both good and bad.

I suspect that many of them could make better judicial decisions than this one.

Pat Sajak (yes, the Wheel of Fortune guy) has some reasonable thoughts about celebrities expressing their political views.

I especially liked this bit:

A celebrity should try to consider the appropriateness of a venue before opening his or her yap about political and social issues. Just because an arena is full of screaming kids who have come to hear your latest songs doesn’t mean you have the right to abuse this captive audience with speeches, tirades or political proselytizing. When you go up to a bank teller for a transaction, you don’t want to hear a lot about politics or the environment before your check is cashed.

The electricity went out at my house today.

After waiting for about an hour, I finally went to the movies, since I couldn’t watch one at home (I saw Million Dollar Baby, which I thought would be useful when evaluating the Academy Awards results. I thought the movie was very well done, but it isn’t really my kind of entertainment).

Fortunately, it was back on by the time I returned (no food was spoiled, etc.)

What was interesting was just how many things I thought to do that required electricity to be done properly. Electricity has become part of our environments that we usually take for granted. It often takes losing it for a while to appreciate just how valuable it is to us.

So, I’ll appreciate electricity for a while…

Ok, time to put on my anti-Bush hat.

This NY Times op-ed by David Brooks has me pretty annoyed at Bush.

In the past months we have learned that the prescription drug benefit passed last year is not going to cost $400 billion over 10 years. The projections now, over a slightly different period, are that it’s going to cost over $700 billion. And these cost estimates are coming before the program is even operating. They are only going to go up.

That means we’re going to be spending the next few months bleeding over budget restraints that might produce savings in the millions, while the new prescription drug benefit will produce spending in the billions.

That means that as we spend the next year trying to get a grip on one entitlement, Social Security, we’ll be launching a new one that is also unsustainable.

Over the next few months we will be watching a government that may be millions-wise, but trillions-foolish. We will be watching a government that sometimes seems to have lost all perspective – like a lunatic who tries to dry himself with a hand towel while standing in a torrential downpour.

And much of this new spending will go to people who have insurance to pay for their drugs.

In Congress, some are taking a look at these new cost projections and figuring that maybe it’s time to readjust the program. In the House there are Republicans like Mike Pence and Jeff Flake (whose predictions of this program’s actual cost have been entirely vindicated by events). In the Senate there are people like Judd Gregg and Lindsey Graham. These fiscal conservatives want to make the program sustainable.

Perhaps the benefits should be limited to those earning up to 200 percent of the level at the poverty line. Perhaps the costs should be capped at $400 billion through other benefit adjustments. These ideas are akin to what the candidate George Bush proposed in 2000.

But the White House is threatening to veto anything they do![Emphasis Mine] President Bush, who hasn’t vetoed a single thing during his presidency, now threatens to veto something – and it’s something that might actually restrain the growth of government. He threatens to use his first veto against an idea he himself originally proposed!

Now, it’s possible that there’s more to this story than is apparent, and there are some good reasons for Bush to behave this way. But, I doubt it.

I suspect he views attempts to control this program as threatening the integrity of his promises. Well, I think he is his integrity’s own worst enemy in this case.

And the harder he opposes reform, the less integrity he’ll have left.

I don’t know much about the issue, but you have to admire Jacob Sullum’s skepticism of the Class Action suit bill passed in the Senate.

In short, this looks like good legislation that respects the Constitution. Yet the broad, bipartisan support it has attracted in Congress makes me suspect there must be something wrong with it.

It reminds me of this joke.