If you listen to conservative politicians, you might think that voting for Democrats is an unpatriotic act. Mainstream Republican politicians say that liberals are ruining the country and hint that they don’t really have the best interests of our country at heart. Further out at the right fringes, there is less restraint: liberals are actually socialists trying to destroy America. President Obama is the lightning rod for these accusations of treachery – he is really an African-born Muslim doing his incompetent best to destroy capitalism and deliver us to his terrorist friends.
Nothing new there. Richard Nixon got into the Senate in 1950 by painting his liberal Democratic opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas, as a traitor, “pink right down to her underwear”, whose real allegiance was to the Soviet Union.
It’s nonsense, and here are two examples to prove it – my father and my father-in-law, both lifelong liberal Democrats, both patriots.
My father, Ernst Hochstadt, came to this country when he was 18, narrowly escaping the Nazis in his native Vienna. He lost his accent, learned to love baseball, and became an American. Everyone called him Ernie, unthinkable in formal European society.
He also became a Democrat. From him and my mother I learned to support the struggle of African Americans for equal rights, symbolized for us by the Brooklyn Dodgers’ star Jackie Robinson. I learned from them that women were as good as men, that labor unions protected the rights and livelihoods of workers, that government should help those in need.
These lessons didn’t come in political lectures. My father was quiet about his beliefs, like he was quiet about having volunteered for the US Army so he could go back to Europe as an officer to fight the Nazis.
My father’s allegiance to his adopted homeland and the freedom it offers was based on his own experiences of tyranny and persecution.
Unlike my immigrant father, my father-in-law, Roger Tobin, personifies the red-blooded American. A lifelong athlete, he delighted in beating all comers at tennis, badminton, basketball, and any other sporting endeavor. His infectious good humor made him a great salesman, who rose through the ranks of his company to become President at the end of his career. He snuck into the Marine Corps at 17 after Pearl Harbor and ended up in Japan.
Roger was a proud Democrat, who wore his liberalism on both sleeves. His financial success put him into the company of lots of rich Republicans, with whom he loved to argue. He never let his friends forget Richard Nixon’s disgrace.
Roger came from a Democratic family. His mother became a social worker during the Depression to help make ends meet and to help those who were even needier. His liberalism came out of the experience of seeing how government could make people’s lives better in hard times.
For Roger and Ernie, liberalism and patriotism were the same thing. They loved the US because the liberal ideals of equality and fairness are at the heart of the American story. They voted for Democrats as an expression of patriotism.
John F. Kennedy expressed their kind of liberal love of country during his campaign for President in 1960, describing his own view of a liberal, when his Nixon tried to tarnish him with that label: “someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a Liberal, then I’m proud to say I’m a Liberal.”
Although they disagreed with Republicans, I can’t remember ever hearing Roger or Ernie imply that their fellow citizens with more conservative beliefs were unpatriotic. To them, that would have been un-American.
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, June 12, 2012
Monday, June 11, 2012
Monday, June 4, 2012
What Should Government Do?
Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives are fiercely debating widely differing conceptions of what tasks our government should perform. Although the shouting often seems to be only about money, it’s really about how public money should be spent and on whose behalf.
I’ll offer one task that I believe every good government, at any level, should perform – to help people put into crisis by circumstances outside of their control.
I’m thinking of families whose houses have been destroyed by tornado or wild fire or flood; victims of crime, by violence or fraud; those injured in industrial accidents or train wrecks, who might be covered by somebody’s insurance or might not.
We expect our government to provide a safety net for innocent victims of all such disasters, who have lost too much to help themselves. The quality of that net can serve as a measure of a government’s competence and values. The inability of FEMA to cope with the elementary needs of the people dislocated by Hurricane Katrina was judged as a more general failure of George Bush’s administration. Good government should have done better. The net should not have gaping holes.
If a good government must come to the aid of its most distressed citizens, then it certainly must also avoid creating widespread crises. Governments can’t control tornados, but they can make our highways safer and build better levees to reduce floods. If inadequate funds are directed toward maintaining our infrastructure, disasters like the Minneapolis bridge collapse are more likely.
The greatest source of social disasters is war. War destroys lives and livelihoods, houses and hometowns, possessions and infrastructure, on a scale far greater than any natural disaster.
Even though the wars we are fighting right now are far from our shores, even though we have great advantages in technology and personnel, hundreds of thousands of American families are suffering from war. More than 6,400 troops have died in our wars since 2001. The unprecedented ability of modern medicine to preserve the lives of the wounded has led to an unprecedented number of veterans and families who need continuing help. More than 95 percent of troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have survived. The result is that nearly a million veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have applied for compensation for injuries they say are service-related. Underfunding and neglect of the Veterans Administration and its medical facilities means that the claims of more than 560,000 veterans from all wars are backlogged more than 4 months.
War is a decision of government. If our government enters war, it must take responsibility for the social and economic consequences, at a time when the federal budget is badly out of whack. Leaders must recognize and plan for the medical and emotional damage to our society.
We have killed many more people than we have lost. We have caused vast destruction in other countries, but avoided it here. We have punished many of those responsible for 9/11 and other terrorist plots. Yet the accomplishments of America’s two wars of the 21st century have not been worth the millions of American victims these wars have created.
These days, having left Iraq and planning to leave Afghanistan, we again hear talk of an new war, a war against Iran. Like the failed wars we have been fighting, this future war is presented to us as a moral imperative, the inevitable confrontation with evil, a war we must fight.
Unless Iran actually puts our nation in mortal danger, declaring war on Iran would violate the trust that Americans put in our government to protect the lives of our citizens, to avoid creating predictable disasters. It’s what our government shouldn’t do.
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, June 5, 2012
I’ll offer one task that I believe every good government, at any level, should perform – to help people put into crisis by circumstances outside of their control.
I’m thinking of families whose houses have been destroyed by tornado or wild fire or flood; victims of crime, by violence or fraud; those injured in industrial accidents or train wrecks, who might be covered by somebody’s insurance or might not.
We expect our government to provide a safety net for innocent victims of all such disasters, who have lost too much to help themselves. The quality of that net can serve as a measure of a government’s competence and values. The inability of FEMA to cope with the elementary needs of the people dislocated by Hurricane Katrina was judged as a more general failure of George Bush’s administration. Good government should have done better. The net should not have gaping holes.
If a good government must come to the aid of its most distressed citizens, then it certainly must also avoid creating widespread crises. Governments can’t control tornados, but they can make our highways safer and build better levees to reduce floods. If inadequate funds are directed toward maintaining our infrastructure, disasters like the Minneapolis bridge collapse are more likely.
The greatest source of social disasters is war. War destroys lives and livelihoods, houses and hometowns, possessions and infrastructure, on a scale far greater than any natural disaster.
Even though the wars we are fighting right now are far from our shores, even though we have great advantages in technology and personnel, hundreds of thousands of American families are suffering from war. More than 6,400 troops have died in our wars since 2001. The unprecedented ability of modern medicine to preserve the lives of the wounded has led to an unprecedented number of veterans and families who need continuing help. More than 95 percent of troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have survived. The result is that nearly a million veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have applied for compensation for injuries they say are service-related. Underfunding and neglect of the Veterans Administration and its medical facilities means that the claims of more than 560,000 veterans from all wars are backlogged more than 4 months.
War is a decision of government. If our government enters war, it must take responsibility for the social and economic consequences, at a time when the federal budget is badly out of whack. Leaders must recognize and plan for the medical and emotional damage to our society.
We have killed many more people than we have lost. We have caused vast destruction in other countries, but avoided it here. We have punished many of those responsible for 9/11 and other terrorist plots. Yet the accomplishments of America’s two wars of the 21st century have not been worth the millions of American victims these wars have created.
These days, having left Iraq and planning to leave Afghanistan, we again hear talk of an new war, a war against Iran. Like the failed wars we have been fighting, this future war is presented to us as a moral imperative, the inevitable confrontation with evil, a war we must fight.
Unless Iran actually puts our nation in mortal danger, declaring war on Iran would violate the trust that Americans put in our government to protect the lives of our citizens, to avoid creating predictable disasters. It’s what our government shouldn’t do.
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, June 5, 2012
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Is Gay Bashing a Partisan Issue?
Bullying of young gay men by their peers is in the news. It happens all the time in schools and on playgrounds, so often that the NBA is running a series of commercials against using the word “gay” as a slur.
Gay bashing is in the news because of two serious incidents that have become public knowledge. Dharun Ravi just received a 30-day jail sentence, because his secret videotaping of his gay college roommate at Rutgers contributed to that student’s suicide, two days after he discovered it.
This was a difficult legal case, because Ravi engaged in no physical harassment, just the broadcasting of a homosexual encounter as an expression of his own homophobia. The linkage of this social bullying to the suicide is speculative, so the sentence was light. The judge emphasized that jail time was intended for crimes of violence. Out of this tragedy comes, one hopes, a greater awareness of how homophobia at the individual level hurts its victims in ways that may be unintentional, but are nevertheless predictable.
The other incident happened long ago. At a private high school mainly for the sons of the wealthy, a group of boys attacked another boy in his room, assaulted him, and cut off his long hair. The gang was led by young Mitt Romney, who wielded the scissors and taunted his classmate. Romney also humiliated other students whom he thought were insufficiently masculine.
Romney defenders trivialize his actions with a variety of excuses: people did not use the word “gay” in the mid-1960s; homosexuality was not a big issue then; boys will be boys, especially at prep schools.
Romney said in a radio interview: “I don’t remember that incident and I certainly don’t believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual. That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s, so that was not the case. . . . I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school, and some might have gone too far, and for that I apologize.”
I went to school and college at the same time as Romney did. Homosexuality certainly was an issue for boys and young men in the 1960s. Wearing the wrong clothes, speaking in the wrong way, having the wrong haircut could earn taunts of being queer. Once you were labeled queer, it was difficult to become “straight” again, no matter how much you tried to prove your manliness.
Homosexuality was not in the news, because few men dared to reveal any sexual preference besides lust for women. But the dangers of being called “homo” were everywhere for boys. Showing artistic interests, being athletically challenged, or lisping were taken as signs by boys everywhere that one of their classmates was different in a bad way. I can’t remember any of my schoolmates who would have wanted to be seen as a homosexual, because that meant daily disdain from peers, daily comments meant to hurt, daily bullying.
But not everybody bullies. Many boys whispered that so-and-so was light in his loafers. Many boys shouted “Homo!” Many boys pointed fingers and giggled about those who did not fit the crude version of masculinity that passed for normal among adolescents in the 1960s. But gang-leading bullies, assaulting other boys who were different and laughing about it, were as rare then as they are now. I could tell lots of stories about juvenile “hijinks and pranks”, but none of them involved physical attacks, because those are not pranks, they are assaults.
How could Romney, the ringleader, have forgotten that incident? Was the physical assault on another boy so routine for him? Does he really still believe that group violence is a prank?
Bullying is currently an Illinois issue. A bill before the state legislature would have schools go beyond criticizing bullying and adopt “a bullying prevention policy”. These policies would define bullying and be clear that it is illegal; explain how allegations of bullying could be made anonymously; and describe what penalties bullies would be subject to, such as counseling or community service.
Apparently Illinois Republicans are not as worried about bullying as they are about anything which might prevent homophobic behavior. When the House voted 61 to 49 in favor of the bill, the Republicans overwhelmingly lined up against it, including local representative Jim Watson.
We won’t get rid of bullying if it is called as prank, or, worse, seen as an understandable reaction to queers and homos. A North Carolina Baptist pastor just told his congregation that the way to deal with homosexuals is to put them behind barbed wire until they die off. Another advised his flock to beat their children if they showed signs of being gay. Talk about a bully pulpit.
What does Romney think of that? What about Jim Watson? Why do so many Republicans wink at gay bashing?
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, May 29, 2012
Gay bashing is in the news because of two serious incidents that have become public knowledge. Dharun Ravi just received a 30-day jail sentence, because his secret videotaping of his gay college roommate at Rutgers contributed to that student’s suicide, two days after he discovered it.
This was a difficult legal case, because Ravi engaged in no physical harassment, just the broadcasting of a homosexual encounter as an expression of his own homophobia. The linkage of this social bullying to the suicide is speculative, so the sentence was light. The judge emphasized that jail time was intended for crimes of violence. Out of this tragedy comes, one hopes, a greater awareness of how homophobia at the individual level hurts its victims in ways that may be unintentional, but are nevertheless predictable.
The other incident happened long ago. At a private high school mainly for the sons of the wealthy, a group of boys attacked another boy in his room, assaulted him, and cut off his long hair. The gang was led by young Mitt Romney, who wielded the scissors and taunted his classmate. Romney also humiliated other students whom he thought were insufficiently masculine.
Romney defenders trivialize his actions with a variety of excuses: people did not use the word “gay” in the mid-1960s; homosexuality was not a big issue then; boys will be boys, especially at prep schools.
Romney said in a radio interview: “I don’t remember that incident and I certainly don’t believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual. That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s, so that was not the case. . . . I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks during high school, and some might have gone too far, and for that I apologize.”
I went to school and college at the same time as Romney did. Homosexuality certainly was an issue for boys and young men in the 1960s. Wearing the wrong clothes, speaking in the wrong way, having the wrong haircut could earn taunts of being queer. Once you were labeled queer, it was difficult to become “straight” again, no matter how much you tried to prove your manliness.
Homosexuality was not in the news, because few men dared to reveal any sexual preference besides lust for women. But the dangers of being called “homo” were everywhere for boys. Showing artistic interests, being athletically challenged, or lisping were taken as signs by boys everywhere that one of their classmates was different in a bad way. I can’t remember any of my schoolmates who would have wanted to be seen as a homosexual, because that meant daily disdain from peers, daily comments meant to hurt, daily bullying.
But not everybody bullies. Many boys whispered that so-and-so was light in his loafers. Many boys shouted “Homo!” Many boys pointed fingers and giggled about those who did not fit the crude version of masculinity that passed for normal among adolescents in the 1960s. But gang-leading bullies, assaulting other boys who were different and laughing about it, were as rare then as they are now. I could tell lots of stories about juvenile “hijinks and pranks”, but none of them involved physical attacks, because those are not pranks, they are assaults.
How could Romney, the ringleader, have forgotten that incident? Was the physical assault on another boy so routine for him? Does he really still believe that group violence is a prank?
Bullying is currently an Illinois issue. A bill before the state legislature would have schools go beyond criticizing bullying and adopt “a bullying prevention policy”. These policies would define bullying and be clear that it is illegal; explain how allegations of bullying could be made anonymously; and describe what penalties bullies would be subject to, such as counseling or community service.
Apparently Illinois Republicans are not as worried about bullying as they are about anything which might prevent homophobic behavior. When the House voted 61 to 49 in favor of the bill, the Republicans overwhelmingly lined up against it, including local representative Jim Watson.
We won’t get rid of bullying if it is called as prank, or, worse, seen as an understandable reaction to queers and homos. A North Carolina Baptist pastor just told his congregation that the way to deal with homosexuals is to put them behind barbed wire until they die off. Another advised his flock to beat their children if they showed signs of being gay. Talk about a bully pulpit.
What does Romney think of that? What about Jim Watson? Why do so many Republicans wink at gay bashing?
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, May 29, 2012
Monday, May 21, 2012
The Voter’s Dilemma
The Republican Party has swung to the right, too far to the right for many Republican voters. This movement has not just been a shift of weight, but rather a full-throated repudiation of the legitimacy of moderate Republicanism. And of moderate Republicans.
In order to compete as a Republican presidential candidate, in a field crowded with extreme conservatives, Mitt Romney felt he couldn’t afford to present any moderate alternative, so he became a "severe conservative". Influential and experienced Republicans like Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, crushed in a primary by the Tea-Party-backed Richard Mourdock, are tainted by their history of forging political compromises rather than scoring political points. Mourdock's campaign criticized Lugar's willingness to work with Democratic lawmakers.
The current national Republican list of enemies far exceeds anything Richard Nixon compiled: "liberal traitors", the President, government employees, unions, and now any acceptance of their own policies of the late 20th century. What if you are a Republican who sits next to a liberal in church?
I have friends with exactly that dilemma. I live in the home town of Paul Findley, in the home state of Charles Percy. They represented Illinois in Congress from the 1960s into the 1980s, and represented the ideas of the Republicans I meet every day at the County Market and BJ’s restaurant, at ball games and at the nursing home, in their homes and mine.
One of the facts of small town American life, which is often held up as the American ideal, is that nasty partisan politics are tempered by the bonds of friendship and the need to get along with your neighbors. Nobody runs for local office here on the social issues that seem to inflame the newly extreme national Republican Party: women’s rights, the separation of church and state, the efforts of gay Americans to be treated with respectful equality. Nobody here seeks votes by saying that the other party are traitors to real American values, because it would break up the bowling league or poker game or literary society.
Virtually all elected city officials are Republican, but none of them has pursued the anti-government vendetta that has been pushed by every Republican candidate for President. In office, they try to use government to make our town better, not starve government until it dies.
Mitt Romney might have attracted the allegiance of my Republican friends, if he had not forcefully and repeatedly repudiated the policies he advocated as Governor of Massachusetts. That was a fateful and irrevocable choice. If Romney now backs away from the extreme positions he has run on thus far, he won’t become a moderate, he’ll be a liar.
In democracies, when many people feel unrepresented by the existing parties, when both their politics and their morality remain unrepresented, a new party might form to give them a public voice. That’s how the Republican Party began, as a political and moral alternative to the Democrats, the Whigs, and the Know Nothings.
There are other parties to vote for, but Obama and John McCain split 98.6 % of the votes in 2008, and only Ralph Nader won more than half a percent. Besides the Republicans and the Democrats, no other party shows any signs of making a political difference.
We have an entrenched two-party system. We would all gain from giving up routine party allegiance and thinking carefully about what candidates represent, both politically and morally. Some of the recent candidates for national office from both parties have been morally shady or politically ignorant, or both. Voting for them because of party loyalty means encouraging one’s party to put forward more people like them. Imagine John Edwards and his mistress and their child in the White House.
What do you do if you stand right between the parties, not as liberal as the Democrats and their leader, President Obama, not as conservative as the Republicans and their leader, Mitt Romney, have become?
Split your ticket. Find the candidates who are closest to representing you, regardless of party, and don’t vote for candidates who don’t represent you, regardless of party. Force the parties to listen to you, not take your vote for granted.
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, May 22, 2012
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Uncertainties at 90
My mother turned 90 the other day. Her birthday brought all her immediate descendants to Jacksonville: my son and daughter and daughter-in-law, my brother and his wife, and his daughter. We ate her favorite foods, I made a chocolate cake, and we remembered or mis-remembered family stories from long ago.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about uncertainty, the many important things that we don’t know, but would like to know. My mother’s major uncertainty is her health. At 90, every day begins with the question, how will I feel today? Is this a headache or the first signs of stroke? If my legs are weak today, will they ever get better?
Any day can bring a crisis. A good day is when nothing happens.
My mother lives at the Jacksonville Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. She is happy there, because she receives extraordinarily good care from a knowledgeable, friendly, and helpful staff. The parking lot is rutted with potholes, but every day my mother is greeted, asked how she feels, and helped to live a dignified life.
Once a month, nearly a dozen women from all phases of JSN’s operations come together into my mother’s room and report on their observations of her health, mood, accomplishments in physical therapy, and eating habits. They ask for her opinions about her care, and whether she wishes to have any changes made. On the basis of their combined knowledge, they plan for the next month’s care.
The medical and scientific uncertainties connected with my mother’s health are a very immediate concern. Although most days are similar and uneventful, sometimes crucial decisions must be made within hours. Everyone must be ready to think about all the evidence we have, all the alternatives for action or inaction. I and all the professionals at JSN are prepared at all times to make significant decisions to keep my mother healthy.
Medicine is a highly developed branch of science. In other kinds of science, there is usually much less pressure to come to a decision. I believe that the more distant a particular kind of science is from our immediate needs, the more resistant people can be to reaching potentially unpleasant conclusions. Global warming is a good example. Thus far, warming has had little effect on most people’s lives, and it will be years, even decades, before the consequences of climate change affect our daily lives, or those of our children and grandchildren. So the necessity of paying attention to all the evidence, of applying careful logic, of reaching careful conclusions, can easily become subordinated to wishful thinking and unwillingness to abandon comfortable assumptions. Even when 97% of the world’s scientists engaged in climate research (yes, 97%) agree that global warming caused by human actions is occurring now, it’s easy to close our eyes for one more day, to remain skeptical even in the face of overwhelming evidence, to refuse to believe.
When all those health care experts gather in my mother’s room and lay out the evidence they have gathered about my mother’s condition, I listen carefully. If they all said that they thought my mother had a particular ailment which should be treated because it could get much worse, I would take notice. I might expect that there would still be some disagreements among them, some uncertainty about exactly what the causes were and how to treat that condition. Practicing medicine, as in every scientific field, is not like following a cookbook recipe. We expect some uncertainty.
If one of the experts said she disagreed with all the rest, and argued that my mother was fine, that there was no problem, and that we should do nothing, I would listen to her, too. But the consensus of the experts would be a powerful persuader. There’s no room for delay, no luxury of putting off uncomfortable decisions. In this case, thinking that the majority of experts were perpetrating a hoax, had some selfish agenda, were lying about my mother’s health would be irresponsible.
My mother’s health is too important for such political games. So is the health of our Mother Earth.
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, May 15, 2012
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about uncertainty, the many important things that we don’t know, but would like to know. My mother’s major uncertainty is her health. At 90, every day begins with the question, how will I feel today? Is this a headache or the first signs of stroke? If my legs are weak today, will they ever get better?
Any day can bring a crisis. A good day is when nothing happens.
My mother lives at the Jacksonville Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. She is happy there, because she receives extraordinarily good care from a knowledgeable, friendly, and helpful staff. The parking lot is rutted with potholes, but every day my mother is greeted, asked how she feels, and helped to live a dignified life.
Once a month, nearly a dozen women from all phases of JSN’s operations come together into my mother’s room and report on their observations of her health, mood, accomplishments in physical therapy, and eating habits. They ask for her opinions about her care, and whether she wishes to have any changes made. On the basis of their combined knowledge, they plan for the next month’s care.
The medical and scientific uncertainties connected with my mother’s health are a very immediate concern. Although most days are similar and uneventful, sometimes crucial decisions must be made within hours. Everyone must be ready to think about all the evidence we have, all the alternatives for action or inaction. I and all the professionals at JSN are prepared at all times to make significant decisions to keep my mother healthy.
Medicine is a highly developed branch of science. In other kinds of science, there is usually much less pressure to come to a decision. I believe that the more distant a particular kind of science is from our immediate needs, the more resistant people can be to reaching potentially unpleasant conclusions. Global warming is a good example. Thus far, warming has had little effect on most people’s lives, and it will be years, even decades, before the consequences of climate change affect our daily lives, or those of our children and grandchildren. So the necessity of paying attention to all the evidence, of applying careful logic, of reaching careful conclusions, can easily become subordinated to wishful thinking and unwillingness to abandon comfortable assumptions. Even when 97% of the world’s scientists engaged in climate research (yes, 97%) agree that global warming caused by human actions is occurring now, it’s easy to close our eyes for one more day, to remain skeptical even in the face of overwhelming evidence, to refuse to believe.
When all those health care experts gather in my mother’s room and lay out the evidence they have gathered about my mother’s condition, I listen carefully. If they all said that they thought my mother had a particular ailment which should be treated because it could get much worse, I would take notice. I might expect that there would still be some disagreements among them, some uncertainty about exactly what the causes were and how to treat that condition. Practicing medicine, as in every scientific field, is not like following a cookbook recipe. We expect some uncertainty.
If one of the experts said she disagreed with all the rest, and argued that my mother was fine, that there was no problem, and that we should do nothing, I would listen to her, too. But the consensus of the experts would be a powerful persuader. There’s no room for delay, no luxury of putting off uncomfortable decisions. In this case, thinking that the majority of experts were perpetrating a hoax, had some selfish agenda, were lying about my mother’s health would be irresponsible.
My mother’s health is too important for such political games. So is the health of our Mother Earth.
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, May 15, 2012
Monday, April 30, 2012
False Equivalents
Recently I received two comments on my columns which help to explain the unresolvable political arguments which are tearing our nation apart.
In response to my column about doing my taxes, someone wrote that the US has the most progressive tax system in the world, and cited an article he had read to prove it. Another reader responded to my column about scientists disagreeing about global warming by suggesting I read an article debunking climate change.
I read those pieces, and they are junk. Here’s why.
Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at George Mason University. In an article in the Washington Examiner, and then in a variety of postings, she wrote: “the United States has the most progressive income tax system among industrialized nations.” Her only evidence is that the percentage of total tax receipts paid by the highest earners is greater in the US than in other countries.
The most progressive income tax systems among industrialized countries, as of 2009, were in Denmark (the rate for top earners is 62%), followed by Sweden (57%), the Netherlands (52%), with Austria, Belgium and Japan at around 50%. The top tax rate in the US is 35%. Very few major industrialized nations have a lower top tax rate.
So why does the US have the largest percentage of total taxes paid by the highest earners? Because we have more and richer top earners, all of whom pay less than they would in other countries, but who add up to a larger proportion of the whole. The great inequalities of wealth in the US mean that even though we have a much flatter tax system, the rich are so rich that they pay a large proportion of our tax receipts.
This is not complex economics, but simple spinning of data for political purposes by de Rugy. Her misleading claims, posted immediately on conservative sites like National Review Online, are not designed to promote understanding, but to advance a political agenda.
The article against global warming was written by Mona Charen, who makes her living as a syndicated conservative columnist. In her first sentence, she accuses those who are concerned about global warming of demagoguery, sentimentality, cynical manipulation, and hysteria. She repeats the hysteria idea in the second paragraph.
Then she makes three points. Although there have been many warnings that polar bears are endangered by global warming, it turns out that they have not yet suffered any species damage. Her second point is that new science allows us to take better photographs, which show that there are many more Emperor penguins than scientists thought. Her third point is that a prediction made 5 years ago by scientists about the speed of the melting of Himalayan glaciers turns out to be much too high.
Charen ends by questioning whether the climate is actually warming at all, and then saying that those (all of us?) who are on the other side have hurt science itself, besides being all those things she began with.
Mona Charen picks and chooses scientific tidbits which she thinks can make her readers believe that science itself is suspect. As soon as you look at the larger picture, you see how manipulative she is.
The scientists were wrong about polar bears, but that doesn’t mean anything about their ideas on global warming itself. The bit about penguins shows that better technology reveals that the number of penguins has been underestimated by scientists, which also has nothing to do with warming.
The third point is worse. One of the authors of the study about the melting of glaciers, John Wahr, wrote that the Himalayan glaciers are a small contributor to overall ice melt and that estimates for the largest contributors, Antarctica and Greenland, have been correct. “It's Greenland and Antarctica that pose by far the greatest threat to rising sea levels in the future. That's, basically, where all the ice is.”
You won’t find out that fact from Mona Charen, just as Veronique de Rugy doesn’t tell you what you really need to know about progressive income tax systems. They both know that the average reader, especially those who want to believe conservative ideas, won’t or can’t follow the trail backwards from their misleading writings to the real facts. They don’t seek truth, they obscure it.
My two readers, who put these writings forward in opposition to mine, asserted a false equivalence. They equated these bits of right-wing propaganda with my columns, which I suppose they believe are simply left-wing propaganda. They’re wrong.
I don’t cite misleading factoids, which hide the real facts. I don’t quote people out of context. I don’t try to hoodwink my readers.
I’m sure I won’t convince my critics by saying that. Every writer claims total honesty. But I’ll say it anyway, because it would pain me if anyone discovered that I was as dishonest as de Rugy or Charen. Nobody will, because I’m not.
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, May 1, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
What We Don't Know
I just read a long exchange among scientists about global warming, in which they, sometimes harshly, argued against each other from opposite sides of what seems to be a great divide. Most of us know so little about how a climate works and how it might change that we must rely on distant experts to tell us what is going on and what might happen in the future.
I was struck by the agreement among these arguing scientists that significant warming had occurred across the earth, and that it could have major effects on human life. The scientists disagreed about the past and the future: what caused the warming and how much further warming is likely?
We don’t know the answers to these questions. Each model of climate change predicts a slightly different future.
We do know that global warming has occurred. 2010 was the hottest year on record, tied with 2005. Each year since 2001 has been hotter than any year before 2001, except for 1998. Last month was the hottest March on record in the US.
A warming climate could mean the end of maple syrup production and the proliferation of tree-killing insects, just to name two of many inevitable changes. If the trend of warming continues for the next 20 years, the odds of catastrophic floods in our coastal cities rise to dangerous levels.
Some things about global warming are uncertain. But one thing is not – if we do nothing, we will face enormous problems which could have been avoided.
We don’t know exactly how humans evolved from apes. Very recently another fossil find in Africa added a new species, not yet named, to the now long list of almost humans. We do know that evolution, working incrementally over millions of years, has allowed humans to develop larger brains, which in turn permitted us to make tools, create language, and build civilizations which lower animals could never dream of.
We don’t know exactly how the many chemicals which we have synthesized and then used all over the earth affect our health. An article on WebMD says, “How much hormone is in a hamburger, and could it hurt you? The answer is, no one really knows.” But we do know that pesticides can cause cancer, as do some of the additives fed to the animals we eat. The Food and Drug Administration has known for decades that putting antibiotics into animal feed to make them put on weight can cause more resistant strains of human diseases to develop.
We know that human inventions, created to make life better, can make life worse in unpredicted ways. Asbestos, lead, and mercury were employed in a wide variety of materials in our homes, because they appeared to be useful, until scientists realized that they were also toxic to humans. Then it took years to get them out of our daily lives.
A major uncertainty today is how much the process known as fracking, the injection of chemicals under high pressure into rock to release natural gas, could harm our health. Scientists in many states have documented that fracking contaminates water supplies, causes small earthquakes, and pollutes the air. But exactly how and how much is not certain, because the studies are scattered, and the oil and gas industry vociferously denies any dangers from fracking.
Although the vast majority of scientists in every nation agree that global warming caused by human activity will continue to levels dangerous to our society, the media and some politicians in the US continue to stress uncertainty. Americans are so confused by the claims of public figures that global warming is a “hoax” that a Rasmussen poll last year showed the majority distrusted science: 40% thought it was very likely and 29% thought it was likely that scientists have falsified global warming research.
There is no evidence for such falsification, just the wishful thinking of those who don’t want to face uncomfortable reality.
Here’s one thing we do know. Science works.
Tornado prediction is an even less certain science than global warming. Yet weather scientists were able to broadcast the earliest tornado warning in years and save lives across the Midwest earlier this month. Despite the uncertainties of such forecasts, weather science was on target.
Great and powerful people have argued against accepting the basic findings of science since well before Galileo. They have always lost, after a long, tiring, and wasteful battle. Their political unwillingness to accept science squanders society’s precious time, which it needs to face the real question: what does the science mean for us?
That question is devilishly difficult to answer. It’s the main thing we don’t know.
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, April 24, 2012
I was struck by the agreement among these arguing scientists that significant warming had occurred across the earth, and that it could have major effects on human life. The scientists disagreed about the past and the future: what caused the warming and how much further warming is likely?
We don’t know the answers to these questions. Each model of climate change predicts a slightly different future.
We do know that global warming has occurred. 2010 was the hottest year on record, tied with 2005. Each year since 2001 has been hotter than any year before 2001, except for 1998. Last month was the hottest March on record in the US.
A warming climate could mean the end of maple syrup production and the proliferation of tree-killing insects, just to name two of many inevitable changes. If the trend of warming continues for the next 20 years, the odds of catastrophic floods in our coastal cities rise to dangerous levels.
Some things about global warming are uncertain. But one thing is not – if we do nothing, we will face enormous problems which could have been avoided.
We don’t know exactly how humans evolved from apes. Very recently another fossil find in Africa added a new species, not yet named, to the now long list of almost humans. We do know that evolution, working incrementally over millions of years, has allowed humans to develop larger brains, which in turn permitted us to make tools, create language, and build civilizations which lower animals could never dream of.
We don’t know exactly how the many chemicals which we have synthesized and then used all over the earth affect our health. An article on WebMD says, “How much hormone is in a hamburger, and could it hurt you? The answer is, no one really knows.” But we do know that pesticides can cause cancer, as do some of the additives fed to the animals we eat. The Food and Drug Administration has known for decades that putting antibiotics into animal feed to make them put on weight can cause more resistant strains of human diseases to develop.
We know that human inventions, created to make life better, can make life worse in unpredicted ways. Asbestos, lead, and mercury were employed in a wide variety of materials in our homes, because they appeared to be useful, until scientists realized that they were also toxic to humans. Then it took years to get them out of our daily lives.
A major uncertainty today is how much the process known as fracking, the injection of chemicals under high pressure into rock to release natural gas, could harm our health. Scientists in many states have documented that fracking contaminates water supplies, causes small earthquakes, and pollutes the air. But exactly how and how much is not certain, because the studies are scattered, and the oil and gas industry vociferously denies any dangers from fracking.
Although the vast majority of scientists in every nation agree that global warming caused by human activity will continue to levels dangerous to our society, the media and some politicians in the US continue to stress uncertainty. Americans are so confused by the claims of public figures that global warming is a “hoax” that a Rasmussen poll last year showed the majority distrusted science: 40% thought it was very likely and 29% thought it was likely that scientists have falsified global warming research.
There is no evidence for such falsification, just the wishful thinking of those who don’t want to face uncomfortable reality.
Here’s one thing we do know. Science works.
Tornado prediction is an even less certain science than global warming. Yet weather scientists were able to broadcast the earliest tornado warning in years and save lives across the Midwest earlier this month. Despite the uncertainties of such forecasts, weather science was on target.
Great and powerful people have argued against accepting the basic findings of science since well before Galileo. They have always lost, after a long, tiring, and wasteful battle. Their political unwillingness to accept science squanders society’s precious time, which it needs to face the real question: what does the science mean for us?
That question is devilishly difficult to answer. It’s the main thing we don’t know.
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
published in the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, April 24, 2012
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