(if I were the) King of the Forest

If a state chooses to live up to the more modern understanding of its obligation to fairness and equality under the law by creating a gender-neutral form of civil union, that is certainly just and arguably wise. If a same-sex couple, having been properly joined by such a state-sanctioned civil union, chooses to call themselves “married” some may contradict them but no one can or should stop them. If a church chooses to sanctify their union and call it “marriage” in the eyes of God, that is their right. If members of their community choose to honor the union with the same designation, then the communal sense of marriage will begin to evolve. If enough people in enough communities defer to the new usage then the traditional concept of marriage will begin to lose its name and, our ability to conceptualize it thereby undermined, will slowly fade from our cultural memory, just as gayness did decades ago. And we will be culturally poorer for that even as we are culturally more inclusive.

But that is a transformation that should be decided individual by individual in a cultural dialog over years or generations, in which some are free to preserve the old concepts and others to embrace the new until the weight of cultural consensus removes the last holdouts – or never does. It is not a transformation that should be enforced by political power.

Periodically in discussing issues surrounding nuclear non-proliferation someone – typically but not always someone from some Islamic country – will assert that we have no right to deny the likes of Saddam Hussein or the Iranian Ayatollahs access to nuclear weapons – that such a demand amounts to imperialism, that it interferes with the self-determination of their peoples and usurps their legitimate sovereignty. Inevitably the need for nuclear weapons in the hands of such countries is rationalized by the need to “counter the threat” from Israeli nuclear weapons or from our own. And inevitably attempts to limit the number of nuclear nations in the world are classified as arrogance, the presumption that only members of the nuclear club are sophisticated and moral enough to be trusted with such power.

There is some validity to the issue of the usurpation of sovereignty – although if we wish to be so solicitous of sovereignty we really should have a debate over what constitutes legitimate sovereignty in the modern era of human rights and ascendant democracy. But where nuclear weapons are concerned basic survival, not sovereignty, is really the most fundamental consideration. And if our desire that Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il not have nuclear weapons represents a presumption that they are not sophisticated and moral enough to be trusted with such capabilities, that presumption is not arrogant but prudent.

If we want to make drugs affordable in the third world, we must find a way to rein in the health care advocates who would use that as a moral platform to transform the American and European markets. Protected from such a threat, the drug companies would, I’m guessing, cooperate. But as long as Americans agitate to be treated – at least for purposes of pricing – the same as their peers in the marginal markets, the drug companies will do all they can to protect their domestic profits – which ultimately protects the R&D pipeline that benefits both the first and third worlds.

A friend of mine, Ira Goldman, is the inventor of the KneeDefender™, a small plastic device that fits on the tray table in an airplane and limits the ability of the seat in front of you to recline. His reason for creating such a device was the number of times his knees had been crushed by a sudden recline while penned within the claustrophobic confines of a coach class seat (and I thought “cruel and unusual punishment” had been outlawed by the Constitution).

The KneeDefender™ is one of those items about which no one seems to be neutral. To some it is their salvation; to others it is an outrage; to many it is a horrible sign of moral degeneracy and social decay – but one that they nonetheless find too useful to forswear.

Mandatory seatbelt (and helmet) laws do not generally arouse my passion, for two reasons. First, although I consider them paternalistic invasions of my autonomy they also have no immediate or practical effect on me: I use seatbelts and helmets by choice, as do most people I know. Second, given the very real benefits they provide and the relatively low costs they entail – and given that on such bases only one state in the Union currently does not mandate the use of seatbelts – I consider them largely a fait accompli. That doesn’t make me agree with such laws or embrace them; it merely makes worrying about them a poor use of my time and energy.

That said, I happen now to live in that one state (New Hampshire), and when the issue arises – as it does from time to time – proponents of such laws tend to be particularly dismissive of any concerns about civil liberties, to characterize those who raise such concerns as egocentric simpletons, and to trivialize their opposition as merely a childish and irrational reaction to “being told what to do.” That dismissive and disrespectful tone does stir my passion.

The fact that complexities were over-simplified is part of the format and a necessary evil. However, at the end one of the characters, as a closing remark on the Constitution, read from its preamble. Nice touch – except that they left part of it (many would say the most important part) out. What they read was:

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, …. , promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to us and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution of the United States of America“.

What was left out, of course, were two of the primary purposes of government, ones which provide the necessary specifics for fulfilling what the Declaration of Independence considered the very reason for government to exist – the protection of individual rights. The missing phrases were:

“… to ensure domestic tranquility, to provide for the common defense, …“.

I fear that in the modern cultural/social/political climate, Mr. Schneier’s plea for more distributed solutions to security problems will, except in the narrowest technical realms where logic and experience generally prevail, fall on deaf ears. Social and political biases of the public aside, our political and cultural leaders benefit from the increased power with which centralized systems endow them, and such systems will continue to be the preferred solutions to most problems which fall, however unproductively, into the political realm.

As both an option-holder and a shareholder in various companies I agree that options should be reported in some manner other than a footnote, but I vehemently disagree that calling them an “expense” – on a par with cash outlays like salaries – is the correct accounting form.

This sounds to me like a success of ethical government. It sounds to me like a refutation of the clamor we’ve heard for the last six months from the news media and the Democrats that the Bush administration is “in Enron’s pocket”.

So it is with the ABM treaty. Abrogating it may or may not be wise policy but, Mr. LaFortune’s outrage notwithstanding, it is not a violation of international law and it is not a moral affront to the international community.