In Gonzales v. Oregon, the Court attempted to discern whether Oregon’s law of physician aided suicide was legal. The majority concluded that the principles of federalism protected the states right to regulate medical practices. The Death with Dignity Act allowed terminally ill people to end their lives through voluntary self-administration of lethal medications; prescribed by a physician.

The history is interesting. There was another case in 1990, Cruzan v. Director, in which it was decided that Due Process only protected a person insofar as they can refuse medical treatment. Thus, this comatose patient was able to refuse (through proxy) the ability end life. Later, in two cases challenged the right to assisted suicide, the next logical step.Interestingly the appellate courts found in favor of assistance in one court under “right to privacy” (3rd, 4th, 5th, 9th ) and the other under Equal Protection (14th Amendment Due Process). However, the Supreme Court said that no such protections exist.

At any rate, the current status is that a person can not just invoke some “right to die”, they must be in a state like Oregon that expressly passed legislation that is Constitutionally protected by federalism.

2. Public Support:

A solid majority of Americans (60%) believe a person has a moral right to end their life if they are suffering great pain and have no hope of improvement. Nearly as many (53%) believe a person has a moral right to end their life if suffering from an incurable disease. But far fewer see a right to suicide in other circumstances. Just a third say a person is morally justified in ending their life because living has become a burden. People-press.org

Public support clearly is not in favor of suicide when life is a “Burden”.

3. Health Care Costs:

http://www.cms.hhs.gov

Question:

Considering the legal implications, public opinion, and health care costs, is it reasonable to entertain the idea of assisted suicide for seniors?

Holland is thinking about letting seniors above the age of 70 voluntarily commit suicide if they consider their lives complete.

A campaign to give elderly people in the Netherlands the right to assisted suicide said Monday it has gathered more than 100000. CTV News.

I think the debate must center around widespread conversation of ethics. But, the conversation is no longer moot. Interesting.

let’s start a coffee party . . . let’s get together and drink cappuccino and have real political dialogue with substance and compassion

The birth of a movement. This movement differs because it is not about a political ideology, but a dedication to rationale dialogue. Instead of the Tea Party’s older (and doctrinal) members, the Coffee Party has a surge of youthful contributors eagerly waiting to meet-up for rational political discourse.

Newsflash, no one supports a government that continually operates outside its means. Instead of some tepid reaction to the Stimulus Package as blatant socialism, the conversation would be rationally directed to the economics of the bill with emphasis on how such measures can be avoided in the future. What an enlightened perspective, approach politics with an open mind, avoid dogmatism; Think.

Marketplace of ideas don’t fail me now! The two groups are now in a Facebook Face-off;

• Join the Coffee Party Movement currently has 104,000 members.

• Tea Party Patriots currently with 107,000 members.

The epic struggle sees both sides frantically requesting people join their cause. Friends communicating with like minded people to join a Facebook group as to signal a battle for the best idea. While the Tea Party started out with a strong lead, the Coffee people are no less emboldened to strike a strategic defeat. And a major defeat it shall be. It will undermine the media hype about the importance of the Tea Party, that it was just a some half baked myth of neoconservative lore. Will Fox News cover the inevitable Coffee rally with the passion and enthusiasm as it did the Tea Party? While Romney and Palin advocate Tea integration in the Republican Party, the Coffee Party will continue to woo moderates with the promise of intellectuality discourse.

In the event of a Tea Party Facebook loss, Colbert would say the Market Has Spoken. But, wry as his writers are, they will note that Facebook group “Boner in your jeans?.. Try running downstairs with no bra on!” has 111,000 members. This lady for president – 2012! But in all seriousness, over 100,000 fans is a big number for a political cause.

UPDATE

107,868 fans to  107,790 fans at of 5:06 PM , March 10th 20010. Coffee Party has nearly surpassed the Tea Party!

Let me begin with a few general statements.  First, our paradigm of national sovereignty is actually quite new.  Substantially, it originated in the conclusions of the Thirty and Eighty Years’ Wars—that is, from the Treaty of Westphalia signed in 1648 by delegations from Spain, France, the Netherlands, England, Sweden, agreeing to mutual recognition of each other’s right to self determination, particularly with regard to religion.  Prior to that, the Western world had either been ruled by empire (Greeks, Romans, Holy Roman Empire) or by nobody at all (the Dark Ages).  I use the qualifier “western” because, despite many impressive eastern empires such as Babylonia, Persia, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, the east has had significant exceptions such as China and Japan which closely resembled modern sovereign states.

Empire by no means ended with the ratification of the Treaty of Westphalia.  Great Britain renounced empire only within the last ninety years; France renounced empire only within the last seventy years; and Russia renounced empire only within the last twenty years (although recent events call its sincerity into question).  Make no mistake, nationalism and self determination are very powerful and even growing forces.  My only point here is that breaches of self determination, and even accepted ones, are not as alien to our world as many think.

My second observation: Globalization is alive and well and is not going anywhere, in turn making our world practically minuscule.  Our youth are growing up in a world of daily advances in transportation and telecommunications.  Never in history have so many goods and services traversed such long distances as they do today.  Of the Forbes Global 2000 in 2009, United States corporations occupied 551 slots—an impressive number and a clearly dominating one, but tellingly 200 less than in 2004.  Japan occupied the number two slot with 288 corporations followed by Great Britain with 102, and China with 91.  Also in 2009, United States MNCs’ assets valued at around 27 trillion dollars, UK’s 14 trillion, Japan’s 13 trillion, France’s 11 trillion, and China’s 5 trillion.

My third observation: With the exception of the United States and now China, nations large and small, humble and proud, and violently suspicious of each other have demonstrated unbelievable willingness to give up sovereignty to each other in various ways.  The most obvious example is the European Union.  The willingness of the Europeans to cede monetary policy to a centralized body seems unthinkable to Americans.  Yet, if you were tell a Frenchman 100 years ago that France would voluntarily cede monetary policy to an entity governed in part by Germans, the reaction would have been even more pronounced than Americans’ reaction today.  And with the Treaty of Lisbon, the EU has become even more consolidated.

So how do we get from where we are today to the stratospheric heights of world government?  It certainly does not follow that the newness of national self determination, the ascent of globalization, and the willingness of many nations to cede some sovereignty lead to world government.  The answer lies in trends we are already seeing and institutions that are already well established.  As powerful as forces adverse to world government are, other forces will hamstring nations into giving up sovereignty in ways that seem beyond contemplation today.

Globalization has changed every single country it has touched; once it enters a country, that country is never the same.  Along with incredible prosperity, globalization necessary proliferates and augments conflicts.  Presently, the globalization’s conflicts tend to implicate issues such as human rights and dependency—conflicts that harm the powerless.  However, as more and increasingly diverse and adverse interests increasingly compete, collide, interfere, and impede; as vulnerability and harm become increasingly pervasive; as the world become less certain; and as these conflicts involve increasingly powerful actors, the globalized institutions that now seek de facto protection and immunity through state sovereignty will begin to demand that their nations of domicile give up some of that protection in exchange for supranational enforcement of contractual agreements and tort liabilities.

After all, what is a security company incorporated in Turkey supposed to do when a large French software company doing business in throughout eastern Europe subcontracts specific programming duties to a software company in Greece and that programming contains defects causing the Turkish security company’s security systems to fail, leading to a loss of millions of dollars for banks in South Africa and India?  As it is, the bank, the bank’s investors and depositors, and the security company would have little recourse—whether through the international system or through the courts of their own domiciles.  This is a problem for which Americans have little regard because, as long as an implicated foreign entity has minimum contacts with this country, that entity can be served with process to appear in an American court.  Most of the time, these entities appear because, after all, what global company could ever survive pending the sanction of denied access to United States’ markets?  For the rest of the world, the raw economic power to muscle foreign entities into their domestic courts is hardly present.  And these kinds of examples like the one I just provided will become increasingly common.  Because of this, supranational judicial power will begin as an exo-American phenomenon.  There is reason to believe that this is a coming endeavor of the EU.

America’s hegemony is the principal obstacle to my envisioned supranational power.  But, as stated earlier, the world vis-á-vis the United States is becoming increasingly powerful.  American corporations will require basic supranational judicial recourses as globalization potentiates.  They will need enforcers of contracts, assigners of tort liability, and protectors of property rights—the invisible infrastructure for economic activity that corporations take full advantage of here at home.  And so, the United States will be forced to join the rest of the world as it takes advantage of these empowered international courts and will even get used to the power arrangement.

Like any entity with power, these courts will become increasingly powerful and influential, possibly even expanding its jurisdiction to environmental and human rights issues.  But before you think that international courts will dictate our domestic policies, I can assure there will be plenty of nationalism to check that.  Actually, my big and scary “world government” will be quite small and limited.  You will still be able to carry your guns.

A recent op-ed

I wasn’t sure which angle to take this one from.  There are two very important and significant issues at hand here:  civil rights and media responsibility.  There is no doubt that both issues are of paramount importance.  However, the role of the media as an apparatus of “truth” dissemination is less scrutinized despite its predominant role in the market place of ideas.  Thus, total breakdown in factual reporting notwithstanding, any lapse in media responsibility often goes overlooked, discarded as simply a gaff, or worse yet, as something expected.  So I will pay it some attention here.

The insidious nature of the Times op-ed isn’t that the author opposes repealing DADT.  There are legitimate concerns to be identified and debated.  The important thing is that they are discussed within the context of a fact-based debate, not one muddled by inaccuracies, falsehoods, and omissions of fact.  The Times op-ed falls squarely in the latter category.  McPeak’s article is a glaring example of outdated and inaccurate views on sexuality and the military.  However, the more troubling issue isn’t so much that McPeak’s views are off the mark.  What is more concerning is that the Times’ editors didn’t find it necessary to query on his so-called facts supporting his views.  Either that or perhaps they are just as ignorant as the author; if that’s the case, God help us.

McPeak’s position is that allowing gay Americans to serve openly in the U.S. armed forces would undermine unit cohesion.  There isn’t anything particularly insidious about this statement, even though it isn’t grounded in any fact-based analysis.  As long as claims are based on logical conclusions derived from sound facts there is nothing insidious about making a challenging claim.  In a society that operates on the foundation of the free market place of ideas, this is a fairly reasonable standard, especially for articles published in one of the most widely read newspapers in the world.  Unfortunately, McPeak’s op-ed doesn’t qualify as fact-based.  Quite the opposite, to the embarrassment of the Times.

His main critique is that those advocating for repealing  DADT haven’t researched the effects it would have on unit cohesion.  This is a completely erroneous statement. McPeak falsely claims that “advocates for gays in the service have by and large avoided a discussion of unit cohesion.”  This simply isn’t true.  There is plenty of scholarly research available that supports the notion gay soldiers can serve alongside straight soldiers without undermining unit cohesion or causing other problems that might worsen the military’s capability to carry out its missions.  The fact that the Times allowed McPeak to get away with saying something so blatantly false is troubling.

Since the Times is unable to fact-check themselves, I’ll do it for them, free of charge.  Contrary to McPeak’s bogus claim, there is plenty of research available that supports the notion that openly gay soldiers serving side-by-side straight soldiers has no harmful effects on unit cohesion, a total rebuttal of McPeak’s claim.  In fact, one such source is an article published last year by the the DoD’s own Joint Forces Quarterly, which argued that “the stated premise of [Dont' Ask, Don't Tell] — to protect unit cohesion and combat effectiveness — is not supported by any scientific studies.”

False information aside, another glaring deficiency in McPeak’s op-ed is, as Stephen Walt pointed out, “his failure to discuss any of the countries where gays do serve openly, such as Israel, Australia, Canada, or Great Britain.”  Available research, including the JFQ article, shows that countries that allow gays to serve openly do not suffer from a lack of unit cohesion, or any other detrimental effects.  Foreign militaries who have lifted bans on homosexual soldiers function just as efficiently as militaries who do, minus the inherent discrimination.  A recent report by the Palm Center notes:

“In a survey of over 100 experts from Australia, Canada, Israel, and the United Kingdom, it was found that all agreed the decision to lift the ban on homosexuals had no impact on military performance, readiness, cohesion, or ability to recruit or retain, nor did it increase the HIV rate among troops.”

So, an article published by one of the world’s most influential “truth” disseminators contains one glaringly ignorant falsehood and one issue-skewering omission.   Setting aside the issue of civil rights, what is most egregious is that the Times allowed such a factually inaccurate article to run in their paper.  It would be one thing if this were some no-name, local newspaper.  It’s a whole other realm of reporting and news coverage when it’s The New York Times.

It all goes back to the importance of maintaining a reasonable standard for what is worthy to be released into the market place of ideas.  In order for a free and open society to function properly, there must be checks on what is granted “legitimacy” and “authority.”  Most people who read NYT, paranoid conservative dunces notwithstanding, are under the impression that what they are reading is fact-based reporting.  Moreover, when it comes to particularly tempestuous issues, like civil rights, there must be an even high standard of reporting and information diffusion.  Of course there’s no such thing as perfect reporting; it goes without saying that there will be bad articles written and inaccurate statements made.  However, when it comes to an especially controversial issue like DADT, there must be an especially high standard of reporting.  The Times really ought to be ashamed of itself for running such a shoddy piece given the magnitude of the issue being discussed.  This article in no way helps the ongoing debate about DADT.  It muddies the waters of an already murky river.

Healthy debate is an essential component of a society which makes its decision in the free market place of ideas.  Influential media outlets (e.g. the NYT) play an essential, if not paramount, role in ensuring the diffusion of “healthy” (i.e. accurate) information.  They are the parents and the citizens are the children.  The children eat what the parents feed them.  Healthy children have good parents.  Unhealthy children have irresponsible parents.  McPeak’s piece is a good example of what a bad diet looks like.

Rational decision making in the market place of ideas rests upon the ability to have intelligent, healthy debate.  Anything that obstructs this process muddles the debate process and leads to erroneous conclusions and bad decisions.  Perhaps the editors at the Times missed that memo.  I think the local community colleges offer courses in FACs.  Perhaps they should enroll.  Children shouldn’t eat pizza and ice cream for breakfast.  It’s bad brain food.

Haven’t you heard?  Wheaties is the breakfast of champions!

Christian text and tradition

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is reported to have preached:

Blessed are those who’re persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you, and persecute you, and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets before you.

This text reflects concerns of early Christians in the first and second centuries who did experience persecution.  Most of their persecution was social and local – expulsion from Jewish religious practices and general ostracism.  Christianity was still seen as an offshoot (and heretical branch) of Judaism, and many of its early converts were Jewish.  This is especially true for the audience for which the gospel writer Matthew writes. At other various points during Christianity’s early history, it was confronted with more organized and widespread persecution.

The important thing to note about biblical texts like these is that they are like one half of an ongoing conversation that took place two thousand years ago in a certain context. The circumstances in the modern world are quite different, and the surviving half of the conversation is not always relevant now.  Nevertheless, the text of the Bible is extremely important to many Christians, and especially so to the fundamentalist Christians who suffer from Christian Persecution Complex.  Ed Brayton summarizes the connection between the Sermon on the Mount and the modern complex and their disconnect from modern reality:

[The Sermon on the Mount passage] provides fertile ground for a persecution complex, a reason for Christians to seek out examples of persecution (though, to be fair, the habit of inventing and exaggerating persecution is limited to a certain subset of Christians). And in some places at some times, that persecution was quite real. The astonishing thing today is that they manage to convince themselves they’re being persecuted even while controlling virtually every institution in our society.

Fundamentalist psychology

Another explanation for Christian Persecution Complex is found in the psychological profile of fundamentalists.  The social psychologist Bob Altemeyer has researched extensively on authoritarianism and fundamentalism, and has found a lot of overlap between the two.  Individuals who score highly on fundamentalism and authoritarianism tests tend to be disproportionately aggressive when confronted with any challenge to their own views.

The challenge to fundamentalist views does not even have to be a direct challenge to be considered by the individual as a challenge.  To a non-fundamentalist, an atheist’s positive statement “I do not believe in God” is not an attack per se on any other point of view; it is only a statement of that individual’s view.  But to a fundamentalist who holds his own views very rigidly and defensively, this statement is easily converted into an attack that puts the fundamentalist’s interests in jeopardy.

There is some disagreement over how the atheist’s statement can be reasonably interpreted. Jesse Galef argues in an article for the Friendly Atheist titled “Atheism Inherently Offends:”

There is one reality and some of us are correct while others are incorrect. It’s no longer merely a statement about myself – in essence I’m saying, ‘I don’t believe God exists and neither should you.’

Perhaps this interpretation makes the fundamentalist reaction more reasonable.  In any case, it certainly sheds light on why it occurs.  If Galef is right, then an atheist’s description of her own beliefs belongs in the same category as a Republican identifying as such or a Muslim identifying as such, rather than a woman, Hispanic, or lesbian identifying as such.  The first category includes beliefs that are adopted by choice and may be changed if the holder is convinced, so a positive statement of belief may be taken as an attempt at persuasion.  The second category includes purely demographic markers, and cannot reasonably be interpreted as persuasive attempts.  This distinction makes sense, but it does not explain the unique phenomenon of Christian Persecution Complex.  There is no comparable Democratic Persecution Complex that is identifiable any time another self-identifies as a Republican.

Atheist agenda

The last explanation for Christian Persecution Complex may be found in the atheist agenda: there is a desire among many atheists to actively campaign against religion.  The complex may not be pure paranoia then, if fundamentalists’ claims about the goals of their opponents are partially true.  In any given court case, the stated goal of the party opposing the fundamentalist interest is usually “equality” or something similar.  But that ostensible goal may hide the real motivations behind these cases.

Thomas Huxley is said to have fired the first shots in the explicit war between faith and science, saying that “one or the other must go after a struggle of unknown duration.”  Several current atheists, including the most widely known, are members of the aggressive atheist camp.  Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, and Harris are the leaders in this group, and have unequivocally advocated against religion.  Even less aggressive atheists tend to believe in the superiority of their opinions and would like to see religion decline in influence.

Although none of these explanations fully explains Christian Persecution Complex, taken together they help show why fundamentalist Christians seem to view modern legal and political conflicts involving religion the way that they do.

Johnson was represented by The Thomas Moore Law Center, which announced the ruling Friday.  Johnson’s attorneys and other conservative Christian commentators call the ruling a “victory for God.” The court’s opinion, available here, shows

The clash of interests

Johnson’s posters contained the phrases: “In God We Trust,” “One Nation Under God,” “God Bless America” and “God Sheds His Grace On thee,” and “All Men Are Created Equal, They Are Endowed By Their CREATOR.”

Johnson, the district, and the students each have their own interests in this matter, and they represent clashing interests in society as a whole.  Modern US society involves tension between public individuals’ rights to free speech with the needs of society, including the separation between church and state.

In this kind of case, it is not immediately and completely clear which set of interests should prevail.  Teachers should not forfeit all of their personal rights of free speech when they enter the classroom, but schools should not be seen as promoting particular religions, either.

Constitutionality

The court criticized the district’s actions in several instances, including this paragraph:

That God places prominently in our Nation’s history does not create an Establishment Clause violation requiring curettage and disinfectant for Johnson’s public high school classroom walls. It is a matter of historical fact that our institutions and government actors have in past and present times given place to a supreme God.

The court’s point is well taken that God is present in the country’s historical documents, and historical revision in the name of political correctness is counter-productive.  However, this approach misses

The unconstitutionality of the district’s order to Johnson to remove his banners hinged on viewpoint neutrality, which the court eventually does discuss.  The walls of the high school become a limited forum, in which government regulation of messages must be viewpoint neutral.  The same legal principle is at the core of a case before the Supreme Court now, Christian Legal Society v. Martinez.

Quest for consistency

One problem for the district is consistency.  The school evidently permits other teachers to hang posters containing Buddhist, Islamic and Tibetan symbols on their classroom walls, but balked at Johnson’s Christian messages.  This led to the court’s finding that the district singled Johnson out on the basis of his viewpoint in an unacceptable manner.  Other non-curricular messages that Johnson used to support his position included:

• A poster of John Lennon and the lyrics to the song “Imagine”
• Posters of Mahatma Gandhi, the Dali Lama, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
• A Greenpeace poster that says: “Stop Global Warming.”
• Bumper stickers that say: “Equal Rights Are Not Special Rights,” “Dare to Think for Yourself,” and “Celebrate Diversity.
• An anti-war poster that asks: “How many Iraqi children did we kill today?”

Two easy ways of achieving a consistent rule for appropriate classroom decorations would be to allow anything or ban all private messages by teachers.  Neither of these extremes is necessary, though, if a reasonable line can be drawn.  In initial reactions, different people will react differently to the above examples because of their own biases.  It is possible, however, to craft viewpoint neutral rules regulating what kinds of non-curricular messages public school teachers can display in their classrooms.

One reasonable standard would be for schools to allow teachers to display messages on their walls only if the messages were related to the curriculum of the class.  English teachers could display quotes from literature; social studies teachers could display quotes from historical leaders; government or history teachers could display messages like those Johnson did.  This standard recognizes that the limited forum in each classroom is necessarily limited to the curriculum of the class.  The material in certain classes lends well to discussion of politics or religion, but in other classes, these views may be distracting or intimidating.

Another reasonable standard would be to allow displays that involve religion or politics as long as they are not inappropriately advocacy related.  This would be a fuzzier standard, but that doesn’t make it inferior.  A poster containing the entire Declaration of Independence could not really be seen as an attempt to push any particular political or religious view on students.  The same is true for a poster of Martin Luther King, Jr. or another world leader.  But Displays like Johnson’s pretty clearly appear to be part of an advocacy agenda and such things are inappropriate in a math classroom context.

In the vein of consistency, Hemant Mehta (the Friendly Atheist) asks what the outcome would be if an atheist math teacher put up large anti-Christian banners in the classroom.  Atheists are among the most discriminated groups in American society.  Examples involving their freedoms often expose underlying hypocrisy in how standards would be applied.

In this case, Johnson seems to have a legitimate point.  His displays were unfairly targeted by the school in an inconsistent application of district policy.  But it does not follow that his display is appropriate for the classroom.  Public schools need to develop reasonable, consistent standards for situations like these, and they need to enforce them fairly.  Christian advocacy displays in the classroom when they are totally unrelated to the curriculum are no more or less appropriate than Wiccan, atheist, Muslim, or Buddhist displays.

What makes this absolutely more shocking is the “open and notorious” nature of this embarrassment… with no sense shame. Actually, it is on its 10th edition and the press release was authored by the President and Dean.

Fraud is defined by the dictionary as “intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another” and”an act of deceiving or misrepresenting.”

How did they arrive at this order?  Cooley can only make this claim by sufficiently broadening the number of factors and then allotting them equal weight. Traditionally, highly important considerations are GPA, LSAT, Bar passage rate, and employment upon graduation. However, in this scheme they are given the same weight as Total Volumes in Library, Total Applications, Total Law School Square Footage, Program Achievement Rating Rank.

Cooley must believe it is being very witty using this equal footing formula accurately describe the entirety of a legal education.

Lets talk program achievement. “In essence, each school’s reported bar passage rate is divided by a quality index computed through a combination of LSAT and UGPA scores reported for that school [the formula used is Bar passage rate/(UGPA x 15 + LSAT) x .5].”  This is the one factor which “double counts” the really important indicators, but don’t be fooled, it is moderated by 28 other comparatively less important factors. So they allotted themselves an 82 (whatever that means).

[80 divided by (3.o x 15 + 146) x .5

80/(3.0 x 15 +146 ) x .5 = 0.209424084

Now for Pitt:

90/(3.4 x 15 + 159) x .5 = 0.214285714

Cooley managed to take its 3 pitiful factors GPA, LSAT, and Bar passage and “shine that turd”. An 83 to 82 score is arbitrarily silly. Math is used to obscure the truth. Did you catch the manipulation?

I would suggest adding another category “Attrition rate” where Cooley would surely be number “1″ : 1st Year – 26%; 2nd Year – 10.4%. Cooley wants people to believe that it can accept a host of people with the worst statistics (independent indicators) and come out thinking they are a top law school.

This is nothing short of a delusion.

But this delusion extends to the highest reaches of the administration. Here is the opening paragraph by the President and Dean of the law school in a press release about the ranking system:

“The English nobility and the Indian caste system represent outdated notions of entitlement and reflect the evils of cultural discrimination. Indeed, Americans overthrew their former government largely because of the abuses of the self-perpetuating nobility that reserved for itself the privileges of participation in the English political and social systems. And Americans have replaced the caste system with equal protection under law. Americans inherently reject elitism and discrimination in favor of opportunity.” Cooley Press Release

This comparison to law school rankings balances tenuously on the verge of absolutely crazy.  To relate systems of ethnic oppression to a ranking system that is grounded on merit is utterly shameless. Further, it is offensive to people facing discrimination and to those with the ability to think rationally. The mentality that Cooley openly advertises is anti-intellectual and fraudulent in nature. A perfect moment to try out my new labeling system, “Thomas Cooley Law School is the rubbish bin of academia.”

I worry not only about the students being deceived, but rather that this atmosphere will inevitably impact clients. The ABA should take a look at this practice because I doubt is isolated within Cooley. It is not just the single act of creating a fraudulent ranking system, but the enviroment that gave rise to it. If this is a symptomatic of a systemic failure, I think an in-depth inquiry is required by the ABA.

Stoll’s article contains several sweeping statements that appear comical after a decade and a half.  He dismisses all of the touted powers of the internet with predictions that turned out to be horribly wrong:

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

The 1995 article is worth reading for enjoyment, but criticism of his 1995 predictions should not be too flat.  Not only did his predictions turn out to be incorrect, they were based on several faulty assumptions and used faulty reasoning.  These are problems that still exist and can be found in current predictions.  There are three fundamental issues that plague techno-critics like Stoll: exponential growth, misapplication of current limits, and the misinterpretation of “human nature.”

The human brain is a very powerful computer, and is especially good at recognizing patterns.  Unfortunately, the brain tends to see linear progression, and have great difficulty with exponential progression. The graph below represents one example that compares a linear growth line to an exponential growth line. Early, the two may be virtually indistinguishable, but once the exponential curve separates, it grows dramatically.

The first fundamental issue common to predictions of future technology in the computing age is that most people fail to recognize the exponential growth inherent in the field.  Ray Kurzweil discusses this phenomenon extensively in his book, The Singularity is Near.  Kurzweil is a leading futurist and researcher in computing, and spends a significant portion of his book establishing that technology is advancing at an exponential pace.

Even after hearing this observation and agreeing with it, most people fail to realize the full implications of exponential growth.  To predict the next 15 years, humans naturally look to the 15 years previous.  The technological progress between 1995-2010 has been incredible, but the technological progress between 2010-2025 will be orders of magnitude greater. Fifteen years worth of progress leading up to the present will be achieved again in just a year or two.

The second fundamental issue tainting future predictions is the inability to separate current limitations from inherent limitations.  Stoll considers, for instance, that message boards in 1995 lacked organization and contained masses of data which were difficult to effectively navigate.  He considered this to be an inherent problem with the internet as a phenomenon when it turned out to be a short-term limitation easily overcome by search engines and emergent patterns from chaotic systems.  Stoll also dismissed the prospects of e-commerce, saying:

We’re promised instant catalog shopping–just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month?

Stoll mistook then current usage of the internet for commerce for a permanent pattern.  Although this flaw is easy to spot in retrospect, it runs rampant in today’s predictions about tomorrow.  In the field of artificial intelligence, critics use old or current examples to refute future potential.  They may something like, “no computer we have today can perform this task like a human can.”  They are falling for the same fallacy that Stoll did fifteen years ago, and they are failing to recognize the exponential growth in the industry.

The last fundamental problem that undermines predictions like those of Stoll is the mischaracterization of “human nature.”  Stoll could not believe that humans, as social creatures, could adapt to life in cyberspace where contact with others is through a computer screen.  He labeled physical human contact as an essential component of human nature.  Perhaps human nature doesn’t change, but “human nature” changes.  That is, our definition of what traits are fundamentally human evolves over time.  Humans are in fact social creatures, but it turns out that our sociability is highly adaptive to the online world.  Instead of spending time physically interacting with others in a small geographic radius, many in the modern world opt to video-chat, Facebook, or e-mail friends from all over the world.

Each of these three fundamental errors present in Stoll’s article from the 90’s exists today.  Techno-critics fall for the same fallacies over and over.  Meanwhile, technology continues to grow exponentially, advances overcome temporary barriers, and people adapt.

Some philosophers took Heisenberg’s principle too far, claiming that it represented the fundamental epistemological gap inherent in all pursuits.  The principle has been invoked countless times as non-scientists criticize the efforts of scientists to explain the universe.  The non-scientists disparage the scientific attempts to explain the universe through the scientific method because their efforts seem ultimately futile.  These philosophers started with a good point, but took it too far.

It is worthwhile and even amusing to point out some apparent barriers that exist to knowledge.  An analogous barrier is David Hume’s critique of causality, which says that causality cannot be directly observed, only inferred from the observation of discrete events.  Hume’s critique can be taken too far by those detached from reality – or obsessed with the purely abstract world – who say something like “we can never know that A caused B.”  In a pure sense, they may be correct, but it is not important.  Under the right conditions, it can be inferred with an extremely high degree of certainty that A caused B.  At such high degrees of certainty, the philosophical critique vanishes.

Any time a barrier appears in a given scientific field, scientists race toward it.  Barriers like these are usually not practical barriers, but essentially abstract barriers.  A barrier to 100% certainty is no real barrier when it is possible to achieve 99.999…% certainty.

Just as the original Heisenberg limit has implications beyond subatomic physics, so does the fact that we are approaching the theoretical limit.  Science does not give up because a limit appears on the horizon.  It marches right up to any limits, and frequently tears them down eventually.  Anyway, from up close these limits do not appear as daunting as they do from a distance.  Each step of progress answers some questions, opens up new avenues for inquiry, and makes our picture of the universe a little bit clearer.

The way in which this suit arose is somewhat perplexing, as the school’s counsel said in response (PDF) to a CLS demand letter (PDF).  Although the CLS evidently complied with the open membership policy for years, it suddenly decided to amend its bylaws to exclude potential members who do not adhere to an “orthadox” interpretation of the national CLS’ Statement of Faith (below), which includes conservative views condemning homosexuality and the support of homosexuality. The school then refused to recognize or fund the student group, although it did offer the use of its facilities if the group wished to be organized separately from the university.

Trusting in Jesus Christ as my Savior, I believe in:

• One God, eternally existent in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.
• The Deity of our Lord, Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary; His vicarious death for our sins through which we receive eternal life; His bodily resurrection and personal return.
• The presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the work of regeneration.
• The Bible as the inspired Word of God.

The CLS chapter wants to be able to exclude members who “engage in homosexual conduct or adhere to the viewpoint that homosexual conduct is not sinful.”  The initial point of clash is that the university nondiscrimination policy conflicts with the national CLS organization’s constitution.  The more substantive conflict is over the First Amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Several elements of the First Amendment are involved in this case.  The CLS chapter claims that the nondiscrimination policy violates the CLS’s rights to freedom of religion, free speech, and free association (and the right not to associate); the school argues that granting an exemption to a religious group would violate the establishment clause.

The District Court shot down each of the CLS’s arguments in its order for summary judgment (PDF), and the Ninth Circuit affirmed with just a short memorandum opinion (PDF):

The parties stipulate that Hastings imposes an open membership rule on all student groups-all groups must accept all comers as voting members even if those individuals disagree with the mission of the group. The conditions on recognition are therefore viewpoint neutral and reasonable.  AFFIRMED.

It has been long established that a university organization cannot be denied funding because of the opinions it advocates, regardless of how deplorable or unusual they may be.  This is where the fundamental misunderstanding of the CLS chapter lies.  Their funding denial did not result from the opinions of the group, but the discriminatory practices.  Viewpoint discrimination occurs when the government targets particular views taken by speakers on a subject. But the lower courts found that Hastings did not exclude the CLS because it is a religious group or because it expresses religious opinions, but rather because it refused to adhere with the school’s nondiscrimination policy which is imposed on all student organizations.

The tension between anti-discrimination and religiously-motivated discrimination has been demonstrated in numerous recent court cases.  Conservative Christians interpret decisions favoring anti-discrimination policies to be “attacks” on Christianity itself, which is perplexing.  Our society has visited the anti-discrimination vs. discrimination battle before, and the conflict is well resolved.  The injection of religious motivation changes the nature of the discrimination, but not enough that we are likely to turn around on the fundamental question.  Even though the Supreme Court is one of the most conservative modern courts to sit, this case should still be decided in favor of the university and its nondiscrimination policy.