We have an outstanding military force comprised of the finest Americans this country has seen in generations.

Now I think that the idea of comparing generations of people is rather silly. Of course there are generalizations that can be made – Gen Y is more confident than the equivalent group from the Great Depression, for example, and probably has higher expectations that can appear (rightly or wrongly) to be selfishness – but to say that one generation is ‘better’ than another when they’ve lived in such different worlds is ‘a hiding to nothing’ as my grandmother would mysteriously say.

But just for the sake of argument, let’s look at this assertion. Note first, these aren’t some of the finest Americans, these aren’t heroes that would rank alongside the greatest we’ve seen; these are the finest.

So let’s go back 3 generations (the minimum I think ‘generations’ would cover). That gets us to the end of the Second World War, and men like Beauford T Anderson, who threw mortar shells at advancing Japanese forces to successfully hold his position single-handedly. Men like Thomas A Baker who, too wounded to continue after a night filled with heroism, asked to be propped against a tree with a pistol containing 8 rounds. The following morning he was found dead, still seated and with 8 dead Japanese soldiers in front of him. Or men like Charles Joseph Berry, who threw himself an a hand grenade to save his comrades.

Skipping forwards we have Tibor Rubin, who during the Korean war held a hill without support for 24 hours against overwhelming enemy force (and that was only one of three reasons given in his Medal of Honor citation). William G. Windrich died as a result of injuries received and the cold, having repeatedly declined treatment so that he could fight with and direct his men in battle.

In Vietnam, among many heroes, James Anderson Jr, Richard A Anderson, John P Baca, Jedh C Barker, Peter S Connor, Michael J Fitzmaurice, Robert H Jenkins Jr, David P Nash, Laszlo Rabel, Hecto Santiago-Colon, and Russell A Steindam were just some of the men who threw themselves on grenades to protect the men around them.

In 1993 Gary I Gordon and Randall D Shughart volunteered to walk into the chaos of Magadishu to protect a downed aircrew, and paid the ultimate price.

The men and women who serve today are ordinary people who have it within themselves to rise to extraordinary heights. I unhesitatingly admire them for their service, regardless of my views on the war they fight. But the men I listed here, amongst thousands of others, stood tall in Hell. To suggest that they aren’t the equal of today’s soldiers is as grave an insult as I can imagine.

To view the maps go to the palette bar thingy on the left of Google Earth, then under ‘Layers’ choose ‘Featured Content’, ‘Rumsey Historical Maps’ and take your pick. As you’re zooming around be patient – the progress indicator at the bottom of the app seems to say 100% some time before the maps show their full detail.

Now suppose they had thrown Foley, a gay representitive, under the bus at that time with no evidence of a crime. The lefties would have been all over “those Homophobic Republicans.” Now, a year later, as soon as evidence of a crime appears Foley is confronted and resigns. The cry is, “They were hiding it until after the election! Hastert should resign!”

No, Hastert did his job correctly. The scandal casts Foley in a bad light.

Partially correct. If Hastert had proceeded by saying “Look at Foley, he’s a big sweaty gay come to corrupt our children, can’t you see the gay dripping from him?” I think the Left would have protested. If, on the other hand, he’d made discrete inquiries about the issue, perhaps speaking to some former Pages who may have felt able to speak freely about what happened, I don’t think there would have been an outcry. Even if he had gone public, announcing that accusations had been made that were serious enough to warrant a full investigation, though he remained firmly supportive of his good friend Rep. Foley, I think there would have been little basis for complaint. But instead, as Marty phrases it, “he told Foley to knock it off.” I’m no expert, but “Please don’t be a pedophile” doesn’t strike me as being tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime.

Now for the more general critique, where Marty quotes from RealClearPolitics:

“Scandal? Disgrace? I think not. Foley and others could only be so labeled if popular culture condemned, rather than promoted, immorality. Oh, sorry, there I go again, appealing to a discarded standard.”

This is based on the Christian (and some other religion’s) argument that morality is meaningless without reference to (a) God; that there is no action you can describe that can be said to be moral or otherwise without first understanding what (a) God would teach on that action. I don’t wish to debate this point – you either agree with it or you don’t, and my attempts to highlight its strengths or flaws won’t change that. But it simply does not apply here. Immorality isn’t a single entity, so popular culture cannot be said to promote or condemn it. Certainly there are things that Christians find immoral that popular culture promotes (such as casual sex), and things that I find immoral (such as the subjugation of women, which certain forms of Christianity also promote, ah the irony). But neither popular culture nor society as a whole support the idea of a 50-something man having sex with children, and to suggest otherwise is so ridiculous as to suggest some kind of brain damage.

Don’t take my word for it – ask around your place of work and try to find anyone who thinks it’s OK. Whether you work at the 7/11 or a Hollywood studio the answer will be the same. The only exception would be if I have readers who work at the execrable ManBoyLove organization, which I doubt (I’m not sure that’s its correct title, but I’m damn sure I’m not googling for it.) And they only further my point, because they’re about as far from popular culture or societal norms as it is possible to get.

All of us are, of course, free to follow a group morality or our very own invention. The choice will certainly have consequences in this world, and depending on your faith may in the next world too. Foley’s consequences now include disgrace and humiliation. Hastert and several others in the Republican leadership who appear to think that investigating credible evidence of a pedophile in your midst isn’t worth the trouble deserve nothing less.

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Addendum: I could quote approvingly from pretty much this entire piece at WorldNetDaily, which I can’t imagine being able to say about anything else they’ve ever published. Worth a read to see a sane view from the far Right.

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Update: Looks like it might be the fault of all those nasty horrible gays after all. Of course.

Though for extra credit, a) notice the use of the word tool, and b) why is the man rubbing it on his nose?

Hundreds of worms had arranged themselves like discarded g-strings along the bike path, and using the little-known law of cycling physics known as ‘sucking’, my wheels were, shamingly, drawn to almost all of them. In my defence it wasn’t all my fault; many of the bewildered Lumbricidae, driven insane by the seemingly endless tarmac (crawl across, across, not along!) hurled themselves into my path like strands of segmented pasta abandoning a baby’s fork. Yet the guilt, it weighs heavy upon me, and so I must sneak into the office Mother’s Room for a quick lie down. I shall return.

Side note: I salute the author of the following snippet:

It is a commonly held belief that if you chop a worm in half you will end up with two live worms. This is not true. If you chop a worm in half it is possible that one half may recover and heal but you are most likely to end up with two halves of a dead worm.

I fear that the line between these two states is vanishingly small, in fact so small as to display quantum physics-like properties, in that the act of observation causes it to change. Certainly we have no way of knowing when we are at the line, only when we have passed it. Unfortunately I suspect it does not have one of the key characteristics of quantum physics, namely the quanta. While light can only present itself in discreet units, the demarcation line for too much or not enough is measured in fractions. For example, were we hovering on the insufficient side of the line, the purchase of a short-sleeved T-shirt may still leave us lagging our desired goal, while the accrual of the same T-shirt with long sleeves would push us beyond the mark. Staying with our physics theme, I suspect further that the apparel boundary exhibits signs of radioactive decay; what yesterday was a surfeit of choice becomes tomorrow’s barren wasteland of sartorial options.

Naturally I have a solution for this problem: The regular purchase of small quantities of extremely skimpy foundationwear. Allowing for very fine adjustments of our position (see the rich bounty of double entendres I leave for you to pick up!) relative to the feast/famine fashion line, but regular top-ups will help keep us there over time. You may easily think I have my own motives for such an arrangement, but I hope that reflection on the argument laid out above will convince you that I am thinking only of my dear spouse’s emotional wellbeing.

And I leave you with a new phrase for the fashion physicists out there: The Apparel Boundary, being that point at which one has sufficient clothing to make a suitable choice for all ocassions, while not so much as to overwhelm.

Whatever the truth in this spat (which seem to revolve around the meaning of the word ‘support’), I was intrigued by the Bush ad’s description of the idea. I forget the exact word used, but it was something like ‘kooky’ or ‘wacky’ or ‘weird’ . Whatever, the implication was clearly that this was such a far-out, stupid idea that just thinking about it shows a deep character flaw or reckless stupidity.

So, is it really such an unthinkable idea? 300 million Europeans tolerate it, even if they’re not particularly happy with it. That doesn’t make it a great idea, and indeed it could even be a bad idea, but it’s not freakishly outlandish.

Perhaps it’s the size of the tax burden that would be created? The existing tax is 18.4 cents per gallon (a spuriously precise number, incidentally; presumably 18 cents was laughably inadequate, but 19 cents was an egregious burden?). Adding 50 cents would give us an average gas price at the moment of around $2.30, of which 68.4 cents, or a shade under 30%, is tax. A 30% tax rate is clearly higher than almost any basic sales tax throughout the world, but apart from being lower than the gas tax in many other countries, it’s also lower than the two higher tax bands in the US. If it’s so ridiculous to tax gas, a convenience, at that level, how much worse is it to tax income, the thing that provides food warmth and shelter, at even higher rates? Obviously the Republicans (and perhaps even the Democrats) don’t like those high rates, but they’re not actually risible.

The only thing left is the size of the increase, and this brings us to the crux of the argument. An increase of that size, in isolation, is a big deal. If anything gets increased four-fold, even a good thing (“I’m going to quadruple your allowance!”), we are naturally suspicious, because things don’t naturally change that much. And without context all we’re left with is that unnatural change.

The particular context of Kerry’s support is irrelevant; he could have supported it to pay for more teachers, or to cut income taxes, or even just to stick it to SUV drivers. The important thing is that it had a reason, and when a change has a reason it generally becomes, by definition, reasonable. Not necessarily a good idea, and perhaps even an awful idea, but at least worthy of debate.

Bush’s ad doesn’t provide that back story, and it’s not his job to do so. But its omission creates an easy target for him to attack, and for the voting masses to get incensed over, without ever having to think about what it means. Unfortunately the hundreds of millions of dollars the candidates will raise or have spent for them will be used largely to propagate just this kind of mindless, knee-jerk reaction; it doesn’t cost 200 million dollars per side to run a series of one-on-one debates. Both parties will be equally guilty of this (the Democratic side is running an ad with the tagline “Shouldn’t America be his top priority?”, which is every bit as dishonest as the Republican attacks). All that would be distressing enough, if it weren’t for the fact that so many of the people who aren’t already hard-wired to vote Republican or Democrat, come what may, will vote according to the ads, not the ideas.

Let’s ignore for a moment what government is, and look instead at what we might like it to be. Clearly there are dozens of different issues we could argue about here, but I’m particularly interested in how decisions should be classified. Let’s say that government faces two kinds of issues; things that can be managed, and things that just are. Any issue can then be placed in to one of these two camps:

“The sky is blue” – thing that just is
“Homelessness” – thing that can be managed
“Cheese” – thing that just is
“Global Thermonuclear War” – thing that can be managed

See how easy that was? It seems fairly obvious, given this distinction, that government should deal with ‘things that can be managed’, and leave ‘things that just are’ alone. The problem with the current treatment of gay marriage (or rather, one of the problems) is that those involved portray marriage as something that just is, but want to legislate it as a thing that can be managed.

Putting aside their religious arguments for a moment (because that’s not what government is supposed to be about), proponents state that marriage is one of our most enduring and fundamental institutions. If that is the case then it’s ‘a thing that just is’, and shouldn’t be legislated on. This is in part the point that Nick makes. Not legislating in this area doesn’t mean the status quo, it means removing the 1,138 different benefits and protections that the government gives to married couples (no, that number isn’t made up, click here if you’re a Time subscriber for more info). We don’t provide benefits for the enduring union between a man and his dog, or a woman and her shoes, because those are ‘things that just are’. If marriage ‘just is’, then we should leave it alone.

That’s a very valid view (see this article from 7 years ago for more), but I actually prefer the alternative, which is that marriage is something that can be managed. But that alone isn’t enough to make it a thing that should be managed. For that, we need to show that there is a public interest to be served by intervening. For example, government could regulate the colour of your carpet, but it doesn’t because there isn’t a public interest inherent in your choice of floor covering. On the other hand, it does regulate the dyes used to create that colour, to prevent little Timmy from chewing on some unsavoury chemicals; a public interest served.

So to legislate marriage, we need to show why marriage is a matter of public interest. I don’t think that’s difficult to do in broad terms; children raised in a (happy) marriage tend to be more balanced, marriage increases longevity, etc. But we need to be more specific about these benefits. Are children raised in a (happy) marriage more balanced because of the stability that marriage provides, or because of the extra stuff 1,138 state benefits buys them? And by extension, are there forms of marriage (such as gay marriage) that should be excluded because they don’t bring such benefits. I suspect that it is possible to demonstrate that, in general, two parents are better than one regardless of the financial rewards of being married, but I’m struggling to understand how those two parents being of the same gender would nullify such benefits (let alone how it would destabilize society as a whole).

Once we are able to demonstrate that marriage is a benefit to society, and that this benefit is increased by providing 1,138 incentives, we should whip out the legislative pen with gusto, But until that point, trying to block some types of marriage because “we don’t do that” is both morally, and logically, wrong.