General
I had a nice weekend in Berkeley and also at Biella's reading group (which Biella herself unfortunately couldn't attend). And my arms didn't hurt much over the weekend.
On Sunday, I attended Kate's graduation in the Greek Theatre, in the rain. All the speakers there referred to it, and it was very difficult for anyone attending to forget about it. (The rain has come and gone since then, at least back here in San Francisco.) I also met some of Kate's family and friends, including her sister, with whom I have several common interests and with whom I also recited Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky".
It's eerie to read a magazine directed at members of Congress, and I've already said so here, but I'll say so again. I'm used to advertising which wants its readers money, not advertising which seeks political advantage. The advertisers in magazines aimed at politicians are often supporting or opposing particular legislation, and frequently legislation or political programs in which they have a direct financial interest. (For example, ETS will endorse standardized testing, and Boeing will endorse a "national missile defense" system.)
It's usually difficult for political power to avoid rubbing me the wrong way, but this certainly rubs me the wrong way. Maybe we need a lobbying organization which can go to Washington and lobby against Realpolitik and log-rolling. (Some readers might remember the "Abolish Public Policy" joke, an elaboration of earlier self-referential political jokes with an edge to them.)
Oh, yeah: one of my old biases is to believe and expect that legislation is moral expression, so that people with different political beliefs all make some kind of intuitive sense to me if they talk about their opinions for or against legislation (in particular or in general) in terms of right and wrong. But when you talk to or listen to people who actually "do politics" -- engage regularly and directly with legislative politics in ways which are most often understood to be effective -- it doesn't seem that there is any moral expression going on. There are only interests. (Corporate lobbying makes this plainest, because of the incessant reference to balance of trade, balance of payments, relative contribution to the economy.)
My joke "8/VSB is not a crime" (I actually considered registering "8vsbisnotacrime.org") goes to the heart of this for me. Many well-paid and intelligent people are now writing legislation to control the manufacture of 8/VSB demodulators. There was never any suggestion that 8/VSB demodulators are wicked or evil, or that their manufacture is in some sense wrong. In fact, hundreds of entities are manufacturing 8/VSB demodulators today -- literally by the millions -- and nobody would dream of suggesting that any of these entities are thereby doing anything wrong, or harming anybody, or infringing anybody's rights.
8/VSB is a straightforward technical standard (about as neutral as we could imagine a technical standard being, I'd say, from what I know of it). It's verging on pure mathematics in places. The manufacture of 8/VSB modulators and demodulators is routine today.
But it's possible that in a year this same activity will be a criminal violation of a paracopyright law (and almost all these manufacturers, having received advance notice, will have made their 8/VSB demodulators Robust, or issued certifications of compliance to protect themselves).
And in that change there is no suggestion that any sort of moral truth will have been discovered or revealed or announced, or that any sort of moral progress or social progress will have been achieved, or that anyone will have learned anything or become any wiser. There is no suggestion that an existing wrong will have been detected and exposed and punished, or that a terrible practice will have been thwarted. None of these things is in any sense the aim of the proposed legislation. It will rather be that several interests have made a deal, and, much as courts will often lend the force of an Order to a stipulation between parties, the legislature may also lend the force of an Act to a stipulation among these interests.
Maybe this seems particularly stinging to me because I can remember a time in my life when I really thought that legislation was really supposed to be about right and wrong. It's clear enough that it can't determine right and wrong, or pre-empt the individual conscience, but it still seems that many people labor under the assumption that legislators as a group are regularly trying to engage in moral expression. I have even seen serious philosophers take up the cause of this claim, that legislators are actually doing so, and that their Acts should actually be interpreted in this way.
There is a famous saying attributed to Bismarck about laws and sausages; it survives in several variants. Most of them suggest that people who like laws and sausages shouldn't watch how either one is made -- that observing the making of laws and sausages would cause a loss of enthusiasm for them. So not long ago I was sitting in a group of people who were busy writing a law, and one of them alluded to Bismarck's saying, not disapprovingly. This was as if to say: Disrespect us, we are doing something disreputable, we are showing and confirming that legislation is about power, we are undermining the faith of you who are unfortunate enough to have to observe what we are doing.
I called out "I wonder where we will find our Upton Sinclair!" but received no answer.
Stephen Jay Gould has died at sixty.
