No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session. – Gideon J. Tucker
One week ago, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (a Democrat from Nevada) made a speech in which he “called on” Nevada to outlaw prostitution; the story broke in the Las Vegas Sun but was quickly spread everywhere, and by the next morning probably half of my regular readers had alerted me to it (for which I thank all of you; please don’t ever hesitate to send me interesting links!). At first I didn’t really see what I might say about the story; after all, in the current viciously prohibitionist climate a politician’s making such asinine comments isn’t exactly unusual. But then I ran into a few other stories and started thinking about the Reid affair in light of them, and my ensuing thoughts gave me something worth writing about. First of all, for my international readers and those Americans who somehow missed it, here are the highlights of the story:
Senator Harry Reid on Tuesday [February 22nd] called for “an adult conversation” about prostitution in Nevada, saying it is an impediment to economic development because it discourages businesses from moving here. “Nevada needs to be known as the first place for innovation and investment – not as the last place where prostitution is still legal,” he said in a speech to the Nevada Legislature. Reid told the assembled lawmakers that he met recently with a group of business leaders who run data centers for technology companies. They visited Storey County in search of a new location for their businesses but “one of the businessmen in that meeting told me he simply couldn’t believe that one of the biggest businesses in the county he was considering for his new home was legal prostitution.” He said he has talked to families who “don’t want their children to look out of a school bus and see a brothel.”
“We should do everything we can to make sure the world holds Nevada in the same high regard you and I do,” Reid continued. “If we want to attract business to Nevada that puts people back to work, the time has come for us to outlaw prostitution.” The industry had been warned that Reid would call for an end to legalized prostitution, which is allowed only in the state’s rural counties…Legislative leaders were not pleased at the prospect of the leading Democrat in the U.S. Senate floating legalized prostitution as a key issue for them to confront. Some questioned the timing of his call, coming as the state grapples with a massive budget deficit and record unemployment. If Reid believes prostitution gives Nevada enough of a black eye that business won’t relocate here, some wondered, why then would he create a circus-like spectacle by mentioning the topic and attracting national attention to it.
While Reid’s remarks were the primary focus of the media and others in attendance, he only spent a few paragraphs on the topic in an eight-page speech. Reaction to Reid’s remarks was mixed, with most elected officials saying any decision on whether to ban it is best left to the rural counties…
Apparently, Senator Reid is woefully ignorant of both history and international law; he claims that Nevada is “the last place where prostitution is still legal,” when in actuality the United States is practically the last place in the Western world where prostitution is still illegal. He also displays his moral imbecility by arguing that overprotective parents’ “right” to keep their kids in ignorance about sex actually trumps others’ civil right to work in the job of their choice. But for politicians moral imbecility is practically a given, and his ignorance of the world outside U.S. borders obviously doesn’t extend to politics: Reid knew full well that his ridiculous suggestion would be greeted with all the warm acceptance alcohol prohibitionists might expect at a brewery, but his comments weren’t for their benefit; rather, they were intended to appeal to neofeminists, religious fanatics and all the other undesirables currently following the prohibitionist bandwagon. After all, his party was considerably weakened in the last election and it needs all the money and support it can get. There’s a name for shamelessly catering to other’s desires and emotional needs in exchange for money, but I don’t think I need to say it; instead, I’ll call your attention to the definition of the word “hypocrisy” instead.
Reid’s proposal hasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell of going anywhere, nor does this recent bill from Georgia state representative Bobby Franklin (a Republican with degrees in Bible Study and Business Administration); Franklin proposes that women should get the death penalty for miscarriages if they cannot prove they didn’t cause them on purpose. The following is paraphrased from an article which appeared in Mother Jones on February 23rd:
Georgia State Representative Bobby Franklin, who has proposed a host of bizarre laws in the past, has introduced a bill that would criminalize miscarriages and make abortion in Georgia completely illegal. Both “crimes” would be potentially punishable by death: any “prenatal murder”, including “human involvement” in a miscarriage, would be a felony and carry a penalty of life in prison or death. Women who miscarry would be forced to prove that there was “no human involvement whatsoever in the causation” of their miscarriage or be found guilty of the new crime, and there is no definition of what “human involvement” means; this is hugely problematic as medical doctors do not know exactly what causes most miscarriages.
Perhaps a quarter of all pregnancies spontaneously terminate, and the actual number may be much higher because many miscarriages occur so early that a woman doesn’t even know she’s pregnant. The bill thus holds women criminally liable for a natural, common biological process and demands they protect embryos (redefined in the law as “fetuses”) from “the moment of conception,” despite the fact that pregnancy tests aren’t accurate until at least three weeks after conception. Unless Franklin (who is not a health professional) invents a revolutionary intrauterine conception alarm system, it’s unclear how exactly the state of Georgia would enforce that rule other than holding all possibly-pregnant women under lock and key.
The bill also contends that Georgia is exempt from upholding Supreme Court decisions like Roe v. Wade because the Constitution’s Article I only governs five crimes (counterfeiting, piracy, high seas felonies, offenses against the law of nations and treason), and since murder is not one of those five crimes, it should be solely governed by the state. Furthermore, it mandates that doctors must at least attempt to save both mother and fetus even in situations where doing so is impossible, and redefines medical terminology by designating all zygotes, embryos, and concepti as fetuses and the latter as persons no matter what the level of development.
But I still didn’t really know what to do with these stories until I read this partisan rant from U.S. Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York, in which she tries to pretend that the current rash of misogynistic rhetoric and legislation is somehow the fault of those evil Republicans. Obviously she missed the speech made by Senator Reid, a Democrat, and the fact that the other U.S. senator from Nevada, a Republican, disagreed with him. No, Representative Maloney, this isn’t all your supposed political opponents’ fault: it’s yours. You and every other legislator of both sexes at every level of government, no matter which half of the Big Government Party you belong to, have by your constant marginalization and social castration of male Americans created a vast reservoir of resentment toward women that will not remain dammed up forever, and is in fact beginning to seep out in the new attacks on women’s rights from BOTH sides of the aisle. By decades of expanding government control and weakening civil rights you and your kind have established the precedent that the government can brutally repress the individual in almost any way it likes, and by allowing legislatures to redefine everything from tomatoes to rape you have set the precedent the new Georgia bill follows; if an adolescent can be defined as a child or a rational adult woman as an incompetent ward of the state, how is defining a zygote as a fetus or a fetus as a citizen any different?
Superb picture of Reid. It really captures the core of his message to those of us aren’t members of the ruling class.
Yeah, when I came across that one I couldn’t resist. 😉
You will get one flavor of misogyny from Democrats, and another flavor from Republicans. Yes, the two parties are far too much alike, but if you want to influence them, you need to learn the differences.
For instance, I wouldn’t have said anything about workers’ rights if I’d been writing to a Republican about this. I’d’ve said something about government interference in private business.
I’m looking at this as a blessing in disguise (cuz I’m weird like that). I bet those ol neo-feminists are really getting their panties in wad reading the interviews that they are doing with the working girls there who say “Hey, leave us alone. We are here because we want to be, etc”.
I just hope that those with some power are paying attention to the public opinion (in the form of comments left after several of the Harry Reid stories) that are saying to leave it alone, it’s safer for both the lady and the customer, and that it should be legalized and taxed everywhere or at the very least be on a county by county basis as opposed to a state law. It brings in much needed revenue to the poor counties.
Imho, both major political parties are just different sides of the same counterfeit coin. And, wing nuts are perched on all sides of the political spectrum. Every politician panders to their base and totally disregards what is good for the nation because the only thing each one is concerned about it their reelection and to be able to continue to feed at the public trough. By the way, I am not cynical….lol. New Zealand, all the Way; Decriminalization is Here to Stay.
Great anaysis and commentary, Maggie. We need a candidate like you for President!
When I lived in Nevada I visited several brothels (according to my guidebook there aren’t many), and they were all small businesses in the middle of nowhere.
Here in Europe children ride by streetwalkers in the city every day, but there is no epidemic of little girls saying “I want to be a prostitute when I gow up.” Just as driving by Catholic churches doesn’t result in an epidemic of little girls saying “I want to be a nun when I grow up.”
Yikes! I’d never accept the job of US President; there’s not enough power to really change the system in it. For me it would have to be Dictatrix or nothing, so I could quickly dismantle huge blocks of federal law and amend the constitution to ensure that the massive federal bureaucracy couldn’t be simply re-established after my eventual assassination by the collectivists. 🙁
Ah, but most Europeans don’t believe in sex rays as Americans do.
Even the indoctrination of catechism doesn’t persuade most girls to join a convent.
At least some Europeans still have a sense of humor about sex. Recently a student (just turned 10) was puzzling over the Immaculate Conception, so her teacher asked her: “And what was her husband, Joseph, doing all the time while Mary was being an immaculate virgin?”
The anxiety over “bad influences” is an obvious reflection of the traditional terror of female sexuality. Despite the assurances of anti-sex educators who claim kids have “no interest” in sex, many people secretly assume that most girls will become sluts or sex maniacs if they have half an excuse.
But wherever sex education and childhood sex play are tolerated, the empirical evidence does not confirm the fears of traditional parents.
I have a great deal of trouble trusting anyone who actually wants to be President. First of all, I don’t think for a minute that anyone who has actually become President in the last century was motivated by “a calling to public service”. They’re in it for their own egos.
It’s a terrible job with huge responsibilities and very little compensation. And, essentially every President enlarges government control over the population. To me, that means they leave the country in worse shape than they found it. Not much of a claim to fame.
I totally agree. I feel that anyone who would voluntarily seek public office should be permanently barred from it. 🙁
Indeed, government is one of those ‘necessary evils’ that we can’t do without, but then it has this tendency to grow that apparently cannot be curtailed. The American Founding Fathers were aware of that, and come up with some great ideas about how to make that at least unlikely, but one has to admit they haven’t been successful.
On the one hand, there is the tendency by government officials to accept more power — the ego trip: the more power I have, the more agency I have, the better I feel about myself; I Am In Control. On the other hand, there is the tendency from the people to hold the government responsible for everything, leading to outrageous demands that this or that problem be legislated against. The two legs of a pair of scissors; what can they do together but cutting?
In design space, it would seem that popular democracy is not an evolutionarily stable strategy. But, as Churchill pointed out, all other systems are even worse. A Dictatrix as good as Maggie would soon be followed by a bad one, just as Marcus Aurelius was by Commodus…
“Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.” – James Madison
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury.” – Alexander Tytler
People talk a lot about democracy, but forget that democracy is only one of the founding principles of the American Experiment. The other biggie is liberty.
While democracy institutes the rule of the majority, liberty means that the minority, including that smallest minority of all, the individual, has rights which the majority must simply deal with. It means that if I want to worship Great Googlimoogli, I get to worship Great Googlimoogli, even if every single solitary other person in the country utterly HATES that particular choice. Tough.
Considering how democracy and liberty are such polar opposites, it’s a wonder we’ve lasted as long as we have, and that we do as well as we do.
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!” – Benjamin Franklin
The problem seems to be that, if you don’t have democracy, what you usually have is political power in the hands of some group — and they don’t like liberty when it goes against their interests. The King was never a friend of liberty, nor the First Secretary, nor the Lord Protector.
Despite all the troubles of democracy, and despite its curious opposition to liberty, it still seems that liberty does better in democratic regimes than in other ones. That is indeed a curious paradox: if democracy is really opposed to liberty (seen as the right of the individual as opposted to the majority), why is it that liberty fares worse in non-democratic governments than it does in democratic ones? Why is it that the King ends up destroying the liberties that the Nobles got in their last agreement as quickly as he can — while it at least takes longer in democracies?
The answer seems to be that in a ‘perfect’ democracy no group gets too powerful, so there’s always group A to defend liberty from attacks by group B (and then group B to defend liberty from attacks by group A). In other words, democracy is more chaotic, and more things can happen (there are fewer constraints) than in more ‘managed’ regimes, where the options are fewer. Or so it seems to me.
There’s something much better than democracy: A minimalist republic with a strong constitution which strictly enumerates the powers of the government, and has a separation of powers with at least one branch which is installed for life (with provision for removal in case of gross incompetence) so as to be above politics. The citizenry must be armed, and the vote earned by some specific criterion (completing a term of service, reaching an advanced age, etc) with the constitutional provision that voters do not have the ability to restrict the rights of non-voters. That’s vastly better than democracy, and tends to work until it’s undermined by amending or interpreting the constitution into meaninglessness.
Any real-life examples? As far as I can see, it would be as pervious as any other form of government to the ‘granularity’ and infinite detailedness of life — always coming up with ‘special cases’ under which the provisions of the current system must ‘be extended’ to ‘deal with this new problem’.
The problem with the strict enumeration of the powers of government (which the American Constitution also attempted) is that it is ultimately written in language, and reality usually escapes language by coming up with situations that weren’t really intended but do fit (or fail to fit) the definitions. Plus of course the matter of interpretations of the wordings.
I could imagine the branch installed for life moving in the direction of accumulating more power (it would have more experience than the others, since it is there for life). We actually had such a thing in Brazil till 1889 (the emperor was supposed to yield the ‘Moderator Power’ — independent from Executive, Legislative and Judiciary). The second emperor (Pedro II) already tried to make it into an instrument for manipulating congress, actually with success.
The provision that voters couldn’t restrict the rights of non-voters could probably be misinterpreted (deliberately or not) to mean what it doesn’t — by claiming that restricting their rights is actually helping them (as the antis do when they claim that their rescue work helps prostitutes since prostitutes are all trafficked victims, etc.). Also, if citizens can all be armed, it probably would be a matter of time for armed non-voting citizens to start demanding / actively fighting for the right to vote. They could always pull some “oppression” out of their asses to justify that if need be.
I don’t think the problem with democracy is really who (and how many) gets to vote — Athene (and Rome) restricted the vote in a number of ways that nobody would accept today, so that actually only a fraction of native-born residents could vote; still they had all the problems of a democracy. My impression is that the problem of democracy (as is often the case) is the same as its main virtue: its inherent chaos. Many things can happen that don’t happen in more restrictive regimes — both good and bad. One ends up depending on luck (or statistics) for the good things to outnumber the bad things.
By the way, do you think American democracy has ‘already failed’ — i.e. the country will only go downhill? Or do you think it is ‘going to fail’ or ‘about to fail’? (In my circle of friends opinions are divided.) If it has already failed, do you have an opinion about when this happened? Which event derailed it? Or was it more of a gradual (d)evolution?
No political system is perfect; they all devolve into either chaos or tyranny. That’s why it is so absolutely vital Man expand to the stars; once we can expand to infinite worlds, it will be impossible for tyrants to conspire (as they do in our tiny world) to oppress the whole of humanity. The sheep who want to be led can stay safe in their nanny-states, while those of us who understand what it means to be human seek the stars. And every time a Utopia devolves into a police state as it has in America, those who value freedom can move on to another new world to try again.
As for your second post, I’ll answer your question with a question; when Romulus Augustulus was deposed by Odoacer, did he realize that future historians would mark the event as the end of the Western Roman Empire?
And every time a Utopia devolves into a police state as it has in America, those who value freedom can move on to another new world to try again.
Just mention in passing my standard “every generation thinks that this time, things are worse than ever.” With that out of the way — move on to another world or build another world. There are enough resources in the asteroid belt to build O’Neill habitats totalling over 3,000 times the surface area of the Earth. You can have a lot of freedom-seekers in that much living space, and they can be far removed in distance from each other.
Also, I love Benjamin Franklin, really I do. He fully deserves his place on the one hundred dollar bill, one of the few non-presidents to grace our money. And his quip about wolves and a lamb is cute, maybe even useful. I do note a few problems, though:
a) lambs typically outnumber wolves, so if it’s down to voting, the lambs will be fine,
b) a wolf can be armed as easily as a lamb, and can contest the vote the same way,
c) hopefully there are a few well-armed omnivores out there acting as moderators.
Again, I like Franklin too much to suggest that he go fly a kite… oh.
Indeed, I totally agree with the need to go to the stars (what SF fan wouldn’t). One wonders what a strange creature Man is, who moves forward to new areas only to succumb to the same old temptations as he strives to create a way for him and his neighbors to live in peace… As soon as things get crowded, no matter how good the initial settlers were, things also go downhill. Is it so that Man has always to leave Man in order to be Man? Can Man never be Man when Man is present?…
Ah well.
Of course, Romulus Augustulus didn’t have any thoughts on the matter (he was 10 in 475, when he became emperor of the West). (This guy, by the way, describes some interesting, non-mainstream ideas about when the Roman Empire ended; if you like alternative visions of Roman history you may find him and his sources interesting.) Nobody knows at the time (the dao that knows the dao isn’t the dao…); history is only known in hindsight (which has some interesting philosophical consequences). I just wondered if you thought things had already gone bad sufficiently long ago that it was already obvious. (I remember reading a blog whose author agrees with you on many respects, and who thought after the Civil War there no longer was hope of saving the American Republican experiment.)
No, men always have to leave mobs in order to be men.
I fully believe that the reason Lincoln was so troubled was that he was wise enough to realize that his cure might kill the patient. I don’t think the republic was inevitably doomed after the War Between the States, but it was started on a course from which only wise and dedicated men could have saved it. Alas, those men did not appear, and IMHO future historians will mark the United States’ entry into the First World War as the point of no return.
I’m starting to reconsider a few things about the American Civil War, but not in a way that either Southerners nor Yankees are likely to appreciate.
The more I learn about it, the worse both sides look to me. What it all boils down to is the same thing most wars throughout history were: A big, nasty pissing contest between two groups who were each claiming the right to oppress and control another group.
I’m going to make a Dictator List: the things I would do before retiring. A few Constitutional amendments, a boatload of laws struck down, and some new laws stuck in to limit the gub’mint’s power to strike down my stuff — that should do it.
At least for the next century. After that is anybody’s guess.
“Nevada needs to be known as the first place for innovation and investment – not as the last place where prostitution is still legal”
This is from his website, the usual anti-business democratic rhertoric:
“It also created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which is an independent watchdog, housed at the Federal Reserve, with the authority to ensure American consumers get the clear, accurate information they need to shop for mortgages, credit cards, and other financial products, and protect them from hidden fees, abusive terms, and deceptive practices.”
So Harry Reid needs to decide whether businesses are immoral profit seekers or not, because if they are, then Nevada’s prostitution laws won’t matter a damn to them.
“I’d like to locate my next factory in Nevada: the sort of workforce I need already lives there, the tax structure is to my liking, not too many regulations of the sort that are expensive to my sort of product, and the dry climate will save me a percent or so in the specialized assembly rooms. Whazzat? Legal prostitution in a few counties? Well, screw profit, I’m going somewhere else!”
I’m sure I sound like a true (weekend) Nevadan when I ask: what are the odds of that?
So, you don’t think that credit has been offered with hidden fees, abusive terms, or deceptive practices? Even if you don’t, I don’t see the relevance here, at all.