Thinly veiled...

This is really a comment riffing on (or ripping off) Sol's post, but in light of the length, I'm posting it separately.

Not that common sense needs academic verification (I beg pardon of all social psychologists among our readership), but most of the "work" done on women's rights in Islamic societies supports Sol’s view. Wearing veils of any sort is more often an expression of the wearer's agency, rather than direct imposition by another barty, notwithstanding the fact that this "choice" may reflect a desire to avoid scorn within the moral framework of a patriarchal society. The argument, thus, is that if a woman makes the choice to not be called an "exhibitionist whore," it is no less her choice.

Curiously, the Qu’ranic passage most often quoted in this debate echoes this conclusion almost explicitly. Surat Al-'Aĥzāb (33:59) states that female “believers” should draw their “jalabeeb” over themselves, “that they may be recognized and not molested.” Exactly what sort of garment would be the modern equivalent of a jalab and how much of a woman it should cover (hair, face, eyes) is a point of strong debate. Nevertheless, the passage indicates that the veil announces or even confers the social status of “believer” within a society in which non-believers do not hold the same rights.

The Qu’ran makes no provision for Muslims living outside of Islamic society, nor do the Hadith – the other primary sources of Islamic law – or the early commentators. Therefore, if we may infer that the primary function of veiling is to express one’s religious affiliation (and assumedly, pious observance), rather than to serve a religious duty in itself, the issue that rises is not one of Feminism so much as the Canadian “salad bowl” vision of immigrant culture. For the veil to serve its original social function, one must presuppose a society that recognizes Muslimhood as being more respectable than other religious affiliations.

It does seem ridiculous to legislate that a woman cannot wear something that gives her “more rights” within her own community, unless the real issue is that a separate community, with distinct moral…let’s call them “valences” for Benny…exists within the larger Canadian culture, and more importantly visibly interacts with it. If a law were made against Confucian-inspired corporal punishment within Chinese families, I think few people would complain outright, but it would be impossible to enforce – mostly because it wasn’t occurring in the public milieu of the Canadian public.

The veil sticks out like a scimitar scar on the cheek of French Canada, because it exposes that there is already a community with unequal privileges that support its assimilationist policies: bienvenue au Québec. Ignatieff’s support of the ban further indicates that his base may be facing a broader question of how many separate cultural frames the country can support before it starts to lose its strong sense of itself, especially if these frames are accompanied by expressions of cultural superiority (and unequal rights for unveiled women). (Theoretically, one could argue that the ban is Feminist not because it liberates observant Muslim women, but because it frees other women from the scorn of Muslim men by making them harder to differentiate.)

See what I did there? I conflated the superiority that veiling confers within (certain) Muslim societies with its multiple expressive uses in the Canadian context. I did it by drawing from the Qu’ran as if I could reach a privileged understanding of Islamic law from a single quote. Prime Orientalist work, you say, Mr. Said. It is, but I believe that’s the thought process that can justify such a ban, without also banning nuns' habits and priests' collars. And I believe such thinking will persist until Canada and other Anglo-European democracies can stop pretending that assimilation is not a prime concern of their respective majorities.

For a little context on the ban, glance at this article from the Gazette. Please note the part stating "10-15" women might have worn a niqab out to the polls to get an idea how urgent this legislation was. I probably see 10 niqab on a sunny bike downtown, although that's a different valence altogether..

I believe everyone here would agree with the following statement:

Telling women what they can and cannot do is anti-feminist.

In fact, it seems to me that that axiom is, at its base, the core of feminism and gender equality. It really doesn't get any simpler than that: a woman can do what she wants. But, Jean Charest and the Quebec government believe otherwise, and it has been pissing me off for some weeks now.

It started a few weeks ago when a Muslim woman was asked to leave a government sponsored French language exam unless she removed her niqab (that's the full face covering, as opposed to the hijab.) Other cases include a Muslim woman wishing to be looked after by a woman at a public health centre, and a man refusing to be served by a female employee at a public health centre wearing a head-covering. And now, the Quebec government is enacting a law that would bar face covers from all government buildings, whether on employees or customers. (A good history of the law can be found in this article.)

Now let me say something: it would make me happy if women didn't wear clothes dictated by their religions. I think fairly often it's probably someone else, male or female, who's deciding what the woman is wearing. The Charest government, however, is couching this law in bullshit terms of gender equality. Charest: you are tellling women what to do. By framing it in terms of freeing women from oppression, you're making the assumption that women are incapable of thinking for themselves, and that they have no agency at all in the decision to wear a veil. If a woman wants to veil herself, a woman can veil herself. If it's a symbol of her submission to her husband or father, well, that's a damn shame, and I hope she'll rethink her decision and position, and assert her right to be stand on equal ground. If it's a symbol of her own religious convictions, well, that's great, and she has every right to uphold those convictions so long as they don't impinge on anyone else's rights (which, when they involve an individual's clothing, they don't.) And if it's a symbol of something else entirely, whatever it is, that's her goddamn inalienable right.

I can see no reason whatsoever for a woman in a niqab to not be allowed to take a French exam. I can see infinitesimally more of a reason for a woman to not be allowed to request service from a female employee, since that would slow down general service an ever so little bit, but with equality in hiring laws, she could easily be allowed to wait until the next female employee is available. And that asshole who refused service from a veiled woman? Yeah, he's an asshole. I can't think of how the veil make services rendered by the woman any worse. When she says to say "aaah," does this guy need a goddamn demonstration? The goverment shouldn't be catering to assholes.

Thoughts?

Nancy Pelosi, Superwoman

While I will try my best to remain cautious on the hopes of HCR passing the house tomorrow, things do appear to be looking pretty good. There's a lot to be said for momentum in these kinds of situations, and while the Democrats were pretty incompetent for long stretches of last year, it's been an impressive week of headline-grabbing vote turns and big ballsy talk. This legislation will be good and helpful and corrective; maybe not the Canadian dream, but a damn sight better than what exists now, and we should, as progressive people, all be pretty happy about it. So, assuming it passes, who should we thank?

Well, Nancy Pelosi:

During a mid-February conference call with top House Democrats, Pelosi made it clear she would accept nothing short of a big-bang health care push – dismissing the White House chief of staff as an “incrementalist.”

Pelosi even coined a term to describe Emanuel’s scaled-down approach: “Kiddie Care,” according to a person privy to the call.

Pelosi’s remark was more than just a diss. It sent a clear signal to House leadership that Pelosi wouldn’t compromise – and it coincided with Obama’s own decision to renew his push for an all-encompassing bill after weeks of confusion and discussion.

In the end, Pelosi, Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) braved a political backlash to pursue comprehensive reform, green-lighting a two-step reconciliation process that requires the House to approve a Senate health bill reviled by many House Democrats.

I've been reading Path to Power over the last month, a truly excellent book on a level I can barely describe, and I just finished a chapter on Sam Rayburn. Rayburn was an ass-kicking, vote-getting, progressive-legislating machine, the kind of guy who grew up mad and populist and turned that anger into a long and worthy stream of accomplishments (he created the SEC, for example). In short, Rayburn was the kind of guy whose absence is keenly felt in an age of Democratic incompetence and spinelessness. I was talking with John Macleod about that fact, debating the reasons why there are no politicians today who are admirable both as legislators as well as humans beings. John was characteristically pessimistic, so there wasn't much in the conversation, but my thinking was that it probably has to do with the media and campaign environments as they currently exist, forcing politicians to tack to whatever extreme and intransigent opinion will generate funds and screen time.

I was even going to write a post on this, on how the new media environment has really had a negative overall effect on legislative efficiency, when I started to read about Nancy Pelosi's role in the last few months, reeling health care back in from the edge of the world. Then I got to thinking about the House over the last session, and what kind of things we've seen passed - a decent climate change bill, health care reform with a public option, the stimulus, 288 other bills the Senate has yet to act on. Nancy Pelosi is one awesome lady! She's been grinding out tons and tons of nice progressive legislation over the last year, often at great political expense, often knowing the Senate is so broken that the legislation may never even get to Obama's desk, often knowing that she is exposing a significant portion of her caucus to risky votes. No one can accuse her of not trying to take advantage of the moment, and no one can accuse her of lacking the stones to push through the reform she believes is right. So here's to Madame Speaker: if, by this time tomorrow, she's passed the Senate bill and the fixes, someone should really name a building after her.

Euro Crisis Update (Lazy Block-Quote Edition) II

...the re-updatening.

Here's that block-quote:

The IMF usually has maximal bargaining power at a country’s moment of crisis – it typically cares far less about whether the country makes it through than the country itself does, and hence can extract harsh conditions in return for aid.2 But – as we have seen with the Greek crisis – EU member states are far less able to simulate indifference when one of their own is in real trouble, both because member states are clubby, involved in iterated bargains etc, and because any real crisis is likely to be highly contagious (especially within the eurozone). In other words, the bargaining power of other EU member states (and of any purported EMF) is quite limited. If Greece really starts going down the tubes, Germany faces the unpalatable choice of either helping out or abandoning the system that it, more than any other member state, created. In short – any EMF, unlike the IMF, needs (a) to concentrate on preventing countries getting into trouble rather than dealing with them when they are already in trouble, and (b) deal with the fact that any country in trouble likely has significant clout in the architecture overseeing it.

From my sense of the EU integration process, and of the rough bargaining strengths of the actors involved, I imagine that any final bargain will emphasize forward-looking measures, which are intended to forestall problems before they arise. Unhappily for Bundesbank disciplinarians, these are likely to rely more on carrots than sticks – it is clear from previous experience with the Growth and Stability Pact that threats of harsh punishment are not sufficient to produce virtue if these threats are not credible. We can expect moderate levels of fiscal transfers (likely ratcheting up over time), aimed at helping ease the pain of adjustment, together with admonishments (and withdrawal of goodies) for those who fail to live up to their promises...So yes – the Greek crisis is plausibly a very significant step indeed in EU integration (whether for good or bad, I am not going to speculate, since even if I am right, it would depend heavily on the detail) (CrookedTimber).

In my first big post on this topic, I speculated that because the current arrangement in Europe is so unsustainable both economically or politically (Greece being the case in point), the system could only fall one of two ways: Europe will unravel or it will converge, but the middle ground can't hold any longer.

But I think I may have been wrong. For reasons relating to policy inertia, confidence in financial markets, politics, and the sheer limits of logistical implimentation, it seems like integration is a bit of a one-way street. It would be very difficult for any one actor in Europe to begin disentangling itself from the rest of the continental system, let alone to disentangle that system itself. At this point, it seems like things can only roll one way.

Couldn't have said it better

From this New Yorker piece by James Surowiecki on a tax loophole that benefits private equity fund managers to the tune of billions:

"If we were starting from scratch, after all, it seems unlikely that the Senate would choose this particular moment to pass a bill subsidizing money managers to the tune of billions of dollars a year. But, because the tax break already exists, it exerts a kind of gravitational pull that makes it hard to get rid of. In part, that’s simple economics—those who benefit from the tax break have more money to lobby for it to be kept in place. Furthermore, while the cost of subsidies is spread out among all taxpayers, the benefits are highly concentrated, so, naturally, opposition is generally diluted and diffuse while support is intense. If you work in private equity, it’s possible that nothing the government does matters more than keeping this tax break intact. And this pattern is true not just of subsidies but of government programs in general: every government action creates a constituency with an interest in keeping that action going."

Bien dit, non?

Middling thoughts for middling things

What does it mean to take the middle ground? Perusing the March 1st issue of the New Yorker, and, in what is admittedly a more pedestrian moment, on the day that I saw Shutter Island, I read a very smart piece on psycho-pharmocology by Louis Menand. The article had as its basis two recent critiques of biological psychiatry by psychologists Gary Greenberg and Irving Kirsch. Though they end up with different versions of the same prescription for the problem--Greenberg championing "existential, humanistic talk therapy," and Kirsch just the normal type--both men take aim at anti-depressants as being a fiction of drug company-marketing and therefore of no ultimate value to the sufferer of depression. Menand mentions a few more authors who corroborate their views, cites the opposing, pro-medication stance in the work of a certain Peter Kramer, and then discusses both the hype that has surrounded drugs and the axiomatic resistance they have met in other quarters.

I've had enough debates with certain individuals who we all know and love about psycho-pharmacology, enough so that I doubt anyone would be surprised at which side of the debate I fall on. I am suspicious of almost anything that is done for profit, and drastic interventions into the body and mind all the more so. My stance is of course completely one grounded in sentiment. I could not cite you any specific studies that support my view. At best, I rely on anecdotal evidence and logical argument, almost certainly drawn from an a prior distaste for healthcare as an industry.

I am not writing this, however, to open up the topic of trends in modern psychiatry. I'm reaching for something much more abstract. Menand's piece made me aware, as I often find myself being, of how attractive the middle ground is, and how widely used it is as a device of intellectual delivery. It also made me, as, again, I find myself being, profoundly suspicious. That suspicion of moderation is something I can't quite shake, and so I'm bringing it to the table for you, my peers.

I won't begin with some tired trope about spinelessness or indecision, words that are very frequently directed at moderates. My monthly quota of viperish invectices was used up on poor President Obama. What I'm curious to discuss is the powerful attraction that we all have to so-called objectivity. Menand's article demonstrates a canny fluency in exactly that genre, and so that's why I mentioned it. To better illustrate the point, I'll give you a selection from his closing paragraphs:

We are proud of our children when they learn to manage their fears and perform in public, and we feel that we would not be so proud of them if they took a pill instead, even though the desired outcome is the same. We think that sucking up, mastering our fears is a sign of character. But do we think that people who are naturally fearless lack character? We usually think the opposite. Yet those people are just born lucky. Why should the rest of us have to pay a price in dread, shame, and stomach aches to achieve a state of being that they enjoy for nothing?

Or do we resist the grief pill because we believe that bereavement is doing some work for us? Maybe we think that since we appear to have been naturally selected as creatures that mourn, we shouldn't short-circuit the process. Or is it that we don't want to be the kind of person who does not experience profound sorrow when someone we love dies? Questions like these are the reason we have literature and philosophy. No science will ever answer them.

Aside from those two, unfortunately glib sentences which conclude it, I think that this excerpt intelligently phrases some of the strongest concerns with, and arguments for, psycho-pharmacology. It gave me the best reason I can think of not to think with my gut on a subject for which I usually let my gut have a free ride. That stepping back was exactly the attractiveness I'd always found in moderation: by asking two questions with opposing answers instead of one of a preach/choir stripe, an objective writer forces us to consider an issue as if it were value-neutral. Once we've arrived at this point, it should be easier for us to evaluate the issue as if we were only interested in its best resolution.

But are there limits to the effectiveness of this device? I wonder about this more and more. Just this sort of dispassionate rationality makes me less sanguine, even leading me to raised hackles and the like. It seems that too often, objectivity is responsible for false dualism. In this regard it is almost pathological. Almost every social conflict of deep import must, now, have two sides, both of which require equal time and attention from us. Yet there must be situations--and I suspect that these come in no small number--in which there really is only one right answer, or at least, for the purposes of enacting social policy, one path which, when embraced as fully as possible, will lead to the greatest possible benefit. In the matter of financial regulation, I simply cannot see the merits of the opposed camp. Yes, there may be a case to be made that certain types of regulation will cause more harm than good, but to me that is merely a nuanced argument for public supervision--it isn't that we don't need regulation, but that we need good regulation. That suits me just fine.

The twentieth-century was probably the worst possible petri dish in which to have observed the development of strong, (semi) coherent viewpoints. Drowned by the shadow of eugenics, totalitarianism and free market dogma, it's no wonder that those of us who learn towards honest and salutary intellectual progress are loathe to raise a flag in the name of this or that robust idea. But this strong commitment to objectivity begs the question of our total flaccidity. Parliaments around the world are deadlocked; the social sciences are reduced to technocratic bickering; in short, nobody (except the most disingenuous among us) can take a stand, and all of this while enormous and sometimes disastrous social traumas pass over us, wave after wave after wave.

Are we right to fear ideology? Or, in order to maintain a workable social equilibrium, do we require it, even if we are forced to lock horns with its vilest or most misguided proponents? Is it really wrong to feel that there is a right answer, and that sometimes that answer does not demand recourse to a position of compromise?

To phrase the question in earlier terms: what am I supposed to take from Menand's article? Intelligent and well-researched though it is, I, the reader, have no idea what it means. Am I supposed to be suspicious of psycho-pharmacology, or am I supposed to understand its relative merits? Surely I benefit from acknowledging that the issue is complex, and that my gut isn't the only guide to navigating it. Yet all I know in the end is that this psychologist says this, and that one that, and here I am, high and dry, forced to rely on some ambiguous mixture of literature and science to sort out for myself what is right or wrong. Unless I dive into both spheres, I'm effectively back where I started, and I don't think I'm wrong to guess that, like me, few others would sit down with Phenomenology of the Mind and the D.S.M. and hash it out for themselves. Not every forked path can be walked both ways.

What do you think? If possible, I'd like to hear what your preferences were when reading about anything which is rent by opposites, and therefore is safest to navigate behind the edifice of objectivity. Do most of you tend to favor the middle ground? If so, why?

A Graph is Worth A Thousand IOUs

From Econbrowser:

The first bar is the impact on the unified budget balance of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (EGTRRA) of 2001. The second is the impact on the budget balance of the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (JGTRRA) of 2003. The third bar is the CBO estimated impact on the deficit of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act proposed in the Senate on November 19, for 2010-2019.

Also, for the record, that unemployment benefits extension that has, in its wanton disregard for fiscal responsibility and intergenerational equity, so offended Senator Bunning, would (I believe) pop about a fourth of the way down the JGTRRA column. And as long as you have that record open (leaving aside the budgetary (that is, economic) cost of not extending benefits), Bunning's vote on both the 2001 and 2003 GTRRA bills (are you sitting down?): yea and yea.

Kill the (Other) Bill!

Paul Krugman's piece in the Times today revisits what is now an all too familiar and worn out question: is it better to settle on imperfect compromise while the option to reform is available or should we instead hold our breaths and wait for better legislation? Of course, this time the bill in question is financial and not health reform. And this time, Krugman's answer is different.

So here’s the situation. We’ve been through the second-worst financial crisis in the history of the world, and we’ve barely begun to recover: 29 million Americans either can’t find jobs or can’t find full-time work. Yet all momentum for serious banking reform has been lost. The question now seems to be whether we’ll get a watered-down bill or no bill at all. And I hate to say this, but the second option is starting to look preferable.
[...]
There are times when even a highly imperfect reform is much better than nothing; this is very much the case for health care. But financial reform is different. An imperfect health care bill can be revised in the light of experience, and if Democrats pass the current plan there will be steady pressure to make it better. A weak financial reform, by contrast, wouldn’t be tested until the next big crisis. All it would do is create a false sense of security and a fig leaf for politicians opposed to any serious action — then fail in the clinch.
[...]
No reform, coupled with a campaign to name and shame the people responsible, is better than a cosmetic reform that just covers up failure to act.

This time around, I doubt we'll see anything close to the same level of controversy as when this same question was applied to the health care bill. For one, arguments over financial regulation don't really carry the same emotional wallop as, say, a debate over whether we ought to let poor blue-eyed American children die of tuberculosis. And unless I'm just making an ass out of you and me again, this time, the consequences, stakes, and therefore, solution to the above debate, seems a little more obvious depending on your policy preference. But in the off chance that this becomes another internecine handwringer for the American Left(ish), you read it here first!