Plodding Insight

Get the latest on Iran here.

Robert Fisk is in Tehran:

Unbelievably – and I am a witness because I stood beside them – just 400 Iranian special forces police were keeping these two armies apart. There were stones and tear gas but for the first time in this epic crisis the cops promised to protect both sides.

…

This was phenomenal. The armed special forces of the Islamic Republic, hitherto always allies of the Basiji, were prepared for once, it seemed, to protect all Iranians, not just Ahmadinejad’s henchmen. The precedent for this sudden neutrality is known to everyone – it was when the Shah’s army refused to fire on the millions of demonstrators demanding his overthrow in 1979.

NYT on the use of Twitter by Iranian protesters.  I am so proud of the internet today.

It’s 10:20 pm in Tehran. I’m wondering what morning will reveal, worried. Twitter is amazing today. We could be seeing the Tiananmen Square event of Iranian history.

There’s some incredible pictures here. I’m especially moved by the picture of the pro-Mousavi guys protecting the injured riot policeman.

Tweets from within 15 miles of Tehran.

You can also search for the #IranElection hashtag on twitter to get the latest.

Huh, so it turns out I’m autistic. And also… a total hunk?

Since autism was first described in 1943, the definition has shifted. Doctors have come to agree that autism is characterized by poor social skills, communication difficulties and strong, narrow interests and repetitive behavior. Once upon a time it was understood as categorical: Either you were autistic or you weren’t. Starting in the late 1990s, Baron-Cohen advanced the idea of an autism spectrum on which everyone falls, just as we would fall on a spectrum of height. As he sees it, we’re all a little bit autistic. Indeed, many adults going through the Autism Spectrum Quotient questionnaire, a tool created by the Cambridge center, will recognize certain traits in themselves, like preferring to be alone, disliking spontaneity or easily remembering phone numbers. Today the notion of a spectrum is widely, though not universally, accepted in the field.

…

Baron-Cohen is responsible for spreading the idea that the autistic brain is basically an extreme version of the male brain. He observed that people with autism were better at things for which men show more aptitude than women (like systemizing) and worse at things for which women show more aptitude than men (like empathizing). It’s noteworthy that boys are diagnosed with autism four times as often as girls. “There was this massive clue that nature was giving us that autism might be in some way sex-linked,” he says.

…

The Cambridge center’s most recent coup came from a study that began 12 years ago. Researchers obtained amniotic fluid from about 500 pregnant women and tested it for hormone levels, then tested their children every few years. In a study published this year, they revealed that the higher the fetal testosterone, the more autistic spectrum traits the child would later show.

Source

Poor social skills, check.

Inability to empathize, check.

Good at math and other kinds of systematic thinking, check.

Receding hairline as supporting evidence for high testosterone … Check!

Its merely human to think to yourself that other people have it easy, and nobody appreciates how hard your job is.

But for crying out loud, computer programmers, how hard is it to create an electronic voting machine that can tally our votes correctly?

I added an important footnote to my essay on Gay Marriage.

Like many Americans, I have a little 401k account with my employer, and I hope that one day it will be a big 401k account.  My goals are:

1)  Maintain my desired asset allocation, while
2)  Minimizing the expenses paid.

Now, minimizing your expenses paid is obviously a good thing, but somebody might be wondering why I would mention that right up front as one of my two goals.  Is it that important?  What expenses do you pay in a 401k anyway?  In fact all mutual funds have yearly expense ratios — money that is taken out of everyone’s account to pay the expenses of running the fund.  Fund managers can and do make millions, and their salary comes out of your 401k, along with other expenses.

You can look up the expense ratio of each available fund on your 401k provider’s website or elsewhere on the internet.  A typical expense ratio for an actively managed fund might be 1.5%.  That doesn’t sound like much, but consider the effects of compounding.  If you put $10,000 in a fund that earns 11% a year, after 40 years you will have just over $650K.  However, if you pay an expense fee of 1.5% each year, at the end of 40 years you will have only $377,193.  That means you are missing out on an additional 72.3% increase!  $272,814 of your money just disappeared … into your 401k manager’s pocket.  These fees matter, big time.

On the other hand, there are lots of advantages to saving through a 401k, and the biggest advantage for most people is the company match!  I could invest through an IRA, but I’d be missing out on an instant 75% increase in my money that I get from my employer.  So, as much as I hate being limited to the funds in my 401k, it’s probably still worth using.  The question becomes, what do I do with the funds in there?

My asset allocation goal is:  100% equities, (I’m young) as diversified as possible, in a cap-weighted fashion.  I make no assumption on whether US stocks might outdo international stocks, whether growth stocks might outdo value stocks, whether large-cap stocks might outdo small-caps, or whether Coke might outdo Pepsi.  I have no special knowledge about what the future might hold, so I just want to invest in everything.

How do I do that?  Well, if I wasn’t stuck in a 401k, I would just buy two ETFs and call it a day:

55% Total US Stock Market Fund “VTI” since the US market is about 55% of all stocks worldwide.
45% “VEU” Basically a cap-weighted world stock market fund that excludes the US.

Since my company only offers one fund with international stocks, I’m basically stuck with that for 45% of my portfolio.  On the US side, we don’t have anything resembling a Total Stock Market fund, but I can construct it by combining various funds.  First I break them down by size (meaning the sizes of the companies they invest in, not the size of the fund itself) and I look at the total expense ratios to find the cheapest plain vanilla fund for small-caps, mid-caps, and large-cap stocks.  The internet tells me that the “Total Stock Market” fund I’m trying to replicate contains:

72% Large Cap Companies
19% Mid Cap Companies
9% Small Cap Companies

So I multiply these percentages by the 55% allocation for the US market, and I get, strangely enough, these nice round amounts: (With expense ratios in parenthesis:  remember these are the cheapest ones available!)

40% Large Cap US  (Expense Ratio 0.18%)
10% Mid Cap US    (Expense Ratio 0.76%)
5%  Small Cap US  (Expense Ratio 0.42%)
45% International (Expense Ratio 1.36%)

That gives me a weighted average of 0.78% paid for expenses, or $78 a year for every $10,000 in the fund.  So right now, I am not paying very much money because I don’t have very much money, but suppose one day I’m ready to retire and I have a million bucks.  At that point I’m paying $7800 A YEAR!  Sometime between now and then, things have got to change.  (It blows my mind that so many people would pay well over $10k a year out of a million dollar account just to have their money “managed”, as if that is going to help them when the next correction comes around.  And what about those with $10 Mill??)

One option is to leave my employer and roll over the 401k into an IRA, which I could then invest myself.  Remember those two funds I was trying to replicate?  They have expense ratios of 0.07% and 0.20%, respectively, which means with a million bucks, instead of $7800 I would be paying $1300 a year.  That’s still quite a chunk of change, but it’s one sixth the price of the 401k funds.  But I like my employer and I have one other option:  the 401k self-directed brokerage.

While companies like zecco.com are offering tons of commission-free trades and no yearly fees, my 401k provider knows a captive market when it sees one.  For those customers that absolutely must have access to stocks and ETFs outside of the regular 401k funds, you can do self-directed trades:  It will only cost you $75 a year.  And $25 a trade.  Do I need to tell you I’m rolling my eyes?

Anyway, here is the approach:  I know that I am paying 0.78% a year right now.  How much money would I have to have in my account to make it worth it to switch over to the brokerage?  Well that depends:  on how many transactions I wanted to make.  I would not only have a transaction every time I bought some stock, but every time I sold some as well.  That means if my funds drift away from my desired allocation and I want to get them back to the right percentages, that’s not one transaction, it is two.  (And could be more if I have a % of funds in bonds or other securities as I get older.  I’m not always going to have just two funds that need to stay balanced.)  If I buy more stock after every paycheck and rebalance with two transactions quarterly, I am out $925 a year right there (Don’t forget the yearly fee!)  What is the break even point?

$X * 0.13% + $925 = $X * 0.78%

$X = $142,308

So once I am paying $1100 a year it becomes worth it to switch.  However, I think I can do better than that.  I can actually feed my paychecks into one of the regular 401k funds and move the whole amount over twice a year.  And maybe I can only rebalance twice a year.  With only 6 transactions, the equation becomes:

$X * 0.13% + $225 = $X * 0.78%

$X = $34,615

That’s not nearly as bad.  Once I have 34 grand in there, I can limit the amount of money being slurped up by my 401k provider to $225 a year, and send the rest of my expense fees to a responsible company like Vanguard that is actually trying to put the customer first.  (They produce the two ETFs I mentioned.)  I might even make the switch before that point, just to avoid sending so much cash to these rip-off artists.

Well, I may not have 34 grand yet, and I certainly don’t have a million yet, but I do have a PLAN! 

On September 11, 2001, a large group of Muslim men killed three thousand Americans. CAIR, the leading American Islamic organization in American society denounced the attack, but Americans watched on television as Islamic populations around the world danced in the street in celebration.

President Bush’s approach to talking about Islam would remain constant throughout his following years as President. In the days after the terrorist attack, this was reported by the LA Times:

President Bush visited the Islamic Center here yesterday, saying Muslims should be treated with respect because “the face of terror is not the true faith of Islam.”

After an hourlong meeting with Muslim community leaders, Bush said last week’s murderous acts by Islamic terrorists “violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith.”

In keeping with custom, Bush removed his shoes before entering the mosque.

…

He said the Muslim leaders with whom he met share his outrage and sadness. “They love America just as much as I do.”
Source

Two things make these statements notable.

1) President Bush was not a Muslim.

2) The terrorists acted as part of large and organized web of violence that proclaimed Islam as its inspiration and their actions were celebrated by a nontrivial portion of Muslims worldwide.

I’m not trying to imply that Muslims are collectively responsible for the terrorist attacks. Just note these facts and then compare them with the next event:

Yesterday, a notorious abortion doctor was murdered. The suspected killer was not a member of any prominent pro-life organization. His actions were quickly and uniformly condemned by pro-lifers. As of yet, no statement has been made by the killer about his motivation.

President Obama’s statement on the event follows in its entirety.

I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning. However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.

I am not suggesting that we shouldn’t conclude the murder had something to do with Tiller’s well-known willingness to perform late-term abortions. Of course it did.

But which is more (if at all) believable: That the violence committed by the 19 al-Qaeda hijackers says something dark about Islam generally, or that the violence committed yesterday says something dark about the pro-life community generally?

Nobody is dancing in the street after hearing this news. Yet as liberal pundits begin the week predictably connecting the Tiller killing to the pro-life movement, somehow nobody in the Whitehouse decided that we would hear the President say that Scott Roeder is “not the true face of the pro-life movement.” Nobody suggested the President say that the killing “violated the fundamental tenets of pro-life thought.” If Bush can say such things on behalf of Islam, can’t pro-choice Obama defend the pro-life movement as our enemies rush to smear us all with the charge of terrorism?

If he doesn’t, is it because those things don’t need saying? (They shouldn’t, but of course they do.) Or is it because the President really does think that the killing is symptomatic of the pro-life phenomenon? If he doesn’t think that, is he at least bright enough to realize that is what a lot of people are going to be saying today?

President Obama recently received an honorary degree from Notre Dame, to the dismay of many pro-lifers. In that speech he tried to reach out to the pro-life movement, speaking about a “presumption of good faith”. But today instead of defending the pro-life community when it most needs and certainly deserves a well-reasoned defense, we get platitudes about how “our differences as Americans” shouldn’t lead to violence, as if pro-life rhetoric was more to blame for the murder than the mental instability of the perpetrator.

Murderous and mentally imbalanced people latch themselves on to all kinds of political causes.

I am left pondering: In the judgment of the press, when is an event a symptom of a greater problem, and when is it the baffling actions of one lone crazy person? Perhaps the best commentary on the killing that I’ve read so far was this remark on twitter:

Anyone else having trouble remembering the vitriol against environmentalists because of the Unabomber?

Hmm…

UPDATE:  Let’s watch the coverage of this and compare with Tiller’s death.  Should be instructive!

UPDATE 2:  Michelle Malkin on the two killings.  I had no idea in writing this piece that the contrast I was pointing out would be illustrated so perfectly within the following days!

UPDATE 3:  Ann Coulter makes substancially the same comparison I did.

If anybody reading this was following the debates about Chris West recently, you should read Dr. Janet Smith’s article defending him.

President Obama has nominated Sonia Sotomayor to replace Souter on the Supreme Court. How will Republicans in the Senate respond?

One typical AP article reads,

Given her background, any effort to filibuster her nomination could carry political risks, since Hispanics are the fastest-growing segment of the population and an increasingly important one politically.

Source

Am I losing my mind? Have I spent too much time on the web and not enough time in the sunlight? I read this passage, and I can’t help but find in it a veiled threat. “Don’t raise hard questions about her, or we will paint you as a racist.” After all, it is the press that gives most people the context and the selected emphases with which they interpret the news. Its not as if Republicans don’t want her on the bench because she is a Hispanic. If they oppose her at all, its going to be because she’s a liberal.

Let’s talk about race for a minute. Do a google news search for “first Hispanic” right now. She is being touted as the first Hispanic to [probably] sit on the Supreme Court. She is not. There was a Hispanic man sitting on the Supreme Court from 1932 to 1937, named Benjamin Cardozo. This reveals that “diversity” is not really about race. Cardozo is being discounted because he did not grow up poor and is not connected with the immigrant experience of our modern-day Hispanic populations. It is about cultural identities, not race.

…Except when it isn’t! The press had no problem talking about Obama as the first black President, despite the fact that neither of his parents came from black American communities with the cultural legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. Is it useful to consider Obama an authentic black man? Yes! Is it useful to consider Cardozo an authentic Hispanic? No!

Which begs the question, useful to whom?

Observe: the press first creates a connection between Sotomayor and Hispanics by playing up her Hispanic identity, which they are free to ignore. Hispanics are told this is “their” nominee. Nobody asks if Hispanics, like the rest of America, might be better served if we chose the best candidate in a race-blind fashion. When the Republican opposition to her judicial philosophy begins, more news stories come out ruminating on how much the GOP will suffer politically for opposing the Hispanic candidate. The lasting impression in the minds of many people is, “Republicans oppose people of color. Republicans have a race problem.”

Why is this impression created? Because, as I have mentioned before, the press reports every story from beginning to end in the context of that assumption. Vicious, racially charged attacks on conservative minorities like the former Secretary of State are ignored, because they do not fit in with the story the press is trying to tell.

Long story short, the press uses these imaginary constructs of racial identity as a tool to slander conservatives and shield liberals from criticism.

It’s incredible how these identity groups color the discourse in our society. Consider this little gem from the same AP article quoted above:

From the moment Souter announced his resignation, it was widely assumed Obama would select a woman to replace him, and perhaps a Hispanic as well.

Why would that be widely assumed? In common parlance, it is because the Supreme Court “needs” more minorities and women. Do we ever hear that the NFL and the NBA “need” more white people? What constitutes this “need”, exactly? Justice Sotomayor herself gives us the answer. This is excerpted from a 2001 speech that she gave:

Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases…I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor [Martha] Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

Source

This is racism. This is un-American. This is a blatant double standard that is a mile wide. Can you imagine some conservative talking about the superior judgment of a white Harvard-educated man, because of the richness of his experience? It’s not only obvious that no conservative would say that. It is equally obvious (to me) that conservatives don’t even think that way.

But liberals do, and somehow they continue to control the terms of the debate so completely that they are never called on it. This Sotomayor quote isn’t just an eight-year-old cherry-picked slip-up. It is an expression of the identity-group-based reasoning that was going on in Obama’s head when he was talking about chosing the nominee.

I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives — whether they can make a living and care for their families; whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation. I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving as just decisions and outcomes.

Well, he certainly found what he was looking for (or did he?): a nominee with such ability to identify with other people’s lives that she believes that certain race and gender combinations in a judge result in better decision making. And we’re all very surprised that the race and gender combination she was talking about was her own!

Dare I suggest that Sotomayor has expressed an inability to empathize with her non-female, non-Hispanic collegues? (Not to mention an alarming lack of imagination in the assumption that white men don’t have certain “rich” experiences that Latina women might lack!) Isn’t drawing conclusions from people’s race and gender the opposite of empathy? Didn’t we used to call that … oh, what were the words? …. “racism” and “sexism”?

Will we see the press talking about Sotomayor’s “bias problem”? Will major AP articles contain open-ended ponderings about whether nominating Sotomayor might hurt Obama’s ability to reach out to white voters? Will we read about how Hispanic Democrats who defend her might have trouble getting re-elected?

Barring those impossible scenarios, can we get the media to just shut up about race already and cover the daily news in an unbiased, race-blind fashion?

EPILOGUE

Well, that’s not going to happen either, but the internet has provided an unexpected solution: Total fragmentation of political discourse while the corporate enterprise of providing the news sinks like the Titanic. As layoffs and bankruptcies flood the news media world, you can expect their voices to become even more desperately partisan, hastening their demise. Maybe after they experience the total collapse of news, reporters will have more “richness” of “experience” to draw from, and learn to report the news straight.

Until then, if you ask me, the mainstream media can’t self-destruct fast enough.

UPDATE:  Some related thoughts from others:

“The idea that you pull back from a fight because someone is from a different ethnic group is part of the mistake Republicans made and how we got President Obama in the first place.”

“Stop being fucking victims.”

Over at The Earth is Made of Atoms and Ideas, I am critiquing my friend’s economics paper on the land tax (by request).  Part I is up.

Interested parties may wish to follow my twitter account.  I’m definitely hitting my stride.  Not sure if it will last, though.

We read in the Chicago Tribune that a small group of Notre Dame students boycotted the commencement ceremonies yesterday, and held their own celebration, which included praying the rosary and a speech by Fr. Frank Pavone, head of Priests For Life.

This was not just a good thing to do, but the right thing to do.  When the local Bishop not only boycotts the ceremony, but is forced into issuing a public rebuke of Fr. Jenkins for honoring Obama, can any Catholic student be justified in attending?

Sadly, less than 1% of Notre Dame’s graduates participated in the alternative ceremony with Fr. Pavone.  What was an opportunity for the Catholic young people of Notre Dame to defend the good name of the University has become confirmation that those who suspect the worst are correct:  Fr. Jenkins’ flouting of Episcopal authority and his tone-deaf attempts at rationalization are exceptional only in that the name recognition of both Notre Dame and President Obama combined to draw far more public attention to the event than the typical occasion on which the Catholic identity of the school is trashed.  Where only an insignificantly tiny minority of the students bothers to give any weight to the protestations of the Bishop, are we to believe that the make-up of the faculty is any better?

Fr. Jenkins is altogether typical of staff at the great majority of our Catholic Universities, paying lip service to Catholicism, doing a little CYA when necessary, and generally not letting the celibate old guys in miters get in the way of educating Catholic young people in an environment of undiluted leftism — in other words, trying their hardest to be indistinguishable from secular universities.  Fr. Jenkins is just a suddenly visible example of the pervading atmosphere.

He bit off more than he could chew on this occasion, and I still think he will be gone in the next year, one way or another, but we should not be fooled into thinking that with the removal of Jenkins, all will be right with Notre Dame or with the American system of Catholic Universities.  We can only hope that the surprising uptick in the American Bishops’ willingness to speak up on controversial matters will continue.  We might someday have leaders that demand follow-through on the non-negotiables of the faith.

UPDATE:  Lest you think I have gone overboard in my characterization of Notre Dame, consider this from a Wall Street Journal Editorial:

At Notre Dame today, there is no pro-life organization — in size, in funding, in prestige — that compares with the many centers, institutes and so forth dedicated to other important issues ranging from peace and justice to protecting the environment. Perhaps this explains why a number of pro-life professors tell me they must not be quoted by name, lest they face career retaliation.

The one institute that does put the culture of life at the heart of its work, moreover — the Center for Ethics and Culture — doesn’t even merit a link under the “Faith and Service” section on the university’s Web site. The point is this: When Notre Dame doesn’t dress for the game, the field is left to those like Randall Terry who create a spectacle and declare their contempt for civil and respectful witness.

In the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian, there is a wonderful photograph of Father Ted Hesburgh — then Notre Dame president — linking hands with Martin Luther King Jr. at a 1964 civil-rights rally at Chicago’s Soldier Field. Today, nearly four decades and 50 million abortions after Roe v. Wade, there is no photograph of similar prominence of any Notre Dame president taking a lead at any of the annual marches for life.

Father Jenkins is right: That’s not ambiguity. That’s a statement.

My defense* of West’s alleged vulgarity

Christopher West is a Catholic speaker on human sexuality.  Specifically, he has been very successful popularizing John Paul II’s arresting writings on human sexuality, which are called the Theology of the Body.  The mainstream press has begun to take note of him:  ABC recently interviewed him, and did a typical bang-up job, erroneously claiming that he was making a hero out of pornographer Hugh Hefner.  Of course nothing could be further from the truth, and we are not surprised at journalists once again demonstrating their ability to engage in misinterpretations of conservative Christians that very nearly but not quite justify reasonable accusations of deliberate malice.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.

The Catholic News Agency reported on this, printing some of West’s corrections to ABC’s foolishness, and they also printed some comments by Dr. Alice von Hildebrand.  Dr. von Hildebrand is a very old and very well-venerated figure in more traditional and intellectual circles of Catholicism, and she had her own criticisms … of Chris West.

Link to the CNA Article  The boldface in what follows is added by me.

“My feeling is that his vocabulary and his way of approaching it totally lacks reverence.”

“Reverence is the key to purity,” she told CNA.”  The intimate sphere “is not a topic of public discussion” but is “extremely serious.”

“It seems to me that his presentation, his vocabulary, the vulgarity of things that he uses are things that simply indicate that even though he might have good intentions he has derailed and is doing a lot of harm.”

…

Additionally, she charged that West does not mention the Old Testament figures who fell to sexual sin: David, King of Israel, who was blessed in “an extraordinary way” but ordered the murder of the husband of a woman with whom David committed adultery.

 “Adulteries lead to murder. It is one of the most abominable stories you can imagine,” she said, explaining the Prophet Nathan’s rebuke of David led to the composition of Psalm 50.

She said it was upsetting to her as a youth to learn that a young man who prayed for “the straight and honest heart so that I may serve my people” went on to have 750 concubines.

“How can you be so good when you’re twenty, and lead such an abominable life when you’re seventy?” she asked. “As far as I can tell, this is something that Christopher West forgets, in this sphere which is extremely dangerous.”

She reported that a priest friend of hers had told her 90 percent of the sins that men accuse themselves of involve the Sixth Commandment against adultery.

Christopher West’s approach makes him forget that sex is “an extreme danger.” Though sex can be sanctified, that sanctification implies “a humility, a spirit of reverence, and totally avoiding the vulgarity that he uses in his language.”

“I’m shocked and horrified by the words that he uses. His mere mention of Hugh Hefner is to my mind an abomination.”

One of the better Catholic blogs on the internet did a little piece on Dr. von Hildebrand’s criticisms, and I got involved in a lively debate in the comments there with one of her fans. We had some interesting exchanges about reverence, vulgarity, and language.

One of the distinctions that were made is that, at least according to von Hildebrand’s fans, she is not accusing West of obscenity.  The complaint is that he is using the ordinary, everyday words from the dictionary when he talks about sexuality.  One of the examples given is that a better way to address sexual intercourse would be to call it “the marital embrace”.  This, it is advocated, is a way of expressing the mystery and dignity of sex, something that is left out by the crassness of ordinary language.

Now to be fair, I agree that using that euphemism is a positive thing.  But the question is whether it is required.  Does failing to speak in such terms mean that you are being vulgar?  I recognize that as a possibility, but in the case of Christopher West, I argue a qualified “No.”  The rest of this post is what I wrote, addressed to a von Hildebrand supporter:

I think I know what our root disagreement is. 

You have pointed out the possibility that using the dictionary terms for human sexuality can imply the absence of any spiritual dimension — that these terms can demoralize and desacrelize the discussion.  I agree that this is a possibility.

But where I see a possibility, you believe these words are inescapably vulgarized by our culture.  For instance, when I point out that Chris West’s presentations do emphasize the reverence due to human sexuality, you respond by saying,

“[Ordinary words] can tend in that [desacrelizing] direction without completely canceling out his good efforts in the other direction.  In other words, I think that CW’s crassness tends to undermine his own work, and that if he could find a less crass way of conveying his ideas, he would strengthen it.”

You are setting up two opposing forces:  Chris West’s acknowledgement and promotion of the dignity of human sexuality on the one side, and his use of “vulgar” words on the other side.  It’s as if his ideas and enthusiasm count for +5 and his choice of words counts for -2, and he ends up with a remaining +3 for his presentation.  But this kind of understanding of words is deeply problematic, in my opinion.

Where does the negative connotation of these words come from?  From the context!  We live in a society that has lots of wrong-headed ideas and impressions about sexuality, and that context attaches those wrong-headed ideas to the ordinary words that name human sexuality, in the form of a connotation.

But if we allow that connotation to stand, and avoid using those words when we address human sexuality, what we are doing is recognizing and affirming the connotation, and since the connotation is attached to a word that is at root the simplest and basic name for what we are talking about, we are in fact affirming the connotation of a desacrelized understanding not only with the words for sex but also with sex itself!  We have surrendered the field and said, yes, these ordinary words ARE vulgar.  But what possible way can that be understood if the words are the most basic and straightforward labels for what we are talking about?  We end up implying that we are avoiding saying these words because the thing they define is itself vulgar and should not be named directly.

What Chris West is doing when he incorporates these words into his presentation is saying, “No, I do not concede that sexuality is obscene, and I will not shrink from speaking about it from a position of confidence.  I will speak these words in a context that gives them new meaning.  I will affirm the goodness of human sexuality by wrestling back the language of sexuality from those philosophies and cultural attitudes that have maligned it.”

I assert that the context that he wraps around the words is not at odds with his use of the words.  The context that he surrounds them with actually CHANGES their meaning.  And furthermore if that changed meaning is different from the meaning that we normally associate with the words, then that contrast is instructive.  In fact it is not only instructive, it is a corrective!  Because like it or not, the way we use language to understand the world has the effect that the connotations we attach to ordinary words also get attached to the things in the real world that they represent.

We can understand that a word like the “f-word” both represents sexual intercourse and at the same time tears it down by making its name an obscenity.  But we cannot understand a simple phrase like “sexual intercourse” to be obscene unless at some level with think that sexual intercourse is itself obscene.  That is the line that must be drawn in the sand.  We have a duty to fight for these words and win them back from the enemy that claims ownership of them.

*Special thanks is due to Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom, who although he probably couldn’t care less about this conversation, has done a lot to shape my understanding of the important role the philosophy of language has in any debate.

UPDATE:  Dr. Janet Smith also defends West.

File under Things We Grow To Expect.