Ben Kaufman – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com Breaking news from the Farm since 1892 Tue, 26 May 2015 05:26:28 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/cropped-DailyIcon-CardinalRed.png?w=32 Ben Kaufman – The Stanford Daily https://stanforddaily.com 32 32 204779320 Super Tuesday: How might the Supreme Court affect the institution of marriage? https://stanforddaily.com/2015/05/25/super-tuesday-how-might-the-supreme-court-affect-the-institution-of-marriage/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/05/25/super-tuesday-how-might-the-supreme-court-affect-the-institution-of-marriage/#respond Tue, 26 May 2015 05:26:28 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1101442 In light of the awaited Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage, Ben Kaufman '17 and Wyatt Smitherman '16 debate what affects the decision might have. Kaufman argues same-sex marriage will not necessarily set a precedent for other non-traditional marriages, while Smitherman claims allowing same-sex marriage may have unexpected consequences.

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My sparring partner means to argue this week that a recent Stanford Daily ad in search of a “genius” egg donor is so abhorrent as to embody the breakdown of the American family. Indeed, lest we support a loving couple struck with infertility as they fight to still have kids and as they begin their work of offering this future child every possible advantage even before he or she is born.

To argue that this potentially off-putting request that the donor be a high achiever was made possible by our rising acceptance of marriage equality, though, is absurd. Indeed, there is no doubt that a change in the family dynamic and in the ties between parent and child is present when adults talk about their kids with such utilitarian undertones. But the inspiration for the ad’s stipulation that the donor be high-achieving is much more likely to be found in the potential parent’s desire for his/her children to get ahead in our free market for labor than in growing acceptance of homosexuals. Gay people aren’t what make you demand that your egg come from a girl who is “top in her class, [with] several awards in high school and university;” the knowledge that your child will one day compete with such prodigies for a job does.

Of course, this isn’t meant as an indictment of capitalism. It’s meant as an assertion that conservatives in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, especially when those stones are aimed at a group that has faced such drastic persecution for so long by the American right, and especially when the present conservative has previously argued on these very pages that the government should prioritize heterosexual couples on the utilitarian basis of their ability to procreate. Embrace optimization within the free market and accept its consequences (e.g., neurotic parents), or reject both. Don’t do the former and use the latter as a tool to substantiate ulterior discomfort with gay marriage.

But fine, let’s address this question of whether gay marriage diminishes the importance of marriage as a whole, of whether marriage equality will bulldoze the American family unit and whether polygamy or, as Bill O’Reilly predicted, bestiality, will inevitably follow. Marriage, of course, is a social construct; it is something humans invented, and we are collectively free to define what it is and what it means. Most would likely agree that it exists, in its purest form, to unite people in love, and, in its crudest form, as a purely practical commitment between two people centered around cohabitation and child-rearing.

My only question is why gay people can’t fit into that and why their marriages necessarily take away from the validity of heterosexuals’. Their love is surely every ounce as emotionally valid as anyone else’s, the portion of them choosing to adopt from among the nation’s nearly 400,000 parentless children has doubled in recent years and recent research has shown not just that the children of homosexuals fare just as well as their peers, but that they tend to be wholly happier and healthier. Perhaps this shouldn’t surprise us; with Millennials showing ever less interest in tying the knot and overall marriage rates continuing to reach historic lows, it seems that the only people enthusiastic about marriage are homosexual.

Further, there is little doubt that “traditional” families are statistically on the decline. But research shows that that has much more to do with financial constraints, flighty fathers, the prioritization of married people’s careers and changes in spousal roles than with gays somehow making heterosexuals feel that marriage is less valuable. My own parents, for example, will have been married for 27 years in June, during which time about 390,000 gay couples will have gotten married while 600,000 will have entered domestic partnerships. And while I didn’t ask, I can say confidently that neither my mom nor my dad has ever remarked that their marriage has become less valuable over time because of those 990,000 cumulative now-united homosexuals.

As to the “slippery slope” argument that gay marriage opens the gates for the normalization of other arrangements (polyamory, etc.), I simply say, says who? Again, marriage is something we have the power to define. It is not an independently extant facet of the universe. If we take religion as its foundation, then we necessarily must allow for polyamory, slavery and child brides. And if we don’t, then we, the people, are left with the right to decide what we think is okay, and a huge majority of Americans think gay marriage is exactly that. If there is a slope, it’s one that began when marriage itself became a concept. But there isn’t. We simply live in a world where denials by those in power of the rights of the marginalized can only last for so long. If that one day comes to include people interested in polyamory, frankly, who cares? The notion that such unions delegitimize those of heterosexuals would, at that point, be seen as ridiculous in the same way that gays do so is now.

For readers who wonder why this issue is even being taken up in The Daily when it seems like such a peripheral view, I remind you that such stories of gay marriage diminishing marriage as a whole, ruining the family unit or otherwise being a boogeyman remain pervasive, even among certain groups on campus (the opposing column, for example). But I also remind you that the Supreme Court is widely expected to rule in favor of gay marriage this summer and that hate can only reign for so long.

Contact Ben Kaufman at ben bkauf614 ‘at ‘stanford.edu. 

Americans are, by and large, a private and respectful people who enjoy their personal rights. We also tend to be somewhat shortsighted and see only as far as the next election cycle. So it’s not that we don’t care about the current Supreme Court case on homosexual marriage, it’s just that we don’t care enough to hold strong opinions on it. What our friends and neighbors do behind closed doors we may only rarely agree with, but far be it from us to impose any kind of forcible penalty on them for such behavior.

This extends even more to legislated intervention. We despise the government’s intrusions in our personal affairs nearly as much as the occasions it dips its sticky fingers into our bank books. In our eyes, its job is to look after our physical well-being (only physical) and provide us a stable environment, and once it stretches outside of these boundaries we make a ruckus and vote out the swine and the next cycle hurriedly rethinks its agenda.

However, now that this case has reached the halls of the highest court in the room, government must provide us with an answer. Because this question will finally be settled for good afterwards, the Supreme Court must be satisfied with the effects either decision has. So here are a few predictions I make if Justice Kennedy decides to overturn the state ban altogether.

1. The legalization of polygamy – 3 to 5 years

If the definition of marriage from the perspective of government no longer includes any mandate for the people involved to be of opposing sexes, then it’s one more step to eliminate the additional requirement for the involvement of two and only two persons. In legalizing homosexual marriage the justices will have shown their disregard for the importance of biological bonds between parent and offspring, so that particular reason can’t be trotted out. In fact, the lawyers in this case may go one step further and suggest that, with three or more parents in a single household, a child has even better guidance.

The Problem: Polygamy asks for the absolute devotion of marriage, but equally to multiple people. That’s a difficult task on from both an emotional and physical standpoint; emotionally because absolute devotion is by its nature singular in object and creation, and physically because of a well-known hormone called oxytocin. Known as the “love hormone,” it creates strong feelings of attachment and trust and is released during different processes that include physical contact: hugging, kissing and sexual intimacy. However, physical contact with many other partners ends up reducing oxytocin’s effectiveness by spreading this bond amongst a wider crowd (it’s one reason why premarital sex is a detriment to long-term marriages).

2. More precise child-selection – 10 to 15 years

By this procedure parents, who for any number of reasons cannot complete a biological creation, specifically select their future offspring, through adoption or egg/sperm donation by way of a surrogate. They thus are able to pick their child’s traits before making the commitment to raise it. It’s not a new phenomenon (as last week’s “Genius Egg Donor” request in The Daily pointed out), but as the number of alternate marriages increase a greater need for the service it provides will be seen.

The Problem: Love of this type is conditional. It was formed on the basis of a qualification that the child met in some way—by appearance, by skill or talent, by heritage—and so attaches strings to the initial offering of love the parents extend to the child. For instance, picking one particular egg over another because her mother won a Nobel Prize. It’s a far cry from the unconditional love that birth parents bear towards their children, a brand of love formed without condition and so sustained without return. Imagine a couple looking to adopt walking into an orphanage with their eyes closed and pointing out a name at random on the roster sheet to choose their child. Such is required for unconditional love.

3. An increase in divorce rates – 12 to 18 years

Divorce rates are already high, but it’s not hard to imagine them going higher. Currently the same-sex divorce rate is lower than that of heterosexual marriages, because only people who really, really want something will circumvent the law to get it. However, the rates of homosexual marriage and, therefore, divorce, should vastly increase as a consequence of SCOTUS’ decision.

Another less obvious consequence may present itself. When the availability of anything goes up, its exclusivity and (as an extension) the unique respect it garners shrinks. The same will happen with the institution of marriage. It’ll take a generation at the very least. But there are legalistic benefits to being married, and weighing these reasons with the other undocumented ones that reinforce the idea of living with another human in close proximity as a positive one will result in many more heterosexual marriages made for the wrong reasons. The result is more divorce.

The Problem: Divorce is almost never a good thing.

4. The elevation of normal marriage – 30+ years

Once “marriage” becomes only an additional condition existing between a group of people and thus as insignificant as a flawed stone, the pure diamond of normal marriage—marriage between a man and a woman, created for the right reasons that include family and a life-long bond—will once again rise to the surface. Against it will be sacked all the other hybrid forms of state-recognized partnerships, forms that create caricatures of families based on conditional love and confused desires. No doubt a few others besides those above will be invented along the way.

But this form will once again stand alone, secure in its stability and longevity. It embraces both biological necessity and the emotional comfort men and women provide each other. Its love between parents and the child made from them is a love without strings. And it need not fear any threat from the imitations it has outlived for millennia.

Contact Wyatt Smitherman at wtsmith ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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Should hate crimes be punished? https://stanforddaily.com/2015/05/11/should-hate-crimes-be-punished/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/05/11/should-hate-crimes-be-punished/#comments Tue, 12 May 2015 04:59:04 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1100804 Ben Kaufman '17 and Wyatt Smitherman '16 debate whether hate crimes should be subject to punishment from the judicial system. Kaufman argues that hate crimes perpetuate systematic oppression of certain groups while Smitherman claims hate crimes are not intrinsically worse than other crimes.

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In civil society, we conceive of certain actions as being so odious as to merit criminalization. Killing, stealing, singing off-key in North Carolina — each of these has been judged unfit for toleration and has subsequently been outlawed at the federal or, in the last case, state level.

Among these unacceptable actions, some are considered, to quote the intro to “Law & Order: S.V.U.,” “especially heinous.” This means that those who commit them are deemed by the public to merit penalties beyond what exists for crimes we view as lesser. We judge, for example, that accidentally causing someone’s death in a car crash isn’t quite as nefarious as carrying out a carefully planned assassination, resulting in our distinction between vehicular manslaughter (the former) and first-degree murder (the latter). The same quantity of death is equal in both cases, but we acknowledge that the circumstances and intentions behind a crime necessarily play into our judgment of what constitutes proper retribution.

As is evidenced by the fact that virtually nobody in the political mainstream (or, frankly, even on the political fringes) is pushing for an end to hate crime legislation, it is readily obvious that this logic should extend to wrongdoings motivated by the victim’s identity.

The idea behind the distinction between standard crimes and hate crimes rests on the intuitive notion that there is simply more at play in the latter and that their impact on society is bigger and more potentially damaging than comparable actions that lack identity-based motivations. The argument is therefore both sympathetic and directly utilitarian; we bring extra condemnation upon someone found guilty of having assaulted a homosexual purely on the grounds of the victim’s sexual orientation because we believe that such violently expressed sentiment has no place in our society, and because, to quote Chief Justice Rehnquist, “bias-motivated crimes are more likely to provoke retaliatory crimes, inflict distinct emotional harms on their victims and incite community unrest.” It’s the kind of stuff that we don’t want in our society and that moves us further from the overcoming of inter-group barriers, so we do what we can to eradicate it.

Of course, if the persistence of prejudice well into the 21st century demonstrates anything, it’s that such laws, which have existed since 1964’s Civil Rights Act, may not be a silver bullet in efforts to rid the world of hate. To argue that they should be gotten rid of, though, is misguided at best, duplicitous at worst and reckless at most points in between.

In “Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics,” for example, researchers James Jacobs and Kimberly Potter put forth the notion that hate crime legislation exacerbates racial divides by creating the false perception that wrongdoings are undertaken not by individuals but by the whole of the groups that they identify with. Under such a model, the act of categorizing a theoretical white xenophobe’s ethnically motivated assault on a perceived foreigner as a hate crime leaves the victim to assume that all Caucasians are racist, further dividing the two groups on a grander societal scale.

Such an argument baselessly assumes, though, that the origin of the tendency to project the actions of an individual onto the behaviors of a group rests on our acknowledgment that hate crimes are motivated by prejudice. Projection is a central facet of social psychology; humans almost inevitably tend to assume that “outgroups” (groups to which they don’t immediately identify) are homogenous, threatening and not worthy of trust, leading to the very stereotyping and anger on which hate crimes depend. This existed long before the term “hate crime” was ever uttered, making it surely no coincidence that there is absolutely no hard evidence in sociological or psychological literature connecting the phrase with a rise in what it describes. Check. I did.

Instead, what hate crime legislation allows us to do is prevent such mistrust and hysteria by confronting issues of prejudice for what they are. If a police department is found to be systematically singling out minorities, for example, it is only by bringing the problem to light, doling out proper penalties and working pragmatically toward a better future that we can achieve one.

Indeed, it is only by calling a spade a spade that we can confront the world’s spade population, even if the road toward a better world proves turbulent. In an era when so many groups continue to be so systemically repressed but where progress is at never-before-seen levels of attainability, it befalls each of us to do exactly that. The defense of penalties for hate crimes is an obvious step in such a direction, and efforts to combat such laws serve only to attack the already meager legislative safety net that minorities so evidently depend on.

Contact Ben Kaufman at bkauf614 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

A week ago, some students with too much time on their hands crept by different residences and administrative buildings in the dead of night, spray-painted some very crude swastikas on the side (almost like a child’s finger-paintings, really) and then slunk away. It didn’t take long for the Stanford pot to boil over again, as accusations of anti-Semitism began flying through the Californian sunshine and notable figures from President Hennessy to Rabbi Eisenberg began condemning the actions as intolerable and bigoted. With such a strong outcry of abhorrence, the focus on the crime seems to have shifted its nature. One can almost imagine that, when the perpetrators are caught, they won’t be charged with anything as simple as vandalism or destruction of property. No, that would be too easy. They’ll be leveled with charges of “inflicting emotional distress, spreading fear and panic, perpetrating unsafe spaces on a campus striving for tolerance” and that most unholy of unholies, the dreaded hate crime.

Now let’s imagine if, instead, these fools had spray-painted a figure of Pac-Man on the windows, gleefully gobbling up Blinky or Clyde. Would these innocent cartoons arise such wrath, such vitriol, as the slashed lines and pentagram painted on SAE? It’s hard to think so; other than a few of the more artistic bent who might praise the work as revolutionary or some other meaningless adjective, Stanford’s reaction would altogether be more lukewarm. College students, we might shrug, and go about our business. But a swastika! Hanging is too good for them!

Why, though? And yes, I am serious.

Most will argue that it is the meaning of the symbol created, rather than the mode through which it was made, that is the true crime here. Its meaning is one of cruelty and injustice. It symbolizes the idea of Jewish oppression and slaughter at the hands of a totalitarian regime, and through its splotchy exterior it screams a flood of hate that seeks to crush every semblance of equality in our world. It symbolizes. It represents.

And really that’s all it does, all any icon or mark can ever do. To quote from a mostly-great movie, “Symbols are given power by people. On its own, a symbol is meaningless.” (“V for Vendetta”). To a young child who hasn’t yet been taught of the Holocaust, those lines of paint would carry no weight. No, what people truly are reacting against when they witness a racial slur or genocidal drawing is the reality it once represented and, above all, the fear of a possible return to the past horror at some point in the future. Prompted by this fear, they then seek to blot out this possibility through an extra condemnation and additional punishment. Nowadays the punishment often only fits the crime if the crime is not deemed to be motivated by religion, race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender bias and on and on the list goes. Otherwise an extra penalty is tacked on to the charge, this additional punishment nominally excused in the courts by a perceived societal threat or notion of collective emotional damage (somehow transmitted from a single victim to the entire group) that the offense has spawned. The crime may be the exact same, but this surcharge means that killing a man because of his skin tone is now intrinsically worse than killing a man because his boots squeak.

But there are side effects to adding in motivation or potential as a factor when deciding punishment. The crime, the actual physical damage that can be weighed and measured in terms of lives or dollars of property or broken bones, becomes diminished when these intangibles (which are not only questionable but also nearly impossible to prove in a court of law) enter into effect. In one Texas case, an assault charge that carried with it the hallmarks of a hate crime increased the possible jail sentence from 20 to 99 years. Other arguments against the notion of hate crimes in a legal sense stem from the principle of equality, in this area meaning the thought that all viewpoints are equal and that hate crime legislation effectively places certain schools of thought above others. Still others take the viewpoint that our court system is meant to punish deed and not thought; to do otherwise is both ridiculous and infeasible.

In the past, these questions were irrelevant. Before hate crime legislation, courts would only ask of the accused: “Did you do it?” and “Did you intend to do it?” These two questions established a) guilt (still the most important thing) and b) sanity, or whether a person was fully in control of his or her own actions when the crime was committed. If either of these two was seriously called into question, the sentencing was reduced. However, the question of “Why did you do it?” was not one anyone particularly cared about. A defense lawyer might be inclined to arouse sympathy with the jury box if the reason was especially touching, but outside the grounds of providing background information, a criminal’s motive was irrelevant. To the vast majority of us, any reason for committing a crime does not justify the act itself; that’s one of the reasons we call them crimes.

See, it’s not tolerance or respect or even political correctness that accounts for the backlash so-called hate crimes spawn. It’s the fear. Above all, people fear that the discrimination personified in certain criminal actions is representative of a greater human problem than of one single crime, that it’s a symptom of a larger condition of deep-rooted discrimination and can grow (if unchecked) into an epidemic of prejudiced actions and laws. But these people are seeing the trees rather than the forest. For every one incident, they neglect the thousands of others that disavow and despise that kind of bigotry and strive in small, silent ways for universal equality. These thousands will not allow symbols to dictate the terms of engagement and will not be influenced by the foolhardy or prejudiced.

Contact Wyatt Smitherman at wtsmith ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Affirmative action: Should race be a factor in university admissions? https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/27/affirmative-action-should-race-be-a-factor-in-university-admissions/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/27/affirmative-action-should-race-be-a-factor-in-university-admissions/#comments Tue, 28 Apr 2015 04:00:49 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1099988 Ben Kaufman '17 and Wyatt Smitherman '16 debate the usage and necessity of affirmative action policies. Kaufman argues that race should be one of many factors considered in university admissions while Smitherman claims we should have a solely merit-based admissions system.

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There are few topics as uncomfortable, as ambitiously unsexy and as powerful as a means to clear a room as affirmative action. But it’s also a tough subject to avoid, and one that demands discussion if we should want to meaningfully call ourselves a nation built on opportunity.

The comedian Steve Martin once joked, “I started out at the bottom. I was a poor black child.” I, however, was not; I’m white, my mom and dad are an accountant and a doctor, respectively and the comfort I was granted by both my parents’ unbelievably hard work and the systemic advantages that made their path possible defined my upbringing. I went to an absurdly expensive private school where absurdly rich kids drove absurdly nice cars, one so unsettlingly ostentatious that its prom was featured in Time magazine as an example of new manifestation of income inequality in the 21st century.

But that high school was also, without any doubt in my mind, the single largest reason I got into Stanford. Its small classes allowed me to develop personal relationships with my teachers, its dedicated guidance staff were on hand day and night to comment on revisions to my college application essays, and the general air of high expectations set the tone for four years of neurotic attention to grades and scores. But my 3.9 at Dwight-Englewood, a school which actively helped me develop as a person, is nothing next to an ostensibly much worse GPA from a high school in south central Los Angeles, where a student is likely to be dealing with any number of profoundly debilitating life circumstances.

This is, of course, exactly what my parents aimed for by sending me to such a school, and I mean that without any vitriol. They wanted the absolute best for me, and they got it. In the face of such standard liberal tropes about self-awareness and the relativity of what constitute “good grades,” though, it’s easy to lose sight of the profound questions this type of situation raises.

What does it mean, for example, to have a high level of human capital? In a piece from 2013, David Sacks and Peter Thiel wrote, “The sole criterion in finding the members of [a Stanford] class and in defining “merit” should be individual achievement … But race and ethnicity … do not have a place on this list; these are traits, not achievements.” Indeed, Stanford admissions officers should shoot only to make the best, most talented and most interesting class possible each year. Putting aside the extent to which diversity is necessarily inherent in the definition of “interesting,” though, it stands that ignoring applicants’ background (including consideration of their race alongside acknowledgment of their socioeconomic circumstances, their familial situation and the general hardships they have had to face in life) is to not fully conceptualize the individual “merit” Sacks and Thiel speak of. The duo want only to take the applicants with the most readily available and visible human capital, not realizing that others of less fortune likely have the potential to far surpass their more carefully groomed peers. Indeed, the only way to be able to know that is through consideration of one’s complete background.

What is it, then, that “affirmative action” means? Merriam-Webster defines it broadly as “the practice of improving the educational and job opportunities of … groups that have not been treated fairly in the past,” and Stanford answers the question of whether it engages in the practice by saying only, “We review all applications with a sensitive awareness to the applicant’s personal experiences, family background and potential to add to the rich and dynamic texture of our campus.” Indeed, there are no evil quotas here. There are no image-obsessed administrative bean counters carefully calculating whether the school has reached some conceptually pleasing mass of underprivileged students. Nobody is proposing the institution of a quota system; I’ll be the first one to agree, as the Supreme Court did in the 2003 Gratz v. Bollinger ruling that deemed such systems unconstitutional, that such a program would go too far.

But that’s fundamentally not what we’re dealing with here. Instead, what we do have is a school meaningfully trying to get a holistic sense of the individual applicant, viewing race as a contextualizing factor only to the extent (though a necessarily profound one) that it has shaped the applicant’s life.

I honestly can’t see what’s wrong with that. There is absolutely no “reverse discrimination” present when a child of Mexican immigrants with a 3.5 GPA who had to work two jobs through high school is offered admission over an incredibly comfortable kid like me with a 3.9; there’s only recognition of vast differences in background and advantage between the two of us. Recognition of those differences is the vital point here. Thiel and Sacks lament, for example, that “ the average SAT disparity between Stanford’s African-American and white admittees [recently] reached 171 points.” Even if it did, that remains a full 30 points below the amount that my own SAT scores went up after my parents paid for a stunningly expensive program of extracurricular tutoring, something most people from disadvantaged backgrounds likely can’t afford.

Nobody is saying that we should hand someone admission simply for being a person of color. Nobody is saying that people who have earned affluence should apologize for what they have. All that Stanford is looking to do with its existing affirmative action policies is to meaningfully get a complete picture of the individual applicant. That’s it. Affirmative action serves here only as an effort to underscore the talent among minority groups that may not be visible when only raw numbers are considered. And if it comes down to defending that, I hope it’s clear that I plan on standing in the affirmative.

Contact Ben Kaufman at bkauf614 ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

Affirmative action, much like the message of Che Guevara or Karl Marx’s ideology, is one of those ideas that started out in a positive light and then went careening down a more dangerous path. Meant as a preventative measure to workplace discrimination, its origins from the Reconstruction to the magnificent triumph of the Civil Rights Act all held true to this initial idea. For nearly a century its message was one of equal opportunity for all candidates, and with each successive president, great strides were made to ensure that qualification was the only factor affecting one’s employment.

Then Nixon came along, and with him the suggestion that rigorous numeric measurements such as goals and timetables should be taken as signs of affirmative action’s implementation. The thought itself was harmless, but it marked the initiation of a gradual shift in the way affirmative action was both viewed and implemented; over the next 30 or so years, the notion would grow (affirmed by the legislature in the 1977 Public Works Employment Act and judicially marked by Regents of the University of California v. Bakke in 1978) that numbers mattered and that success was a case of percentage. Nowadays, the principles of modern affirmative action uphold as goals other concepts besides mere equality, among these the ideas of diversity and representation and that quotas are more important than competency. Its message has changed.

For good? Some would say so. To them, a diversified workforce holds a kind of intrinsic value to it, a quality that gives it greater worth than a collective body of individuals with apparent similarities. It’s an interesting opinion, and it prompts others to then ask, exactly how much better is the one than the other, and what must be sacrificed to achieve it? The immediate expected effect is a decrease in overall competency, as the value traits within an organization, such as expertise or skill, decline once they cease to be the sole adjudicators of admission or employment. Consider the mismatch hypothesis, the thought that underprepared minority students perform poorly when admitted to difficult colleges. While this theory hasn’t been all together validated, it does draw attention to the results of racially-oriented favoritism in admissions processes — namely, that a more qualified student loses his spot. A similar, even more consequential, result can occur in workplace environments: for example, when a higher-level position that ties indirectly to the success or failure of a company is filled by a less-qualified individual.

But the true harm of our modern affirmative action lies hidden deep within its loudly proclaimed message. It professes to equality, but its methods put means before ends, and like all ideas of great strength, the image it conjures up is a powerful one. A massive set of scales, with bowls whose depth and height are are of immeasurable size, stretching three taut cords up, up through the darkness to the grasp of a looming arm. But these scales have not two, not ten, but a hundred arms, joined at the center in a great hub of cold iron and presided over by a blindfolded figure of justice. On each arm there is a label in bleak lettering. Women, one reads. Blacks, another says. Latinos. Homosexuals. Asians. Veterans. Transgenders. Elderly. Disabled. And on and on they sound off, in every direction, and the lady in the center holds her sword high above them all.

Only, her blindfold is a sham. For her true goal is not equality but rather sameness, and her justice is not blind to those who seek it; no, it is much aware of exactly, precisely what its supplicants are. What, not who. To her, they are not people with hopes and dreams, not humans whose value far exceeds the obvious shallowness of appearance. They are data points, their characters reduced to its single, most obvious facet and nothing more. Each fits very nicely under its own label, neat and tidy, and so her balancing act is much simpler, now that a billion individuals have been reduced to a mere hundred titles. She judges not on principle, but on characteristic, and thus does not judge at all.

The intentions behind affirmative action were undoubtedly pure and well-meaning. Something along the lines of: To account for the sins of the past, we must pay their current debts. We must make restitution for the current accumulation of centuries-old grievances in the hopes of balancing the scales. But using bias as a tool to do so puts the means before the ends and places still more barriers among a people bent on unification. The ideas of modern affirmative action disregard the current person in favor of the ancient group, sacrificing today on the altar of yesterday. Even worse, they harm the possibility for a better tomorrow. A tomorrow in which labels take a backseat and justice is truly blind, and the complexities and values of the individual are the most important characteristics of them all.

Contact Wyatt Smitherman at wtsmith ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Should the United States pass an Iranian nuclear agreement? https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/13/should-the-united-states-pass-an-iranian-nuclear-agreement/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/04/13/should-the-united-states-pass-an-iranian-nuclear-agreement/#comments Tue, 14 Apr 2015 04:06:45 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1098918 Ben Kaufman '17 and Wyatt Smitherman '16 debate the possibility of a new deal with Iran on nuclear weapons. Kaufman argues we that the Right needs to compromise to pass the deal while Smitherman claims the cost is too high in passing the deal and lifting sanctions.

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On April 2nd, world leaders assembled in Lausanne, Switzerland announced that they had reached an historic agreement on a framework for a new deal to restrict Iran’s nuclear activities. Of course, for Congress’s 301 self-appointed Republican Secretaries of State, the fact that this deal included comprehensive restrictions and unprecedented international supervisory standards on Iran’s nuclear plan didn’t matter much. As long as such a deal could be taken as a victory for the Obama administration, it goes without saying that their opposition to it was a foregone conclusion.

Hence the inevitable masquerade of ill-conceived efforts to undercut the agreement through hazy objections related to constitutional powers or a perceived lack of concessions by the other side. From Tom Cotton’s open letter to Benjamin Netanyahu’s unsurprising turn to fear-mongering, the Right’s approach to this obviously beneficial deal has been to ignore the facts, their constituents, and the world at large in the name of political posturing. But the Right’s potential success in blocking the deal would do more than waste John Kerry’s time; it would make the world measurably less safe, ensure that those looking to collaborate would miss out on an unparalleled opportunity to do so, and pointlessly leave the Iranian people to continue to be crushed by the weight of international sanctions.

The deal’s potential to meaningfully improve the world’s safety is apparent in its provisions. The Congressional Research Service explains that the deal is based on “requirements that Iran freeze, in effect, its production of … the form of enriched uranium in [its] stockpile that has caused the most concern; dilute [its more refined uranium] to other forms that would take time to reverse; … and provide the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) with additional information about its nuclear program, as well as access to some nuclear-related facilities which are not covered by Iran’s IAEA safeguards agreement.” In laymen’s terms, the agreement would comprehensively halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions, implement an unprecedented level of transparency, and allow the Iranian people to escape the staggering starvation-laden pain of international sanctions.

Though a final settlement isn’t expected until June, leaders in science, diplomacy, and international security have already applauded this preliminary framework as a “vitally important step forward” for the world and those that live in it. Fifty former diplomats, defense officials, and political leaders from across the globe signed a separate statement pledging their agreement to the existing deal, imploring Congress to “take no action that would impede further progress or undermine the American negotiators’ efforts,” as they added their voice to a growing chorus of foreign relations veterans who support the agreement.

Why, then, have so many Congressional Republicans opposed the deal so vehemently? The general sense of the conservative media seems to be that the deal was, to quote the National Review, a form of “Surrender to Tehran.” The Review explains, “[Iran] will get complete sanctions relief and U.N. legitimacy all at once, while keeping thousands of centrifuges, multiple nuclear sites, [and] the right to develop new, more advanced enrichment equipment … The White House says the deal pushes the time it would take Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon to a year, but widely respected arms-control experts have said… that this is not enough.”

Each point here, of course, is either categorically false or completely misrepresented. Indeed, Iran will get sanctions relief, but it won’t come for free; they’ll be forced to drastically cut into their number of centrifuges, and the “thousands” that they will be able to keep will be under a historically never-before-seen level of international scrutiny. The same goes for their “multiple nuclear sites” and “new, more advanced enrichment equipment.” As for the “widely respected arms-control experts” who see the agreement as not being far-reaching enough, it’s surely no accident that no citation is given in the article. The experts in question are likely either too obscure to be of note or nonexistent to begin with. The scientific community has spoken unambiguously; this deal may not be perfect, but it is an absolutely massive step forward for the entire world that we simply can’t afford not to take.

It should be no surprise that the public sees through these thinly veiled games. Americans support the deal two to one, and even Israeli press outlets such as the Jerusalem Post have openly questioned whether Bibi Netanyahu’s warnings of nuclear armageddon amount to him “putting his own interests ahead of his country.” But Americans should give even more scrutiny to the situation they’ll be left in if the agreement fails. While the deal’s sunset clause limits the world’s ability to rest easy to about ten years, snubbing the agreement as a whole would bring us to a situation much worse than the one we entered negotiations at in the first place. The framework’s mandated breakout time of 12 months isn’t ideal, but we stand now at about two, and the anti-American sentiment that would boil over as sanctions continue to starve out average Iranians would surely not serve to slow down the wheels of nuclear proliferation.

It doesn’t have to be like this. Republicans can put politics aside, take the advice of experts and acknowledge the deal’s value, and allow the United States to be a responsible leader in international diplomacy. Or they can continue to put gamesmanship ahead of international security, block the world’s agreement, and leave us to see where the cards fall. Hopefully, they won’t land on nuclear winter.

Contact Ben Kaufman at bkauf614 ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

The history of Iran’s nuclear program and the rest of the world’s subsequent attempt to curb it is as infamous as it is worrying. It seems like every few years another report pops up that details hidden underground centrifuges or missiles being modified to carry nuclear warheads, or another failure to meet any of the items on that long list of propositions they’re supposed to adhere to. These most recent discussions are a resigned effort in futility. Yes, the victory and subsequent outreach of President Hassan Rouhani in the 2013 elections gave the international community some hope for a permanent solution. However, the unique government in Iran (a combination of theocracy and parliamentary democracy, both under the rule of a Supreme Leader) means that our old friend Ali Khamenei has final say as head of the country’s military.

This is a man who has never embraced the United States’ concerns for the future of his country’s nuclear program and is perfectly happy to endure our sanctions to satisfy his hidden goals. Thus, the futility. No doubt in Washington the questions being raised deal with compromise, with exchange. What restrictions might we have to lift? What concessions might we have to make? But the main issue is being dodged. If this were another country; Britain, say, or India, or even perhaps China, the international community wouldn’t be quite so alarmed. They’re developing nukes, we might say. So what? Everyone needs to feel safe at night. We’ve got a few stashed away somewhere. What sets Iran apart? And asking that one last question leads to the most important of them all.

Why don’t we trust them?

Not Iran in particular, but rather the culture of absolute, unquestioning theocratic rule that governs their region. It’s the one question at the center of the Iran nuclear debate that no one really wants to ask or answer. In the past century the pinnacle of the Cold War taught our world that nothing can justify the widespread slaughter of innocents. Mankind had come to the brink of self-annihilation and stepped back from the edge, and from then on we could surely only recover as a single, unified race. But 9/11 exposed our world to a form of evil so unlike anything we had ever seen before, an evil perfectly at ease killing its loyal servants and a few thousand besides so that all else would bow down before the fear it wielded over them.

If this evil (or at least, the symptoms of strong hatred it has bred) were universally acknowledged by those with the power to act upon their realization, this latest nuclear deal might be approached with appropriate levels of wariness and caution rather than an eagerness born of desperation. But it isn’t; all that manifests in the hearts and minds of our politicians is the vague haziness of distrust. It’s a distrust that now has years of solid historical evidence to back it up, distrust built on refused inspections and concealed plants and broken promises. But it’s also built upon other things, on audiences chanting “Death to America!” and on YouTubed beheadings proudly recorded in HD.  We just don’t trust Iran–indeed, any Islamic state governed by sharia law–with any sort of nuclear program, however small.

But we want to trust them.

We want to believe that, deep down, followers of radical Islam and the countries that serve them are just like us. That they want the same things we do, and that if given the chance they’d choose fireworks over mushroom clouds. And since we are the United States and occasionally let our good intentions lead us down the thorny path, we extend time and time again the hand of friendship, often with another concession attached. It doesn’t matter that they keep slamming the door on us, we reason; eventually, they’ll come around. After all, surely they don’t want nuclear holocaust either? Perhaps they simply wish to be given the respect any country with a Big Red Button deserves. But there is a fine line between respect and subservience, and the culture of Iran is a culture that routinely confuses the two of them. Again, we just don’t trust them.

A failure to realize this is only one of the many disconnects in this particular administration. Currently there’s a battle of stubbornness being waged in Washington between executive and legislative branches (though we could simply call it between left-leaning Democrats and everyone else). Compromise is extremely difficult given such a polarized situation, and as a result each side has engaged in acts which in another time would be unthinkable.

For instance, the president’s recent slew of Executive Orders, each designed with the purpose of circumventing Congressional authority in passing what amounts to law. Not quite outside the scope of his powers, but the point is certainly open to judicial interpretation. On the other side can be seen a Congress so uneasy with their president’s ability as an effective leader that they take it upon themselves to pen a letter, somewhat forthright in its wording and scope, to Iran’s administration. There’s nothing technically wrong with such an action, but normally that sort of thing is the president’s job. Nowadays, though, it seems they trust him about as much as they trust Mr. Khomeini.

And this is most worrying. Our leaders in each branch of government are elected to represent America’s interests, and hers alone, in all they do. This is especially true when dealing with unfriendly powers and nuclear weapons, and in their actions they must present a strong and united front. While lifting sanctions for Iran may at some point benefit both our countries, if the cost involves allowing a hostile regime of rebellion and cruelty to move one step closer to nuclear capabilities, that cost is far too high. It’s not far from committing a kind of suicide, and there’s far enough of that in this war already.

Contact Wyatt Smitherman at wtsmith ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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A debate on the implications of Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/30/a-debate-on-the-implications-of-indianas-religious-freedom-restoration-act/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/30/a-debate-on-the-implications-of-indianas-religious-freedom-restoration-act/#comments Tue, 31 Mar 2015 05:31:43 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1097929 Ben Kaufman '17 and Wyatt Smitherman '16 debate what the Religious Freedom Restoration Act will mean for Indiana. Kaufman argues that the law will only allow for minority discrimination while Smitherman argues the bill is similar to many others, but would ultimately be better if replaced by At-Will contracting.

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Over break, Indiana’s governor signed a law protecting citizens from having their religious practices be “substantially burdened” by government action. In laymen’s terms, this means that Indianans accused of anti-gay discrimination now have legislative backing behind a plea of religious necessity.

Of all the bad ideas to have ever blossomed, this one, to quote the columnist Jake Novak, “fell off the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down.” But given how inherently hateful the ideology behind the law is, to call it only dumb is to assess it pretty optimistically. This law is patently absurd, a hateful dying gasp of an ideology that Americans have realized is thoroughly indefensible. And that assessment is hardly a left-leaning one: From the army of concerned citizens and celebrities who made #BoycottIndiana the top trending hashtag on Twitter to the tens of thousands of Indianans who have taken to the street to showcase their outrage, it’s clear that the American mainstream stands strongly against these new rules.

Indiana’s law is based on two equally ridiculous premises: that religion is under siege in the U.S. and that the invisible hand of the market is capable of protecting minority rights. It’s as laughable as it is terrifying that laws could continue to be made on the backs of such obvious fallacies, let alone that they remain such sacred cornerstones of conservative dogma.

To begin, despite Fox’s best efforts to insist so, there simply isn’t a war in our nation against religion. It’s just not there. We’ve surely become a more secular nation – religious membership and attendance are each at all time lows, and many regulations connected to religious ideology such as the Defense of Marriage Act and sodomy laws have been struck down or repealed. But to paint this as the effect of some conspiracy against faith, to attribute this to the (Bill) O’Reillian image of a struggle between “secular progressives” and terrified, hard-working “traditionalists,” is ridiculous. Nobody’s stopping you from being religious.

To accuse people who say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” of attacking religious freedom (as one friend of Fox News recently did) is, frankly, to spit in the faces of people actually dying worldwide in the name of their faith. If the comparison seems too far, it’s only because the Right’s categorization of itself as religiously victimized is exactly that. Imagine the experience of a Syrian Christian living under the looming threat of ISIS, and then tell me that American Christians are truly being persecuted. The illusion that these two things are in any way equal is precisely what Indiana’s new law – tellingly titled the Religious Freedom Restoration Act – is built on. The law’s conception represents a stunning height of brashness, an embrace of the blissfully, insultingly apathetic gall necessary to equate true persecution with the demand that employers not actively discriminate a group that has already faced so much degradation.

As Indiana’s governor recently underscored by saying, “this is not about discrimination, this is about empowering people to confront government overreach,” the second pillar that this law rests on is the idea that the free market will necessarily weed out potential homophobia in Indiana. Purportedly discriminatory employers, this worldview contents, would quickly be put out of business by locals who choose to take their business elsewhere, leaving only the good guys without government intervention.

I don’t mean to say that this isn’t true in this specific case; with more than 50 percent of Americans now supporting marriage equality, “This Business Serves Everyone” stickers popping up across Indiana and a proper social media infrastructure clearly at the ready to rain hell upon identified offenders, such assumptions may be accurate. But to say that the free market can be trusted to protect minority rights is as ludicrous as it is dangerous. What if this were a different time or a different group; what if the year were 1975, only two years after homosexuality was de-listed from being a mental disorder, and such a law were passed? Employment discrimination against gays probably could have gone off without much hubbub, and the minority – a group whose protection is a central aim of the Constitution – would have been left to face the tyranny of the majority. Indeed, unless a minority faction has everyone else’s outspoken sympathy, such free-market conceptions serve only to further marginalize those outside of the mainstream.

This is exactly why the 14th Amendment and its Equal Protection Clause were passed, why Civil Rights laws banning discrimination in employment and a number of other fields were signed into law, and why the Supreme Court has upheld the Constitutional imperative toward minority protection on so many occasions. Simply leaving the rights of the have-nots to market forces is inexcusable in its unpredictability. The government as a whole and anti-discrimination laws specifically exist so that this doesn’t have to be done. Attempts to roll them back, especially when based such flimsy premises, are nothing but inexcusable.

Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act is an insult to those who believe in the beauty and unifying power of religion. It is a slur padded in a fiction about religious persecution and manufactured cries about government overreach. It is childish, hateful and heinous, and it has no place in a civilized society.

Contact Ben Kaufman at bkauf614 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Way back in 1993 the very first Religious Freedom Restoration Act was signed into law by Bill Clinton after passing both houses of Congress by huge majorities. It was intended to block or inhibit a law’s burden on one’s religious duties except in the cases of “compelling government interest”, and served as a more legalistic, though still federal, expression of our First Amendment freedoms. Keep that magic word in mind: federal. Following Washington’s example, many of the states themselves then chose similar courses, adopting their own nearly identical versions of the federal RFRA. On Thursday Indiana became the 31st to do so when governor Mike Pence signed S.B. 568 into effect.

But not too many people are happy about it. Though the text of the law is remarkably similar to both the early federal law and the 30 other state legislations, it still seems to have riled up a whole crowd of protesters who believe that sexual discrimination is right around the corner. The law’s proponents only point to the 1997 Supreme Court case of City of Borne v. Flores, which determined that the federal RFRA did not always apply to state and local laws. Hence, the flurry of state legislation in the past decade as sort of a base-covering procedure, to which now Indiana is joining. This is not a new concept, regardless of the outcry.

For this law says nothing about private practice. It says nothing about the operation of business by individuals or corporations. The text specifically pinpoints government interest, and lists “state action” as being “the implementation or application of a state or local law or policy” or “the taking of any other action by the state.” The only way its passage could deal with an issue of discrimination would be a) if a secondary law also existed in Indiana that prevented any kind of favoritism and b) a person violated it on religious grounds. Then, and only then, could the RFRA come into effect, and still only if a “compelling governmental interest” in ending this discrimination could be proven.

The problem is that Indiana has no such secondary law. The Title II portion of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prevents discrimination in public accommodations (restaurants, retail stores and service facilities) based only off of race, color, religion or national origin. Through the use of the Commerce Clause, Congress was able to apply this Act from the federal to the state level. Since then, several of the blue-leaning states have extended this protection to cover sexual orientation and gender identity as well. However, Indiana has not. If a business owner in Indiana then refuses to provide a service because of religious belief, no violation of state law has in fact occurred. RFRA wouldn’t even apply because the state government would have no legal jurisdiction in the matter.

But what about the blue-leaning states? Here, RFRA serves as a kind of check on the government’s possible sphere of influence, limiting such only to cases where a “compelling governmental interest” actually exists. For instance, in the infamous Oregon bakery fiasco the 22 other bakeries in the greater Portland area that might service homosexual weddings might have reduced the reasons for prosecution to less than compelling. In a similar way, the $150,000 fine levied on Sweet Cakes (the bakery in question) possibly wouldn’t have counted as a “least restrictive means” of furthering this interest of equal treatment.

The RFRAs don’t only signify an allowable influence of religious freedom on business; they celebrate the triumph of a free-market society over the petty interventions of government. In essence, they allow the principles of capitalism to motivate and encourage fairness while simultaneously curbing the influence of the state. Why bother with legally enforced discrimination statutes when the power of social media and instantaneous information can make or break a new business overnight? Nowadays, if a company chooses for whatever reason to refuse its services to some of its patrons, to celebrate or mock a specific ideology, or to laud a certain belief, there will be backlash. This backlash may be positive, e.g. the massive outpouring of support present at Chick-fil-A’s appreciation day, or negative, e.g. the equally massive outburst of vitriol against its president’s remarks. Businesses are coming to the rather obvious realization that any of their principles other than purely business ones will offend or please certain interest groups. And Indiana definitely doesn’t want the NCAA to pack up and leave.

Hence, the greatest capitalist innovation of our time; the At-Will contract.

At-Will is a locked door. It’s a hole in the wall through which instructions and nothing else are passed. Initially a hiring strategy, a business that employs using At-Will contracts can hire and fire at anytime for any reason. You could be employed for the color of your hair and terminated because you prefer tea to coffee, but you will never know of these reasons and cannot sue based on them. It’s the perfect solution to the requirements and statutes that years of zealous anti-discrimination have given us, and it may solve these service issues as well. A company that not only employs but serves using At-Will contracts could theoretically refuse service to anyone for any reason; if a patron walks through its door, the fact of their entry would constitute an unspoken agreement with this contract (provided the shop advertised its presence).

And the nice thing about At-Will is that it gives no room for the rampant misinterpretation RFRA has garnered. While celebrities re-tweet outraged remarks about a law that already exists in half the country and businesses like Angie’s List and Salesforce make dark threats if a bill sourced from a 20-year old piece of federal legislation is not immediately repealed, the rest of us shake our heads in puzzlement. Any state RFRA is simply the First Amendment applied to state governments, we say, existing purely as a result of our country’s federalism. What exactly are they condemning?

Contact Wyatt Smitherman at wtsmith ‘at’ stanford.edu. 

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The debate on man-made climate change https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/09/the-debate-on-man-made-climate-change/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/03/09/the-debate-on-man-made-climate-change/#comments Tue, 10 Mar 2015 03:55:27 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1097360 Ben Kaufman '17 and Wyatt Smitherman '16 go head to head on the debate over climate change. Kaufman argues it is largely man-created while Smitherman claims the effects of climate change are part of the larger uncontrollable weather cycles of the earth.

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You really just have to sit back and admire the hole most Republicans have dug themselves into on climate change. The question isn’t whether they’re right or wrong in denying that it exists — they’re wrong, and 97 percent of climate scientists agree. The environment is being changed by human hands, and, as Fox News host Marc Morano recently said, “You’re entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.” Of course, he followed that up with “it’s a concept not everyone’s comfortable with” and dove into accusations of Google’s new accuracy-based ranking system somehow being fascist, but the point stands. The sky is blue. The grass is green. Human action is changing the climate. Period. We shouldn’t take those who deny the last claim any more seriously than we would take those who deny either of the first two.

The funny part, as evidenced by the number of Republicans jumping on the “I’m not a scientist” question-dodging bandwagon, is that the GOP’s leadership surely knows this. It just doesn’t seem to think that cutting its losses and moving on is a good move. Republicans’ confession that they don’t know what they’re talking about is clearly a step up from their previous tendency of outright climate denial, but it underscores the fact that their party is simply in too deep to admit fault. The “not a scientist” movement and the attitudes that drive it thus leave us in a race to see which will cave first: the Republican Party or the earth. But if 2013’s government shutdown is any indication, we shouldn’t be so sure that sanity, public opinion or the undeniably real effects of our environmental complacency will be enough to sway the right.

Still, some continue to deny both climate change and humans’ causal role therein. There are those who argue, for example, that human-based climate change is too difficult to predict or examine, making assertions of its existence groundless. Indeed, climate change is extremely hard to predict; a fairly consistent rule, in fact, is that our models have tended to underestimate how bad climate change really is. But to argue that there is some “missing link” between extant changes to our planet and human causality (as Senator James Inhofe has, lamenting, “The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He [God] is doing in the climate.”) is, again, completely false. Science has firmly established that humans are not just witness to but are the direct cause of climate change. I challenge you, reader, to convince an Earth Systems major or a professor in the department that climate change is simply too hard to observe for our science to be accurate, or that the work of these scientists is meaningfully negated by the fact that you don’t like it. My email address is under this article. Message me if you succeed.

Then there’s the assertion that our planet has been going through such cycles all its life and that this is simply some puberty-like awkward hiccup in the Earth’s life cycle. Of course, there is little doubt that our planet has known tropical periods and ice ages. But at no period in its history has a quarter of atmospheric carbon (an unbelievably powerful trapper of heat) been man-made, nor has an increase in the Earth’s temperature ever coincided with a decrease in solar activity. Our planet’s surface and lower atmosphere are warming while its outer atmosphere is cooling, a process that is exactly what we would expect to see from human-caused climate change. Climate skeptics have no answer to the question of how greenhouse gasses wouldn’t be affecting our planet if changes being seen now were due only to cycles. Perhaps these pollutants were buried in the sand alongside the GOP’s heads.

Others go on to point out that other countries have done more environmental damage than the U.S., but, aside from the extent to which that argument ignores the previous assertion that man hasn’t altered the environment in the first place, the point is a complete red herring. It’s far too late to quibble about who did it worse; the fact of the matter is that global warming is an absolutely alarm-soundingly urgent issue, and that every single person in the world will be affected by it. Perhaps if Republicans jump ship now on climate denial, they can save some amount of face; surely they could maintain base support by framing the issue as a chance to push for a private-sector boom in green innovation. Is there truly no tax break that could turn this into a conservative issue, no big-government-bogeyman fear-mongering that could make the battle against pollutants a battle for individual liberty? Is it not one already? Isn’t it a shame that the survival of our race is coming down to such petty political calculations?

Or perhaps global warming denial will simply be added to the Conservative Hall of Shame, taking a spot alongside resistance to civil, women’s and gay rights. I hope the museum isn’t close to sea level. Maybe they’ll add a water slide.

Contact Ben Kaufman at bkauf614 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Good morning, Stanford! It’s another beautiful day out here on the west coast: sun shining, skies blue and balmy, temperature in the 60s and, well, about perfect. Yes, it’s certainly easy for us to forget the terrible winter storm pounding up and down their side of the country. Apparently it’s a real doozy this time, striking as far south as Texas with sub-freezing temperatures while winter storms Juno, Remus and now Thor blast New York and New Jersey with ice and snow. Even the inner states (Arkansas, Georgia and the Carolinas) aren’t immune this season.

And now the same thought just crossed all of your heads: Surely it must be due to global warm— climate change.

Yes, the first label’s somewhat fallen out of fashion by now. The most recent satellite data lists a lack of any sort of warming trend since 1997, when the recurring El Niño weather pattern drove global temperatures up approximately 0.3 degrees above the previous average. In the past decade or so, we’ve hovered around or slightly below this point, even as worldwide carbon dioxide levels have continued to rise. Despite all the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) computer models predicting a three- to four-fold temperature increase over this same period, the Earth has stayed a pretty even course, barring the fluctuations typical of any large, complex and still not fully-understood system.

So then, climate change. A much broader, more ambiguous label encompassing not only predicted temperature variations but also environmental anomalies that, while no scientist or researcher ever thought might occur, can nonetheless be sheltered under this umbrella term and pointed to proudly as another unfortunate result of carbon abuse. Ignoring that the U.S. has been fairly constant in greenhouse gas emissions since 1990 and actually reached a peak in 2007 (pat yourselves on the back), it seems there is no acceptable solution to some environmentalists other than to throw the full weight of public policy behind the ultimate goal of a zero-carbon footprint. Which then leads to cap-and-trade, risky federal investments in green energy enterprises and a general feeling of shame for anyone who dares drive unaccompanied to work.

I can understand the motivations behind these techniques, if not their methods or goals. Ours is a beautiful country, with resources meant neither for neglect nor exploitation, but instead for management and cultivation. It’s a balancing act, as are many ideas within our system of government; on the one hand are the tree-huggers and green crusaders, on the other hand are the clear-cutters and strip-miners, and out of their bitter dislike comes that magic word we all champion: sustainability. We harvest, but we replant. We mine, but we refill. We do things like attach scrubbers and baghouses to our coal-fired plants, the dirtiest means of power generation, and go above and beyond the call of duty.

However, the latest effort by the EPA seems a bit too much. In September 2013, an addendum to the Clean Air Act was put forth that proposed newer, more stringent carbon pollution standards for future power plants. With this, the EPA essentially classified carbon dioxide — odorless, flavorless, non-toxic to humans and absolutely vital to the existence of all plant life on this Earth — as a pollutant. Last year, more ambitious plans were announced to apply such regulation to existing power plants, with an option to comply or shut down. It’s directed mostly at the coal-fired plants that provide 39 percent of the U.S.’s electricity, in particular in the Midwest region, where this figure approaches a higher number. But coal is cheap, and thus electricity from coal is cheapest of all sources (notwithstanding natural gas). The result? Skyrocketing energy prices and a huge blow to our economy.

Let’s move to a bigger scale. Though climate change is championed as a global problem, other superpowers seem to be doing very little at the moment to match our rather strenuous efforts. China in this respect immediately comes to mind, though not with any idea of hope attached. In 2007, they overshadowed the U.S. as the largest producer of carbon dioxide in the world, and while our numbers have dipped since then, theirs have only grown. This past year, China pumped nine billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into its skies, along with particulate matter, soot and other toxic chemicals like mercury and sulfur dioxide that the U.S. has long since heavily regulated but that go unchecked across the Pacific. The air quality in larger Chinese cities is practically legendary (once described by the U.S. Embassy as “crazy bad”), and others cities like New Delhi are not too far behind them. Unfortunately, the borders of a country don’t matter much to smog and smoke.

It seems that, once again, we’re asking the wrong questions. Rather than, “How can we force ourselves to curb our already decreasing carbon dioxide levels, regardless of the economic impacts on a cheap energy-dependent country?”, it should be, “In what ways can we adapt to a continuously changing environment?” No one doubts that the Earth’s temperature is in a state of oscillatory flux; even without any kind of ice-core data listing its repetitive cycles of heating and cooling, the evidence of the most recent Little Ice Age demonstrates how such century-wide fluctuations are common to our planet. Some of them are more distressing than others, causing mass freezes across farmland and locking down transportation. Others are gentler. Do we prepare for them, or do we vainly try to stop them in their tracks?

It is a great folly to assume mankind can control something as complex as weather, and one only slightly less to presume we know everything there is to know about it. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases may influence the Earth’s meteorological systems, but the evidence to such is inconclusive at best and downright manipulative at worst. A better understanding, an unbiased understanding, should always be pursued before major, potentially damaging policies are enacted across our country (which tries hard enough as it is). There is no religion here, only science. Let us treat it as such.

Contact Wyatt Smitherman at wtsmith ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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The debate over same-sex marriage: A question of morality or practicality? https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/23/the-debate-over-same-sex-marriage-a-question-of-morality-or-practicality/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/23/the-debate-over-same-sex-marriage-a-question-of-morality-or-practicality/#comments Tue, 24 Feb 2015 05:32:40 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1096346 In a response to the Alabama Supreme Court struggle over the legality of same-sex marriage, Ben Kaufman '17 and Wyatt Smitherman '16 debate the moral and practical arguments at play for and against same-sex marriage in the United States.

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Like with the validity of climate change research, the only people who continue to deny that marriage equality is an absolute no-brainer are conservatives. It’s time to put that debate to bed once and for all. Sixty-three percent of Americans support gay marriage, more than 70 percent of Americans live in places where it’s allowed and each of those numbers is poised to keep on growing as we move forward. The fact that we’re still even discussing this is mind-boggling. America, marriage equality won. Let’s turn the page.

Of course, the question at hand isn’t that of LGBT rights as a whole, but rather the argument that the federal government should place more value on straight couples because they have a higher chance (that is, any) of procreating. This is deeply troubling even only as a contention, let alone as a theoretical piece of public policy.

A good place to start in evaluating the above proposal, putting aside relevant ethical and legal ramifications, is the question of whether Americans need to be encouraged to have more children in the first place. The answer, of course, is that they very obviously don’t. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that America will be home to nearly 417 million people by 2060, putting the U.S. on track to handily defend its current third-place position behind only China and India in population rankings. If we were facing a demographic crisis like Japan’s, it would make sense for our government to take evasive baby-promoting action. The simple fact, though, is that we aren’t.

Next, let’s consider what the pursuit of a utilitarian baby boom would truly entail. Perhaps the government was looking to fix Social Security by bringing us back to the 159.4:1 ratio that existed between workers and retirees in 1940, a ratio that reached 2.9:1 in 2010. By 2050, the retired population is projected to hit 83.7 million. A 159.4:1 ratio under such circumstances would require a workforce of 13.3 billion people, equal to almost ten Chinas, eleven Indias, about 42 current Americas or 1.9 times the population of our current global population. Our physical infrastructure is already being pushed well beyond its limits; imagine the traffic on the 101 if two Earths were shoved into the U.S.

Plus, given that there are about 120 million full-time workers in America, a workforce of 13.3 billion would require us to come up with 13.18 billion new workers by 2050. That in turn means that every woman in America (of which there are about 161 million) would need to contribute 82 new workers by 2050, or 2.3 kids a year. Ask a female friend how she feels about that, and then consider the massive improvements that already need to be made to our physical, medical, agricultural, environmental and educational infrastructure just to support our population along current growth projections.

Still, the most worrisome aspect of any policy favoring heterosexuals over other couples is its stark incompatibility with both American laws and American values. The argument that some people are entitled to special treatment because their sexual preference also happens to make them more likely to procreate assumes that, for the government, citizens exists purely as an instrument to maximize the nation’s growth and power with no consideration of domestic well-being. That’s ridiculous. Our government exists to protect and serve, not to milk the population to defend our nation’s international supremacy without any consideration of repercussions at home.

This isn’t to say that there are no cases in American life where freedoms are sacrificed toward social good, and it’s no accident that our Constitution’s self-declared goal is, “ to form a more perfect Union” Indeed, we give up some amount of our freely-earned income so that we can support the framework of civil society, and we forfeit our right to beat up innocent people on the street because we wouldn’t want someone else to end up doing that to us. But each of these situations involves a trade-off where the benefits substantially and evidently outweigh the negative effects.

In striking down Section Three of the Defense of Marriage Act, Justice Kennedy wrote, “The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.” Especially when America has absolutely no demographic reason to pursue policies that give preference to heterosexuals, there is simply no positive outcome to be had in prioritizing straight couples that ‘overcomes’ such a blatant violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

And what would this incentivization of child-bearing look like anyway? In nations that currently engage in such policies, parents are generally offered extensive tax breaks, day care services, medical care, paid maternal (and often paternal) leave, to name only a few perks. Ignoring cost, such practices (in the absence of a crisis) would make sense only if people chose to be gay and if this were a question of swinging the balance of their decision-making toward being straight. We know that they don’t. Such practices thus serve only to discriminate.

The point is that promoting straight couples doesn’t make us a better nation in any (any) way. It does nothing more than make us one that implicitly de-prioritizes gay couples, and by inevitable extension, homosexuals as a whole. We’ve done enough of that over the years. Let’s move on.

Contact Ben Kaufman at bkauf614 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

There’s a new wrinkle this time in the Great Marriage Debate. Location: Alabama, where Judge Granade recently overturned the state’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage during Strawser vs. Strange. Date: Feb. 9, two weeks back. Character: Justice Glenn Murdock from the Alabama Supreme Court, who submitted along with the Court’s order a two-page opinion that warns of a line drawn in the sand. If Alabama permits same-sex marriage as law, his next vote may be to abolish marriage altogether and simply deny the so-affirmed rights of marriage to everyone.

His reasoning may be a little far-fetched, but there is some sense behind it. The idea of constitutionally-protected marriage rights has always been somewhat vague. Though the Supreme Court has a long history of defending the irrefutability of marriage, the confusing nature of federal jurisdiction on this subject remains. By this opinion, this one judge has finally forced all of us to ask the question at the very center of this debate.

It goes something like this: Why should government concern itself with the marital state, or lack thereof, of its constituents? What matters to it when two human beings choose a commitment to life-long fidelity in partnership? I don’t mean the rulers; no doubt high-profile relationships are a frequent subject of discussion around the Senate water cooler. But to the body of law and theory that dictate rule this idea would seem irrelevant. What reasons could government itself have for legally recognizing this union?

Perhaps financial stability? Most forms of government have vested interests in promoting economic security among their citizens. But insofar as relating to the nominal recognition of marriage this argument doesn’t hold. When two or more people live and work under one roof they automatically benefit from the social and economic advantages that follow (shared rent, divided tasks/responsibility), whether or not they share a marriage certificate. Could it then be for purposes of organization? Possibly, but it should be remembered that in this day and age computers make this trivial. Not to mention that marriage is not the only bloc by which two or more people may choose to affiliate themselves; “Head of Household” is also a category in tax returns.

And here I’ll mention that it is not the government’s job to make sure its citizens are happy and leave it at that.

No, when emotion is stripped from the case and replaced with the pure reason law requires, there remains only one reason why government should place any kind of value on an institution as socially oriented as marriage. It’s children.

For it is in a government’s interest to ensure the maintenance of its population. It is in a government’s interest to encourage the continuance of the next generation, through methods that result in healthy, stable and intelligent workers who themselves will later contribute their talents to the strength of the country. One might even say that the government invests in its youth (think Department of Education) to ensure an excellent final product. By doing so, the government not only ensures its own survival, but also the prosperity and increased wealth of its citizenry. It is a callous argument, but concerned only with logic.

Hence the advantages married couples receive. Tax breaks that allow couples to put aside for the childrearing years when they first marry and spend more of their resources on their kids once they arrive. Employment benefits that grant a family security when the working spouse(s) is injured or dies. Medical exceptions that give parents the responsibility over their child’s health.

If it is accepted that, from a government’s point of view, marriage exists to create an atmosphere suitable for child rearing (which decades of sociological research have proven it does), the next consideration would be this; which environment is most suitable?

It will take many more years before a complete study that accurately compares the effects of parent combinations on children is done. If such a study proves that the familial situation a child is raised in ─ foster, single parent, adopted, same-sex, different sex, polygamous, etc. ─ makes no difference whatsoever on a child’s psychological and emotional development and prepares them all equally for the challenges of adulthood, I for one will be thrilled. But such a result would be both unlikely and counterintuitive. There are times when where one comes from matters, even if it’s only as a point of reference. And as children grow, the most basic question of “Where did I come from?” may turn to a darker “Why would anyone give me up?” A thought they cannot quite shake, a thought that changes them ever so slightly.

And so, the government looks down upon its populace from on high and calculates their best interests. The people should have houses, it says; incentivize this. Make it cheaper for them to have houses. The people should have children, it says; incentivize this. Make it cheaper for them to have children. The people should be married? Well, we are not sure about “should,” but it does seem make it easier for those children. Fine. And it relaxes back into plush leather and congratulates itself on a job well-done.

Then it notices something it could not have predicted, that to its calculations went unnoticed. It seems a bond that forms, first between mother and child seconds after the pain stops, then between father and child outside the waiting room, then perhaps between brother and child as he peers at this new arrival over the crib. And it wonders.

The people should be married, it says. Incentivize this.

We may elect government to represent our interest, but behind each law, each decision, there is reason. The links between children and the marriages that produce them are too powerful to deny, particularly when they relate to legislation or court matters. Taken from this perspective, Judge Murdock’s opinion serves only to make a political statement without understanding why and how the government recognizes the institutions it should encourage. If only for the children.

Contact Wyatt Smitherman at wtsmith ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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Student activism: Productive or reckless? https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/09/student-activism-productive-or-reckless/ https://stanforddaily.com/2015/02/09/student-activism-productive-or-reckless/#comments Tue, 10 Feb 2015 05:32:10 +0000 https://stanforddaily.com/?p=1095345 Ben Kaufman '17 and Wyatt Smitherman '16 debate the efficacy of on-campus student activism in light of the wave of recent student protests at Stanford University.

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Sure, activism can be annoying, individual protesters can go too far and nobody likes feeling surrounded by warriors of political correctness. But to roll our eyes and argue that students should simply give up all efforts at activism is weak at best and cowardly at worst.

Of course, there’s really no argument to be made that the Silicon Shut-Down protesters weren’t acting recklessly when they closed down the San Mateo- Hayward Bridge. I certainly understand (or, okay, I conceptually understand as much as I can within the bounds of being white) how important it is to actively bring the issue of black lives mattering into the mainstream. We simply can’t allow those in places of privilege to think about racial inequity only when it’s convenient for them to do so; I’m a white man, and it’s easy for these issues to be distant and only conceptual to me and those in my demographic. But that doesn’t mean that demonstrators should be immune from the repercussions of their actions, and, if a court of law finds that the Stanford 68 are liable for a three-year-old girl’s permanent brain damage (as they’ve been accused of being), they should and will face appropriate consequences.

I also don’t dispute that the backlash against the bridge protesters has unfortunately lent substance to anti-protest sentiment on campus. It simply isn’t enough to say only that Stanford is politically apathetic, as it also houses a sizable faction (likely born out of the often wholly anti-governmental sentiment of the tech world and its leaders, such as Peter Thiel) that sees activism and politics in general as frivolous.

That group now (again, unfortunately) has a much larger claim to the hearts and minds of our campus than those looking to initiate social progress do. It’s just a fact. If YikYak is any barometer, Stanford students are becoming increasingly convinced not just that the cups at Coupa are small and that Netflix is a fun way to spend a weekend, but that protesters are nothing more than overzealous, quixotic and thoroughly irritating college kids who are protesting only for the sake of their own self-righteousness. Activists know nothing about the issues, this narrative insists and their goal is simply to earn back-pats through yelling and sign making.

That point in our cultural conversation, though, is where things get dangerous. There’s no doubt in my mind that the Stanford 68 took it too far, but the extent to which campus has been willing to dive into a knee-jerk reaction against any form of social dissent is deeply troubling. Just like how Princeton’s Tal Fortgang famously complained that his opinions were being written off at sight because of his European ancestry, I worry that any on-campus push for social progress may soon come to be dismissed as childish, bleeding-heart liberal nonsense. Look at what people are saying on social media and at lunch tables about SOOP, Fossil Free Stanford and anyone else with a political agenda. The discussion isn’t about whether these groups are right or wrong (and I don’t mean to comment on my stance on any of the issues they raise); it’s about whether they should just pack up and go home, and why it is that demonstrators feel such a need to bring their issues to campus.

Of course, the protesters arrested on the bridge shoulder a fair share of the blame for this growing wariness of critical thinking about society. Among all the activists at Stanford, the 68 were the ones who actually broke the law, and it was their action that truly amped up the flame under what was previously only a simmering sense that protesters should quit their complaining. But are we so apathetic and easily manipulated as a school (and, truly, as a collection of human beings) that we could let the misstep of 68 (even if a grave one) undermine the fact that 42 million black Americans remain systemically disadvantaged? Are we not intelligent enough to know we should divorce the tactical error of a small group from the broader need for reform, or the action of one socially interested group from the realm of political advocacy as a whole? Because right now we’re concluding not just that those speaking out messed up, but that this necessarily means the issues they care about should fall off with them. That’s a surprisingly simple-minded conclusion for such a cerebral school to make and a troubling one to begin with.

Stanford, speak out against stupidity and the presence of tunnel vision among the politically active. Speak out against demonstrations that put human lives at risk and events that distract us from issues that demand attention. Insist that club leaders look to be more collaborative and constructive, and demand that they make a legitimate effort to initiative nuanced dialogue instead of name-calling. But take a long look in the mirror before you go so far as to protest political activism — to, as the expression goes, “protest protesting”– as a whole.

It may be tiring to live on a politically active campus, but the alternative isn’t one where social problems don’t exist. It’s one where they’re swept under the rug. The presence of a lively political discourse at Stanford is inherently valuable, and, even if it can be tiresome and individual actors can sometimes go too far, we have a duty to defend it from those who directly advocate inaction. To do otherwise is to defend the status quo. And for some people, that isn’t an option.

Contact Ben Kaufman at bkauf614 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Activism is apparently on the rise at Stanford. These days you can’t go anywhere without finding a group of young fresh-faced revolutionaries in political confederation, marching or holding panels or creating symbols of belief. Last quarter it was Michael Brown, two weeks ago it was the Right To Life memorial and now the issue of Israeli divestment is on everyone’s mind. In a week it will be vaccines (more on that later). And since democracy dictates that Activism cannot exist without its twin brother Dissent we also have anti-protests, outraged articles in the Daily and debates between the SPER and the SCP.

And this is a good thing! There are a lot of things people will say our country is built upon, but one principle whose universality can hopefully be agreed on is that we as Americans strive for this kind of openness. The free exchange of ideas in an open, hospitable environment so that the good ones can be selected for development and the bad ones weeded out is tantamount to our democratic government and vital to our capitalistic state.

But there’s a certain rawness to the political climate here at Stanford. A kind of ragged disrespect, sometimes but not always one-sided, that with the increased frequency of sociopolitical events growing in campus-wide interest has itself grown more visible, more apparent. Or maybe it’s just that since we’re all so darn smart the other side must be really stupid. Or maybe it’s our thin skins. Whatever’s causing it, the current political vogue seems to be to yell your point across as loudly as possible and get in a few insults while you’re at it.

For example, the recent string of protests. Now, it’s one thing to bend or break commonwealth law during protests. In terms of defying the establishment that’s like two for the price of one, and if so I’ll say more power to you and then grab a sign. It’s another to put us—students biking to class, workers on their morning commute, parents visiting campus with their children—in a position of insecurity, or in some cases even danger. Hence the yelling.

Did the Shutdown Silicon crowd picture any of the workplace consequences (clients delayed, meetings missed) for the forty or fifty cars who were an hour or more late to work that morning? Did the Slow Down for Michael Brown organizers, in the heated excitement of making their voice be heard, envision the potential for a massive bicycle accident in the infamous “Circle of Death” due to their human traffic cones? Will either side of the current Israeli divestment debate up the ante by forcibly blocking Stanford bus lanes, or will they stop and consider firstly the student running late to his class midterm or the bus driver who can’t brake in time?

Such disruption is counterproductive. At best it’s only irritating and is thus met with a sarcastic look and a few barbs. At worst, it sparks dull antipathy towards the protestors and their cause no matter what they’re championing, and that’s perhaps the most disappointing thing of all. Because black lives do matter. The root truths of the conflict in Israel do matter. The good or bad of vaccinations do matter.

There is a wider issue at hand here, though. It’s the issue of civility, of the common decency we extend to our fellow humans because they are humans and especially of the dignity we ought to take extra care in displaying towards those with whom we do not agree. The political arena has a tendency towards the strongest of opinions because of the importance anything as simple as an idea can have in such an environment, but strong opinions don’t demand harsh words or alarming actions―even on a smaller scale. In CoHo last Saturday evening I asked two proponents of opposing vaccination beliefs to curb their very loud R-rated adjectives. They did so only in volume; the discussion grew no less heated.

Everyone at Stanford has an opinion on just about everything, particularly if that brand of everything deals with a political anything. Which makes sense; ours is an intelligent and aware student body that focuses its energy (for the most part) on issues we know and see as important ones. That’s why we’re all here. Articulate political discussion is not only important, but necessary, for democracies like ours to continue to thrive in a world full of ideology. Articulate, respectful, civilized discussion that conveys one’s message without ostracizing its intended recipients. Surely that’s not too difficult?

Contact Wyatt Smitherman at wtsmith ‘at’ stanford.edu.

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