Questions and Observations: Something to Offend Everyone

1. It strikes me that the people who believe that gender roles are largely culturally determined are pretty much the same people who are most likely to be sympathetic to the transgendered--those who are outwardly one sex but inwardly feel themselves to be the other sex, and who have the personality and innate preferences of that other sex. I don't really know what is correct or that these two notions can't ultimately be reconciled, but they do at least seem to be contradictory. And no one much notices.


2. It feels right that someone ought to be able to start an honest business with little interference and charge what she wants for her goods or services and that she ought to be able to profit or not depending on her work skills and business acumen. And further, it feels right that she should be able to hire workers for what they are worth to her or sell shares or take out loans to raise money for expansion. And beyond that, those persons holding those shares or loans ought to able to exchange those shares or loans for other things of value. All of this seems sensible and feels right.

But when the elaboration of this process results in some people making many, many, many multiples of what some others make doing full-time, legitimate work, to me, it feels wrong. And I have no problem with the idea of society rebalancing outcomes to some degree. But if it happens that all attempts to do this make the above-described economic system unworkable, and if any other system is too unproductive or requires unacceptable coercion, then we may have to accept wildly inequitable outcomes. But we should not celebrate the morality of massive inequality nor cease looking for workable methods of redress.

While a just society may reluctantly decide that war is necessary in some circumstances, the celebration of the war's attendant slaughter is a mark of that society's barbarity.

Questions and Observations: Something to Offend Everyone

1. A question for those who want no measures strong enough to actually stop illegal immigrants from coming across the southern border and no serious attempts to make them leave once they're here: If you want a completely open border, please say so. And also, do you want to stop screening people who want to come here from places other than Latin America? If not, why not? You don't like Romanians or Nepalese? And there are Iraqis, who, having served us as translators, are trying to come here for their own safety. And they are mired in months and years of red tape.
So hey, if you think people should be able to move freely around the globe and settle anywhere they want without restriction, let's talk. Certainly the nation-state with controlled, well-defined borders has caused a lot of mischief in the world.

2. I heard a discussion today of a report by, I think, the Pew Research Center, that talked about "unauthorized" immigrants rather than "undocumented" or "illegal" immigrants. An effort to find a term that UnAmerican one-worlders and hateful nativist bigots can agree on?


3. Do you think the Arizona legislature should pass a resolution encouraging the President and Congress to maintain the weakness of the economy, since that's been our most effective tool in slowing illegal immigration?