DC vs Iraq: who will get democracy first?
Let's Free DC is drawing attention to an embarrassing "Democracy Race": whether the citizens of Iraq or the 572,000 citizens of Washington, D.C. will get full democratic representation first. It looks like Baghdad residents will be voting for their representatives to national government long before District residents will.

LetsFreeDC is agnostic on how to bring full Congressional representation to District residents; it provides a page with links to three groups with alternative ideas on how to achieve that:

statehood,

constitutional amendments giving equal constitutional or at least voting rights, or

retrocession: Maryland regains its contribution to D.C. (except for a National Capitol Mall Area) just as Virginia regained its contribution, the Arlington area, in 1846.

A very comprehensive chart compares the important features of the major options. Its author, Mark David Richards, also provides a useful political history of the District.

Of the approaches, I've always favored retrocession, and still do as an ex-D.C. and current Maryland resident. First, I wonder if statehood could backfire for current low-income D.C. residents. Statehood for such a small population could provide a motive for large-scale relocations to D.C. by different interest groups. Such groups would not just have access to the halls of power, but might also have a realistic chance of directly tipping House and Senate races by sheer numbers, particularly if gentrification were to accelerate and force low-income residents to seek housing elsewhere.

More fundamentally, I just don't believe it's wise or fair for a very small population to have two senators of its own. States like Delaware got their disproportionate representation as a necessary part of the political deal to form the United States. States like Wyoming or North Dakota were political mistakes in this sense; there's no need to knowingly compound the problem by adding another state with a population so far below 6 million, i.e., roughly one-fiftieth of the U.S. population.

But it's more important to me that District residents get the vote than that it be done with exquisite fairness to the rest of the United States. So while I strongly favor retrocession, and believe most U.S. residents would if given the facts and a chance to think it over, I wouldn't want to wait for ten years if statehood or a suitable constitutional amendment could be achieved sooner. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:19:00 AM -- |  

 

US Department of Art and Technology

What We Do

The Executive Branch and the Congress have responsibilities for U.S. aesthetic matters and for the socio-cultural impact of technology as explored in the artistic investigations of the media arts. Within the Executive Branch, the US Department of Art and Technology is the lead U.S. cultural agency, and the Secretary is the President's principal art and technology adviser.

Read on for more superb bureaucratese. Via the equally entertaining john & belle have a blog (who credit Tom Tomorrow, who no doubt credits someone else, ad infinitum. Think of it as one-shot blog-rolling.)

WaPo article on USDAT here.

For future reference, "john," a.k.a. Professor John Holbo, has also been having plenty of fun at Jonah Goldberg's and John Derbyshire's expense all week long, re the Bill Bennett and Senator Rick Santorum affairs. posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:55:00 PM -- |  

 
Liberty kid
My little girl turned 5 this week. Last weekend we got her the "I'm a big kid now" item she's wanted for about two years: a pink girl's bicycle, with flowers on the seat and a basket to carry her dolls around in. Maddie and I went to the bottom of our hill where there's a flat cul-de-sac, she got on, and pedaled madly up and down the street. As she sped down the street, she chanted,

Red, white, and blue ... never give up! ... we represent... America!"
(pedal, pedal, pedal) : repeat endlessly

Where did that come from? Well, where else: we let her watch TV on weekend mornings (it's just easier on everyone, we all agree). Her favorite TV show these days, apparently overtaking "Sagwa" the Chinese cat and the regrettably cancelled "Angelina Ballerina," is a show called Liberty's Kids. Maddie chants parts of the rap-like theme song as she bikes; I think the connection is that she's outgrown childish things like tricycles and teletubbies.

The story line is that several fictional characters have hooked up with Benjamin Franklin (Walter Cronkite) in the 1770s, and all work for his newspaper. There's a Patriot boy, who alternately argues and flirts with a Tory girl, there's also a French kid, and Moses, a freedman working in Franklin's print shop. Naturally, they're in the thick of most of the major events of the Revolutionary War era.

It's actually quite excellent. Maddie loves it, anyway, although she'll run into the dining room when things get too scary, as a story about a war is apt to do. But she clearly loves that the cartoon is about something, and something real, and the drama of the situations captivates her. She talks about the stories a lot, including an episode about Nathan Hale and several episodes about Benedict Arnold (voice by Dustin Hoffman!) that give a surprisingly full account of his decision to betray the Americans. I was amazed to be talking about issues like slavery with a five year old -- even if she's clearly the most fabulous five year old in the world. The sooner the better, since she's interested.

We're guardedly OK with the series because it doesn't sugar-coat American history. The show is quite accurate about a lot of details, as far as I can tell (consulting historian Jack Rakove seems to be doing his job well); most episodes take some historical event during the era as the kernel of their story. One example of non-sugar-coating is a story where Moses tries to free his brother from slavery. Brother Cato instead opts to gain his freedom by joining the British forces, relying on Lord Dunmore's Proclamation of 1775.*

Maddie likes the oratory: "Give me liberty or give me death!" is not everyday children's TV pablum, not when it's delivered with verve. And another important, nice thing: Maddie really identifies with the numerous heroines in the series, from Sarah, the Tory girl, to Abigail Adams, to the "female Paul Revere" Sybil Ludington (a doll has been duly named after her). Maybe that's what those dashes up and down the street are all about...

If you've got kids between about 4 and maybe 12 years of age, you could do worse than let them watch this show now and then. For her part, Maddie now wants to be a ballerina, mommy, and historian when she grows up. Good choices! Stay tuned.

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* This proclamation, however pragmatically motivated, thus predated the (at least equally pragmatic) Emancipation Proclamation by more than those famous four score and seven years. I think it may be memorialized in the Declaration of Independence as the last grievance against the King: "He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us..." posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:09:00 AM -- |  

 

Vouchers for madrassas? Just don't make me pay for them
Eve Tushnet responded to an e-mail of mine the other day about her views on school vouchers for "madrassas", or Koran study schools.

Part of our disagreement centered on just how Koran-centric the schools are. I had the Pakistan/Taliban/etc. model in mind, in which the schools do little more than provide a spot for their students to memorize the Koran and usually get indoctrinated in the Wahabbite version of Islam. I considered that to be verging on child abuse in America (and anywhere else for that matter).

Eve agreed that the interesting question becomes vouchers for "a school that teaches radical Islam but also teaches other stuff, and does not explicitly call for treason or revolt." But even if you're willing to grant that some varieties of truly "radical Islam" aren't a call for treason or revolt, you're still left with the chore of deciding which ones those are, or hiring a theologian to help you with that.

Eve's case for madrassa vouchers, from her earlier post, is this:

If you're OK with madrassas for the rich--if you think they're wrong but you won't outlaw them, say--then saying poor parents can't use vouchers at madrassas is pretty weird. The basic claim here is that parents can direct their children's education in almost all cases. (There are obvious exceptions for child abuse; there are also restrictions such as testing that all children must pass, or school-certification requirements; but there aren't religious litmus tests.) If you deny that claim, you should oppose private schooling in general. (emphasis added)

My initial "pragmatic" response was off target, partly because I assumed we shared the Pakistan/Afghanistan definition:

[E]ven if rich people already can send their kids to madrassas, if that is dangerous for our society, then there's a pragmatic case for not enabling far more numerous poor people to do it as well. (emphasis on my missing her point added)

Eve's reply was:

First, I'm not convinced that within the pool of potential madrassa-choosers poor people are "far more numerous," and I doubt either of us can know that. Second, if something is too dangerous for the poor I still don't see why it's not too dangerous for the rich--either ban the dratted things or treat them like other schools. Otherwise, Nephew's point would lead us to, for example, forbid scholarship programs from putting poor kids through madrassas--while still letting rich kids attend them!

Well, yes. I don't want to help pay for people to send their kids to a religious school, especially if it's dangerous -- but even if it isn't.

First, I'll stipulate that neither of us know the proportions involved. I simply assumed that the poor outnumber the rich, and wouldn't differ in the percentage attracted to madrassas (or other religious schools), dangerous or otherwise.

It's the rest of Eve's comment that points up an interesting misunderstanding or difference of opinion. It's not that I would be against madrassa vouchers if madrassas were too dangerous for the rich. I'd oppose madrassa vouchers -- or vouchers for any school -- if the schools were too dangerous for society, for reasons ranging from supporting violence against nonbelievers to denying the Holocaust or claiming outsiders are subhuman.

While these issues might be settled by denying certification to schools that failed some kind of state or community standard, Eve makes a wider assertion: if the rich can do it, the poor have a claim on my help for doing it as well. On its face, this seems nonsensical: consider plastic surgery, trips to the Bahamas, or shopping sprees at Neiman-Marcus. There's nothing wrong with any of these, I just don't see kicking into a general fund for them. Since Eve is a sensible person, I'll assume her unstated assumption is that the claim of the poor to my help only extends to things that are either unquestioned rights, or are of outright benefit to society, not just to themselves.

And here is where we part ways about madrassas, or Catholic schools for that matter: even if the schools themselves were beneficial to their students, I think taxpayer subsidies for them in the form of vouchers would be harmful. They would put the state in the school day to school day business of deciding which religious teachings are dangerous. Avoiding this was a fundamentally wise punt by the Founding Fathers, one that may well have spared us at least that variety of Civil War. I recommend sticking with their views.

In general, the fact that a rich person can afford to do a constitutionally protected thing does not by itself compel me to support subsidizing such activities for everyone else. So yes, I would forbid scholarship programs on the public dime that put poor people through a faith-based school whether or not rich people could go there.*

As Eve points out, there are moderate Islamic schools out there; maybe these can be called madrassas, too. For example, there are apparently decent Islamic-based private schools in the DC area. I don't intend to smear such schools. But I also don't intend to subsidize them, and I would resent even being asked to do so.

While there's no real news peg to this exchange of views yet**, DC Mayor Tony Williams has recently changed his mind and now supports a school voucher program in the District. It will be interesting to see what limits are placed on school eligibility for the voucher program. I'd just as soon avoid the whole question and improve public schools, including allowing for more choice within the public school program. As a fallback, I'd be less against extending vouchers to secular private schools than I would be to extending them to faith-oriented private schools.

I'll add that this argument -- "just don't make me pay for it" -- is a tricky one for me. For instance, should abortions or abortion counseling for the poor be federally funded? I think so, but I also see how others might not, for reasons similar to mine about madrassa vouchers. I assert church/state separation is a fundamental virtue to be guarded, they assert an x-week old fetus is a human life we must not take. We both seek to avoid federal or state subsidies for our opponents to act on their beliefs. I think my point is better, but then of course I would, wouldn't I?

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UPDATE, 12PM: Aziz Poonawalla provides information about the range of schools encompassed by the word "madrassa."
* EDIT, 10AM: I dropped "dangerous or stupid but" before "constitutionally protected" in this paragraph. Otherwise, I seem to imply that faith-based schooling is necessarily dangerous or stupid, within a key sentence. I don't think that, as my comments elsewhere in this post indicate ('--even if it isn't'; 'there are moderate Islamic schools'; 'even if the schools themselves were beneficial'). My apologies to those offended by the original wording and/or the rewrite.
** So why were we talking about it? Because we can. The discussion was prompted by an NRO "Corner" squib about the British suicide bombers, that mentioned the subject in passing.

UPDATE, 6/11/03: Eve Tushnet replies in Jewish World Review. In her blog post announcing that, she mentions some later posts of mine. For any curious readers of hers dropping by, they were Vouchers for private religious schools, on May 20, and Locke v. Davey, contd., on May 21. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:56:00 PM -- |  

 
Newsrack weekend update

In a comment about the Aziziyah school courtyard story I mentioned, Doug provides a link to a London Times article that the discovery petered out: two missiles were dug up, neither had WMD warheads.

A knowledgeable reader writes about my April 20 Boeing post to explain that one point in favor of the leasing arrangement -- from the taxpayer point of view -- is that Boeing would do all the maintenance on the planes. The argument is that's cheaper than paying Air Force mechanics to do the same job, since the Air Force also has to arrange housing, medical benefits, and so forth for its personnel.

I receive favorable mention by Iris of "Interfaith Nunnery," just for sending her an e-mail. (I liked the phrase "aggressive apathy" in her comment about the museum looting business.) Well, heck, I should do that more often.

Sven Gessner provides a fourth German translation of the Gettysburg Address to my collection (in a comment to an old post of mine about translations of that speech). He also defends the translation by Erich Heller, published by the Library of Congress at their Gettysburg Address translations web site, as a product of its time. If you're fluent in a foreign language, I'd appreciate your evaluation of the translation to that language of Lincoln's speech published by the Library of Congress. See the post for details and to leave your comments.

Gary Farber appears to be getting better.

Sina Motallebi remains in jail.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 4:52:00 PM -- |