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I've been reading some pieces by Jim Pinkerton (link from The Corner).
Pinkerton worked for Reagan and Bush I. He has been credited with coining the phrase "new paradigm." He probably didn't coin "a thousand points of light" (I think that might have been Peggy Noonan), but he worked on implementing it--with his own distinctive approach. I think this amounted to something like "faith-based initiatives," or "community initiatives."
His vision in his 1996 book, What Comes Next, has been
described as libertarian, emphasizing market-based solutions including vouchers, but also admitting the need for communities, and making room for religion.
It has been pointed out that Pinkerton was known for his disagreements with others in the Bush Administration.
He has become critical of Bush II on the Iraq War, and in this recent piece he rehearses some of the charges against the neo-cons.
Like Don Quixote, he suggests, they have read too much, and gone mad or abandoned common sense. He connects Leon Trotsky and Leo Strauss as the two inspirational figures for many people in or supporting the Bush White House. My question: Trotsky and Strauss? My memory from grad school is that Straussians wouldn't even read Trotsky, and I suspect experts in Trotsky didn't know much about Strauss, either.
Pinkerton has obviously picked up on the "Straussians are taking over the world" meme; one example is in the Globe and Mail July 12.
The best response has probably come from my teacher
Cliff Orwin (a link that has not decayed (yet)).
Having said all this, Pinkerton strongly suggests that the only official rationale for the invasion of Iraq that is still standing is "liberation," a humanitarian or compassionate goal that one would associate with...Bill Clinton. This means not only liberation for the Iraqi people themselves, but some kind of improvement in the entire Middle East. So far, I would still say, so good. There is no widespread intifada against the U.S., or the West; regimes friendly to the U.S. have not faced crises, or been overturned; and Afghanistan and Iraq are probably better off than they were. President Bush surely deserves credit for "the road map to peace" between Israel and the Palestinians. My sense is that Sharon is grateful for the overturning of Saddam (which was probably more in the interest of Israel than the U.S.), and that is one big reason he is willing to co-operate.
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Update July 26: I've been reading Steven Den Beste's overview of the war so far. (Link from
Instapundit).
Den Beste is very much pro-war, and he makes the point that the co-operation of Palestinian groups may be owing to the presence of U.S. forces in Iraq.
I haven't been following Den Beste closely, so I don't know how much his view has changed, but he now says Saddam probably had no involvement to speak of in 9/11, and he may have had no WMDs to speak of, either. He did have the intention of acquiring WMD's; he did support anti-Israel terror; and he was seen in the Arab world as a strong man who would stand up to the U.S. Simply ending sanctions and the no-fly zone over Iraq might have caused a repeat of the slaughter of rebels in 1991--this time, with Kurds as the victims. Iraq was an excellent candidate, according to Den Beste, to be the first major Arab country to be reformed, to show that the old tyrannies could be thrown off, Western-style progress is possible, etc.
There is still a lot of fast and loose theorizing here: the whole Arab world, not Islam as such but the fanatical brand of Islamism, the old decaying Middle Eastern tyrannies, the young of the Arab countries--one sweeping statement after another, like Pyle in The Quiet American. Still, there is a rationale here that does not depend on WMDs or a link to 9/11.
Still more update: Josh Marshall seems pleased that he has been right all along--it has been about regime change in a significant part of the Middle East. (Link from Hit and Run ).
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Now there is talk about interventions in Africa. If the U.S. is going to seriously consider intervening wherever someone needs help, it becomes rather urgent to ask: if the U.S. has a motive to go in, does this provide any explanation of what to do once there, or how to get out (the famous "exit strategy")? As Pinkerton points out, this is the kind of debate Bush II pretty well promised to avoid when he ran in 2000. This is what Pinkerton means by the neo-cons having read too much: they can rationalize military actions with fantastic visions of a better future, but they are not realistic as to what is needed here and now.
Pinkerton joins the ranks of those who do not think there is much left of the WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) rationale, nor of the "Link between Saddam and Bin Laden" rationale. On the former, I can't resist highlighting what seems ridiculous. The U.S. is apparently now waiting for the British to confirm that there is solid evidence of WMDs in Iraq--not that mish-mash of rumours that was dished out before. The entire CIA is...standing by. Still waiting. Take it away, Tony Blair.
More seriously, Nathan Tarcov wrote some years ago on the conditions under which the U.S. should use force against other countries. ("Principle and prudence in foreign policy: the founders' perspective," The Public Interest No. 76 (Summer 1984): 45-60). (Tarcov is one of those Straussians, but I doubt he is one who has read too much. He also worked in the Reagan Administration--for one year). Appealing to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and to statements by a variety of statesmen, Tarcov argues that in principle for the U.S. "only the violation of rights justifies the use of force." In addition to principle, there are prudential judgments to be arrived at, namely "whether to exercise the right forcibly to vindicate vilated rights. There is indeed no right to do so without having conscientiously weighed the costs to all innocent parties, the precedents and consequences, and the power, will, and opportunity to win."
More specifically, assuming the circumstances make this prudent, it is reasonable for the U.S. to come to the aid of a nation that "is in the act of liberating itself," as when the French came to the aid of American revolutionaries, who were already engaged in rebellion. Unless there are clear signs that such a rebellion is underway, however, it is wrong to presume that a foreign people wish to have a different government. Henry Clay said "I would not seek to force upon other nations our principles and our liberty, if they did not want them. I would not disturb the repose even of a detestable despotism."
As Tarcov says, "some would argue that any people subject to despotism can be presumed to will their liberation, whether by an armed vanguard or a foreign intervention." It is essential, however, to wait for some sign that "the people" in question wish for such an outcome: "... precisely because, in the absence of either free elections or resistance, it is difficult to tell whether a people consents to its government, that difficulty cannot automatically entitle a third party to use force on their behalf."
This I think is the real issue as far as the morality of the Iraq war is concerned. Not whether Bush defied the U.N. Security Council--everyone does, when there is something that they want. Bush is remarkable, if anything, for the patience he showed in trying to get Security Council agreement. Not "unilateralism"; each country must and will make its own decisions about foreign policy and war. But whether there was any real indication of consent from the Iraqi people at large for the U.S. (and allied) invasion; that I think is a real question. There has been a somewhat varying cast of characters who are described as a potential governing council, or something. Exactly what was their standing before the invasion? How many people do they speak for? Have they signed any document, remotely resembling the Declaration of Independence, stating what their principles are, what actions they are willing to take, and what sacrifices they are willing to make?
Just to be clear: as far as I can tell, there is considerable evidence now that the U.S. invasion is popular (other than with some Sunnis or Saddam loyalists), or could become popular if there is some improvement in the civil order. But did decision-makers know with any confidence that this would be the case before they went in?
The practical question for the U.S., however, is whether there is clarity as to what U.S. forces are doing in Iraq, what events will be understood to define a success, and how long this will take. Tarcov commented on the U.S. war in Vietnam toward the end of his essay: "...the speeches of American officials during that war were full of reasons why we were fighting. Too many reasons. Was it to build democracy in Vietnam? To stop aggression from the North and prevent Hanoi from imposing a government on the people of the South? Was it to fulfill a pledge? To maintain our credibility? To preserve our strategic position in Asia?....Without clarity in principle, we could not achieve clarity in strategy; the different principles invoked dictated different strategies and required different sets of facts to be true in order to be relevant."
The analogy to Iraq today is clear. Was the U.S. primarily trying to make life better for Israel, in hopes of a new round of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians? If so, once again, so far so good. Was the main goal to liberate the Iraqis? The record to date is probably more mixed--especially since it is not clear the U.S. will accept an Islamic fundamentalist regime in Iraq, even if that is the regime that enjoys the most widespread popular consent. Was the goal to push back Islamic fundamentalism, especially where it becomes fused with terrorism, and reinforce secularism and modernity? If so, the question is whether the U.S., with a military occupation, is making its own causes look good. (U.S. and British forces got into trouble by carrying out a wholesale confiscation of weapons, and violating the privacy of Arab (Moslem) homes).
Reading Maggie Gallagher today (link from The Corner) makes me realize I barely mentioned gay marriage in the last couple of posts.
One question here: has the pendulum swung too far from society protecting its "general" interests, including children and the future, to society protecting the more or less selfish interests of individuals?
It might be true that as recently as the 50s, there was a tendency for the majority (a bigger majority on some issues than others) to think and act as though individual and group/minority interests could be sacrificed, almost without a thought. To the extent that there was some thought, it would go: this will benefit society/the majority in the future. Whether or not children are "better off" in a traditional family, for example, society may find children who grew up that way useful--used to the idea of sharing, loyalty to a group, etc.
Now we seem more and more impressed if a group simply says: this is what we want, and the old ways prevented us from having it.
Libertarians seem to think we can and should strip political debate of metaphysics, including outdated, unnecessary or harmful religious and moral teachings, and what we have left will be "real" politics, or the essential relationship between government and individuals. In fact it seems they strip away politics, understood as anything other than the separate interests of discrete individuals. They want to take us morally back to the state of nature, but they obviously hope we won't literally end up there.
Some of the libertarians who are close to my heart have been warbloggers in recent months. Since the argument for the self-defence of the U.S. was always shaky, and has now come under more questions, have libertarians with war fever discovered that there is a common good, after all? Something that makes us want to sacrifice some of our noble young people so that our society as a whole--our children and grandchildren--can not only survive, but prosper?
According to Tocqueville, Americans agree with Lewis that adultery should be condemned because it is the breaking of a contract. Public opinion, he wrote, is "inexorable" against the faults of a married woman who commits adultery: "the woman [in America] can always choose freely and...education has taught her to choose well....the Americans...regard marriage as a contract which is often burdensome but every condition of which the parties are strictly bound to fulfill, because they knew them all beforehand and were at liberty not to bind themselves to anything at all." Democracy in America Vol II, Part III, Ch. 11. (Amazingly, this work too is on the web.)
This has obviously changed, but there is a combination or alternation of puritanism and libertinism which Tocqueville describes, and is recognizable today.
For cases where the majority fears to make laws contrary to the interests of obvious wrong-doers, Tocqueville gives the examples of fraudulent bankruptcy, against which he says there is no American legislation, and the abuse of strong drink leading to violence and crime, with no attempt to control this even by a "duty on brandy." Vol. I, Part II, Ch. 5, "American Democracy's Power of Self-Control."
For a lingering example of puritanism, he gives Sunday closing laws; Vol. I, Part I, Ch. 2. (Note E). In the Online edition, see Appendix E at the back; there should be a reference to it here, at the same point as footnote 29.
Contrary to the business about booze, he didn't quite see the prohibition movement, but it wouldn't have surprised him; he did see the temperance movement begin to organize, and promise to set an example of abstemiousness. Vol. I, Part, II, Ch. 6, "Activity Prevailing," Footnote 1; and Vol. II, Part II, Ch. 5, "Uses of Associations."
Generally speaking, there were votes in the U.S. for no restrictions on booze at all; there would soon be votes for prohibition; but it was hard to foresee when there would be significant votes for a moderate regulatory regime, which Tocqueville obviously regarded as the only sensible approach. The analogy to drugs today is obvious.
I'm not sure what the equivalent would be with a range of family and sexuality issues. Perhaps there was something to be said for the old bastardy laws, as well as laws against adultery? But far less for laws against sodomy, which for some reason are being debated forty years after the other laws were struck down by the Supreme Court?
Illegitimacy cases: Levy v. Louisiana (1968); and Labine v. Vincent (1971).
Were state laws on abortion, often contradictory, hard to enforce, and full of humbug, better than the Supreme Court striking down all such laws at once? This is something I'll have to come back to, drawing partly on Walter Berns. He does not say, as some "originalists" might, that leaving old laws in place would be good simply because the original constitution doesn't clearly say to strike them down; the framers supported both democratic deliberation on such matters, and support for traditional institutions, including the family.
Some possibilities for understanding the U.S.: Libertinism as a holiday from puritanism? (In the chapter on women and adultery, Tocqueville says there may be a significant population of prostitutes; this makes little difference to the society as long as the morals of the majority of women are as he describes). Libertinism as a reward/middle age crisis, after practising puritanism in order to get ahead? Or the reverse, as may be the case with the President: going on too long as an over-aged frat boy, libertine in some ways; then undergoing a conversion to puritanism, just in time to worry about teen-aged daughters?
Tocqueville says modern democracy will display fewer crimes than the old aristocracies, but more vices. (Author's Introduction). Less adultery, along with torture and other things, but more pornography?
First, let me see if I've got this right. The U.S. Supreme Court, with Justice Kennedy writing for the majority, has ruled that a state cannot ban homosexual sex acts conducted in private between consenting adults. State laws against "sodomy," which were upheld in the Bowers decision in 1986, have been struck down. (In some states "sodomy" has referred to acts between heterosexuals as well as homosexuals). The "right to privacy," which has been central in cases concerning birth control and abortion, has been expanded further so that it is a right to "intimate association/sexual autonomy/reproductive autonomy," in the words of Professor Jack Balkin.
It is not yet clear whether the Court will use this reasoning to provide a constitutional right to gay marriages, to strike down "don't ask, don't tell" in the military, or to strike down laws against incest, polygamy, or bestiality. Everyone seems to agree, however, that the Court's rulings on privacy do not allow for laws against masturbation (if there have been such things in recent decades) or adultery.
On the danger of bestiality see (original interview not available) Congressman Santorum.
On masturbation among other matters see Justice Scalia in dissent.
In my recent research on C.S. Lewis, I came across these passages in Present Concerns, in the essay "Sex in Literature" (1962):
"The older law...embodied a morality for which masturbation, perversion, fornication and adultery were great evils. It therefore, not illogically, discountenanced the publication of books which seemed likely to encourage these modes of behaviour. The morality of the modern intelligentsia...if it were fully and frankly stated...would, I believe, run as follows: 'We are not sure that these things are evils at all, and we are quite sure that they are not the sort of evils the law ought to be concerned with.'
"My own view...is that they are evils, but that the law should be concerned with none of them except adultery. Adultery is an affair for law because it offends the Hobbesian principle 'that men perform their covenants'."
Lewis begins the essay by recalling that criminal penalties became less harsh, over the course of many years, because juries would refuse to convict. (I believe this is called jury nullification). "The moral seems to me to be clear. When the prevalent morality of a nation comes to differ unduly from that presupposed in its laws, the laws must sooner or later change and conform to it. And the sooner they do so the better. For till they do we inevitably have humbug, perjury, and confusion."
I take it Lewis means not simply that when society has come to accept these practices, we should eliminate laws directed at books where they are recommended, but that we should eliminate laws against the deeds themselves. Interestingly, he doesn't seem to have favoured such laws whether society was "right" about morality or not; if society is right, the laws are not needed, and if society is wrong, it seems, the laws will do more harm than good.
There are many church-going Americans who certainly object to "liberating" sexual acts, and who would like to see laws on the books making many of them illegal. On the other hand, the U.S. is the land of liberal divorce, of liberal abortion which is largely understood as an extension of birth control for women, of an entertainment industry that Joe Lieberman describes as dangerously coarse, and of a substantial portion of the world's total production of pornography.
I have some sympathy for the argument that states should be able to legislate on such matters with only limited oversight by the courts, so that it is the deliberation of a large number of citizens that counts. On the other hand, for modern-day Texas and other states to have a law against sodomy certainly smacks of humbug and confusion. The U.S. is a land of widespread libertarianism, partly or largely driven by the profit motive, but also of widespread puritanism.
It is interesting that Lewis identifies adultery as the one thing from the list about which there should be laws. Americans seem committed now to "serial monogamy," with an emphasis on both words. Obviously many or most newlyweds in the U.S. believe that the marriage could last forever, and hope it will, but they surely are not shocked when this does not happen. Yet they want to be married, monogamously. It is important that divorce be truly final--more final, in fact, than marriage. Adultery may be a common stage between one marriage and the next, but no one really wants to talk about that. Adultery is much more shameful than divorce. As I used to explain to students, this seems to be the reverse of an old-fashioned, somewhat cynical French attitude. In the French movie "Cousin, Cousine," the man and woman are in love--they have found their one true love--yet there is nothing they can do about it, since divorce is unthinkable. They will live out their lives in a beautiful melancholy, full of rich memories, many of which are sad. In the American re-make, "Cousins," there is a solution after all: two divorces.
How can a society that so widely accepts a solution like that, and dusts its fingers in a businesslike way afterwards, also be a society that debates laws on sodomy? Part of the answer must be: you can break old taboos as long as you make a case this is done for a career, getting ahead, making a deal, calculating advantages. If you do it merely for pleasure, you're still (officially) a swine. Even an old guy dumping his wife for a young woman isn't necessarily thinking only of bed. He's gaining a status symbol (the U.S. has given us the expression "trophy wife"), he may have a chance at more children, hence heirs and continuity, and all those deep things, someone to leave the business to. If he met wife #2 through work, she may be more part of the business, more up to date.
No, that's too cold. Love must be one of the things that is allowed, even required, to override considerations of money and career. But then why the attempts to regulate what lovers do in bed together?
It's a fascinating mystery.
Busy weekend. We have some relatives visiting; we're all driving tomorrow to visit our daughter, who is in a group home; and I'm trying to finish an article I'm hoping to have published. Monday I'll deliver a set of readings for a course I'm teaching in the fall--American Constitutional Law--to be photocopied.
But I've been working on some posts as well. Speaking of American Constitutional Law, the first one touches on the recent Lawrence case.
We have two dogs: a Jack Russell (we think) named Jack, whom we got from a pound; and a West Highland White Terrier named Hero. Hero was our first; we knew we needed a non-shedder, and we bought him from a breeder for $500.
Now he needs surgery at about 6 years of age. He's never been all that energetic--usually something or somebody has to get him going before he'll run at the park. A couple of weekends ago I took both dogs to the park. I ran with them, Hero got going fast, yelped, and started limping.
It turns out he tore the ligaments in his knee. This is fairly common in bigger dogs, that run a lot; being overweight might contribute (Hero is slightly overweight). It's unusual in small dogs. Maybe we contributed by not exercising him enough.
With or without the surgery, it is now certain he will get arthritis in that knee. The vet recommended a hip x-ray before surgery; if the hips are really bad, there is not much point in working on the knee. The hip is already showing some arthritis, and may be delicate somehow, but surgery is recommended nonetheless.
I feel a bit guilty, but mainly heartbroken for the dog. He's had a happy life, always showing a lot of spunk, and making us laugh. Now there's a shadow over him. Supposedly he will re-gain 100% of the use of the knee, at least for a while, but we now know his old age is going to be painful and difficult, and it is likely to come sooner than we expected.
We used to think of Hero as a very robust dog.
So a blog-type question: has dog breeding gone too far, yet again? Westies are supposedly free, as purebreds go, from congenital medical problems. The vet says she has heard from a much older vet, who has done surgeries for years, that the cruciate ligaments in pure bred dogs (same ligament that baseball players get replaced in their elbows?) is generally more delicate now than it used to be.
From my reading, I gather the "creation" of the breeds we see today, along with Kennel Clubs and dog shows, was a deliberate attempt to preserve some diversity of breeds with the knowledge that the population was becoming urban, and many skills of working breeds would not be needed. A kind of semblance of working qualities is kept up in shows--a personality, acting like a hunting dog or terrier--but true show dogs never work in the field at all.
Breeders and shows, at least the "conformation" trials, emphasize a "phenotype," not a "genotype"--literally a certain look of dog. Sometimes it is a movie that reminds people exactly what a Dalmation looks like. But if breeders produce identical puppies, they are not maintaining enough genetic diversity; they are inbreeding too much, and reinforcing problems.
Maybe I'm just gloomy, but I think the best idea is to pick a puppy that is half and half, from purebred parents of two different breeds. Meet the parents, and make sure they have no significant health problems.
Even though my earlier post on SARS and disease was long, I actually broke off without including all that I had ready.
Meanwhile, a nurse in Toronto has died of SARS, and I think we are being told this is the first medical staff person to actually die of the disease here. Other deaths have been elderly or frail patients--the kind who die of flu every year.
Some numbers:
There are about 1500 deaths a year in Canada from good old influenza. The figure may be as high as 2000 if deaths caused by pneumonia which results from the flu are factored in.
For some reason, this is not 10% of the U.S. figure; it is less, since there are about 36,000 deaths from the flu, on average, in the U.S. every year. In both countries, a very high proportion of these deaths occur among people 65 and over. The flu vaccine is not consistently given to this population, and even if it is, they apparently remain vulnerable.
Seniors are also highly vulnerable to a virus that until recently was believed to be confined to children under 5: respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). There are 11,000 deaths annually in the U.S. caused by this virus, and it is now estimated that 78% of these deaths occur among seniors 65 and older.
There are more deaths in the U.S. from this virus, which is hardly mentioned in the media, than from AIDS.
Another question from before: is the public sector a proven failure both at managing epidemics, and at achieving big public-health breakthroughs, like the vaccines and antibiotics of the 20th century?
Mark Steyn wrote in the National Post in April that the incidence of SARS in Toronto proves the failure of the public sector. The over-stressed public system can't cope--not because of a shortage of funds, but apparently simply because it is in the public sector.
The National Post link is gone, but there is a friendly discussion of the Steyn piece here.
I have to say again I am no expert in any of the relevant fields. A quick Google, trying to confirm what I've seen in the media recently, reveals that many things about SARS are still unknown: did it start with a type of cat or other animal, or an isolated group of humans? How exactly does it spread? What distinguishes the super-spreaders?
Many reputable people believe the main reason there were so few cases of SARS in the U.S. was "dumb luck." (Link may be gone).
I also did some digging into both the polio vaccines and antibiotics, but I won't go into great detail now. Both initiatives were more a result of private sector efforts than public sector in the U.S.; a bit more public sector in Canada. The Rockefeller Foundation was involved in both. The March of Dimes spent a fortune on polio victims and their families, and was basically a volunteer fund-raising organization; but it got at least a boost from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had polio himself.
In both cases, when it came to mass production, it seems that government money and authority was needed, but only the private sector, i.e. several different companies, had the infrastructure to deliver drugs to a lot of people.
Polio vaccine.
Penicillin.
Some of the pro-capitalist right like to say that if polio had been left to the public sector, all we would have today would be a space-age iron lung. I think that's an exaggeration.
One interesting detail on polio: improved hygiene made things worse. As long as everyone was poor, and had poor hygiene (there was no awareness of the germ theory of disease), polio was probably fairly common, but it would affect very young babies. A few would get quite sick, maybe even die, but the vast majority would get something like a cold. There were much worse diseases affecting children in those days. Once the middle class started to keep their babies clean, however, babies wouldn't be exposed to polio until age 5 or 6, or later. As with chicken pox, the older you are when first exposed, the worse it is. So the huge epidemics of polio in the 20th century disproportionately affected the hygienic middle class.
I'm also interested in antibiotic-resistant bacteria. It was inevitable that such bacteria would become more common once anti-biotics were used; the drug kills the bugs that are not resistant; there are always some that have mutated to be resistant; they now multiply. Still, medical practice has made the problem bigger: over-prescribing anti-biotics, treating frail patients in hospital very aggressively. My family experienced the fact that if you have good health care in the U.S., you are treated like a valuable customer; they want you to come back; they will treat complaints very aggressively, because they know patients like that. To some extent, private-sector thinking, such as the customer is always right, as flattering as it can be, has contributed to the problem.
I'm getting a message that my limit is exceeded, and I should consider upgrading my account. I e-mailed the Support folks, asking both about this and about archives. They say they will update me on both.
Most of my posts have been very long. Pent-up ideas?
People around here (the Toronto area) are talking about diseases, and even about possible epidemics. We've had two waves of SARS, and many people think not enough was done to make sure the first wave was over, and prevent the second. We now have West Nile virus (affecting only one or two people so far) and of course the famous (one) mad cow in Alberta, who has affected the beef industry, and spread fear, throughout Canada.
I'm sure I wasn't the only one who was reminded of the mayor in Jaws when so many public officials here in Ontario were rushing to say: "It's safe! Tourists please come! It's perfectly safe!" As you may recall, the mayor in Jaws wanted the beach to stay open for business. In one memorable scene, after a shark attack, he says "my own kid was swimming on that beach." He hopes this means: I must have been convinced it was safe, otherwise how could I have been so reckless or crazy as to let them swim there?
See Jaws screenplay s. 174:
(This screenplay is supposedly not the "final draft" but an "unspecified draft," but I have seen the line delivered in the movie, and I found it in this screenplay.)
Strange new diseases, like the monster in Jaws, stir up primordial fears, and make us realize how quickly many of us will give up any sense of sharing a common destiny with our fellow creatures. Not only is tourism down in Toronto, but many people are afraid to go to public events, or take transit. Those other losers may be going down, but that doesn't mean I have to. (By the way, I still take transit to work every day).
(On tourism: Roy MacGregor said in the Globe [link= http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20030625/UROYYN//?query=tourism ] yesterday:[/link] that at tourist destinations in Toronto, "there is nobody around but us.")
Even though the numbers of afflicted people have remained very low (see below), there are plenty of signs of the old fears. There is a certain amount of talk that we must adjust to a "new normal" of disease, and of a rapid spread that will at least be a cousin of an epidemic. Certain major events since about the 80s have cascaded together: AIDS, outbreaks of things like the ebola virus, and at least a vague awareness on the part of the First World that a number of terrible epidemics, as bad I guess as any in history, are ravaging the Third World. Somehow one rich person"s fear of a bad cough is as serious as the slow and painful death of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Africans.
Already there is a political side to this discussion which naturally interests me. The left, represented by [link= http://www.globeandmail.com] Rick Salutin in the Globe[/link], (no free link) says it is global corporations that spread new and strange diseases, making all us little people sick, and even killing us, for profit.
Haven't the corporations carried out corporate farming, putting antibiotics into animal feed and thus increasing the incidence of antibiotic-resistant bugs (see below)? Haven't they put Third World people to work in crowded and unhygienic conditions, which will cause disease to spread rapidly there? Don't they insure the minimal infrastructure of a capitalist economy, including roads and other transport, with few if any public health measures, so that a vast population can travel over a vast area, but no precautions are taken? Haven't they lobbied for tax cuts and resulting cuts in services, including public health, in the First World? Only wise and all-powerful bureaucrats, I guess, would be able to save us.
The nasty racist strand of the right says it is those nasty immigrants from mostly non-white countries who bring in bad bugs. The more respectable, libertarian-leaning brand of right-winger might argue that the public sector has failed in the case of SARS. Like the mayor in Jaws, it is too politicized to do the job. The U.S., they claim, which has remained almost SARS-free, proves the superiority of the private sector.
Of course, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is a great public-sector [link= http://www.cdc.gov/aboutcdc.htm] achievement[/link] in the U.S. Staff from the CDC have helped out with Toronto's SARS problem.
The theme of epidemics from foreign sources is an old one. So is that finding fault or guilt, and struggling to distinguish "us" from "them, even though if anything is indifferent to the difference between justice and injustice, it is a virus or a bacterium. Flu, including the great pandemic of 1918-19, has usually begun in Asia. Experts predict another [link= http://www.lehigh.edu/~jgm4/virology/history.html ] pandemic [/link] in 5 to 10 years.
Of course, this reminds us that if we are indeed going to see more epidemics, this will not be a "new normal," but a very old normal. It has been argued that the famous plagues of the past were spread by international commerce in both goods and people.
The plague in ancient Athens afflicted several other places before arriving there. (Thucydides II.47, 48; remarkably enough, this great work is available [link= http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Aabo%3Atlg%2C0003%2C001&query=1%3A1%3A1] on the web [/link]).
Athens at the time had the largest navy in Greece, and an "alliance" that had de facto become an empire, in which rebellion had to be harshly repressed by force. Athenians sailed all over the Mediterranean, sometimes on adventurist enterprises such as an attempt to conquer Egypt.
Athens' enemy in the long war (usually called, borrowing the Athenian name, the Peloponnesian war) was Sparta. Sparta remained free from the plague, which led to speculation that the gods favoured Sparta, or blamed Athens for various aggressions. Spartans built an army, not a navy, and they mostly stayed home, where they had a large slave population to deal with.
Here is something that interests me, but about which I certainly don't have any expertise. Are the reserves of oil and gas in the world as limited as we have sometimes been told? Are they truly fossil fuels, derived from living organisms on the planet's surface, or do they come from a different carbon source--ultimately, from deeper below the surface?
Reading a few web sites: total "proved" reserves in the world are greater than in 1980. Conventional reserves can be stated with greater confidence, the more drilling has occurred in an area. For legal reasons, the U.S. has been drilled more than any other country or region. Canada has also been extensively drilled. Many parts of the world, even the Middle East, have been drilled very little by comparison.
Unconventional sources, even working on the fossil fuels theory, are a great unknown. Generally speaking, the cost of recovery is prohibitive given today's technology, but that can change. Extraction from the Alberta oil sands is a growing business.
There is some evidence of mature oil and gas fields that are not "running out" in the time frame that was expected earlier. Instead oil and gas fields are somehow being "recharged."
From a Greenpeace site "A Guide to Oil Reserves and Resources":
http://archive.greenpeace.org/~climate/arctic99/reports/oilreserve.html#oilr/
"This alternative view of oil's origin and habitats was already clearly expressed over 40 years ago by the then Senior Petroleum Geologist for the Ministry of Geology of the USSR, Academician Professor V Porfiryev, viz.'the overwhelming preponderance of geological evidence compels the conclusion that crude oil and natural gas have no intrinsic connection with biological matter originating near the surface of the earth. They are primordial material which has been erupted from great depth.' Under this alternative theory of the occurrence of hydrocarbons (which remains largely unaccepted in the 'west'), the supposed limits both of quantity and of habitat of oil and gas disappear. The world's oil resources would, in essence, be unlimited in relation to any conceivable evolution of demand."
This sounds like it is all crackpot Soviet science, like resisting Darwinian evolution.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/lysenko/works/1940s/report.htm/
But: Thomas Gold, professor emeritus of astrophysics at Princeton, has kept this theory alive in the West. I forget how I first came across Gold's ideas, but I was somehow browsing in a science magazine in the 1970s. Gold's major book on these issues is much more recent: The Deep Hot Biosphere.
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gold/
Also for Gold's own thoughts, see:
http://people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/
The fossil theory is also called a biogenic theory of the origins of hydrocarbons; the alternative is abiogenic. Although Gold admits there is organic matter derived from living organisms in oil and gas, he says it comes from bacteria deep underground, and the all-important carbon is simply part of the earth itself. There are now various pieces of evidence supporting Gold's theories, including the presence of oil and gas at great depths, and the finding of bacteria that flourish with no oxygen, also at great depths.
Oil and gas well depths today range from a few hundred feet to over 20,000 feet--say 5 miles, or 8 km. Drilling can be taken to lower depths all the time. Microbes may be common at depths of 5-10 kilometres. On the other hand, the deeper oil is found, the fewer biological traces are found--supporting the view that oil and gas in themselves have a deep non-biological source.
How deep? Gold says hydrocarbons come towards the surface from depths between 150 and 300 km. He says is the best explanation for many phenomena--including the deposits of metal ores. Why wouldn't metals be scattered in small particles, more or less consistently, throughout the earth's crust? Many people agree that it must have been gathered by a liquid, somehow attracting one kind of ore and then depositing it. Gold is convinced liquid hydrocarbons (not water) are the best candidate for this liquid.
I think there has also been a change in my lifetime in the understanding of where diamonds come from. I seem to recall being taught that they, too,had a fossil origin. In fact they were coal, that had been subjected to more heat and pressure, over a longer period of time. It now seems to be taken for granted that the heat and pressure in question can only occur deep below the surface; that the source of carbon is deeper still; and that the total supply of diamonds available to humans is increasing, not decreasing--probably because the deep reserves have barely been tapped.
Imagine, as the saying goes. Imagine a world in which there is really no practical limit to supplies of oil and gas. Some present-day suppliers of these fuels (OPEC?) may be out of business. Other places, say with asteroid craters or some other features that give access to unusually deep formations, may become centers of oil wealth.
Of course, there are at least two reasons that we have been taught to think it is evil to think about unlimited supplies of [so-called] fossil fuels.
One is that it is simply wrong to use any resource wastefully--it is disgusting, we act worse than pigs, the fumes and emissions must be harming us somehow, etc. Gold likes to point out that methane gas is a relatively clean fossil fuel, and the widespread availability of this fuel will be good news.
The other, somewhat more up to date reason for concern, is global warming. Here again, though,I question the experts without being one myself. That's a story for another day.
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