Terrible Idea (.net)

I’m in a couple classes where we talk about how different life is because of computers, and how certain areas of law must change, or be developed from scratch, to account for these differences.  Not addressing any legally significant change, but illustrative of the new ways we can now gather and process information, here is XKCD’s comic for today.  Laptops truly are weird.  Given my area of study, I’m sure I will be drawn to posting about the ways in which this weirdness affects the legal world.  It will be an interesting couple of months. couple of years. lifetime.

My idea is, there is too much mystique built up around presidential candidates.  Too much separation from them and the people they represent.  Look at this.  A member of a Republican group makes up a fake dollar bill with Obama in the center, and an amalgamation of racial stereotypes in the corners.  The instant something like this gets noticed, half a dozen people from the Republican side point out that it’s but a fringe, while half a from the other side point out what nutjobs Republicans are.

Meanwhile, none of this is connected in any way, shape, or form to the actual Republican candidate.  They only share the same political party… but so does half the country.  So, one side can easily claim that the other are a bunch of racists, while the accused claim innocence and absolution.  And the argument for either side stands up pretty well, because of how broad a term “Republican” is.

This is a terrible, terrible idea.  Racism should be in the dustbin of history, but because we have only two political parties, and everyone gets to latch on to one or the other, we have all sorts of political ideologies that are ostensibly condemned by both parties, but secretly welcomed when the votes are tallied.

I don’t know this for sure, but my sense is that a multi-party system would draw out the crazies and expose them for what they are.  The major, main-stream parties would cease to have to pay lip service to the fringes and actually condemn them.  McCain isn’t a neo-con, but he plays one on TV… in a multi-party system he wouldn’t have to do that — he could actually criticize what he feels needs criticism and advocate what he feels needs advocacy.  Currently, he’s stuck spitting party lines.  And the same goes for Obama.  The guy is as liberal as hell, and he can express that in vague statements (“I want to spread the wealth around”), but when it comes to any sort of policy statement, he has to tone it down.

Let the candidates be who they are.  Choosing two to dichotimize the entire nation is disingenuous.  They can’t, and they shouldn’t, represent all viewpoints.  We need a multi-party political system.

Reading through my daily dose of blogs this morning, I came across two interesting and related items.  First, at Ask Philosophers, an intriguing question and answer involving step-children being raised by fundamentalist parents.  Then, The Legal Satyricon links to a post equating religious upbringing to child abuse.

These issues are… touchy.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say that all religious upbringing is child abuse.  This implies that the government can prevent children from instilling particular religious views in their children.  And as much as I and others may disagree with a particular religious viewpoint, banning its teaching to one’s own children is not a good idea.

However, the scope of the indoctrination presented in the Ask Philosophers question is also worrisome.  Is it really child abuse?  I’d be inclined to say that it is, but I see no easy or effective way to prevent it from happening without also limiting fundamental rights.

Thoughts?

I’m on a vacation of sorts until Monday.  I may post something tomorrow, but probably not.  Meanwhile, here’s a great post by Scott Greenfield, succinctly summing up my (and most of my classmates’) views on the Bluebook.  It’s called “Once There Was a Bluebook.”

I like the turn at the end, where he sticks one to the law profs and accuses them of desiring arcane knowledge to raise the barrier of entry to law journals.  I don’t know how true that is on an individual level, but the incentives are there on an institutional level to make it a plausible scenario.

This points to a larger problem: the tension between a strictly controlled, “peer review” system of academic publishing, and a free for all, wikipedia-style publishing.  Peer review ensures quality (and correct citation formats), but a more free publication would make it so, as Mr. Greenfield says, “anybody could do it,” providing an venue for ideas challenging the accepted paradigms in whatever field.  I think this is important, especially outside of the hard sciences.  Hard science relies more on empirical data to disprove its accepted theories far more than non-hard science fields, which means that a small journal committee doesn’t have as much room to wiggle around and prevent non-accepted research or conclusions into their academic publications.

Anyway, I’m already running late, more when I get back.