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Cogito Ergo BlogitoThoughts, concerns, opinions and outbursts
February 19 Speeding tickets are class warfareSo here's the thing. I just got my first speeding ticket, ever - on the 401, near Brockville. Other people on the road ahead were going faster than me - but like the last gazelle a the herd, my ass was the easy target.
It has me thinking, though - does anybody actually think that speeding tickets are a good idea? I mean, on a sunny day in the fast lane of the 401, drivers are able to safely operate their vehicles at speeds much higher than 100 km/h. But here we have this law against travelling any faster - nearly everybody breaks it, feels that they can safely break it without transgressing some moral imperative, and hardly anybody is charged for doing so. Only a few people, in random and highly discretionary circumstances, are held accountable for speeding.
If we are to believe that the purpose of the speed limit is highway safety, but speed limits are far below the speeds that cause accidents (indeed, a 1996 study of traffic safety in Ontario found that less than 7% of all accidents are speed-related), then it seems fair to say that the speed limits are artificially low. And if speed limits are set below the speeds that one would expect most drivers to travel (try driving the limit on the 401... you'll get honked at and passed by everyone), then these traffic offences amount to a regressive user tax on highways.
Regressive, I say, because the fine is the same whether you are rich or poor. This isn't even a flat tax, where everyone might pay a certain percentage of their income. This is a fixed fee - making the right to speed a luxury item that a certain segment of society can afford. So if you're a wealthy capitalist and you're late for a business meeting, you might think "I should speed, because even if I get a ticket, that will be worth far less than what I will gain from this meeting!" But if you're from the working class, a speeding ticket could represent your entire day's wages. End result: the rich will drive as fast as they see fit (nevermind the ability to afford cars that handle high speeds with ease), while the poor are given a heavy incentive to move into slower lanes and putter along. (If you're really wealthy, of course, you can just hop on a plane without effective speed limits whatsoever).
It is amazing, really, that we live in a society where the poor are actually coerced into moving slower than the rich. Why do we accept it? Because our masters are smart. They know that if we were all charged every time we exceeded the speed limit, there would be a revolt. Under such a system, the people would demand that speed limits be increased to reasonable levels, immediately (my prediction/suggestion: 60 km/h in all towns, with 75 km/h city zones, 120 km/h on all highways, and finally an Autobahn-esque 'no limit' 400 series). A people, that is, who were meaningfully involved in the democratic process such that they could participate in the formation of legislation.
Instead, the many barriers to collective, community-based legislative input have left the population with a comparatively blunt instrument: elections. As such, when the Rae NDP government introduced photo radar in Ontario (ostensibly, to apply our traffic laws to many more motorists) they were promptly turfed from power (for this, among other reasons) and replaced by a government who (among other things) promised to scrap photo radar. I mean, a far more satisfactory result would have been to simply raise the speed limits to a level where the electorate could tolerate photo radar - i.e. to a level that only a small minority of motorists choose to exceed. Perhaps then the number of tickets given would more closely approximate our police forces' capacity to give speeding tickets.
But the Harris Conservatives weren't offering that option. Speeding tickets, after all, are a great source of revenue for the government. If we didn't have speeding tickets, we might have to fund public programs through our progressive tax system, which is a far worse option as far as the rich are concerned! So how do you convince a driving public to accept artificially low speed limits that feel grossly unfair whenever fines are handed out?
Simple: include a high degree of randomness and discretionary application. Want to drive 120 km/h? Go ahead. You've got a pretty low chance of getting caught. We may have the technology (i.e. photo radar) to make sure far more people who break the law get punished, but since that might lead to a general outcry about the law itself, we thin out the enforcement of the law so that it only strikes every so often, at random.
Think about it. If you and all your friends got speeding tickets at the same time, you might think about organizing. You would be as outraged about each other's tickets as your own. You would have a high potential for solidarity. But instead we are given police forces that can only catch a few of us, and even then, the choice to pursue is completely within their discretion. We develop a whole range of myths and superstitions about how to make this discretion work in our favour - don't slam on the brakes when you pass a cop, be polite, don't drive bright red or yellow cars (again, those colours are reserved for the rich who can afford the increased tickets that the colours attract). Further, if you have money and/or time - and if you're well educated and able to engage a complex system that you know nothing about - you can afford to challenge your ticket: take the day off work, go to court, talk to the prosecutor. In most cases the prosecutor will immediately knock down your ticket.
But the main point is that this method of law enforcement is akin to the legend of St. George and the Dragon - a timid town offers one sacrificial virgin daughter (picked at random) each day to feed the dragon, and even the king of the town stands alone in protest when his daughter is chosen to die (don't worry, St. George shows up, kicks the dragon's ass, and the whole town converts - don't you love crusade era tales?). Anyway, when you get a ticket, you're upset and you're alone. When somebody else gets a ticket, you're just glad it wasn't you. This is how you get a people to accept an unfair law.
If we were really interested in promoting highway safety, we'd set the speeding limits higher, and set higher penalties for breaking those limits. Then we'd allow an entire barrage of police enforcement technology - sensors, photo radar, etc. - to make sure that almost everyone who breaks the law gets caught. We'd make the penalities less about money and more about license suspension: something that would truly deter the rich along with the poor. I look like Kirsten Dunst and Jacques VilleneuveI don't know who the top match is, but the second two results are mildly interesting.
 January 26 Toronto Sun adds nothing helpful to Meaford/Thornbury tragedyFive teens from my hometown were recently killed in a car accident. They went to my old high school and were known to my family. They were buried this week. Police have confirmed that at least some of the boys were not wearing seatbelts, and speed "was a factor" in the crash (the boys collided with another vehicle on highway 26 near Meaford, while heading back from a canceled hockey game in bad weather). As in all accidental death - particularly of such young people - saying that it "sucks" is an understatement. In a town of a few thousand residents, the loss is hard not to notice. At the same time the brief media frenzy I observed from here in Toronto hasn't, in my opinion, added much meaning to the story. For a few days, the national newspapers and television news turned the spotlight on our little hometowns of Meaford and Thornbury. Some could only repeat the same basic facts about the accident, and I suppose that's fine, if a wider audience wants to know. But others - predictably, the Toronto Sun, ran the following headline on its Wednesday edition:
This headline was a quotation from the grandmother of one of the victims. Now I'm not saying that it would be strange for grandparents to think the world of their grandson. Neither would it be odd for friends and family to make bold claims about the greatness of the recently deceased. Even if these claims went so far as to challenge the worth of others still living... well, in their anguish and grief, people say a lot. But when writer Brett Clarkson decided to print these particular comments and his newspaper decided to run with this particular headline, they proved once again why their publication is seen in many circles as a sensationalist tabloid. The dead grandson mentioned was popular, played on the school hockey team, and a crapload of people turned out for his funeral. That's what you get from the story. (Oh, the public school principal adds in something at the end about leadership and academic excellence). So which of these things are we, the objective reader, being told to use in our assessment of raw human worth? When you're 16 and living, popularity surely feels like that which separates the "cream" from the rest of the crop. For some teens, this can be a great source of satisfaction; for others, it is a great wall of pain and hopelessness. Isn't this common knowledge? Isn't the paradigmatic teenage suicide preceded by the question, if I died tomorrow, would anybody come to my funeral? Is that a superficial value judgement ever worth encouraging? Perhaps an essential facet of maturity is the full recognition of one's self worth and human dignity, independent of and equal to that of all others. And when you mature, you learn to apply phrases like "cream of the crop" to narrow, well-defined areas of competition: academics, athletics, business, art, whatever. But you try to avoid using such terms to suggest that people themselves are of entirely inferior or superior quality; especially with respect to teens (who are far from completing their self-definition) using the icons of their own pecking order (popularity, athleticism, etc.). The Sun lacks this maturity, so instead they turned a grandmother's innocent favouritism into some pretty dumb reporting. January 25 Evangelism cannot escape literalist/fundamemtalist rootsLately, when thinking/talking about struggles within my particular religion of origin, I've found myself tossing around various terms such as literalist, fundamentalist, evangelical, etc. I'm often thinking of the same people when I use these terms, but perhaps some of those who self-identify as mere evangelicals would object to the other labels. I know I once would have. It is with this contention in mind that I'll attempt to lay out where, from my perspective, these terms of art are entirely conjoined and wrapped up in the same thing. More importantly, I hope to share reasons why an opposition to one of these elements might be more consistent as an opposition to the entire set.
Literalist "Biblical Literalism" commonly refers to the hermenutical practice of interpreting scriptures using the plain meaning of their words (as determinate of a direct message from God to the reader). Many conservative Christians claim the correctness of this practice - and since most of them cannot speak ancient Hebrew or Greek, the practice is often applied to the plain meaning of words in one or several English translation(s) of the Bible (the translation of which, as some can appreciate, is itself riddled with hermenutical and forensic challenges). When combined with a doctrine of inerrancy - as is so often the case - many of the modern conservative Christian political stances come forth. Insistance on the truth of six-day creationism, opposition to homosexual rights and many nominally chauvanist ideals (about women and leadership, the family, etc.) find their confirmation in the lay Bible study, where the unqualified sit around and attempt to objectively discover "God's Will" on these issues.
Fundamentalist My understanding of Christian Fundamentalism is rooted in the late 19th century / early 20th century movement within American Protestantism, typified by a declaration of the "five fundamentals" at the 1910 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church:
(I ripped this list off http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist_Christ..., and they seem to have their sources in order). The main theme of fundamentalism, as it still survives today, seems to be the creation of a closed definition of Christianity. The movement developed first as an attempt to close the ranks of protestantism and keep out the liberals, socialists, Darwinists, etc. by defining what does and does not constitute a real Christian faith. Ironically, this has spawned all manner of seperatism: as each group of fundamentalists refines the contours of its Truth, theologies diverge and "independent" or "non-denominational" churches become the only option. I would argue that fundamentalism - in order to be of any significance - relies on a literalist approach to salvation and ethics. Why take pains to define who is "in" and who is "out"? Because literalists, when looking at passages like Matthew 25 and Revelation 20, begin to see the afterlife as entirely dominated by two categories (heaven and hell), so seperation becomes paramount. The contours of fundamentalism also serve as a rudimentary filter for literalists who, remember, intend to interpret the Bible without much linguistic or anthropological authority. Once you accept and affirm the "fundamentals," you are allowed into the circle of lay persons who will mutually inform each other about the plain meaning of scripture.
Evangelical Armed with relatively simple membership requirements and relatively easy methods of finding truth, it should be no surprise that 19th and 20th century conservative American protestants also comprised a movement known as "evangelicalism". Evangelicals believe in the existence of an imperative to "share" their religious beliefs with others. As to the form of this sharing, there are many different schools of thought:
Etc. This taxonomy is my own and entirely anecdotal. There are all points in between, and I think many evangelicals traverse multiple styles as time goes on. Conservative evangelicals won't have much trouble admitting that they are also literalist and fundamentalist. For "liberal" evangelicals, however, the doctrinal links take some excavation.
I know many people who claim to be "evangelicals" but would rather not be called "fundamentalists" or "literalists." But just because you bend the "plain meaning" principle when it suits (i.e. to create more satisfying or consistent interpretations), literalist assumptions may still strongly inform the level of confidence required to call "non-Christians" to conversion. As for what constitutes "Christian" and "non-Christian", liberal evangelicals happily loosen the contours - often making "success" far more achievable - but the basic idea of inclusion/exclusion informs the desire to categorize and claim implicit superiority of doctrine.
Personally, I can no longer call myself evangelical (and have long rejected literalism and fundamentalism). Respect for the humanity and cognition of others requires unassuming openness and fair consideration of their perspectives. January 09 Response to Toronto Star op-ed on three-parent family decisionAll the social conservatives are in a flap about the recent Ontario Court of Appeal decision handed down last week granting full parental rights over a child to the biological father, mother and her lesbian partner (A.A. v. B.B., 2007 - http://www.ontariocourts.on.ca/decisions/2007/january/2007ONCA0002.htm). A representative of the Catholic Civil Rights League wrote a particularly sad retort for today's Toronto Star (http://www.thestar.com/opinion/article/169037) and so I decided to submit my first letter to the editor of a national newspaper. Here it is in the original form, whether they print it or not.
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