7 fall takes

1

John, I'm sure, would remind me that fall has not started yet.  And therefore we can't be experiencing "fall weather" because the weather we're experiencing is normal for mid-September, which is part of summer.

BUT.  I am wearing a sweater today.  His argument is invalid.

It's not just that either.  There is a tree in our yard with one reddish branch.  The oak tree has brown leaves starting to appear here and there, and all the black walnut trees in the area have yellow ones scattered around.  I haven't seen any sumac lately, but it might already be finished -- it's always the first to change colors.

So yesterday I called it: since it's definitely feeling like fall, that means it's definitely time to make pie.

Apple, because I'm not a lemming.  Just because pumpkin spice is "cool" doesn't mean pumpkin is what you start fall with.  You start with apple and move on to pumpkin in October.  Well, that's my opinion anyway.

Did you know pie is actually REALLY easy to make?   You hear complicated instructions about pie crust, but it's not actually hard to get it "good enough."  Perfection -- both flaky AND easy to handle -- is hard, but if you're willing to accept a slightly messy-looking pie because you tore holes in it and had to patch it, that's pretty simple to do.  My crust took a total of about 20 minutes to make, and it was deliciously flaky if a little homely.  And the filling, that's just a matter of cutting up fruit and sprinkling it with flour, sugar, and cinnamon, even easier.  You should make a pie today.

2

I had a really, really horrible week or two healthwise.  I just felt so lethargic.  Getting up from chairs, I felt dizzy and saw stars.  Functioning as a responsible adult felt like this Herculean task.  I was getting pretty good sleep most of that time, but I still would find myself dozing off in the afternoon -- which I really can't afford because even with the TV on, the kids get in fights or wander off.

It was really demoralizing; I couldn't do anything I enjoyed.  Even reading a book felt really hard -- I couldn't focus.  Answering emails?  Forget it.  Too much work.  I scrolled through Facebook a lot, aching to lie down but afraid if I did I would fall asleep.

I considered a lot of possibilities.  It felt like low blood sugar, dehydration, or sleep deprivation, except I was eating, drinking, and sleeping fine.  Might have been anemia, but my midwife should have my lab reports by now and I would think if they showed anemia she would have called me.  (Of course I could have called her but that is HARD.)  Then again low blood pressure is common right around this part of pregnancy because your blood volume needs increase.  My blood pressure was normal at my last appointment, but then I felt fine that day anyway.

Then weirdly I just started suddenly feeling better.  It could have been any number of things.  It could have been that I started putting flaxseed in my English muffins or that I ran out of prenatal vitamins (have they been POISONING me?) or that I started soaking in epsom salts for the magnesium.  Or maybe it just passed.  All I know is I can go to bed at 10, be up for an hour with Miriam at night, get up at six or seven, and feel okay all day now.  I have accomplished several things per day without hating every minute!  So, all I can say is, I hope this lasts.  I like functioning.

3

Marko is officially registered as a homeschooler, just in time for him to lose all interest in school.  I really believe it's best for him to be mostly self-motivated right now and that if he's not keen on reading at the moment, I should wait.  But MAN does it take patience and forebearance.  I know it'll turn him off reading if I push too hard.  On the other hand I don't want him to forget all he knows.  I've done a trade with him ("if you read five pages of this book to me, I'll read this Star Wars book to you") and I've tried to incorporate his current obsessions ("I wrote a story about ghosts and skeletons for you!") but it's been kind of like pulling teeth.  I blame how fun our new house is, and how busy he's been playing in it.  Plus, I haven't been as available for school stuff in the past couple months as I should have been.  (This is why I shudder at the thought of homeschooling while having  a baby every other year.  Isn't that a guarantee that the older kids' school will be constantly disrupted?  It's disrupted enough with just Miriam, who does not like sharing my attention.)

I figure I'll just keep offering stuff and checking out easy readers and we'll see how it goes.  Maybe now is a better time for math or science than reading anyway.  I just feel like the pressure is on because at the end of the year we have to "demonstrate progress" in one of several approved ways and the whole concept terrifies me.  What are they going to do if they don't think he's made enough "progress"?

4

I have officially read all the Terry Pratchett books the library has.  They were all super awesome; I highly recommend them.  There's adventure, but not a lot of gruesome death or heartrending loss.  There are interesting themes but no preachiness.  I think my favorites are Small Gods and Reaper Man -- one about a minor deity having a change of heart and the other about Death having a change of heart.  What can I say -- I guess I'm interested in the theologically impossible!

What should I read next?  I have already forgotten everything people have recommended to me in the past, so .... feel free to repeat yourselves.  I need to keep a running booklist.

5

It's always on the verge of having another kid that I start to really appreciate the size family I have.  Three kids is a really good number.  And more importantly, not having anybody under two.  It's especially great when we go out.  When it's time to leave the house, everyone uses the bathrom before we go and no one has to wear a diaper anymore.  Everyone can run out to the car themselves and only Miriam needs help buckling.  Everyone is good about holding my hand in the parking lot.  And we're good for a couple of hours at the park or library before anyone starts asking to go home or eat a snack.

Now, don't get me wrong: if I mistakenly try to do a big grocery shop in the afternoon when they're tired and cranky, or if Miriam is having a tough day and wants to spend the entire time at the park being held, it's not super fun.  But it is just so much easier to do stuff when you don't have a baby (and a hulking diaper bag) to worry about.

At home, too, they sometimes all disappear outside or into the playroom and don't fight or cry for minutes on end!  Or they all split up and play their individual things perfectly happily.  Miriam tends to stay up a little later than the others, and though I wish she wouldn't, I have to admit it's really fun to sit with her in the playroom as she makes tea for me, makes food for her "babies" (one of which is a koala and another of which is a bear), sits her babies on the potty, puts them to bed, builds towers of duplos, and basically is busy as a bee doing what she calls "work."  As I've said before -- Peak Cute.

6

So I read a news story about the SSPX, which got me googling for more information, which led me onto some traddie blogs.  I usually try to steer clear of these because they raise my blood pressure, but it's kind of like a train wreck -- I get fascinated by the awfulness.

You see, most Catholics are very cagey about the more iffy things in the Church's history.  They either don't know about that stuff, or they pretend it didn't happen, or they have complicated reasons why that wasn't doctrine, or there was a good reason for it at the time, or whatever.  And in some cases they have a good point.  But traditionalists aren't so bashful.  They actively dig up the worst, most embarrassing words and actions of early Catholics and gleefully agree with them.

Which is why there's no better way to question your faith than by listening to them.  They will tell it to you straight: the Church used to teach some really awful things.  It's up to you to decide if that's a dealbreaker or not.  The traditionalists don't seem to see why it would be.  Their problem is trying to figure out how a church supposedly guided by God could stop believing that stuff.

Anyway, I'm sharing the really horrifying links because I want to point out that Catholicism is, in many ways, a big tent and that these ideas have been held by many, many faithful Catholics over the centuries.  Saints lived and died believing them, as the quotes attest, and while there are really good arguments why Catholics today don't have to .... it's still kind of bad that they're in there at all.  And I am tired of constantly being told that the Church "never taught that" or "never did that" or "only bad Catholics would ever say that."

Here and here are two on the Church's treatment of Jews.  Both authors wrote their posts to defend their own anti-semitism.  They point out that forcing Jews to wear distinguishing marks, expelling them from countries, or enslaving them are entirely within the tradition of the Church -- and therefore, of course, that makes them perfectly justified in wishing to do the same things.  Finding quotes from the saints in there -- St. Pius V, Bl. Julian of Norwich, Padre Pio, etc. -- was kind of shocking to me; I guess I had assumed that these were people who would take the moral high ground even in opposition to cultural prejudice.  I found both posts eye-opening because I wasn't really aware of the extent to which Jews used to be persecuted.  I guess that's something we can thank Hitler for -- that now very few people want to be anti-semitic, because we know how bad it can get.

And here is a post making the exact argument that I have made here: if God wanted to save everyone, he could do it; the fact that he doesn't do it proves he doesn't want to.  Only I shied away from the conclusion he draws.  My conclusion was that there could not possibly be any hell because it didn't serve any of God's stated ends.  His is that God prefers to glorify himself by the eternal torment of most of the people he ever created.  [Because yes, of course this guy believes that the invincibly ignorant and unbaptized infants are punished just like sinners are.]  I hear Calvinists believe the same.  It seems obvious to me that a being that would do a thing like that would be unworthy of worship.  Yet I understand the argument -- on the one hand, morality does not exist apart from God so if God says it's the right thing to do, it is; and on the other, morality doesn't matter because what really matters is making sure you're not one of the ones being tormented forever.  I disagree with both premises, but that would have to be a whole other post.

7

John's work recently had their big annual fundraiser, which is a benefit polo match.  Polo looks to me like a sport for crazy people -- I mean, hockey is dangerous enough when you don't bring horses into it.  But the donors love it.  There's a fancy-hat contest and a luncheon and all the posh things you might imagine.

So after it was over I got some leftover party favors: four boxes of fancy chocolate.  I want it out of my house so it doesn't tempt me, but on the other hand I want to eat it all.  And I can now, because my stomach has gotten a lot better.  I did get a stomachache one time when I had four pieces of candy after dinner, but at least I can have some.

Still.  If you live near me and want some chocolate, send me a message.  Like, soon.  :D

Review: The Better Angels of Our Nature

I heard about Steven Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature some time ago and wanted to read it, but it didn't occur to me to check the library.  Last week I ran into it while looking for something entirely different, and despite my slow pace with books lately, I decided to take a chance on being able to finish it before it was due.  At about 900 pages, that was a big gamble, but I got it done.  Turns out feeling too tired to do any housework jives pretty well with reading books instead.

The basic thesis of the book is this: violence has been going down throughout human history and is now at an all-time low.  Proving that point is pretty easy, though, compared to the other question of why.  What exactly has been changing throughout human history that made people become less violent?  This latter question remains partially unanswered.  Pinker has ideas, but it's very hard to prove that anything caused any other thing, especially when they are both broad trends over centuries.

I found Pinker's evidence that violence is decreasing absolutely convincing, even in areas where I at first felt doubtful.  For instance, I'd always thought that hunter-gatherers were known for being very peaceful, considering they had little to fight over.  But in studying both the skeletons from ancient hunter-gatherer sites and the rate of violent death in hunter-gatherer tribes today, it turns out that is not the case at all.  They were many times more likely to die a violent death than any city-dwelling society -- though, of course, many of these deaths may be at the hands of neighboring agricultural tribes.  There is only so much we can know.  But my mental image of foraging being a life of peace, security, and bliss was not really that accurate.  While they may well have been without internal government or property, each tribe would have had to defend its territory against other tribes, and they may have had disputes within the tribe as well.

Another surprise was that non-war violence has been going down for centuries as well.  For instance, killing of citizens by their government is way down, as I might have known if I'd realized just how extensive the death penalty was in the Middle Ages.  Torture is down, which I did know -- gruesome executions and tortures used to be a frequent public spectacle, while now torture is a rarity and the source of scandal when it's found out.  Domestic violence is down.  Rape is down, though it can be hard to measure beyond this century, since it wasn't always considered a crime before.  Child abuse is down.  Genocide, shockingly, is down.  Civil war is down.  Murder is down.  Pinker scrupulously cites his sources, criticizes them where faulty, and never seems to jump to any conclusions.  But the charts he comes up with from this data are staggering.  This is not a small decline, possibly able to be put down to faulty numbers -- it's huge and unmistakeable.

Pinker admits that most of us aren't going to believe his thesis on first blush.  After all, we are familiar with the violence of today, and less familiar with that of yesterday.  When someone is murdered in our area, we are bound to know about it, while if we are looking at the history of another place and time, we probably only know of major wars.  History is myopic; the closer something is, the more information about it we have.  And so much violent conflict in the past gets glossed over by the writers of the time, because it was common enough not to have been a very big deal.

Still, there's enough information to work with, if you push past your automatic reaction.  For instance, you can look in ancient literature.  The numbers of those killed in battle are probably not trustworthy, but the descriptions of ancient warfare may well be.  When Biblical heroes capture a city and put everyone within to the sword, that is probably an accurate description of how wars were conducted at the time.  When Odysseus throws infants off the tower of Ilium, this isn't considered unusual behavior in a conquerer, and Homer somehow expects us to continue to consider him a hero.  The Romans, of course, were big on torturing people to death, and are responsible for things like gladitorial games and crucifixion.  The Middle Ages weren't really an improvement either -- take the Arthurian tales, which are chock-full of gore and rapine.  Our "parfait knight," Lancelot, "had the custom of never killing a knight who begged for mercy, unless he had sworn beforehand to do so, or unless he could not avoid it."  Still a little much for a modern audience!  And of course Shakespeare is full of similar stuff.  Pinker quotes Henry V:

Why, in a moment look to see
The blind and bloody soldier with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters;
Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dash'd to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes.

And Henry V, too, is painted throughout the play as a hero!

So, what happened?  There is no one cause, according to Pinker, so he has to go one step at a time and explain them all.

Pinker points first to the invention of government.  I've always felt a little doubtful of anarchy, because its proponents seem to assume human perfection at the outset.  Pinker basically destroys the whole idea with his proof that the invention of the state coincided with a massive reduction in violent death.  And he also offers an explanation.

Violence, he explains, is not entirely an irrational behavior.  There is a reason why we evolved with violent impulses -- they have sometimes, in our history, been useful or at least made sense on an individual level.  There are three main causes of violence he points to: gain (as when one person or group attacks another to take their territory, possessions, or wives), fear (when one nation makes a preemptive strike against another in order to forestall an attack they expect in the future), and retribution or honor (when one attempts to punish someone else for a past harm, in the hopes of getting a reputation in the future as a person who shouldn't be messed with).  Each of these is pretty rational, especially in a dangerous situation and resource-poor situation where survival is not assured.  Gain may be necessary for survival, and a tribe that is strong and raids its neighbors often will survive better than one that doesn't.  Fear is often justified -- it can be hard to know when an enemy might attack, when they might at any time.  And as for retribution, it seems the only way to keep attacks from others from being constant.  America has participated in conflicts for all of these reasons: the conquest of Indian territories and the Mexican-American War for gain, World War II for retribution, and the invasion of Iraq out of fear.

The trouble is that these reasons interact to encourage a state of constant war.  If war for gain happens often, than war for fear will be waged to prevent it.  And the only alternative to pre-emptive war is to engage in terrifying retribution if you are attacked.  Reputation, something I tend to laugh about today, could be as vital for survival as food.  But what is likely to happen is that one tribe starts a war out of fear, the other overreacts out of vengeance, and they both wind up feeling like the injured party.  Neither sees any way the war could have been avoided, even though they both suffer from it and would both be better off if it could have been avoided.  And it is likely to unleash a cycle of retribution which will be hard to stop.

Government is a mechanism for stopping this kind of thing by punishing anyone who engages in it.  When a person or group thinks of attacking for gain, it will have to weigh the chance of failure plus the punishment in case of success.  When a person desires retribution, they can be reassured that the government will punish, so attacks are disincetivized without a direct conflict.  And with everyone knowing these two kinds of conflicts are increasingly unwise and unlikely, they will be less likely to attack out of fear either.

The correlate of this is that when people do not trust their government -- when it is obviously corrupt, favors some over others, or does not punish aggressors -- violence levels rise again, as if the government were not there.  Pinker points to situations where this has taken place, from failed states to certain American cities.

I can clearly see this play out in my own life: my kids fight incessantly.  Either one is afraid the other will attack, or they have already been attacked and want revenge.  Or, sometimes, it's just a matter of "he won't do what I want."  And while I like the concept of being a libertarian parent and letting them work things out, the fact is that I've tried it both ways and leaving them alone more provokes more fights.  When they are assured of my quick intervention -- no matter what exactly I do to intervene! -- they are much slower to attack one another.  They feel secure that someone else is going to defend them, so they don't have to be constantly on battle alert.

So, that's one big factor, and it reduced violence as humankind transitioned from hunter-gathering to settled cities.  Something similar happened in the Middle Ages as disparate feudal holdings coalesced into modern states -- less raiding, more law.  But obviously it could do nothing about the problem of interstate war -- there is no higher authority to punish aggressive states.  (The Pope tried, of course, but he couldn't enforce much.)

Another massive factor is trade.  This, again, put the smackdown on a cherished theory of mine, this time agrarianism.  My understanding of agrarianism as being preferable and allowing for more independence relied on the ability of the land to easily sustain all the people who live on it.  But that is not the reality for most of history; population always grows but land never does.  A man with seven sons may not be able to divide his farm enough for everyone.  What is the solution?  Raiding and violence.  It is the only way, in an agrarian system, that a person can better his situation.

But medieval Europe had a great deal of prejudice against any other way of improving one's lot.  There were laws against usury, of course, which prevented a modern financial system such as we enjoy.  In addition, guilds had rules against innovation, working longer hours, setting lower prices -- pretty much any form of true competition.  It was frowned on to sell something for more money than you bought it for.  Yet all of these are nonviolent ways of increasing one's wealth -- something that anyone with a growing family finds they have to do.

As these laws and prejudices began to dissolve, commerce became more and more common.  A merchant class arose that didn't rely on farming at all.  Not only did this mean that there was no point in raiding anyone anymore, but it also gave a huge incentive for peace and cooperation.  Enemies became business partners, and business partners are always worth more to you alive than dead.  As trade expanded across national boundaries, there started to be a powerful group within each country that adamantly did not want to go to war with others.   Today, the more a nation trades with others, and the more trade organizations it is a member of, the less likely it is to go to war, especially with its trade partners.

A third set of reasons can be grouped together under "the Enlightenment."  It started with urbanization as a result of increased trade -- life in a city lends itself to examining different perspectives.  The printing press contributed, too; more and more philosophers and thinkers were able to trade ideas quickly and easily and to spread them to a larger audience.  Pinker lists Enlightenment thinkers like Hobbes, Spinoza, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, and Mill as influences on the moral thinking of the day.

Enlightenment humanism was based on a few key principles like the universality of human nature (so another person is necessarily as important as oneself), human rights, and reason as a tool for seeking the truth.  A belief in reason was sufficient to put an end to witch-burning, for instance.  A belief in universal human nature could help people overcome their national, ethnic, or gender prejudices.  It's funny, because I hated the Enlightenment when I first learned about it in high school -- it was dry as toast -- and was explicitly taught to condemn it in college.  Now I am beginning to see it as one of the best things that's ever happened.

Pinker takes some time to argue against the belief that violent ideologies, such as fascism and communism, really sprang from the Enlightenment.  The Enlightenment was based on individual rights, while these other philosophies thought of man mainly in a collective way -- as a race or a class.  They also did not consider men to be equal, or possessed of the same nature, but rather to be valued or not based on membership in certain groups.  The thinkers they draw from can be described as counter-Enlightenment.  However, Pinker does defend one Counter-Enlightenment thinker, Edmund Burke, who argued in favor of culture and custom as well as reason to guide behavior.  Pinker believes that cultural standards, from etiquette to common moral prejudices, can be a civilizing force too.

Out of the Enlightenment we get modern democracy.  Democracy is one of the most powerful forces against warfare that we have.  While it isn't technically true that no two democracies have ever gone to war, it is the case that the more democratic two nations are, the less likely they are to go to war.  There's a lot of fussing with the numbers to explain this, because many countries that call themselves "Democratic" aren't that democratic after all.  Pinker finds papers which rank countries by how democratic they are, does his level best to exclude confounders, and still finds correlations between democracy and peace.

Why don't democracies go to war as much?  Well, one obvious reason is that the people bear more of the costs of a war than the ruler does, so a nation ruled by the people will be more hesitant to go to war.  Another is that democracies generally have already accepted Enlightenment values, so they acknowledge that their rivals possess human rights.

There's a lot of discussion of recent history.  What about the two world wars, don't they prove that things are worse now?  Well, no.  First because, proportionate to the world's population, they aren't actually the worst slaughters in history after all; and second because two data points don't make a trend.  While over time wars have gotten larger, they've also gotten less frequent -- and they've gotten less frequent faster than they've gotten larger.  The peace we've enjoyed since the second world war is unprecedented.  The conflicts that loom large on our consciousness are tiny compared to the wars of the past.

Another issue he addresses is abortion.  Surely the number of abortions, if they are counted as violent deaths, makes our age the bloodiest!  Although Pinker is prochoice, he produces data to show that before abortion was common, infanticide was just as common.  From Carthaginian child sacrifice to Roman infant exposure, through the Middle Ages: "For almost a millenium and a half the Judeo-Christian prohibition against infanticide coexisted with massive infanticide in practice ... In 1527 a French priest wrote that 'the latrines resound with the cries of the children who have been plunged into them.'"  So it's sort of a net zero there, except where birth control has reduced the abortion rate.  In recent years abortion has been falling around the globe, so it's still good news.

There's a heck of a lot more in this book.  There's a discussion of why men are more violent than women, and whether increased participation of women in public life has made war more rare.  There's speculation about reading novels increasing empathy.  There's some stuff on psychology and neurobiology -- too much, in my opinion, because even after you get through the long explanatory sections, there's not much we can learn.  That was disappointing to me, because I think there's a lot we should be able to learn from the human brain.  Does growing up in a stressful environment make a person more aggressive for life?  Perhaps the science just hasn't gotten there yet.

There's also little discussion of the role of parents and parenting customs.  That is especially odd considering he does talk about changing patterns in education.  (For instance, a switch from rote learning to greater abstraction, which may be responsible for an increase in people's ability to abstract and empathize.)  He defends this on the basis of the popular scientific theory that everything can be put down to genes, chance, and peers and nothing at all to parents.  I'm sorry, this theory fails a basic sanity test.  You can't say a teacher or best friend has an influence and your parents have done.  There probably is something funky in there.  My suspicion is that most parents in a given culture raise their kids about the same, more or less, so the differences blend into the differences in the larger environment.  Try a study comparing homeschooled Fundamentalist kids with the children of crunchy hippies and then get back to me.

So, the book isn't perfect.  Some of his theories I find a little nuts (blaming the crime spike of the 1960's-90's on cultural shifts, even though he admits that those shifts have not reversed) and sometimes he doesn't dig further into a theory that interests me, as I mentioned.  But overall it's still a phenomenal book.  He is rigorous about what we can and can't know from the data available, and he always seems to test and double-test his theories.  Sometimes he proposes a theory and then argues against it so thoroughly it's hard to tell which side he actually favors.  I appreciate this kind of objectivity.

And its conclusions are far-ranging.  I find myself staggered, thinking of the education I've received.  I was always taught history as a decline from former greatness to present chaos.  How did the authors of these books not realize how much better things are today?  Or did they simply assume that a less religious age must be worse, regardless of greater peace and prosperity?  I was also taught to demonize the Enlightenment, the destroyer of a far superior Catholic culture, when in reality there is no true contradiction between faith and Enlightenment values -- rather, religions are improved when they adopt them.  (Unless, of course, you think the Catholic Church was better when it allowed torture, slavery, and conversions by the sword.)  I feel as though I was taught my whole life to be against the side of the angels -- government, capitalism, rationalism, urbanization, technology, all things I was taught to view with suspicion which actually have done more good than any of the things I was taught to revere.  I'm a little ticked off about this, to be honest.  This kind of history "education" seems actually prone to make the world a worse place.

Of course there is still one counter-argument left to the traditionalists: the world is less violent today, they may admit, but that doesn't mean it's better.  It used to be more manly, tough, honorable!  People today are weak, without conviction, effeminate, materialistic.  Well, maybe so.  But I think that not having to worry that my children will be slaughtered is just more important to me than the abstract value of "valor" and so on.  And if a person is to argue that the past was better because one was more likely to go to heaven then -- well, the burden of proof is on them.  Is there any merit to being a faithful Catholic when the alternative is to be punished?  Is one more likely to go to heaven as a person who enjoys watching public executions than as a person who does not?  We are seeing an increase in kindness, concern for people different from us, and self-control.  How can that be a bad thing, even from an "only-salvation-matters" perspective?

Anyway, this is one of those life-changing books that I want to force everyone I know to read.  At the same time, at 900 pages, I know the odds aren't good that any of them will.  Hence the review.  I wish there were a shorter, more journalistic version of this book which could serve as an introduction.  I'd pass it out on street corners.  That's how big a deal I think this book is.  If you can get your hands on it, read it.  There's so much more in it that I haven't mentioned that will totally blow your mind or get you thinking.

Liberals and Islam

I occasionally hear the question, "Why don't liberals hate Islam?"  After all, Islam, at least in many of its common forms, is about as different from liberalism as you can get.  Freedom of thought?  Gender equality?  Self-determination?  Islam isn't known for these things.  Yet it's always conservatives you hear condemning it, while liberals say things like "not all Muslims" or "it's a religion of peace."

The answers I hear given to the question above are often really stupid, or rely on assuming that liberals are stupid.  For instance, it is said that liberals just don't know anything about Islam.  That might be true for some, but surely there are liberals who know a bit about Islam and how it is concretely practiced.  Another answer is, liberals exoticize the other and therefore they love Musliims just because they are so different.  That seems to suggest that liberals aren't capable of rational thought.

I've been reading some ex-Muslim blog posts lately and I have to admit, it can be kind of shocking.  While I agree that not all Muslims practice their religion so harshly, some certainly do, especially in parts of the Middle East.  The result is like Christian fundamentalism on steroids.  So it's safe to say, I don't love Islam.  As religions go, I consider it mostly bad news.

However, I think the liberal way, being focused as it is on non-zero sum solutions and peaceful resolution to differences, naturally is not going to be to say that Islam is evil.  Not because liberals love Islam, but because they are actually putting their money where their mouth is about how you fix problems.  You don't fix them by demonizing groups of people, alienating them, and showing your readiness to fight them.  You fix them by finding common ground, demonstrating your readiness to accept and work together, and accepting people before demanding they change.

So when a liberal American says, "I want Muslims to be able to immigrate to the US, and I want them to be able to keep their religion and culture," they are not saying, "What we need in this country are more burqas and child marriage!"  What they are saying is, "I am willing to accept immigrants to this country in good faith, and while I hope they accept American values (or certain core ones) I want them to know that they won't be forced into a hard choice between religion and freedom."  It's a way of trying to introduce liberal values into Islam, rather than expecting that anyone will ditch Islam for liberal values in one moment.

Another reason that liberals don't hate Muslims is simply an ethical question.  Most people in Muslim countries, especially the most repressive ones, are victims.  Even if they support their government, they are being deceived into that support because it clearly harms them.  And when you see a victim, your first thought should be to help, not to attack, even if you disagree with them on basic values.  It's the liberal tendency to view humanity as a whole, not as an ingroup defending itself from an outgroup.  If you'd rescue a baby from a burning building, you'd rescue a Syrian baby from a warzone.  It's just that simple.  Might either choice be dangerous?  Sure!  But the potential harm is worse and more likely in the case of the victim, so you are obligated to help.

But, you might say, liberals aren't all nice and squishy when it comes to fundamentalist Christians!  They say much harsher things!  I think there are two reasons for this.  First, greater familiarity means more likely to have emotional, rather than principled, responses.  One gets mad and rants and raves, even if logically one knows it's not helpful.  And the second reason is that fundamentalist Christians just aren't as dangerous.  While liberals all know the danger of saying or doing things that might radicalize Muslims and turn them into terrorists who will literally kill them, they know that fundamentalist Christians aren't literally going to kill them.  Or at least, they are very unlikely to.  So they aren't being as careful with Christians as they are with Muslims.  They are treating them with an assumption that they do accept some basic "liberal" values like hashing out differences verbally rather than by bombs, and so they feel safer saying directly how much they disapprove.

Well, that's my opinion anyway, as a somewhat-liberal person who doesn't love Islam.

My little girl is two

Last week was Miriam's birthday.  It's not a shock that she's two -- she's been acting two for months now.  The boys were puzzled on her birthday, saying, "She doesn't seem any older!  She talks the same!"  I pointed out that she's a lot older than she was on her last birthday.  It's just that those little milestones come one at a time instead of all on one day.

So what is Miriam like at two?

I think two is "peak cute" -- well, between two and three.  By four they're all lanky and interesting, so they're more fun than straight-up adorable.  But two-year-olds are all giant eyes and funny speech impediments.  Miriam is no exception.  Everything she does is adorable.  Her little stompy walk -- or her pigeon-toed run -- or the way she asks for "more cakey."  It's all so stinking cute that we are able to forgive her for all the trouble she causes ... which is considerable.

She talks really well, in my opinion, though other people say they don't understand it.  She says things like, "I want that pot.  Take it downstairs.  Do some cooking."  Or, "Me coming with you."  Yesterday there was a lot of spontaneous, "You are my mama.  You are my sweetie pie."  Her grammar is atrocious, but that's kind of a comfort after the stilted perfection of Marko's grammar at the same age.  Her mistakes prove to me that she's actually learning language and not just repeating.  She knows tons of words; I have no idea how many.  To strangers, she rarely says more than "hello" or "goodbye."  But that's an improvement over months ago, where she cried if a stranger looked at her.

She is very confident going up and down stairs, though she uses the handrail unless she's in a hurry.  She can't do doorknobs though.  Her life and my life will both get a lot better when she learns to open doors herself -- especially considering that she's compulsive about shutting any door she finds left open.

She is sleeping badly these days -- I suspect she is cutting her last two two-year molars.  To put her to bed each night, I lie in bed with her with my tablet and we watch "foodie," which is either YouTube's Tasty channel or Anthony Bourdain's show Parts Unknown.  There just has to be cooking.  Sometimes it takes only a few minutes to get her to sleep; other times she restlessly wiggles and moves around for an hour or longer before she finally sleeps.  She stays in her own room all night now, though I have to go in there at least once per night and sometimes a lot more.  And since I'm so tired all the time, I always wind up falling asleep on her crib mattress on the floor and waking up an hour later with a terrible crick in my neck.

In the daytime she varies between independence and clinginess.  She'll disappear into the playroom with the boys and I won't see her for half an hour .... or she'll be climbing all over me all day.  I am ready to cut down on how much she nurses, but she isn't and she lets me know LOUDLY.  We'll be at the library or the park and she'll grab my shirt yelling, "Want to nurse on THAT nursey bit!"  Or at home she'll wrestle with me to get at the goods.  With patient effort I've cut her down a little, and convinced her often to accept a cup of milk from the fridge instead, but it's a bit of a battle and I just don't have it in me to make it a bigger battle than it is.  I wanted to nurse her as long as she wanted, gosh darn it.  This was going to be the kid I was going to be able to allow to wean herself.

Her favorite toys are her dolls and her cooking pans.  Yes, very stereotypical.  I don't think I've encouraged her toward these things more than I did with the boys; but on the other hand, I know each of them had a stage when they just wanted to be exactly like me as well.  It's not like Miriam has a concept in her mind of what boys and girls are supposed to be like, and I'm not even sure she knows I'm a girl and therefore the parent she is "supposed" to imitate.  At the same time I don't think there's a hardwired part of the female brain which knows that women are the ones who cook.  I think she just likes cooking.  And unlike with the others, I've been able to let her participate a lot more with the things I do, since I have a two-year-old and no baby yet.  She's my partner in almost everything I do.  She wants to help load and unload the dishwasher, help do laundry, help sweep.  Every toddler wants these things, but usually I've resisted a lot more because chores are so much harder with toddler help.  This time, I guess I've made my peace with everything taking twice as long.  Because if she's on a chair "helping" me cook, well, she's not crying OR asking to nurse!

If there's one way in which she really is different in personality from the boys, it's that she seems more empathetic.  Marko was really slow to grasp the concept that other people had feelings and that he could change people's feelings by acting in different ways.  I mean, he was like four when he finally figured it out.  Michael was faster -- I think having a sibling helps.  Plus he's a naturally really attached, snuggly, affectionate kid.  But Miriam is even better at it.  If she sees someone sad, she rushes over and pats their back saying, "Be happy!"  Or she gives them a toy she thinks they might like.  She loves sharing toys because it makes people happy -- saying things like, "Give Michael a toy, make Michael happy!  Make me happy!"  Sometimes she grabs something the boys want and they flip out and try to grab it.  This never goes well, because she grabs all the harder and screams like a banshee.  But when I remind the boys that she often likes to share when she's asked, they try asking nicely or offering a trade, and she almost always agrees to that.

And that is one thing that maybe does come from female brain differences.  Lower testosterone means lower aggression and therefore she just doesn't have the same sort of possessiveness and competitiveness that both of them do.  She likes to please.  At the same time she does not, at all, like being told "no" or being yelled at.   She completely flips her lid when anyone, child or adult, is harsh at all.  In fact I realize I sound like I'm describing myself....

And man, is she sweet and affectionate.  The other day John got up with her and let me sleep in.  When she finally got to come into the bedroom, she dashed in yelling, "My mama, my mama!" and wanted hugs and kisses.  The same happens when Daddy arrives home -- she wants uppie, hugs, and kisses, and says, "My daddy, my daddy."

She's almost entirely potty-trained, even away from home.  The trouble is, she refuses to use big toilets, only her little potty, so if we don't bring it places, she gets very upset because she doesn't want to go in her diaper but is terrified by the big toilet.  She was willing to try the big toilet by standing up next to it, but when I told her girls have to sit, she was like .... nope.

I wish I could bottle up the sweetness that is Miriam at two and just keep it forever.  I dread the time when I have less attention to give her, when she can't be my constant helper and buddy in every single thing I do, and can't get "uppie" on request anymore.  But I enjoy it while I can.  And hey, with the obsession with babies she has, maybe she won't mind being a big sister too much.

Three consequentialist goals

I've talked before about consequentialism, but at the time I put to the side what consequences one should be striving for.  It's no small consideration: not only will a person make very different moral choices based on what consequences they are aiming for, but choosing the wrong consequences can seem to refute consequentialism altogether.

I mean, consider the basic utilitarian formulation: "the greatest happiness for the greatest number."  In that case ought we to euthanize unhappy people, to increase the sum of happiness in the people who are left?  If we get the technology to put wires in people's heads that make them feel happy all the time without changing any of the realities of their lives (say, they are still hungry and filthy and sick, but they just don't mind anymore), should we impose that on everyone?

That's where preference utilitarianism comes in -- rather than say "the goal is to make everyone happy," we could say, "the goal is to give everyone, so much as possible, what they want out of life."  So we shouldn't wirehead people unless that's truly what they want.  But that raises more problems: does that mean that, rather than taking a suicidal person to the hospital, we should give them a big bottle of sleeping pills because that's what they want?  Yet, of course, the second we edit it to "what a person of sound mind would want" or "what a well-informed person would want" we run the risk of invalidating everyone's preferences because, after all, that isn't what they really would want if only they were as mentally healthy or well informed as us.

Existence is the third possibility.  Rather than preserve happiness even at the cost of ending some people's existence, we should preserve life above all.  I'm a fan of this, for sure.  After all, when considering whether a public-health proposal is a good one, we ask not "will people like it?" but "how many lives will it save?"  If saving lives is one's end goal, it seems like it wouldn't wind up with anything really monstrous.  Except .... well, we don't actually force medical interventions on people, even if they're really helpful ones.  Take the extreme case: a very elderly person, someone who has a short time to live in any case, and who has begged not to be rescucitated again and again, but to die naturally?  Is it right to overrule their preference because preserving life trumps everything else?

Another consideration is how we are to rate existence for those who do not yet exist.  Is it morally equivalent to save a life and to bring a new life into existence?  Well, not really -- a person who currently exists has rights, responsibilities, preferences, loved ones, and so on, while a person who doesn't isn't tied into the present reality in any way.  To choose not to beget them is no injustice to them, because they don't exist.  But if we really were taking existence alone as the only consequence of importance, we would consider saving a life equal to creating a life, because both result in an equal amount of existence.  I do think creating a life has value -- that is part of why I've done it so many times!  Sociologists may remind us that becoming a parent is likely to reduce our happiness (and I think they're right, in at least one sense) but that doesn't really matter all that much to most people.  On the one hand, we have preferences beyond happiness, and on the other, the child you have will have infinitely increased happiness once they exist.  But I feel odd about saying, "I'm having this child because he will increase the sum of happiness in the world."  I'd rather simply say, "I'm having this child because it is a good thing for him to exist."

In the end, my choice has been to balance all three of these considerations: existence, preference, and happiness -- which could also be stated, "life, liberty, and happiness."  To pursue any one of these completely without reference to the other two has the potential to be drawn out to morally repellant conclusions.  I think in most cases that doesn't even come up because the three are interconnected.  You can't be happy if you are dead; most people prefer to be alive; most people are made unhappy by not being free to pursue their wishes.  But in case it should come up, I think it's appropriate to balance them.  If, for instance, a person desires to die, one might simply overrule that because life has value apart from your preference, and because the person has an opportunity they don't recognize for future happiness.  And yet, when my grandmother chose to forego cancer treatment, her wish was respected because it was a clear, sane, adamant preference being weighed against a very short increase in lifespan anyway.  I can save the threatened suicide victim but not kidnap my grandmother to force treatment on her, without being a hypocrite, because I see in one case a weak preference (because it may be compromised by poor mental health) weighed against a great deal of potential life and happiness, while in the other I see a strong preference weighed against very little life and no increase in happiness (because death would have been slower and more painful).

How much weight ought to be put on each one?  It's not really possible to say.  I tend to rate life the most highly; I think each person is an irreplaceable individual with much to offer the world, so that even if they do not seem very happy, they still have value.  I know others who care more about liberty -- they were not exaggerating when they said, "Give me liberty or give me death!"  Many have died rather than endure what they perceived as slavery.  And some people care more about happiness; they feel their life is better spent bringing joy to others' lives than curing diseases.  I don't think any of these weightings is wrong, though I do think it would be wrong to consider only one while entirely neglecting the others.  To pursue a course of action which serves one of these ends while destroying another -- for instance, wiping out life on earth because people aren't happy enough, or having twenty children and neglecting them all because at least they would exist, or wireheading everyone against their will because it would make them happier -- would be a morally repugnant thing to do.

7 quick moving takes

1

 Well, we've successfully moved.  It was an exhausting and somewhat painful process.  But, thanks to John taking three days off work for it, plus the weekend, we're entirely unpacked and living comfortably in our new house.

So, pictures first!

Here is the living room, on the middle floor, just when you come in.  It's the cleanest and most peaceful room in the house, so I like to sit here.  This picture was taken before the piano was delivered -- it sits next to the brown couch now.  I am very excited to hear John play, and for the kids to get a chance to start learning.

If you turn the other way, you can see the front door and the steps up to the bedrooms.  It's a split level, so only a half flight to go up and a half flight to go down.

Through the living room (if you were to turn right from the previous picture) you get into the dining room.  We got all new chairs, because we had only four dining chairs, of which two were broken.  So every day we had to drag John's computer chair over to the table, plus my chair too because it was just a borrowed dining chair.  Now the old chairs sit out on the screen porch with the card table and the dining room actually seats six.  Which is handy because that's the size our family is going to be.



The dining room adjoins the kitchen -- how nice not to have to bring all the food out into the living room like we've done for five years!  It has quite a lot more cabinet space than I've been used to, and there's a dishwasher beside the fridge there.  I think of it as my robot servant and it makes me so happy.

I kind of hate the colors in here -- the walls are yellow, the counters are almond, and the cabinets are very light gray.  Not sure what they were thinking with that.  I want to paint the walls white except for a red backsplash area.  But not right away; just moving here was enough work to hold us for awhile.

Here is the family room, which is downstairs.  It is very cozy and I thought it would be my favorite room in the house ... but it's often boiling hot down there because it doesn't have any window air conditioning units like the upstairs has.  And the heat makes the ancient orange carpet smell weird.  Eventually, we want central air, but that's massively expensive to do in a house this size -- doubly so because it doesn't have air ducts, only radiators.  And we'll probably pull up the carpet at some point.

The other half of the downstairs is taken up with a huge bedroom which we have designated the playroom.  It was only this tidy very briefly, because John cleaned it; as soon as he was finished the kids ran down and dumped out all the toys.  Marko in particular was really upset by having it cleaned up.  I guess he's only happy if he's stepping on Legos.

2

I'm a little overwhelmed by the yard.  The previous owner was an avid gardener who actually had time and money to keep it up, so there's tons of stuff there, both edible and ornamental.  The trouble is I am not always sure which is which.  I also don't really consider flowers to be worth prime garden space, so I may be digging some things up and moving them around or giving them away before next spring.

The previous owner gave us a three-page list of instructions for how to care for all her plants, which left me feeling rather inadequate.  Then I remembered, I own this, I'm not plant-sitting, so if I want to neglect some of her many mulching steps, I can.  But I'm still nervous about all she's said about pests.  She put in some fences to protect against deer, but she admitted there was basically nothing you could do about the bears other than store the trash in the freezer till trash day.  This sounds dreadful.  And also, if there are bears around, are any of us safe?!

But, on the bright side, there are scads of herbs, there are tomatoes (though not ripe yet -- how late did she plant them?!), there is a late planting of beans.  It doesn't have as many of the things I like as my old garden usually had -- no bell peppers, no cabbage, no cucumbers.  But next year it will!  There's plenty of space.

And the rest of the yard is a perfect jungle for kids.  Some flat, smooth grass and lots of trees, especially in the side yard, where there is a huge, climbable magnolia tree, two holly trees, and some dogwood and redbud.  There's a huge back porch.  In the front there's a brick walkway which is good for toy cars.  I worried about there being no fence, but they have all been excellent about staying in the yard and not playing close to the road.  Though it's a very quiet road as it is, and the house is right at the end where few cars pass.

3

I found moving extremely difficult, especially that last day before the move where absolutely everything was packed and there was nothing to do and nowhere to sit.  It was very sad, looking at our house all empty and lifeless.  Once we had arrived at the new place, things started to get better right away -- with every box we unpacked, we got more comfortable.

But moving is an emotional experience whatever you do.  You don't have any place that feels like home to relax in, no habits to revert to.  Plus you have to go through boxes and boxes of stuff with sentimental value.  Unpacking my clothes got me very upset -- when I see all my clothes, rather than just the stuff I usually wear and keep handy, it feels like I'm looking through someone else's closet.  It's the closet of someone who isn't pregnant or nursing, who doesn't get grease and dirt on her clothes, who gets invited places.  Cute dressy clothes, clothes in my size and my favorite colors.  And the present version of me doesn't get to have any part of this.  I wear John's t-shirts and the exactly two pairs of pants that still button.

That, plus the sight of myself in all the full-length mirrors, gave me a bit of a body-image crisis.  This is why I always get drastic haircuts when I'm pregnant.  I just can't bear the way I look, but the thought of buying a new wardrobe sounds dreadful.  I couldn't afford it before, and now that I can, I'm thinking it's much better not to bother for just four months.  And I do have some decent cold-weather maternity stuff anyway.

4

Once John went back to work and I started settling into a routine, I felt a lot better.  There is just so much more SPACE here.  Like, the kids can go down to the playroom and have noisy adventures, and I can be upstairs barely hearing them.  I can relax in a comfortable chair and read a book, or potter around my new kitchen.  I feel way more motivated to do housework than usual, perhaps partly just from the novelty factor, but also because things actually stay clean after I'm finished for more than five minutes.  And I am finally spared my most time-consuming chore, daily dishes.  I just put dishes in the machine whenever I'm finished with them, which means my counters are always pretty clear.

And after John gets home, we have a nice dinner in our pleasant dining room, put the kids to bed in their own rooms, and then spend the evening in the rest of the house.  We don't have to whisper for fear of waking them, or leave the lights dim so they don't shine under the door.  Instead, I can tidy the kitchen, or I can sit and read in the peaceful living room, or I can go downstairs and lounge on the comfy couch.  John generally sits at his desk in the family room, so we can talk or not, without that awkward pressure of being two introverts a few feet from each other feeling like we should be talking because we don't want to be rude, except we're both tired and don't want to talk.

There are lots of little things that make life easier.  Having more than one bathroom, for instance, so Michael doesn't suddenly get desperate to go potty the second one of us gets in the shower and not be able to go.  Or having a built-in water filter so we don't have to keep filling up the tank on the one we had.  Being able to park in the carport right by the side door, so I can let the kids run out to the car without worrying they'll run in the street.  Miriam having her own room at night so that if she wakes up and throws an hours-long party (like she did last night, ugh) she only keeps one person awake.  But I think the one that matters to me most is the quiet.  The split-level design muffles everything; I can vaguely hear where the kids are, but if they're not on the same level as me, they aren't loud.  And oh, how I have needed quiet.

(Of course this does not work when Miriam is feeling clingy and crabby and is climbing all over me screaming.  Which has been a lot lately, probably for a lot of reasons.  But I'm sure that will get better.)

5

I had a big freakout the first day we moved here when some ants got in the trash can.  And then they got on the counters.  And then we found them in both the dog's and the cat's food bowls.  I sprayed citrus vinegar and wiped down their trails, but they were persistent little buggers.  John finally sprayed the outside of the house with some nasty chemicals and they are now staying out.  I hate poisons, but I also really, really hate ants.  So hopefully they do not come back.

Speaking of the dog and the cat, they are going through some trauma.  Gilbert whined a lot the first night, wondering when we were going home.  He's recovered to some extent, but we haven't yet let him explore anything but the downstairs.  And since there's no fence outside, he has to be tied up when he's out, which he doesn't love.  The result is that he's been pretty hyper.  I want to walk him and explore the neighborhood, but it's going to have to wait for a day when it's not in the nineties.

Kitty-kitty is worse off -- she's still pretty scared to come out of the basement.  I'm proud of her that she's even come off the top shelf in the basement, which is where she stayed the first three days.  She's always been like this about change.  When we first brought her home as a kitten, I thought we'd lost her until I saw her glowing eyes shining out at me from behind the fridge.  And she stayed there a solid week.  Hopefully soon she will get used to our new place so I can get back to snuggling with her in the evenings.  I think it's one of the highlights of both of our days.  BUT, we can still shut her up downstairs at night so I can leave the bedrooms doors open without her coming in and walking on our faces.  Definite perk there.

6

We finally have internet and phone now.  That's a big relief; communication with the outside world has been slow and difficult all week.  I have data on my tablet, but only a limited amount, and that was problematic considering Miriam only likes to go to sleep to cooking shows.

And with that, I feel like we are back to normal life.  Since May we have been in the process of packing up and selling the house and moving, so I haven't been able to do any other projects.  Now I can get back to spinning or start on that rag rug I want to make.  I want to make a new sourdough starter, since I accidentally destroyed my old one over a year ago and haven't felt like I was in a place where I could be responsible for another one.  These little things are what make life feel like MY life, to me .... projects that excite me and make me feel I'm accomplishing things.

Sadly, despite my interior motivation, I'm finding it very hard to actually DO anything....

7

... because at 17 weeks, well into the second trimester when one is supposed to have energy, I feel more lethargic than ever.  I'm sure Miriam's poor sleep is a factor.  But other than that, I don't know.  I've had more out-of-breath-and-heart-racing moments, usually when going up the stairs or walking around, and I'm beginning to think maybe it's not anxiety.  I feel very relaxed lately and a bit excited.  But on some days, I just struggle to be even moderately active around the house.  I'm supposed to get bloodwork done soon, so perhaps we'll find out if I'm anemic or deficient in some vitamin.  That would be excellent news, because I could fix it.  If that isn't it, I may just have to put up with it for the next four months.  Lovely.  Seeing what I said above -- that completing projects that excite me is one of the big things that makes life worth living -- feeling my energy sapped like this makes me feel utterly despairing.

Most days my mood is good, like I said, but for two days last weekend I had a total breakdown.  It was very weird; there wasn't a lot I could point to that was upsetting me, I just couldn't keep it together.  It went away, thank goodness, but I am worried it will come back.  I felt that way for much of Miriam's pregnancy and postpartum, and it was horrible.  Not even mainly for how I felt, but for how incapable I seemed to be of reacting empathetically and patiently with my kids.  I don't have a lot of skills, but keeping it together emotionally is one I'm super good at usually.  Not having that makes me feel I am failing my kids.  It's a terrible way to feel.

I don't want to end on this note, so let me just say -- overall I feel hopeful.  I feel that living here is going to be great for us.  We have the space we've needed for so long, and so many small things that make life easier.  I think we can manage.  I'm glad we did this.  And while pregnancy is a very temporary burden, living here will last a lot longer.  I think we'll be happy here for a long time to come.

Some thoughts on third parties

I've never seen my friends so divided by an election before.  Some are voting for Clinton because Trump is just that bad.  Others are voting for Trump because Clinton is just that bad.  And probably the majority are planning to vote third party for various reasons.

I'm generally in favor of voting third party.  If no one ever does, it pretty much guarantees that the two major parties will be unresponsive to their bases, because they know the base will never abandon them -- or if they do, they'll stay home, in which case it's really hard to say exactly why they didn't turn out.  A third-party vote says, "I'm committed and involved, and this is the sort of candidate I would have voted for."

As long as your vote is guaranteed to a certain party, you have basically no say.  The party knows you won't vote for anyone else, because you're too scared of the opposition, so they don't really have to work for your vote at all.  This is, in my opinion, why the prolife movement never makes any progress.  They've made it quite obvious that they will never vote Democrat, and they also are so scared of Democrats that they rarely vote third-party either.  That means all a Republican candidate ever has to do is be just barely less pro-choice than the Democrats, and all the terrified prolifers fall in line.  It is not necessary to have a prolife voting record or to actually pass any prolife legislation while in office.  He just has to say "sanctity of life" a couple of times on the campaign trail once or twice, and that's a whole bloc that's all his.  Lobbies that are more bipartisan, whose supporters will withhold a vote as needed, get a lot more done.  (Apparently the gun lobby is famous for this.)

So I'm heartened that people are finally drawing a line somewhere and withholding their vote from the candidates they don't like.  That's the only way you get better candidates.

On the other hand, if you always vote third party and never for a major party, you're in the same boat.  Your vote can't be won, so no one will bother with you.  (And by "you" I mean mainly your issues and groups, because no one is tracking you as an individual of course.)  Every year there is some small percentage who vote Libertarian or Green and it's pretty obvious that no mainstream candidate will ever satisfy these people.  So no one actually caters to those groups.  To have an effect politically, you have to be the sort of person who has both standards and realism.  You have to both understand that politics is about compromise and perfect candidates aren't available, and be willing to draw a line somewhere and deny your vote to candidates who are truly unacceptable.

That is, of course, if you're voting third party because you hope to influence the two major parties to care more about your issues.  That's not the only reason people do it, though.  Some people do it because they believe that you are morally complicit in everything the person you vote for does, but you aren't responsible for a person you didn't vote for, even if you could have kept them out of office with a different vote.  I don't see that.  You don't "keep your hands clean" simply by voting for people who you know won't win, because your vote isn't just about picking your favorite person but also about the effects you have on the result as a whole.  If you don't vote for Joe, and Bob wins instead, you're not really any less to blame than if you voted for Bob.  (Well, perhaps 50% less, since you would have put Bob two votes ahead if you had voted for him.)  That's a consequentialist ethical view for you, but where voting is concerned I don't think it can be anything but a consequentialist question.  Voting itself is morally neutral, and it seems the morality of the vote is in the foreseen results, not in how morally upstanding the guy you voted for (or didn't vote for) was.

Another reason people vote for third party candidates is because they think that if everyone did it, those candidates could win.  I used to think that, too -- that deep down everyone wanted libertarian candidates and just didn't vote for them because they were scared to.  But after further experience, I think that isn't true.  Libertarian ideals are popular in maybe 10% of the population, and maybe another 10% would settle for a libertarian candidate because they hate the major ones so much.  But the reason the major parties do well is at least partly because they have wider appeal.  People like liberty, but not too much, and not for people they don't like.  Likewise, socialist-type candidates are popular in a certain crowd, but most people don't really want a socialist in power.  They just want some basic programs.  Pacifists, sadly, are not a big lobby with any party, and as I talk to people I realize it's because people don't actually agree with pacifism.

It's easy to get confused about this because we hang out with people like us, and we know everyone we hang out with likes some of our own pet issues.  But most of the country doesn't.  They care about lower taxes, or more government programs, or a more interventionist military, or less immigration.  These are ideas that appeal to large swaths of the country, and the two parties have divvied them up in a way that isn't really perfect for anybody but which is good enough to still get votes.

But think about it: when ten friends try to decide on a place to go for dinner, or a movie to watch, what are the odds even half of the group gets their first choice?  If two want pizza and three want burgers and four want tacos and one isn't really hungry, they are all going to have to bargain and compromise until they come up with something that no one actually hates.  And that's if they're lucky and get along well.  It's the same in politics -- there are so many issues and so many possible positions on these issues that if each person actually dreamed up their ideal candidate, it's unlikely that any two people would be thinking of exactly the same thing.

So we all compromise.  We decide that we're willing to compromise on foreign wars but not abortion, for instance, or immigration but not welfare.  And that's how we find our way into one party or another, or voting for one candidate over another.  The second part of this process is a bit more sketchy -- often we rationalize the compromise we've made, or pick up ideas from other people in our party, and convince ourselves that we actually do believe in foreign wars or immigration.  It feels better to think we're not really compromising, and that way we feel less out of place among our political allies.

Despite the suboptimal nature of this process, though, it does work.  Everyone gets some of what they want.  While democracy doesn't give everyone all of what they want, it does ensure that the decisions that are made are actually wanted by somebody.  Sometimes it seems way too messy and frustrating, and we all wonder if there isn't a better way.  Certainly there are things that could be better about our system.  Even with a perfectly set-up system, there is never any such thing as 300 million people all getting what they want.  (Except in capitalism, whoooo!  But not everything can be decided that way.)

So, if your analysis leads you to vote third party, you should do so.  There are cases when it may do some good.  I think it's important to take the long view instead of listening to fearmongering that This Is the Most Important Election in History (every election in my lifetime has been described that way) and therefore we must all crowd behind a candidate everybody hates just because nothing could ever be worse than getting the other one.  Sure, there are some candidates so bad it might be best to beat them in the short term and worry about strategy later.  (I think Donald Trump is one of those candidates.  It kind of shocks me that some Sanders fans are willing to let him win rather than compromise -- he clearly is opposed to almost all that they stand for.)  But you can't do that year after year if you expect your voice to be heard.  You've got to do what you can to push the major parties more into line with what you want -- which will include things like voting in primaries, voting in local elections, donating to campaigns, and knocking on doors.  It may also include not voting for "your" party's candidates, if they don't meet some basic minimum standard.  I think it additionally includes voting for that candidate if they do meet a basic standard.  They won't be perfect and you might not like them all that much, but if they'll really forward some of your main issues, you should reward them with your vote.

Well, that's what I think, anyway.