Who's misreading Adam Smith?

So in an attempt to open my mind to different viewpoints (applause, please), I've been following Think Progress for a while, only to find out what I already knew: bloggers tend to be really biased. It's okay to have certain principles, of course. Some people refer to having an opinion as "bias;" I don't. What I mean by bias is simply the ability to take information and use it solely for your own purposes, rather than seeking to modify those purposes. Take, for instance, this post about "John Bolton's Misreading Of Adam Smith." In it, Ali Gharib criticizes John Bolton for taking a single quote from Wealth of Nations and using it to drum up support for the conservative cause. Bolton is quoted as saying this:

Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations that “the first duty of the sovereign, that of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies, can be performed only by means of a military force.” Today, failing to protect our national security inevitably endangers our economic prosperity by making us vulnerable to global adversaries.

It is clear that President Obama does not agree with Smith’s wisdom. Obama’s policies are jeopardizing not only our national security and economy, but our constitutional sovereignty too.

That is why I have been considering running for President.

Gharib, in turn, uses Smith in the following way:

Other than providing for defense and a robust justice system, Smith wrote that the duties of the sovereign also include setting up “public institutions and public works” for:

facilitating the commerce of the society, and those for promoting the instruction of the people. The institutions for instruction are of two kinds: those for the education of youth, and those for the instruction of people of all ages.

Smith clearly indicates that other duties of the sovereign include educating the populace — possibly up through the university level — and paying for infrastructure projects that keep commerce strong, “such as good roads, bridges, navigable canals, harbours, etc.”

In short, Smith believed not only that governments should shoulder responsibility for the first duty of defense, but for other public projects as well. And how should governments pay for all of this, according to Smith? Well, with a progressive tax:

It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expence, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

So, which side is misreading Adam Smith?

American Opinion on Abortion

William McGurn has written an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about the recent Gallup polls showing that American opinion on abortion has shifted toward the pro-life side. The main thesis of the article is that the main stream media isn't fairly representing American opinion on abortion:

Overall, Gallup's findings about Americans and abortion reflect less a political prescription than a sensibility. Apart from talk radio or the religious media, however, it's a sensibility almost entirely lacking in our news and entertainment world. So the next time you watch the pro-life community dismissed as a fringe element, ask yourself: Who's really out of touch with the American people here?

Couldn't have said it any better myself.

One key point that McGurn touches on toward the end of his article:

If there is one extraordinary fact here, it is this: Notwithstanding a pro-choice orthodoxy that dominates our film, our television, our press and our colleges and universities, strong moral qualms about abortion have not gone away. It's not as though we can't change our minds. The same Gallup survey which reported that Americans regard abortion as morally wrong showed that an even larger majority regard homosexual relations as morally acceptable.

I would say the mainstream media is stuck in this traditional narrative which pits evangelicals and conservative Catholics against mainstream America on the abortion issue. But this doesn't jive with the fact that Americans have actually increased in pro-life sentiment, while at the same time mostly rejected the traditional Christian teaching on homosexuality.

The fundamental reason this traditional narrative is wrong is this: It characterizes the pro-life position as a matter of personal conviction, which can only be held either due to indoctrination or through some conversion experience. Such convictions are not allowed into mainstream politics. We can't allow the religious zealots to make our laws.

Fortunately, this mischaracterization of the pro-life position has not ultimately swayed the American people. The pro-life position is a rational one, which can be arrived at through logic and/or common experience, and as such it is making advances in public discourse. I suspect it is the experiential factor that draws people in more than anything else. Anyone who has seen what abortion actually looks like has to deal with the issue seriously. Also, the pain caused by abortion is not to be taken lightly. Nevertheless, I do think logic is a vital part of maintaining any movement; if you don't have convincing arguments, people eventually turn away.

(This, I have to say, is probably why American views on homosexuality are growing more liberal. Conservative Christians have simply failed to state a logical case against homosexuality that appeals to common experience. Not so with the pro-life movement.)

The fog hasn't quite lifted on the subject of abortion. There are still many who make the same old arguments in favor of abortion, that it's simply a matter of personal choice, that no one has the right to tell a woman what to do with her own body. It is amazing these arguments pass in an era when an ultrasound can detect a child's heartbeat six weeks into pregnancy. This is a testament to the hard work of abortion activists in the past several decades. There's still much work to be done if we are to dislodge their rhetoric from the subconsciousness of the American mind.

Obviously the pro-life movement has been doing something right, given the recent polls. Where, then, do we go from here? I would say, keep stressing the parts of our argument that are most public in nature: the logic, the common experience, and, perhaps most importantly, the compassion that pro-lifers show when they go out of their way to help women in need through pregnancy centers. Appealing to religious faith might help energize activists, but it will also keep alive the mainstream media's unfair narrative of pro-life extremism.

Also, even the religious will not continue to hold a certain point of view simply because of religion; without sound logic and common sense reasons for the pro-life position, the movement can't last very long. The fact that it has lasted this long, and is in fact growing, is a great encouragement to those of us who have invested so heavily in it.

That's what I call "bias"

A friend posted this article on facebook:

Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ

This article is a classic example of headlines being completely misleading. First, the difference in average IQ was hardly astronomical, as the article admits:

The IQ differences, while statistically significant, are not stunning -- on the order of 6 to 11 points -- and the data should not be used to stereotype or make assumptions about people, experts say.

What would we do without experts? We'd never be able to tell that not all religious people are idiots!

Second, the definitions of "liberal" and "conservative" used in the study had almost nothing to do with the actual meanings of those words in common American political discourse.

The study takes the American view of liberal vs. conservative. It defines "liberal" in terms of concern for genetically nonrelated people and support for private resources that help those people. It does not look at other factors that play into American political beliefs, such as abortion, gun control and gay rights.

In other words, the study doesn't take into account what it actually means to be, you know, conservative. Or liberal, for that matter.

Also, I don't see any evidence from the article that atheism, more than religion, could be at all connected with caring about strangers, which is supposedly a "liberal" trait. There doesn't seem to be any comparison between intelligent religious people and intelligent atheists.

Isn't it possible that among people with higher IQs, the religious people are actually more "liberal" than the atheists? I mean, of course, that they would care more about providing resources to perfect strangers. I don't think this is an unreasonable hypothesis; church-goers give on average a higher percentage of their income to charity (though still not enough).

Similarly, no comparison was made between intelligent atheist men and intelligent religious men on the subject of sexual exclusivity. Even though intelligence might curb sexual promiscuity among men, who says atheism does? Everyday experience would suggest quite the opposite.

The conflation of these three concepts, atheism, "liberalism," and male sexual exclusivity, together with the attribute of intelligence, is simply an editorial decision made by CNN in choosing a headline. It appears to have little or no grounding in reality.

So does anyone still wonder why people complain about media bias in reporting? You can talk all you want about how objectively the facts were laid out in your article, but that's not all there is to journalism. Presentation matters.

Headlines especially are crucial in shaping people's opinions. Even when people actually read the article (which is by no means 100% of the time!) the headline always leaves a certain impression, and perhaps even skews one's interpretation of the facts laid out in the article.

I can hardly believe that journalists for a network like CNN are so oblivious as to not realize this. Thus I can only conclude that they are intentionally naming their headlines in a manipulative way, and that is what makes me cynical about news media.

Besides this, I get really tired of interpretations of religion like the one presented in this article:

Religion, the current theory goes, did not help people survive or reproduce necessarily, but goes along the lines of helping people to be paranoid, Kanazawa said. Assuming that, for example, a noise in the distance is a signal of a threat helped early humans to prepare in case of danger.

"It helps life to be paranoid, and because humans are paranoid, they become more religious, and they see the hands of God everywhere," Kanazawa said.

Yeah, you know, it's really the paranoia that keeps me going to church every Sunday. It's as if researchers like this have never actually met anyone who's religious.

In fact, for 2000 years Christianity has in many ways been dispelling this kind of primitive paranoia Kanazawa is describing. By proclaiming that the One True God is not only sovereign but also loving and rational, Christianity practically paved the way for the modern era, one in which people don't have an inherent fear of nature but rather faith that nature can be mastered.

One might refer to this article for more insight on that topic.

Anyway, as a conservative religious man who also happens to be a PhD student in mathematics, I can assure you, you shouldn't believe every headline you read.

Media Discrepancies

Compare these two headlines:

1. Poll: 67 Percent of Americans Oppose Funding Abortion in Health Care Bill
2. Americans evenly split on abortion health coverage

Pretty amazing, huh? It makes perfect sense when you consider the ideological bent of each publication. The first headline is from LifeNews.com, a news source dedicated to pro-life issues. The second is from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

The discrepancy may not be all media bias, though. It's interesting to compare the different questions that were asked in these polls.

The Seattle PI cites an Angus Reid Public Opinion national survey:

The poll found that 44 percent of Americans support banning abortion coverage through insurance plans subsidized by the government: 42 percent disagree, and 14 percent told Reid they are not sure.

Got that? The question was, would you support banning abortion coverage.

Now let's look at the Quinnipiac University poll cited by LifeNews.com:

The new survey asked: "Do you support or oppose allowing abortions to be paid for by public funds under a health care reform bill?"

Whereas the previous question asked whether you support banning abortion coverage, this one asked whether you support allowing abortions to be paid for.

It's hard to say what the outcomes of these two polls really mean. Why would Americans be evenly split on banning abortion coverage, but overwhelming opposed to allowing abortions to be paid for?

One hypothesis might be that the Quinnipiac question was more explicit in stating that the government would actually be paying for abortions. Perhaps a respondent who doesn't quite understand what's going on would think that banning coverage for abortions would somehow put a restriction on abortion, rather than simply prevent public funds from paying for abortions.

Or perhaps it never occurred to some people that public insurance coverage for abortions means the government pays for abortions, i.e. our taxes pay for abortions.

Or maybe people just find it hard to support a ban on paying for abortions, because supporting a ban makes it sound like you're against the status quo. "Just leave it alone" might just sum up the majority opinion on this issue.

The most frustrating possibility, of course, is that it's all a matter of media bias. I take small comfort in knowing that the best a left-leaning newspaper like the Seattle PI can do is find a poll suggesting Americans are "divided" on this issue.

That saddest thing of all is to see how "liberals" continue to hamper discussion on this issue, quoting opinions like "There is no point in reopening a debate about abortion in the U.S. right now." It seems the Left wants more than anything to protect the status quo on abortion and silence opposition. That's not very liberal, in the truest sense of the word.

They don't even try anymore...

So in one of those random web surfing experiences, I happened to find myself looking at Time Magazine's "Top 10 of Everything of 2008," and I noticed that on bio-ethical issues, their reviewers don't even make an attempt to acknowledge a different side of the debate.

Let's take the top medical breakthrough of 2008 (emphases added):

"President-elect Obama has pledged to lift the seven-year ban on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research — a boon for the field. But for some scientists, it almost doesn't matter. Researchers at Harvard and Columbia reported a milestone experiment in July, using a new method — one that doesn't require embryos at all — to generate the first motor neurons from stem cells in two elderly women with Lou Gehrig's disease, or ALS."

Of course, it's such a boon for the field that we can now kill embryos for the sake of science, even though it's unnecessary--oh wait, my bad, almost unnecessary--to do so. I mean, heck, it's just neurons. I'm sure embryonic stem cells will gives us ultra-cool-super-awesome cells that will allow us to recover instantly from diseases or read people's minds. Thanks, President Obama!

And in another stunning display of totally unbiased reviewing, Time Magazine highlights the movie 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days as the fourth best movie of 2008:

"In Romania under the Ceausescu regime, abortion was banned, and within 20 years some half a million women had died from having botched illegal abortions. This severe thriller from writer-director Christian Mungiu focuses on Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), a pregnant college student, and her friend Otilia (Anamaria Marinca), who finds a man who'll do the job: a quietly thuggish fellow who calls himself Mr. Bebe (Vlad Ivanov). Remorseless long takes build the suspense as the young women secure a hotel room and, when Bebe explains how they'll have to pay, question whether it's worth the price. Strap yourself in for this minimalist, splendidly acted horror film — and count your blessings that you live in a country where choosing an abortion doesn't mean losing a life."

Don't get me wrong: the plot does sound rather intriguing. It is undeniable that certain regimes that have outlawed abortions have also been horrible regimes.

But, seriously? Is there just not even another side in this debate? Once again, the mainstream media thinks abortion is all about choosing, without any thought given to the other side, who truly believes abortion means that someone is losing a life.

People sometimes ask why there are complaints about mainstream media bias. I guess the answer is that even when it comes to simple reviews of current events and pop culture, the mainstream media wears its opinions on its sleeves.