Things we probably don't want to think about around Christmas

Back in the 60s, a man named Milgram conducted an experiment to see how people responded to pressure from authority. The results were... not exactly nice. The experiment has been recently repeated, with pretty much the same results. BoingBoing covered the story, and included some related links. Not a shining endorsement of humanity. I can't say I'm surprised, though. And people really should think about it. The worst atrocities aren't committed by monsters who do it deliberately, they're often committed by ordinary people who are just under pressure from the people above them to get results. This should be taken into account when, for instance, looking at the current prosecutions for torture in intelligence-gathering in the War On Terror. The higher-ups say "Don't prosecute us, we didn't do it. Prosecute those evil soldiers who actually did the dirty work.". These results pretty graphically demonstrate that the "But we didn't do it!" plaint from the people at the top shouldn't fly. The people at the bottom of the chain of command very likely wouldn't have done those things if the people at the top hadn't been applying the pressure to get results in the first place, and sending the message down that anything that got results was OK.

I thought you meant it

A little open letter, to the social/religious conservatives who make up the Republican party, gotten from barackobama2008:

I Thought You Meant It

I have friends of different races because when you taught me not to judge people based on how they look, I thought you meant it.

I respect other people's religious beliefs because when you taught me that a person's religion is between them and God, I thought you meant it.

I believe in universal health care and social assistance because when you taught me to be kind to those less fortunate than myself, and when you taught me that people are more important than money, I thought you meant it.

I support equal marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples because when you taught me that every person has the same human worth (and also to keep my nose out of other people's business), I thought you meant it.

I am environmentally conscious because when you taught me to take no more than I need, and to clean up after myself if I make a mess, I thought you meant it.

I support reproductive rights because when you taught me I shouldn't judge someone when I don't know what their circumstances are, I thought you meant it.

I am dismayed that you would call someone "elitist" merely because they are educated -- because when I became one of the first people in our family to earn a college degree, and you told me how proud I'd made you, I thought you meant it.

I am not ashamed if these things make me a liberal, because you taught me not to let other people belittle me about what I stand for, and I choose to believe you meant it.

Doctors and discrimination

CA Supreme Court rules that doctors can't discriminate based on sexual orientation.

The key point in this decision is that the doctors had no moral or ethical objections to performing the procedure in question. In fact they performed it routinely. They simply objected to those particular patients having it. Some advocates are painting this as an infringement of a doctor's right to their own moral code. Bullshit. Under this decision, if a doctor finds artificial insemination or abortion or any procedure morally objectionable, they can refuse to perform the procedure. And they can reject certain patients based on legitimate medical grounds, eg. that that procedure would be medically harmful for that patient. What they can't do is flip-flop on moral grounds, deciding that a procedure's moral for one patient and not for another. Which to me seems reasonable. If a doctor found the procedure itself objectionable, why would they perform it for anybody? And if they don't find it objectionable, where's the problem?

Complicating matters for the doctor in this case is the fact that the doctor signed an agreement with the HMO to provide this procedure to all covered patients. The patients the doctor refused were covered by that HMO. So the doctors not only have a civil-rights problem, they've got a breach-of-contract problem.