Tag Archives: freedom

A Thought on Disparate Impact

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Disparate impact is the theory that a policy, or standard, or… is inherently racist if it has an outcome that impacts one group of Americans more than it does other groups of Americans, regardless of any racist intent. If the standard simply affects one group more than another, it must be racist (sexist). Let’s take as an example for this article student discipline in our grade schools. Disparate impact says that discipline standards that result in more black students being disciplined than white students must be racist, even if the discipline is meted out to members of both groups for the same misbehavior, with either no exceptions or identical exceptions allowed.

Let’s unroll that a ways.

Why are more black students disciplined than white? Because they misbehave more often.

Well, why do they misbehave more often? One major reason is lack of discipline at home—lack of home bringin’ up in the parlance of my youth. Either these kids don’t know how to behave at school, or they’re used to getting away with misbehavior.

Why is there that lack? A major reason for this is the higher incidence of broken homes—single parents (usually, single mothers)—in black homes than in white homes. Another reason, closely related, is the greater poverty in black homes than in white, which drives and is driven by that single parent status: the (mother) is occupied with trying to bring in enough money to support her family and lacks both time and energy at the end of her day to deal with her children.

Why is there that difference in poverty? Certainly, racism plays a part at this origin of the students’ behavior problems: the black mother is less likely to be able to get a job at all than is the white mother otherwise similarly situated solely because the one is black and the other is white.

But there’s another major source for this origin. Government welfare policies, with their attendant welfare cliffs, both encourage dependency on government (even to the point of eliminating welfare work requirements that had been in place since the early Clinton years) and make it extremely expensive to move up an income ladder that’s based on earned income. This traps welfare recipients in their poverty, which traps those single-parent families in their poverty, which traps those single parents in their time and fatigue cycle, which severely harms those parents’ capacity for teaching their children behavior standards—giving them that home bringin’ up—which leaves those children more likely to misbehave in school, which exposes those children to disciplinary action by the school.

But the Left doesn’t want to address the disparate impact of that origin—their welfare programs. Or acknowledge that what’s being illuminated by disparate impact is not racism or sexism, but an underlying failure of existing policy. Not at all.

And so, not only do we have the disparate impact of government policy, the remaining true racism that interferes with a black mother’s ability to get a job is obscured and made more difficult to address directly.

Hong Kong and Freedom

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The backdrop is this: in the last few days in the Hong Kong district of Mong Kok, there have been violent clashes between peaceful student and other protestors on the one hand and “locals” consisting, allegedly, of older residents and small business owners mixed with members of the triads on the other hand, this mix attacking the protesters. The latter are losing income from their prostitution and drug…enterprises…and they’re upset about it.

My own view is that the residents and business owners are being provoked and the triads winked at by the PRC in the hope of getting sufficient pretext to justify the government’s coming violent crackdown. That’s a separate question, though; what interests me here are the charges being leveled by the current Hong Kong administration against those who were arrested during those weekend clashes.

Hong Kong’s Secretary for Security, Lai Tung-kwok, said that among other charges, those arrested had been charged with unlawful assembly.

How is it possible to unlawfully assemble in a free society?

PRC, Hong Kong, and Rights

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The situation in Hong Kong, which the People’s Republic of China has created with its high-handed treatment of the Special Administrative Region, is getting tighter.

[Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying] Leung told voters it is better to agree to Beijing’s plans for nominating candidates and to hold an election, than to stick with the current system of having an Election Commission choose the chief executive.

“It is definitely better to have universal suffrage than not,” Leung said. “It is definitely better to have the chief executive elected by 5 million eligible voters than by 1,200 people. And it is definitely better to cast your vote at the polling station than to stay home and watch on television the 1,200 members of the Election Committee cast their votes.”

This is cynically misleading. The 1,200 to whom Leung referred are the nominating committee of the Communist Party of China. They’ve been the ones—and they continue to be the ones, now formally under the control of the Party’s Standing Committee—who will determine who the candidates will be that those “5 million eligible voters” can select from. Those 5 million are only being allowed to rubber stamp the selection made by those 1,200. This is no elective choice. Of course, Leung and his PRC masters know this.

And

[PRC President] Xi Jinping, who has taken a hard line against any perceived threat to the Communist Party’s hold on power, vowed in a National Day speech to “steadfastly safeguard” Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability.

This is just wind in the trees. Xi knows full well that Beijing cannot “steadfastly safeguard” Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability. Only the people of Hong Kong, acting for and by themselves, without outside interference, can do that.

And

China’s government…so far it has not overtly intervened, leaving Hong Kong authorities to handle the crisis.

This is a misunderstanding. The Hong Kong authorities are in the streets, not in the government buildings. The people are sovereign over their government in a free state. Of course, this is hard to realize from inside a despotic state.

The protesters, upset that Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying has refused to meet them, have threatened to expand their demonstrations unless he resigns and the Chinese leadership agrees to broader electoral reforms.

It’s clear from the breadth of these protests, that the PRC has lost the consent of the Hong Kong-ese to govern them. PRC governance, thus, is illegitimate. This is corroborated by the protest news clampdown the PRC has done, especially in contrast to the freely flowing protest news within Hong Kong.

And finally, there’s this failure, this one from the West.

British Prime Minister David Cameron saying he planned to summon the Chinese ambassador to discuss the dispute, saying it is essential that Hong Kong’s people have a genuine right to choose their top leader.

This is an even greater misunderstanding, both by its existence and coming as it does from the leader of the birthplace of John Locke. No, Prime Minister, each one of Hong Kong’s people is created with an inalienable right to his own liberty and happiness. That means he has an inalienable right to choose his own government and the men who operate it. What is essential is that Hong Kong’s people have that right genuinely acknowledged and accepted.

Arrogance and Encryption

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I wrote a bit ago about liberty and encryption. Here’s an example of the arrogance of the government’s attitude toward an American citizen encrypting his communications against government snooping.

Regarding Google and Apple plans to market encryption capabilities for their smart phones, FBI Director James Comey had this to say:

What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law[.]

This comes in the context of Brent Kendall’s paraphrase of Comey’s concern in Kendall’s WSJ article, also summarized in the link just above

FBI Director James Comey on Thursday said he is concerned about moves by Apple Inc and Google Inc to market phones that can’t be searched by law enforcement….

There are two things wrong with this, both of which a talented lawman at the peak of his career knows full well. First is the fact that encryption does not at all place anyone “beyond the law:” get a warrant. Also, the government, as has been well publicized, has an IT capacity fully capable of breaking encryption should the cell phone’s owner decide jail is preferable to honoring the warrant. Finally, the cell phone service providers aren’t the ones engaged in the communications of government interest; the cell phone owners are. The only legitimate targets of warrants for communications are the communicators, not the service providers.

The second thing wrong is the appalling arrogance inherent in Comey’s quoted statement. Leaving aside the foolishness of his claim of unsearchability, he’s cynically conflating “the law” with “law enforcement,” the police. Of course, this is…inaccurate. “The law” is what we citizens, through our elected representatives, say it is; the police are not the law but folks we hire to enforce it.

Here is the modern Liberal government in action.

A Geopolitical Misunderstanding

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…if The Wall Street Journal‘s interpretation is accurate, and a lack of political courage [emphasis added].

A solution to the Ukraine crisis is still far off, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned on Saturday, as his Russian counterpart accused the West of seeking to create chaos in the Kremlin’s geographic sphere.

And

Steinmeier said that a few weeks ago “we were on the brink of direct confrontation” between Russian and Ukrainian armed forces but that diplomacy had “prevented the worst.” However, he said, “I am under no illusion. A political solution is still a long way off.”

Last things first. Diplomacy has “prevented the worst?” Only if the worst is taken as the conquering and occupation of Ukraine as a whole, which is not an implausible view. However, diplomacy has failed to prevent the near-worst: Russian occupation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine, together with a drive along Ukraine’s Sea of Azov coast with a view toward opening a land route to occupied Crimea, solidifying militarily the occupation.

Diplomacy alone—talking alone—can achieve very little beyond abject acceptance of these military facts. Diplomacy, to have any material effect, must be backed by, must be animated by, force—economic, military, and/or their combination. To date, there has been no force backing the West’s…diplomacy. The West has been too timid even to apply economic force against the Russians, only pin pricks that give western leaders a means of comforting themselves through the night.

Now to this:

[Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov] reiterated the conditions Moscow requires for the crisis to be resolved, including acceptance of Ukraine as a “neutral and non-bloc country,” meaning one that would remain outside of the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

This brings us back to the first thing. Neither Ukraine, nor any other of the nations bordering on Russia, belong in any way to Russia or to “the Kremlin’s geographic sphere.” These are sovereign nations, and they’re free to chart their own course—including aligning themselves with the West, joining the prosperity of Western free market economics, even taking in the essential sovereignty of a people over their government. No matter how uncomfortable this might make Russia.

And no, Mr Lavrov, not all cultures are equal, and neither are all polities morally equivalent.