Sweden's Socialist Republic of Children

In his Introduction to Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card made an observation that’s stuck with me:

Ender’s Game asserts the personhood of children, and those who are used to thinking of children in another way—especially those whose whole career is based on that—are going to find Ender’s Game a very unpleasant place to live. Children are a perpetual, self-renewing underclass, helpless to escape from the decisions of adults until they become adults themselves. And Ender’s Game, seen in that context, might even be a sort of revolutionary tract.

It’s one of the interesting aspects of that book that it’s written exactly from the perspective of a child, and treats their feelings and judgements as seriously as anyone else’s. This is one of the reasons the book is so popular among kids; though unfortunately it seems to generate the same sort of ubermench mentality people frequently pick up from Ayn Rand or Nietzche.

At any rate, I was interested by a recent Marginal Revolution post on the adoption of children by gay couples in Sweden. In some sense, if you were to take the revolutionary implications of Ender’s Game seriously, you would treat the private nature of the family as the source of generational exploitation and seek to handle child-rearing in a more public manner. Sweden, arguably does this; while gay marriage has long been acceptable there, adoption of children by gays is much less so. The argument is that the Swedes treat childrearing as a very public thing, while they care less about marriage. One commenter there adds:

This is absolutely true. The Swedish attitude toward the raising of children is absolutely centered on the welfare of the child; the rights of the parents play a very small role. Corporal punishment has been illegal for more than 40 years now, and for Swedes it is a reviled practice (people basically see corporal punishment as domestic abuse). The law also close to universal support (there's eight parties in the Swedish parliament, ranging from far left to the christian right to the blatantly xenophobic, and not a single one wants to repeal it). The viewpoint expressed in that quote is basically accurate: consenting adults can do whatever they want and it's nobody's business, but the public has a very large interest in the welfare of children.

Another person adds:

There also is a specific “ombudsman” for children, whose main duty is to promote the rights and interests of children.

It’s interesting to imagine this treatment as resulting from a certain Marxist response to the perceived systematic oppression of a given underclass of children. It would be interesting to imagine a future in which many more people see things this way, and perceive our current behavior just as flawed as we perceive the moral flaws of, say, the American South circa 1840. Alternately, this is another reason why though Swedish children frequently live in households with unmarried parents, they end up receiving excellent childcare. That sort of public support and social norms are difficult to translate to unmarried parenthood in other parts of the world.

FIANCEE

After BRICs and PIGS--the world has been looking for an acronym to detail the various US States going through a very tough financial patch. Here are a few:

FIANCEE (Flordia, Illinois, Arizona, New Jersey, nEw York, nEvada)
CHAINSAW (California, Hawaii, Arizona, Illinois, New York/Nevada/New Jersey, South Carolina, Alabama, Wisconsin)
MINNOW (Michigan, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Wisconsin)

Avatar

I haven't seen Avatar, and don't plan on it; but by all accounts it's a fairly simplistic tale of corporations gone bad and heroism for the sake of the natives.

But it's a little ironic to have the movie take that message. After all, the movie is a shining beacon of the wonders of capitalism: the financing, work, and organization required to put the thing together could only be accomplished by an corporation. One that's entirely happy bashing other corporations.

Or as Steven Colbert put it; "I firmly support capitalism, except when it's in my financial interest otherwise."

Deliver me from Sin, but not Today

Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen's biggest limousine company, on the climate change conference, from the London Telegraph (Dec. 5):

Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfill the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five," says Ms Jorgensen. [WSJ]

Going Rogue

Following up on Stanley Fish's experiment; I went to the Strand Bookstore here in Manhattan to find a copy of Going Rogue. Yet not only did they not turn me away; they told me it was sold out! With six other people in line to buy it.

That's right. We read Sarah Palin here in the Blue States. And they read Obama in Red States. In some states, people even read Red State Blue State Rich State Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way they Do (recommended, btw).

Asheville, NC

In local news, a former North Carolina firefighter, who shot a cyclist in the head here, has just been sentenced to four months in jail and a $1200 fine.

Apparently the guy was upset that the cyclist was biking along Tunnel Road with a child; an offense so troubling to this guy that he fired a warning shot at the guy's head.

So in case you ever want to let out some road rage with minimal legal repercussions, you know where to go. But I wouldn't recommend biking.

To be A Fly on the Wall in That Conversation

Must have been some debate:

North Carolina, Oct 14(ANI): Jailed Ponzi king Bernard Madoff was involved in a prison scuffle with a fellow inmate in North Carolina federal prison following a debate over stock market, and reportedly came out victorious.

According to reports, Madoff and the other inmate had a heated debate over the stock market, which turned sour when the former pushed Madoff.

Madoff retaliated and as his attacker tried to stand up straight, Madoff hovered over him, red-faced and glaring.

The 71-year-old emerged the winner in the brawl as the other inmate chose to leave the scene.

“I didn’t think Bernie had it in him. He got the best of him; he was really aggressive, and the other guy was in shock that he fought back,” The New York Post quoted an inmate, as saying.

Alleged

I've discussed the absurdity of using the word "alleged" in journalist accounts of events that clearly happened. This was clear when newspapers discussed the "alleged" Fort Hood Shooter. Whatever one thinks of the insane partisan spewing that has emerged from that shooting; I think all sides can agree that the suspect is, in fact, the killer.

Well, Slate fills us in on the details:

Why can't newspapers drop all these modifiers and just go with killer?

They can, but they usually don't out of deference to the judicial system. In a criminal case, of course, the defendant is presumed innocent, and prejudgment in the media could bias the jury pool. Any publication that chose to identify Hasan as the killer would be immune to libel claims, since the statement would clearly have been made in good faith. But reporters traditionally hedge until the legal system delivers its final verdict. Some news stories attribute conclusions to public officials so they don't seem like statements of fact. ("Prosecutors claim" can be a handy phrase.) The Associated Press Stylebook goes so far as to recommend "John Jones, accused of the slaying" over "accused slayer John Jones," because the latter more strongly suggests prejudgment.

Interestingly,

The more the phrase sounds like legalese, the more dangerous it becomes for the news outlet. So you'll often see people described as pirates even before trial, but an arsonist would almost always be "suspected" or "alleged" until his trial was over.

So there you go.