What the hell?

What happened was I was filling out a review of these pants on REI’s website. I had gone to order another pair, figured I’d fill in the review, and then it asked me if I had a blog and if so what the address was. I filled that in, it asked for a password, I said to myself “what the hell” and put it in… and pow, suddenly I’m reviewing pants on my blog.

The wonders of the internet.

Anyway, I might just leave that on- it’s kind of funny. So if you see occasional outdoor gear reviews, that’s where they’re coming from. And you’ll notice that REI conveniently provides a link to the item on their web site if you should happen to want to order it… they ought to give me money if anyone does!

Back in 1992, Pat Buchanan gave a speech at the Republican National Convention. He had been running for President, challenging then-President George HW Bush for the nomination. Of course, he had about zero chance of winning; his goal was to try and push Bush and the party further to the right.

His speech is referred to as the infamous “Culture War” speech. If you’ve got 9 minutes or so, you can watch it:

I wouldn’t suggest it, though. The notion of the culture wars has been what’s defined a lot of American politics for a long while now, and it’s too bad.

Pat Buchanan was at least partially correct, though- there was a culture war. At the time of his speech, we were in the midst of it… actually, by then, it was almost over. It’s still going on, but it’s truly over for the most part; there’s ever-fewer people who are still trying to fight for Buchanan’s side.

For proof, I offer you this:

That’s from a news story in Shawnee, Kansas. A group from Fred Phelps’s church had decided to protest. Phelps is incredibly anti-gay; his church group are the lovely people who go and yell “God Hates Fags!” at the funerals of fallen members of the military. He believes that because America tolerates homosexuality, God is letting our soldiers be killed to punish us.

But you know what happened instead? 14 members of Phelps’ hate squad showed up to protest on a street corner… and on the other three corners, several HUNDRED students showed up to counter-protest. They held up signs with radical notions like “God loves everyone” and “Gay is okay with me” and “Jesus wouldn’t hate, why should you?”

The reality is that the culture war, on gay rights at least, is over. Oh, it doesn’t look like it; gays can only marry in a couple of states, many of the rest have explicitly anti-gay-marriage laws on the books or consitutional amendments, and there’s going to be a lot of fighting in the future on this issue.

But the reality is easily seen on those three street corners full of young people. This is in Prarie Village, Kansas, a southern suburb of Kansas City. I suppose there are parts of America where the people are more conservative, but not by much. And yet, from the news story, this high school is already VERY socially liberal when it comes to homosexuality:

Their message didn’t sit well with many students at the high school where, according to student Jake Davidson, there is a Gay and Straight Alliance at the school and students elected a homecoming king in 2007 who was openly gay.

“Everyone is equal whether you’re gay or straight,” said Davidson, a 16-year-old junior from Leawood and an organizer of the student protest.

“It’s really cool that everyone wants to be involved and take a stand against this. It doesn’t surprise me that everyone wants to help out.”

A gay homecoming king. A Gay and Straight Alliance. The kid wasn’t surprised that everyone wanted to help out.

There was indeed a culture war in America, but on this issue at least, the Pat Buchanans of the world have already lost. The demographics are inexorable; in polls, the younger you go, the more likely it is that the person being polled will either support gay marriage or at least not oppose it.

Some of the other issues are still not solved. We’re still arguing, often bitterly, about abortion. Gun control has made little headway over the years. But the reality is that America is becoming more tolerant in its thinking, and that’s good news for the Democratic Party.

It’s pretty routine that when someone is arrested, the cops take their fingerprints. Now they’re “in the system”. With today’s automated AFIS systems, super-modernized by computers, that means that forever more, they’ll be identifiable via fingerprint.

It doesn’t matter whether or not they were found guilty or not; they’re in the system. Millions of people are in the system for OTHER reasons, for that matter. For example, I’m in there at least twice; once for when I was fingerprinted prior to getting hired as an air traffic controller (we get a security clearance as part of our job) and once for when I applied for and received a concealed weapon permit (to carry a concealed pistol) in Washington state.

We pretty much accept this as just “how things are”. It doesn’t seem like a huge imposition on our personal liberties, and it’s certainly led to a lot of crimes being solved that wouldn’t have in the past. Now, say you commit a crime and leave a fingerprint, and you don’t get caught. Years or even decades later, you get fingerprinted for some reason- and now you’re busted for the previous crime.

Or, more simply, the cops get a print at a crime scene, put it into the database, and out pops a match on someone who was already in the system for some reason.

Seems pretty common sense and not like a bit constitutional issue, right?

Well, how about if they do the same thing… only with DNA?

There’s a proposal here in Washington to start taking DNA samples of everyone who’s arrested for a crime, even something like shoplifting.

Is this okay? Is it kosher? Right now, the proposed bill would have the DNA samples and profiles/records destroyed if the person was later found not guilty of whatever crime they were arrested for, or if the charges were dropped or something.

But why do that? If it’s okay for the government to have a positive form of identifying you (your fingerprints) even if you were never arrested for something, why isn’t it okay for them to keep a DNA profile? In fact, why not collect DNA profiles as aggressively as we do fingerprints?

Somehow, DNA seems more personally intrusive. After all, in theory, with a complete DNA profile, you have the blueprints for the entire person; if you knew how to read them (and we’re getting closer and closer to this) you could snag someone’s DNA and then crank out almost everything about them- hair color, eye color, skin tone, you name it.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with this. I think that if/when the technology is there, we should absolutely be collecting DNA samples on everyone that we presently collect fingerprints on. Of course, I also think we need better laws to protect us against possible abuses of this data- for example, health insurers should not be allowed to use DNA to reject people who want to buy a policy.

(Right now, in some instances, they could do this- and they can use your DNA to tell if you’ve got, say, an elevated risk of some types of cancer or something.)

The problem isn’t with the DNA and how personally identifying it is. (After all, fingerprints are equally identifying.) The problem is the possible abuses of all that information. THAT is what we should be talking about- what level of personal privacy we should have or how secure our personal data is.

Most people are quite naiive about how much personal data is out there on them. Right now, the vast majority of American adults are in multiple databases. They know what magazines you read, what groceries you buy, what you’re using your credit cards for. They know your credit score, your income, you name it.

And they buy/sell/trade this kind of information around like crazy, building complete profiles on you that you wouldn’t believe.

To me, that’s outrageous. Europe is WAY ahead of us in protecting our personal and commercial data, and we need to catch up quickly.

DNA profiles held by the cops, used to solve crimes? No problem. DNA profiles held by ANYONE without serious, strict, sensible safeguards and rules about how they can be used? BIG problem.