A Thorne-y subject: Mister Thorne is back with this month's "Religion in the News," which has some new information on an old favorite of mine, neuroscientist Michael Persinger.

I first became familiar with Persinger's work on hemispheric laterality while studying the psychology and psychiatry of UFO abductees back in the early '90s. His earthquake hypothesis seems a bit of a stretch, to put it mildly, but he's done some truly interesting work -- more brain engineering than neurology, to be honest -- in stimulating hallucinatory "abduction" experiences in the lab. His scholarly articles are thought-provoking, wide-ranging, and generally accessible to the layman.

In related news, First Things has posted its March issue on the Web, including a penetrating if brief commentary of Roger Scruton's latest. (For obvious reasons, FT has been largely preoccupied with the scandals within the Church, but it's remained disappointingly quiet on many other issues of interest, including the current war in Iraq.)

 
Yes, Virginia, there is a First Amendment: Today's opinion in Virginia v. Black shows the Court struggling with a difficult question: burning a cross to intimidate someone is bad, everyone agrees, but just how bad is it? More generally, does the state have a presumptive right to constrain speech that has intimidating characteristics, or does the state have to narrowly tailor its legislation to protect the ideological components of an act that is in many situations inherently intimidating?

Today's opinion is the rare kind that sends Court-watchers into paroxysms of joy: a plurality opinion by Justice O'Connor (a classic example of her split-the-difference approach to jurisprudence, especially interesting given that she's widely touted as the swing vote in the Michigan case), a rejoinder by Scalia ruthlessly slicing apart her legal reasoning, a number of concurrences that dissent and dissents that concur, and an extra-special bonus appearance by Clarence Thomas, who took the unusual step of actually asking a question during the orals for the case. Best of all, it centers on some of the Big Issues that grip America: racism, free speech and terrorism. If you can't find something you like in this case, you're either a Klansman or not trying hard enough.

There are two cases reviewed in Black (Virginia seems inextricably linked with ironic names in the Supreme Court): in the first, Barry Black led a Klan rally on private property adjacent to a highway and several houses. Rebecca Sechrist, related to the owner of the property (who was not evidently connected with the Klan), sat on the lawn of her in-laws' house and watched the rally as it got underway. The rally itself was typical for the extremist right: slackjawed yokels inveighing against blacks, Latinos, immigrants, taxes, and then-President Clinton. At the conclusion of the rally, the Klan members gathered around a cross and lit it on fire, which Ms. Sechrist testified terrified her. The local sheriff then arrested Black for violating a Virginian cross-burning statute. At his trial, the judge instructed the jury (following the statute in question) that the act of burning a cross was prima facie evidence that Black intended to intimidate. The instruction was objected to, the objection was overruled, and the issue was preserved for appeal.

The second case is a little more cut-and-dried: Elliot and O'Mara burned a cross on the lawn of their next-door neighbor, who was (not at all incidentally) black. The two men were evidently upset that the neighbor, James Jubilee, had inquired as to their use of their backyard as a target range. Both men were tried and convicted under the same statute as Black. At trial, the jury was instructed that the state had to prove that "the defendant had the intent of intimidating any person or group of persons."

The Supreme Court of Virginia consolidated the cases on appeal and held that the cross-burning statute was unconstitutional under a previous hate-crime ruling, R.A.V. v. St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377 (1992), which struck down a Minnesota law that prohibited the use of symbols which "arous[e] anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender."

The Justices are confronted with a sticky issue: nobody likes cross-burning and, as both O'Connor's opinion and Thomas' dissent show, it's been a long damned time since anyone equated cross-burning with Sir Walter Scott's literature. But, at the same time, nobody wants to get into the obviously illegal business of regulating ideological speech. So the Justices end up playing the medieval schoolman, trying to separate the act of cross-burning into its threatening (unprotected) and ideological (protected) components. They don't end up with any sort of consensus, but they do manage to break their opinions down along three rough lines: whether cross-burning is mostly bad, sometimes bad, or just plain bad.

MOSTLY BAD: O'Connor expressed the opinion of the plurality and the general belief of the majority by saying that, "[W]hile a burning cross does not inevitably convey a message of intimidation, often the cross burner intends that the recipients of the message fear for their lives." Even though "Individuals burn crosses as opposed to other means of communication because cross burning carries a message in an effective and dramatic manner," O'Connor holds that "Virginia’s statute does not run afoul of the First Amendment insofar as it bans cross burning with intent to intimidate. ... It does not matter whether an individual burns a cross with intent to intimidate because of the victim’s race, gender, or religion, or because of the victim’s 'political affiliation, union membership, or homosexuality.'" The Virginia court erred in trying to apply R.A.V. to this situation, because the statute bans intimidation, not offensive behavior.

A particular caveat from Scalia's opinion in R.A.V. is worth noting:

What we have here, it must be emphasized, is not a prohibition of fighting words that are directed at certain persons or groups (which would be facially valid if it met the requirements of the Equal Protection Clause); but rather, a prohibition of fighting words that contain (as the Minnesota Supreme Court repeatedly emphasized) messages of "bias motivated" hatred and in particular, as applied to this case, messages "based on virulent notions of racial supremacy." One must wholeheartedly agree with the Minnesota Supreme Court that "[i]t is the responsibility, even the obligation, of diverse communities to confront such notions in whatever form they appear," but the manner of that confrontation cannot consist of selective limitations upon speech. [Internal citations omitted]

However, O'Connor takes the middle path, striking down the statute because of its provision stating that the action of burning a cross is prima facie evidence of intimidation. Although prima facie evidence only controls in the absence of countervailing claims, O'Connor argues that the inclusion of the clause in the state statute renders it unconstitutional:

The prima facie evidence provision permits a jury to convict in every cross-burning case in which defendants exercise their constitutional right not to put on a defense. And even where a defendant like Black presents a defense, the prima facie evidence provision makes it more likely that the jury will find an intent to intimidate regardless of the particular facts of the case. The provision permits the Commonwealth to arrest, prosecute, and convict a person based solely on the fact of cross burning itself.

Scalia takes O'Connor to task for this, arguing for a stricter construction of the law than the plurality opinion uses, a construction that would prevent the prima facie clause from rendering the statute unconstitutional. (As usual, Scalia's legal reasoning is rapier-sharp, but he sketches a questionable forest from the most detailed of trees.)

SOMETIMES BAD: Souter's dissent-within-a-concurrence, joined by Kennedy and Ginsburg, states that "the specific prohibition of cross burning with intent to intimidate selects a symbol with particular content from the field of all proscribable expression meant to intimidate." In other words, by banning the threat, Souter argues, the government is also banning the ideology the threat communicates.

To Souter, the proper model is the opposite of that used in the plurality opinion: "The question here is not the permissible scope of an arguably overbroad statute, but the claim of a clearly content-based statute to an exception from the general prohibition of content-based proscriptions, an exception that is not warranted if the statute’s terms show that suppression of ideas may be afoot."

JUST PLAIN BAD: Thomas' dissent goes the furthest, arguing that there is no Constitutional question to be considered, because there is no speech inherent to the act of burning a cross. Sardonically dismissing the worries of a Court that "laments the fate of an innocent cross-burner who burns a cross, but does so without an intent to intimidate," Thomas presents a historical parade of horribles that builds an interesting argument showing that even segregation-era Virginia "must have viewed [cross-burning] as particularly vicious." Accordingly,

[J]ust as one cannot burn down someone’s house to make a political point and then seek refuge in the First Amendment, those who hate cannot terrorize and intimidate to make their point. In light of my conclusion that the statute here addresses only conduct, there is no need to analyze it under any of our First Amendment tests.

Even assuming, arguendo, that First Amendment rights are implicated, Thomas continues, the same problems exist with the plurality's invalidation of the statute as pointed out by Scalia.

Black is a case that will satisfy few and, though providing a more detailed legal sketch than that in R.A.V., it's likely that the Court will at some point consider more hate-crime statutes of the sort ruled on today. Though politically conservative, today's ruling stresses the fact that the Court is generally not willing to prosecute legal logic to the arid heights demanded of the strictest jurisprudential theories. To O'Connor and others on the bench, sometimes the bread of the law needs be leavened with the yeast of pragmaticism.

 
A flag they made their own: The WaPo today discusses immigrants fighting under the American flag, some of whom who have died in the current conflict. Of them, there is nothing greater than to say than America adopted them, and they adopted America.

 
The last republic? The story's familiar: a small, oil-rich nation, with an anti-American government in a military feud with its neighbors. But it's not Iraq or Iran, or even in the Middle East -- it's Venezuela, reeling from political turmoil and economic chaos. Even as the world's attention is focused on the fighting in Baghdad and the imminent fall of Saddam Hussein, this Latin American nation could become a regional security risk.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez began his career as a military coup-plotter. In the early 1980s, he and fellow military officers formed a secret society, the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement (named after Latin American revolutionary Simon Bolivar). In February of 1992, following the implementation of an economic program ordered by the IMF, Chavez led an aborted coup against then-President Carlos Andres Perez and spent two years in jail as a result, though not until after 10,000 soldiers followed his call and scores of lives were lost.

By the lates 1990s, Chavez had transformed himself from a failed conspirator to a mainstream politician, and Venezuela was on the ropes. Both profligate and incompetent -- Venezuela spent more on social programs than any of its neighbors, but its basic living indices, such as infant mortality, were many times that of other nations in the region -- the nation had reached a point where its oil wealth could no longer cover the serious problems at its core.

In 1998, Chavez rose to power on the shoulders of the poor, to whom he promised socialist reforms and an equitable sharing of that nation's oil wealth. He also played on ethnic tensions -- Chavez is, like 80% of the populace, a descendent of Africans and/or South American Indians, while the business and political elite have traditionally been individuals either of European descent or who have been socialized into neoliberalism.

Although many distrusted his revolutionary rhetoric, Chavez garnered widespread support amongst the poor and picked up enough votes from the middle class -- weary of forty years of corruption amongst politicans and the oil oligarchy -- to win by a respectable margin (Chavez garnered the largest minority of the votes, and parties serving as political allies made up the remainder). Massive inflation, widespread poverty and the lowest economic growth rate in South America combined to make for a volatile electoral situation, where the traditional (and American-backed) political parties garnered less than 10% of the votes cast.


THE BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION
Chavez quickly set about putting his revolutionary plans into action both abroad and at home. He visited with Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro, and allegedly began providing Colombian rebel forces with munitions. Domestically, the military was purged and became a primary actor for the Chavez regime. The Senate was abolished and the Presidential term of office was extended.

During his tenure, Chavez has become something of a cause celebre amongst the anti-globalization groups on both the left and the right; his political philosophy, a mixture of authoritarianism and populism, manages to strike chords on both ends of the spectrum.

An example of the radicalism of the Chavez faction can be found on the front page of the Chavez-linked Asamblea Popular Revolucion, which "demand[s] that the Pope, religious leaders, Nobel Peace Prize recipients ... [and] human rights advocates ... be transported [se trasladen] to Iraq and serve as human shields" as sign of their commitment to stop "murderous neocolonialism" [el nuevo colonialismo asesino].

At the same time as he uses leftist rhetoric and policies, Chavez extols oligarchic rule by "strongmen [caudillos]" and excoriates the "imported bourgeois model of democracy" that "eliminates our leaders." It's tempting to conclude that Chavez seems to occupy the same niche as the Italian Lega Norda or Slobodan Milosevic -- the paleoconservatives love him for his nationalist and authoritarian roots, and the radical left loves him for standing up to America, neoliberalism and most post-1936 economic theory.

Chavez has three primary enforcers: the military, which took over many domestic duties in the face of Senatorial dissen; the police, who have been used to intimidate dissidents and even kill anti-regime protestors during demonstrations; and the "Bolivarian Circles," neighborhood political organizations that, critics say, have been turned into armed militias equipped by Chavez at government expense.

Because the Venezuelan media is largely anti-Chavez, the regime has begun a crackdown on free expression, using laws that Human Rights Watch characterizes as "prohibiting broadcasts that subvert public order, discredit authorities and institutions, or propagate false or tendentious news ... barring even legitimate criticism of public authorities and institutions [and] conflict[ing] with international norms on freedom of expression." Radical leftists in the United States have defended these laws, saying that Chavez is acting on behalf of the Venezuelan public to "free" the media from its "corporatist" ties.

One year ago, a military and business coup managed to temporarily throw Chavez out of office. Around 600,000 citizens marched in Caracas, demanding the ouster of the regime. But two days later, a counter-revolutionary effort organized by the Bolivarian Circles forced the interim President, Pedro Carmona (head of the business alliance Fedecamera) to step down, and reinstated Chavez.

The coup was foiled, but Chavez's troubles continued: managers and unionized workers at state-run oil company Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. (PdVSA) began a concerted strike to try and force him to step down and call new elections. The strike also failed, but crippled the oil industry, caused over $6 billion dollars (U.S.) in direct damages, and resulted in Chavez firing almost 18,000 workers from PdVSA (roughly 47% of the company's total workforce).

Today, efforts continue to call a national referendum to remove Chavez from power, but he has repeatedly ignored them, despite his own 1996 statement that he intended for Venezuela to have a system of "direct democracy ... where the people retain the right to remove, nominate, sanction and recall their elected delegates and representatives."

Recent opinion polls in Venezuela show that Chavez would lose a recall petition, with 60% of the population expressing support for a recall of the President. A majority of the nation also feels that Chavez has been a "setback" for democratic rule in Venezuela, which has had a stable, if corrupt, democracy for nearly five decades.

There are signs that Chavez, or forces acting on his behalf, are rooting out revolutionary forces. Earlier this year, the bodies of four Chavez opponents, three of whom were from the military, were discovered outside Caracas. A young girl who witnessed the attacks on the four was also shot and left for dead. The U.S. State Department has alleged that 137 extrajudicial murders by the government took place in 2002.


A WORSENING PICTURE
As bad as the situation was in 1998, today Venezuela is in even worse shape, with the always-fragile middle class rapidly vanishing into immiseration. A succession of natural disasters, from torrential rains that forced the relocation of thousands to a severe drought that has caused electricity rationing across the nation, has worsened the situation. (Chavez exacerbated the death toll from mudslides by refusing proffered American aid.)

The overall economic picture is grim: the economy is in a recession, inflation has reached runaway levels, durable goods sales are down by 75% in some sectors, national debt has increased almost fivefold, unemployment is at 18%, and poverty is rampant. Interest rates for private creditors run upwards of 40%, with Central Bank actions having little effect. (The Bank recently rejected an attempt by Chavez to directly set fixed interest rates for private banks.)

Foreign debt payments are a major issue, with the government unable to pay the $5 billion (U.S.) due in 2003. External debt currently stands at $22.4 billion, with another $9 billion in internal debt. The government has been using emergency measures such as debt swaps to try and minimize the short-term fiscal impact, and this week approved a plan to issue further bonds to keep current on their payments. (Chavez caused no small amount of havoc last month when he insisted the government needed to "restructure" its debt, when he actually meant "refinance.")

Although Chavez fell far short of his promises to the poor, he did markedly increase public spending on housing, accounting for a majority of the economic growth during the recent years. Massive apartment blocks -- hastily and shoddily constructed -- are rented to the lower classes at a net loss to the government, but still can't fill the desperate need for shelter. Other social programs have seen cutbacks or even elimination due to the dire economic environment.

Finance officials have begun to talk about expanding taxes on non-petroleum products to reduce the government's fiscal dependence upon oil. Needless to say, this will further depress economic performance and probably create further unrest amongst the middle classes.

Oil revenues are staggering back to pre-strike levels, but PdVSA is rife with allegations of mismanagement: military officers have taken over management slots, Chavez is supplying Cuba with credit rates so favorable as to effectively give them free oil supplies, and, according to some PdVSA employees, curious transactions are made that appear to be money laundering for drug cartels and international terror networks. It may well be that the effective destruction of PdVSA may be the lasting legacy of Chavez, long after institutions have repaired the damage done to Venezuelan democracy.

Other social pressures are beginning to appear: crime rates have soared since Chavez took office (Venezuela is now the 2nd most crime-ridden nation in Latin America), and less than 15% of murders in the nation are prosecuted. Although the faltering economy and political turmoil is certainly partially responsible, it's worth noting that the military has disarmed local police in an attempt to defang anti-Chavez mayors and local political leaders, thus making law enforcement virtually impossible.

Internationally, Colombia has repeatedly accused the Chavez regime of providing narco-rebels with munitions and safe havens across the Colombian border. In recent months, the Venezuelan military has begun cooperating with Colombia on security matters, bombing rebel positions and arresting FARC and NLA members in Venezuela. However, another round of political dislocation could create further problems for neighboring nations as rebels take advantage of Venezuelan inattention.

THE UPSHOT
Venezuela seems poised for a revolutionary implosion. The military seems to be fractured along pro-Chavez and revolutionary lines, while the government itself has been segregated into Chavez and his cronies (who fill the National Assembly) on one side, and the politicians and bureaucrats who oppose him on the other. The same tensions are mirrored on the streets: the Bolivarian Circles intimidate and threaten opponents of the regime, while the middle and upper classes purchase firearms and secure their homes in preparation for the next round of violence.

With the economy continuing to collapse and political tensions rising, it's only a matter of time before another coup attempt shakes the nation. But next time, both sides will be ready, and the toll will be higher.