Spin Dry

Here's a news story that's a good litmus test on whether your politics are determined by logic or emotion. The full story is here.

Here's the short version: judge in New Jersey rules that nightclub must end discriminatory business practices.

Short version sounds pretty good, right? A nightclub was discriminating against a certain class of customers, a judge puts an end to it, civil rights march on. If you're liberal, you're applauding. If you're conservative, you're moaning about another case of government blocking free enterprise.

Now, let's look at the long version.

The state's top civil rights official has ruled that taverns cannot offer discounts to women on "ladies nights," agreeing with a man who claimed such gender-based promotions discriminated against men.

Now, if you're a knee-jerk liberal, this information makes no difference. In fact, if you're a knee-jerk conservative, this information makes no difference. In the former case, you'll still be saying, "All discrimination bad." In the latter, "All regulation bad."

However, there's a big difference between this case and, say, a club that tries to enforce a "whites only" policy, or won't allow a lesbian couple to eat dinner together, or overcharges Asian customers, etc. The difference is intent. The three examples just cited are attempts to keep certain groups out of a business based on common traits -- and they'd be just as wrong if a nightclub in Harlem banned white customers or a spa in Beverly Hills banned men.

But... the club in New Jersey has a quite different intent, and it's one that any bar or club owner in the US can understand. They aren't trying to keep men out. Rather, they are trying to bring more women in. It's a sound economic decision based on simple logic: more men than women go out to bars and clubs because more men than women want to pick up a stranger and get laid. Ergo, these places tend to have a surplus of men and a surfeit of women. Without incentives to get the ladies in, they could easily turn into regular sausage fests, which will have the end result of driving the men away to greener pastures, in search of the places where the women gather. Yes, there is a certain element of it that's anachronistic; the practice still implies a male-dominant economic relationship -- i.e., the guys spend the money in order to get the women. But that's the price men pay for having a completely different emotional relationship to sex than women do. To quote the old canard, men use love to get sex; women use sex to get love.

And to quote the Beatles, "money can't buy me love." But it can buy sex, which is the ultimate raison d'etre for these places anyway.

So... if you're a knee-jerk liberal, you'll still think "All discrimination bad" and applaud this opinion. And you'd be wrong. If you're a knee-jerk conservative, you'll still think "Government should butt out of everything," and you'd be half right for the wrong reasons.

But if you're a true liberal who has a brain and can think, you'll think, "Discrimination is bad, but some things that group people by category are not discrimination. And sometimes, a free marketplace should be allowed to do what it needs to when it's good for business."

The interesting end result of this little discussion is this: the knee-jerkers of either persuasion do not change their opinion given the facts. The logical thinker can change their opinion; but note that there's no situation in this argument in which a conservative does change their opinion, knee-jerk or not. And that's the real difference between the two points of view -- something that should be obvious just from the dictionary definitions of "liberal" and "conservative." The former, by their very nature, take in new information and form new opinions based on changing circumstances. The latter take in new information and pound it with the hammer of rigidity until it either fits their world-view or they toss it onto the junk heap.

So, next time someone accuses John Kerry of flip-flopping, ask them which is better. A president who will not change his ideas about Iraq despite it turning into a debacle and a bloodbath; or a president who would be willing and able to examine new information and, when necessary, change tactics?