John Tierney

At first I was wary of John Tierney, the replacement for New York Times op-ed columnist William Safire. I couldn't make it through an article because I would be so distracted by his creepy bio picture which makes it seem like he is holding his head is floating. But lately Mr. Tierney, who shares the namesake of my co-blogger, has been on a tear.

He has come out consistently with unique opinions on controversial issues. Although he seems to be a liberal when he says things like, "My position on abortion has been, as politicians put it, evolving. I was once pro-choice and a contributor to Naral. Now I'm pro-choice but anti-Naral." He does not let any ideology get in the way of saying something worth reading about the topic. In a column about Naral's fallacious ad that attacked Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, Tierney used this to discuss Naral's defunct approach to protecting Roe:

...Naral and other groups have worked so long to make abortion a civil rights issue, presenting it as women's fight for freedom against an oppressive patriarchy. The tactic makes for displays of solidarity like the March for Women's Lives, an occasion for denouncing male anti-abortion politicians and waving signs with that perennial slogan "If men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."

It's true that pregnancy is a uniquely female burden and that most pro-life politicians are men - but then, so are most pro-choice politicians. There's no gender gap in opinion on the issue. Polls have long shown that men are no more hostile than women are to abortion rights. In a New York Times/CBS News Poll earlier this year, men were slightly less inclined than women to say that abortion should be outlawed.

Treating the issue as a civil rights crusade may be good for mobilizing some women, but this strategy alienates the public because it ducks the central issue. If you believe that life begins at conception, then protecting women's rights means protecting the rights of females in the womb, too.

The abortion debate, unlike the civil rights debate, can't be resolved by appealing to any widely held moral or legal principles. In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court discovered a right in the Constitution for pregnant women to be left alone by the government. But that just ducked the question - what about the fetus's right to be left alone? - and angered huge numbers of Americans.

There's probably no group more eager to be left alone by the government than members of the Libertarian Party, but even they don't buy this new right. They have bitter debates on abortion, with some calling the fetus part of the woman's body, and others insisting it's like a stowaway on a ship who must be kept alive. (A few hard-core believers in property rights say that even a stowaway can be tossed overboard, but they're not in danger of being elected to anything.)

I wish the pro-choice movement would appeal to centrists of both sexes instead of playing to its activist base. The best way to keep abortion legal is to rely not on the Supreme Court but on the public, because three-quarters of Americans do not want to outlaw abortion.

Many of these people have moral objections and resent the Supreme Court's presumption in its Roe v. Wade decision, but they're also pragmatic enough to realize that a ban couldn't be enforced and would create a new set of problems. If Roe v. Wade were overturned and abortion policy left up to the states, these pragmatists would start to matter more than the ideologues on the left and right who now dominate the debate.

Legislators in some red states might keep their promises to outlaw abortion, but I think most would look at the polls and discover their position had suddenly evolved. The debate over abortion would ebb as the issue was settled democratically.

Instead of feeling obligated to fight over every vacancy on the Supreme Court, women would have a more secure right to abortion. They wouldn't have to worry about every brief and memo the nominee ever wrote - and they wouldn't suffer through an invidious commercial that only hurt their own cause.

Tierney has come out with similar, great pieces. When discussing the supposed "meth" epidemic, Tierney mocks those addicted to fighting drugs, "Like addicts desperate for a high, they've declared meth the new crack, which was once called the new heroin (that title now belongs to OxyContin). With the help of the press, they're once again frightening the public with tales of a drug so seductive it instantly turns masses of upstanding citizens into addicts who ruin their health, their lives and their families." He then goes on to make very good points for why we shouldn't care about meth:

Amphetamines can certainly do harm and are a fad in some places. But there's little evidence of a new national epidemic from patterns of drug arrests or drug use. The percentage of high school seniors using amphetamines has remained fairly constant in the past decade, and actually declined slightly the past two years.

Nor is meth diabolically addictive. If an addict is someone who has used a drug in the previous month (a commonly used, if overly broad, definition), then only 5 percent of Americans who have sampled meth would be called addicts, according to the federal government's National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

That figure is slightly higher than the addiction rate for people who have sampled heroin (3 percent), but it's lower than for crack (8 percent), painkillers (10 percent), marijuana (15 percent) or cigarettes (37 percent). Among people who have sampled alcohol, 60 percent had a drink the previous month, and 27 percent went on a binge (defined as five drinks on one occasion) during the month.

...

It's the same pattern observed during Prohibition, when illicit stills would blow up, and there was a rise in deaths from alcohol poisoning. Far from instilling virtue in Americans, Prohibition caused them to switch from beer and wine to hard liquor. Overall consumption of alcohol might even have increased.

Today we tolerate alcohol, even though it causes far more harm than illegal drugs, because we realize a ban would be futile, create more problems than it cured and deprive too many people of something they value.

Amphetamines have benefits, too, which is why Air Force pilots are given them. "Most people took amphetamines responsibly when they were freely available," said Jacob Sullum, the author of "Saying Yes," a book debunking drug scares. "Like most drugs, their benefits outweigh the costs for most people. I'd rather be driving next to a truck driver on speed than a truck driver who's falling sleep."

Shutting down every meth lab in America wouldn't eliminate meth because most of it is imported, but the police and prosecutors have escalated their efforts anyway and inflicted more collateral damage.

Glancing at Newsweek's cover story last week makes it out as an evil on par with terrorism and AIDS:

It creates a potent, long-lasting high—until the user crashes and, too often, literally burns. How meth quietly marched across the country and up the socioeconomic ladder—and the wreckage it leaves in its wake. As law enforcement fights a losing battle on the ground, officials ask: are the Feds doing all they can to contain this epidemic?

Tuesday, Tierney called for an end to federally run airport screening. Tierney has been a welcome addition to the New York Times op-ed page and certainly an upgrade from William Safire, a man who will always be bitter about losing the 1960 election to JFK. Although Tierney's style requires research and good ideas, it is infinitely more productive than Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman's biweekly reaffirmation of why Bush is a bad President. Tierney actually contributes something to the level of public discourse in this country and that ought to be congratulated.

-Mr. Alec