It’s been a busy few weeks for religious zealots with a hate-on for Atheists, I have to say.

First up, Rabbi Lapin, a member of Glenn Beck’s little Black Robe Regiment group of creepy theocrat wannabes, had this to say on the September 3rd episode:

“I tell them directly, I do believe, that Atheists are parasites.”

(my transcription, so if I got a word wrong, try not to burn me at the stake or what not)

You see, we’re ‘benefitting’ from the ‘energy’ put out by religious folks without putting anything into the system. Honestly, it sounds like some nerdy explanation of The Force as much as anything else.

However, as the Young Turks and David Neiwart have documented, Lapin’s hardly new to Atheist bashing, and perhaps worse. About the religious vs. the non-religious in the US, Lapin said:

“I am absolutely convinced that God is far from finished with the story of the United States of America,” he said by way of summation. “First of all, [there's] the matter of the little battle that must be fought, just as it was in the 19th century.” There were, and are, “two incompatible moral visions for this country. We had to settle it then. We’re going to have to settle it now. I hope not with blood, not with guns, but we’re going to have to settle it nonetheless. The good news is that I think our side is finally ready to settle it. Roll up its sleeves, take off its jacket, and get a little bloody. Spill a little blood. We’ll settle it. And we’ll win. And then there’s no holding us back.”

(Just for a little left-wing solidarity I feel I should point out that Lapin hates teh Gay with equal fervor)

Over in Europe meanwhile, the Pope is making his grand UK appearance, full of pomp and speechifying, with enormous, nay, lavish amounts of security at taxpayer expense, naturally. Don’t worry though, he’s not there to humbly beg forgiveness for the innumerable sex scandals plaguing his institution, he’s there to bring the smack down on the Atheists:

Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny”.

Of course the idea that Nazi Germany was Atheistic is utter nonsense, and the idea that Hitler was an Atheist rather dubious at best. He certainly claimed, over and over, to be a Christian, and had effusive praise for the power of religion, specifically claiming to be a Catholic, and that Christianity informed and guided his particular brand of insanity.

Considering the Catholic Church’s troubled relationship with fascism, ie, its often open support of Fascist dictatorships as a bulwark against Communism, I’m somewhat amused by the sheer unmitigated gall the current leader of that religion has to lay Hitler at *our* feet.

Ah well.

Needless to say this speech hasn’t gone over well with the UK’s large Atheist/Irreligious community, or, say, Richard Dawkins:

This statement by the pope, on his arrival in Edinburgh, is a despicable outrage. Even if Hitler had been an atheist, his political philosophy was not based upon atheism and had no connection with atheism. Hitler was arguably (and by his own account) a Roman Catholic. In any case he enjoyed the open support of many of the most senior catholic clergy in Germany and the less demonstrative support of Pope Pius XII. Even if Hitler had been an atheist (he certainly was not), the rank and file Germans who carried out the attempted extermination of the Jews were Christians, almost to a man: either Catholic or Lutheran, primed to their anti-Semitism by centuries of Catholic propaganda about ‘Christ-killers’ and by Martin Luther’s own seething hatred of the Jews. To mention Ratzinger’s membership of the Hitler Youth might be thought to be fighting dirty, but my feeling is that the gloves are off after this disgraceful paragraph by the pope.

I shy away from the Hitler Youth thing, if only because he’s currently, as we speak, the head of an international conspiracy to hide child molestors from the law.

Not that he’ll admit the scope of the rot within the organization supposedly under his control, of course.

There is perhaps a bright side though; attendance at the Pope’s events is far, far below expectations, and the Humanists in Scotland are ready for his visit with some hilarious billboards touting the country’s rapidly growing secularism.

Heh heh. Made me laugh, anyway.

Still, I see stories like this and I can’t help but wonder at the whole spectacle. Religious figures really can get away with saying whatever ignorant, hateful thing they want about atheists, can’t they? There’s really no consequence for doing so. It’s completely within the scope of acceptable political discourse.

(Inevitably necessary disclaimer: Yes, they have the free speech right to say these things, at least here in America, though Lapin’s edging pretty close to inciting violence. The point is that, come next week, Lapin will still give appearances and go on tv without being noted as a vile eliminationist, and the Pope will still be ranting about Atheists causing all the woes in the world, and that’s apparently perfectly acceptable. Imagine the outcry if you substituted ‘Islam’ for atheism, or ‘Jews’ for atheist, in this type of speech. Don’t you think the reaction would differ?)

Once again, zealots have decided that a form of speech that offends them needs to be punished, and even here in America free speech is anything but free, let alone adequately protected, as the woman who created Draw Mohammad Day has unfortunately learned the hard way:

You may have noticed that Molly Norris’ comic is not in the paper this week. That’s because there is no more Molly.

The gifted artist is alive and well, thankfully. But on the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, “going ghost”: moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity. She will no longer be publishing cartoons in our paper or in City Arts magazine, where she has been a regular contributor. She is, in effect, being put into a witness-protection program—except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab. It’s all because of the appalling fatwa issued against her this summer, following her infamous “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” cartoon.

In other words, because this woman dared to draw a cartoon that some mouth-breathing idiots didn’t like, she’s being forced to give up her entire life, her very identity, in the hope that they will be unable to find her and carry out their terroristic death threats.

This cartoon, as a matter of fact:

Naturally, it was completely legal to draw and publish this cartoon, much like it was perfectly legal for an Australian man to burn pages from a Bible and Koran in front of his webcam, much like it would have been perfectly legal for Terry Jones to burn his own Korans. Yet somehow, when people choose to criticize religion in public, Islam in particular, that legal right gets overlooked in the rush to harass them, suppress their speech, take their jobs, and if that fails, there’s always issuing death threats!

In spite of this obvious lunacy, you also always get concern trolls coming out of the woodwork, who always make it clear that, yes, you have a *right* to do these things, technically, legally.. they suppose… but if you dare to exercise it, why, you’d better expect some nasty, even violent consequences, you silly libertines.

Concern trolls like Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing:

I’m of the opinion that pissing on a symbol for what someone else holds as sacred generally proves you to be a douche, or a provocateur who’s in it for attention.

Should it be legal, as free speech? Hell yes.

Does free speech mean you won’t encounter some potentially violent consequences, from some wacked-out fringe members of the community you mock?

Sorry. It doesn’t. Your relative privilege as a white American doesn’t make you immune to that.

Silly me, I thought that the First Amendment and laws against violence were there to protect us from that.

The concern trolls also like to trot out the argument that we need to forfeit our rights at home because someone might retaliate against the soldiers we have stationed overseas in the perpetual War on Terror (which is bound to be over soon), but I’ll let the ACLU answer that one:

When asked about the national security aspect of burning the Quran–meaning the inflammatory act could put troops in harm’s way–Hensler told CBS News: “we’re not insensitive to endangering troops abroad… but you can’t censor speech based on hypothetical outcome. The Reverend clearly has the free speech right to burn a Quran, as disgusting and vile an act as it is. It’s everybody else’s right to exercise their free speech against him. You can’t pick and choose who has constitutional rights.”

Nice in theory, but then again, what’s a little thing like the rule of law when a religious person’s feelings get hurt? I guess we’d better just give up on all these rights we can’t actually exercise. It’s a lot safer that way.

A common refrain in the lefty blogosphere is that you have to support the candidate with a D after their name, even if they repeatedly betray your causes and ideals, because the Republicans are worse. They’ll repeal all the ‘great’ legislation the Democrats have passed over the past two years, and continue all the terrible policies the Democrats have unfortunately continued – policies which are also, conveniently, the Republicans’ fault.

However, game theory teaches us something quite different – that cooperation without the threat of retaliation for betrayal is a sucker’s game.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

To see why, let’s back up a bit. First, what’s Game Theory? From Wikipedia:

Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that is used in the social sciences, most notably in economics, as well as in biology (particularly evolutionary biology and ecology), engineering, political science, international relations, computer science, and philosophy. Game theory attempts to mathematically capture behavior in strategic situations, or games, in which an individual’s success in making choices depends on the choices of others.

In essence, it’s roleplaying as science. To try and understand what the best strategies are when dealing with other actors, you set up a mock version, either on a computer or for kicks in real life, and play out the various strategems, measuring which is more successful and what the pitfalls are. The results can often be surprising.

One of the most famous experiments in game theory is the ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’. Again, from Wikipedia:

The prisoner’s dilemma is a fundamental problem in game theory that demonstrates why two people might not cooperate even if it is in both their best interests to do so. It was originally framed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher working at RAND in 1950. Albert W. Tucker formalized the game with prison sentence payoffs and gave it the “prisoner’s dilemma” name (Poundstone, 1992).

A classic example of the prisoner’s dilemma (PD) is presented as follows:
Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated the prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies for the prosecution against the other (defects) and the other remains silent (cooperates), the defector goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act?

Obviously, the prisoners would be better off if they cooperated – 1 year’s combined jail time is a lot better than 10, which is the result if either betrays the other, or both do. However, it’s not *rational* to cooperate – no matter which choice your opponent makes, betraying them increases your benefit. If they cooperate, you stab them in the back and walk free. If they stab you, you protect yourself by backstabbing them.

A pretty bleak assessment of human nature, eh? The problem here is accountability, or rather, the lack thereof. Remember the setup: the police make sure neither prisoner can confer with the other until after the decision has been made, and you only get to make it once.

If accountability is added, however, things turn can turn out very differently.

The Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma, aka Politics

If you set up a game where the players have to run through that same scenario multiple times, with memory of what happened before, things turn out differently, and different strategies succeed. If you defect every time, your opponent is free to, and indeed only rational to follow your example. Likewise, however, if you cooperate every time, your opponent can see an easy mark and take advantage.

Wikipedia again:

Retaliating
However, Axelrod contended, the successful strategy must not be a blind optimist. It must sometimes retaliate. An example of a non-retaliating strategy is Always Cooperate. This is a very bad choice, as “nasty” strategies will ruthlessly exploit such players.

Herein lies the fundamental flaw in always voting Dem just because Republicans are worse, and we have decades of math to back it up. If you always cooperate, your opponent will face enormous temptation, arguably selection pressure, to defect and betray you. It’s only a matter of time, and what’s more, they face absolutely no penalty for doing so – you’ll just cooperate again the next round.

If, on the other hand, you are willing to retaliate, a more successful strategy can be devised.

Tit for Tat
As it turns out, cooperating all the time and defecting all the time are both proven losers, given repeat performances. So what works?

It turns out, a combination of the two. I’ll let Carl Sagan explain this one (from his essay ‘The Rules of the Game’, collected in Billions and Billions):

The most effective strategy in many such tournaments is called “Tit-for-Tat.” It’s very simple: You start out cooperating, and in each subsequent round simply do what your opponent did last time. You punish defections, but once your partner cooperates, you’re willing to let bygones be bygones. At first, it seems to garner only mediocre success. But as time goes on the other strategies defeat themselves, from too much kindness or cruelty, and this middle way pulls ahead. Except for always being nice on the first move, Tit-for-Tat is identical to the Brazen Rule. It promptly (in the very next game) rewards cooperation and punishes defection, and has the great virtue that it makes your strategy absolutely clear to your opponent. (Strategic ambiguity can be lethal.)

The problem for Progressives is that we’re being told to, and have in the past often utilized an Always Cooperate strategy.. and our partners in elected office learned that long ago, and are exploiting it.

On gay rights, on immigration, on financial reform, on restoring the rule of law, on putting torturers on trial, on unions and the free choice act, on escalating unwinnable wars, on fighting the legalization of marijuana, on just about any and almost every single Progressive issue you can name the current Democratic party has defected. Why?

Because it’s a winning strategy to defect if you know your opponent will always cooperate; in fact, it’s the absolute best strategy to employ.

The Way Ahead

The only way we can expect to stop the exploitation is to show our would-be-defectors in the Democratic Party that we’ve woken up, once and for all, and are willing to retaliate when defected from. Yes, if we do so, we’ll lose in this round of our iterated game. We might, in fact, lose very badly indeed.

The alternative, however, is clear, from both game theory and common sense: the exploitation will *never* stop. Never. Let’s be very clear; the current dilemma Progressives face with their estranged counterparts does not stem from a lack of understanding; the party understands us all too well. It isn’t the result of Dems failing to learn from past mistakes; on the contrary, they’ve learned exceptionally well from ours.

It’s time to teach a new lesson.