indiepundit

Around the League

2009-04-18T21:36:00.000-07:00

At the League we have been accused from time to time of having far too many posts many of which are far too long - and conversely, others have accused us of having far too few posts, though few have complained that they were much too short. In any case, here’s a little round-up of what you may have missed….

Chris discussed pentecostalization and secularization in light of (post)modernity and globalization; and on Good Friday meditated on the meaning of the cross and freedom:

If the Cross, the most cruel of all the disgusting barbarities humans enact upon beings of light, bodies of dignity, children of the Blessed One, if that utter horror can not finally destroy life, destroy spirit, destroy the human enclosed in the divine, then nothing can and we not need fear any longer. We are free. That teaching is the best of all news.

Will took a few shots at the follies of bipartisanship:

In fact, recent history suggests that our biggest blunders have been thoroughly bipartisan - witness the Iraq War’s near-universal support circa 2003 or the ongoing, argument-proof consensus in favor of the drug war. So is widespread political agreement really that desirable? I won’t complain if consensus is reached through considered deliberation, but that doesn’t seem to happen in the political sphere, where agreement is emotive rather than policy-driven.

…and a couple more at Newt Gingrich.

Freddie tackled capitalist dogma…

To me, the most sensible and pragmatic capitalist is a skeptical capitalist, one who recognizes the enormous power for good in the system but also recognizes that it is ultimately just a patchwork of conventions, laws and mores, cobbled together by disparate people with vastly different aims, and existing always in an uneasy tension.

…and got high with a little help from his friends - or, no, wait - disagreed loudly with one of his friends….

I declared myself a culture war pacifist and also asked if there wasn’t possibly some way to have a “progressive traditionalism” since I’m not particularly satisfied with either one on their own…to which a commenter replied:

Come back in a year or two when you’re ready to expound on important matters that you clearly haven’t begun to understand.

Men of greater faith and intellect than anyone here have been grappling with this “theology stuff” for thousands of years. Is it really wise for us to be dismissing this inheritance with an arrogant wave of the hand, and ignarantly build from scratch.

Ouch.

Scott asked “are we better than this?” and subsequently whipped out the word “whateverism” proving that no, we couldn’t go more than three months even without using it in a sentence:

Far from a condemnation of the political class alone, such underwhelming fortitude has in many ways become the very essence of the American dream. Contemporary culture finds itself largely bereft of the wherewithal to shake off the malaise of modernity, addicted as it is to the primacy of instant gratification and chronic whateverism. In many ways, we’ve become the victims of our own success, the shining examples of a fitter, happier future.

Scott also revealed a secret truth about the League’s membership with his post “We’re All Mad Here” … They say insanity is a sign of genius, though…

Mark stormed the world with a thoughtful expose on the Tea Parties:

[I]f the Tea Parties had remained the sole province of a handful of libertarian activists, they never would have received the national attention they’re now able to receive, and thus would have had even less impact. By accepting the involvement of the movement conservative multitudes, the originators have lost control of their message even as the message has access to an ever-larger platform. The result? An incoherent jumble of protests that is going to wind up resembling the same sort of incoherence that has characterized large-scale protests and demonstrations for decades.

And if you missed the back and forth between Mark and Will over the merits of judicial activism etc. etc. etc. go check it out.

Dave, between some much needed League humor, also wrote a bit about judicial activism:

The meaning of the text did not change. An existing legal principle (Footnote Four) that can be easily reconciled to the meaning of the text was applied to a new case and controversy and found that the government had overstepped its bounds. Libertarians should be pleased by this. Not only was justice served, but it was done in a way that kept the meaning of the Iowa State Constitution intact.

Sound pretty nihilistic to me!

William treated us to some thoughts on the upcoming Observe and Report (it’s out now, I think, so maybe we’re due for a review William….):

From the TV spots for Seth Rogen’s new movie, you might think he’s revisiting the irresponsible-yet-good-hearted cop character he played in Superbad (i.e. the irresponsible-yet-good-hearted character he’s played in all his movies so far). Probably not the case. The trailer suggests that Rogen is playing a delusional semi-racist petty authoritarian with a gun fixation, a fragile ego, and no hope outside his demented fantasies. Those viewers who want Paul Blart crossed with Knocked Up might not expect this.

My only thoughts here is - how the hell did we just happen to have two movies about mall cops get released within a couple months of each other? This is like when Ants and A Bugs Life were released back to back. This happens more often than it should….

And lastly, friend of the League Jack Gillis contributed a guest post (something all commenters and bloggers are urged to submit!) and gave us his own analysis of the Tea Party Phenomenon:

Silent Minorities don’t influence society if they remain silent. A Silent Majority can operate simply by living their lives and then consistently winning elections. That is, they can engage themselves only once every two or four years but nevertheless feel as if they control their own destinies. But a minority has to be noisy to have any hope at all of influencing the course of social development. So to claim, as some have and will, that the Tea Parties are “just noise” is to gloss over one of the most significant aspects of the movement. The fact that it’s “just noise” is the strongest indication yet that they now know that they have to make noise.

I’ll likely do more round-ups like this in the future to catch people up, but I’m not sure they’ll always be quite so in-depth. Let me know if this was helpful….
Cheers!

Babies

2009-01-30T15:20:00.000-08:00

This is funny.

And this is a video of my 19-month old:

Smart AND cute. Oh boy. What a kid.

Of Maus and Men

2009-01-28T15:16:00.001-08:00

Last night, which happened to be International Holocaust Remembrance Day, I attended a lecture by Pulitzer prize winning comic book artist (or graphic novelist) Art Spiegelman. It was supposed to be a talk on tolerance and art, but he self-deprecatingly waved away these weighty subjects. “Everything I know I learned from comic books,” he said. “So I’m going to talk about comic books.”

And for the next two hours, that’s exactly what he did, talking and joking his way through a brief history of comic books, from the first old French comic strips to the now critically acclaimed “graphic novels” like The Watchmen, or his own masterpiece, Maus, which grapples in alternating humor and horror with his father’s memories of surviving Auschwitz, and his own turmoil in understanding that history.

Fortunately for the audience, the talk, like Spiegelman’s work, was not limited to words. On a giant screen Spiegelman guided us from one comic to the next–some his, many from others who he took inspiration from. And bit by bit, as he traversed the world of comics from the early days of racial caricatures to the modern world, where entire populations were subdued by the fear of Islamist reprisal over the Danish cartoons, (a subject he did a cover-story for Harper’s magazine on and which was subsequently banned in Canada) to the propaganda posters the Nazi’s used in the lead-up to the mass-execution of the Jews in Europe, Spiegelman drove home his overarching point:

These are not just lines on paper.

I never understood the old rhyme “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.” It always struck me that this was quite the opposite of the truth. A more truthful cliche might be “a picture’s worth a thousand words.” Spiegelman’s talk led us to the concept of physiognomy, or the “assessment of a person’s character or personality from their outer appearance” which was once considered almost a science, but has, regardless of its lack of scientific merit, certainly been a tool used by illustrators and dictators alike to propagate stereotypes, either for humorous purposes, or for the seeding of hate within cultures.

In much the same way that Nazis exploited the tenets of Darwinism to promote their vision of the superior German race, Nazi propagandists used comics, and physiognomy, to create an impression that Jews were somehow sub-human. The image of the Jew as a rat has been ingrained into the international psyche. The Nazis used this to great effect, and as Spiegelman pointed out, we still refer to the Holocaust as the “extermination” of the Jews rather than as a mass-murder.

It could be argued that as we enter further and further into an era of mass-media and visual information, images will become even more important in how we view the world–what’s shown, as much as what isn’t. The Danish cartoons are an example of how in the name and guise of tolerance, fear can lead us to censorship. Of course, the Arab as a terrorist is almost as universal an image as the Jew as a rat. And so we come to that cross-roads: on the one hand, images were instrumental in so many horrible efforts, from segregation to the Holocaust; and on the other, that most prized freedom of speech. I suppose in the end we must take the bad with the good. There will always be hate, after all, but freedom of speech is a fragile and precarious right.

In any case, all of this leads to the question of Pope Benedict’s rehabilitation of Bishop Williamson into the fold of the Catholic Church. Williamson, as we all know by now, is an adamant Holocaust denier, who is on record stating that “the historical evidence is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy by Adolf Hitler.” Pope Benedict has been quick to decry such Holocaust denial in an attempt to quell the uproar over Williamson’s reinstatement.

Of course, there are words and then there are symbols. The symbol of Benedict welcoming Williamson back into the Church is a great deal more powerful than the words he’s used to whitewash the scandal. A picture’s worth a thousand words, remember. We refer to acts like this as symbolic gestures, and regardless of what the Pontiff says to the contrary, this new embrace of Williamson is a symbol of the very sort of thing the Catholic Church has been attempting to distance itself from–old hatreds, old divisions. The history of the Church and the Jews is not a pleasant one. John Paul II worked for years to change that, and it seems Pope Benedict is as determined to sabotage what his predecessor begun.

And yet, here we come again to that confluence of freedom and consequence. Freedom of religion, of speech, of practice, can often come into conflict with sensibility, cultural sensitivity, and so forth. After all, Holocaust denial is not forbidden by the Church even if one would hope that the basic precepts of Christianity would render it unthinkable, it should still be allowed as protected speech, however despicable. In Germany it is illegal to deny the Holocaust. In Canada, hate-speech is defined by the State, and can be banned outright. So do we give the State this power to define what is hate, what is free, which symbols and words are merely scribbles, and which are swords? Once upon a time the State in question was Nazi Germany, or Stalinist Russia. The State, after all, is changeable as are human hearts, and human words. Our best course is to keep them separate–a separation of Thought and State, no matter the drivel that can, and does, produce.

After all, none of these words, images, cartoons or symbols are mere “lines on paper.” They hold consequence; the power to destroy or heal; the power to stir a nation to war, or lull it to sleep.

Comments open at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen

Streets & Towns

2009-01-23T10:57:00.001-08:00

So you live on Slutshole Lane, so what?

Ah, the Brits....

More from the League of Ordinary Gentlemen

2009-01-23T07:59:00.000-08:00

Above are the ongoing conversations over at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen. Add to that nearly 100 comments, almost a thousand pageviews, and we're only on day two. Not half bad, eh?

Illusion

2009-01-22T08:38:00.001-08:00

Blaise's article is superb, a dark garden of thorny prose and deep, flowery cynicism:

Lord, there is no such city anywhere, but all is a vision. America’s spires and turrets are built on mountains of debt and a fairyland of trust in the faithless apostles of the unregulated Free Market. We have indulged ourselves in fantasies of national superiority and continue to do so, all the while condemning the Islamists who make no bones of their urge to subdue the world to their own vision of harsh justice and superiority. Think Obama won’t perpetuate these fantasies? He’s going to send even more troops into Afghanistan, recapitulating the failures of Bush in Iraq, in the one place in the world where every textbook of military history tells us empires go to die. Less Lincoln and more Plutarch for President Obama: let our Fearless Leader see how Alexander fared east of Persia, both in the nature of Alexander’s successes and failures.

Anon, the whole fair city had disappeared, the reckoning has come due. Yet the illusion has not been dispelled.
Obama is a fine man, as good a man as the times have produced and the country is well-pleased with him, both Republicans and Democrats alike are charmed by his glamour. But of old, the word Glamour meant a spell of illusion...

Read the whole thing.

More on Obama and Gay Marriage

2009-01-22T08:27:00.000-08:00

Video via Friar Zero in the comments:

It remains true that Obama is very much like Russia--a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma...

The Theme Song

2009-01-21T20:07:00.001-08:00

Chris thinks The League should have a theme song. And so here it is:

Bloggy News

2009-01-21T14:51:00.000-08:00

I have some pretty exciting news. Freddie deBoer, Scott Payne, Chris Dierkes, Mark Thompson, Dave Ruggerio, Kyle Moore, and myself have started a new cooperative blog, The League of Ordinary Gentlemen.

The purpose is to get not merely a multi-author blog with disjointed posts by various authors, but to start a series of dialogues within the blog. It's going live today. Right of this moment, actually...

Check it out. Thanks!

A tad curmudgeonly?

2009-01-20T12:42:00.000-08:00

Is it just me, or is Joe Carter just a tiny bit curmudgeonly today?

It's official

2009-01-20T10:11:00.001-08:00

We have a new President.

I'd say it's about bloody time. Congratulations America!

This about sums it up...

2009-01-19T13:57:00.000-08:00

Skipping Libby?

2009-01-19T12:54:00.001-08:00

Is it possible that Bush will let Scooter Libby take the fall? I didn't think there was a chance in hell he wouldn't issue a pardon on this one.

Then again, looks like Scooter might be in for some jail time, if this is true and not just a poor choice of words:

In his final acts of clemency, President George W. Bush on Monday commuted the prison sentences of two former U.S. Border Patrol agents whose convictions for shooting a Mexican drug dealer ignited fierce debate about illegal immigration. [emphasis mine]

Final acts? Meaning, no love for Libby? Wow.

Scrapping the democracy project

2009-01-19T12:11:00.000-08:00

Daniel Larison writes:

Democratization in recent years has not generally contributed to U.S. interests, and it certainly has not contributed to greater peace and security. From empowering Hamas to building up an aggressive nationalist demagogue in Georgia to boosting socialist “people power” in Bolivia and Venezuela to provoking ethnic conflict in Kenya, genuine democratic elections have produced a number of undesirable outcomes for the nations involved and for U.S. interests in their respective regions. The idea of “democratic peace” is a myth, and the politicization of ethnicity and religion that democratization has involved in many parts of Africa, Latin America and the Near East has led to terrible results. Why we should want more of this is a mystery, but like much related to the management of the empire this is something we are not supposed to challenge.

I would add that all of this is not to say that democracies aren't a good thing, or that nations around the world shouldn't move toward democracy, or some form of democracy, since I truly believe that despite all of its flaws, democracy is still the best of all possible political systems. However, what is lacking in all of the nations where the US has tried to impose it is both the rule of law, and a historical foundation of order and representative government. The United States was born out of the British history of a functional parliament, and traditions dating back to the signing of the magna carta. America was also a healthy group of colonies, with relatively high stability and rule of law.

Compare this to Iraq, a country with no history of liberty or representation of the people, founded in a region of the world that has been plagued with war, religious fueding, and totalitarianism in one form or another--or to Afghanistan which has only the tradition of tribal politics, and warlord feudalism. It's simply not good soil for democracy, and certainly not for imposed democracy.

I think a better means by which to export our ideals would be through example, through healthy trade, and through tireless diplomatic efforts. There is a time for force, for war, but it cannot be in order to instill something as fragile, and whose outcome is as unforeseeable, as democracy.

New digs...

2009-01-19T11:13:00.000-08:00

Check out Alex Massie's new digs at The Spectator!

Way to go Alex!

The Superbowl, Baby!

2009-01-19T09:09:00.000-08:00

The Cardinals? Hells yes...

It's not good, but it's not the same

2009-01-17T10:59:00.001-08:00

Pat Buchanan links to this photo series equating Israel with the Nazis at Norman Finkelstein's site.

Okay, here's the problem with this sort of equating of wrongs. First of all, the Nazis took populations in their own country and in countries they had conquered, that were peaceful, law-abiding components of those States and societies, and for no reason beyond blind, racist hatred carted them off to death camps after first subjugating them to ghettos, theft of property, etc.

In Israel the situation is bad. Very bad. The treatment of the Palestinians is often inhumane. The checkpoints make life hard on many people. The rocket strikes and incursions are devastating.

The difference, though, is that Israel was warred against numerous times by her neighbors; they suffered through terrorist intifadas that drove them to these security measures; they do their best to minimize civilian casualties and are responsible for providing the Palestinians with a great deal of humanitarian aid. They also do many things that make peace harder to come by, like the ridiculous settlements in the West Bank, the blockade in Gaza, and so forth.

But they are not Nazis, and they are not in the same category or ballpark even, and it is a cruel, awful thing to use propaganda like Finkelstein is using at his site to suggest that they are. There is a moral divide between Israel and Nazi Germany that it will take much, much more to bridge. Their hands aren't clean, to be sure, but they are nowhere near as bloody as Hitler's Germany.

This sort of fear-mongering does nothing to further the debate. It is emotive only, and dismissive of historical circumstance. I am so tired of the fringes of this debate running its course and direction. I am tired of Finkelstein and his bunch of loudmouths, and I am tired of the extremists on the Zionist side as well, who seem so blind to any fault they may actually have in this.

Israel isn't Nazi Germany, and not all Palestinians support terror. Most of the people in this mess are just normal people caught up in decades-old conflict with no end in sight...

Obama Supports Gay Marriage

2009-01-17T10:57:00.001-08:00

Well, he did in 1996. I don't think he's changed his tune since then, though we'll see if he actually does anything about it.

End Pot Prohibition, but Keep Hard Drugs Illegal

2009-01-17T09:10:00.000-08:00

Recently Culture11 held a mini-symposium on the drug legalization debate. (Read this, this, and this). I've got a stance that lies somewhere between the libertarian and the law & order types. I am strongly in favor of legalizing marijuana but I take a more cautious stance on the harder drugs.

For one, I've seen the effect first-hand of the terribly destructive power those drugs have on people, especially crystal meth. Heroin and cocaine, too, though. These aren't necessarily things that should be condoned as legal in our civil society. That there is a stigma attached to these drugs, that they do have some sort of legal penalty--this may be a good thing. And if we are reasonable about our other substances, perhaps there won't be much of a market for these harder drugs in the first place.

One huge benefit of legalizing pot (which is almost universally accepted as a pretty harmless substance these days) is its negative effect on revenue for the drug lords and cartels. One of the primary sources of income for these groups is marijuana, and conversely one of our primary costs in the "War on Drugs" is fighting marijuana imports, jailing pot users and petty pot dealers, and diverting law enforcement to deal with stoners when it could be fighting the real bad guys.

It’s by far the most widely used illegal substance, and once legalized would be an enormous source of tax revenue for the US Government. Taking it out of the black market would take the power away from dealers, and create jobs. It would take people out of the prisons, and free up space and money in that over-worked, over-crowded system. Anita Bartholemew writes:

Of the 872,000 arrests in 2007 for marijuana-related offenses, almost 90 percent were for simple possession of the dried vegetation in question. The typical arrestee is younger than 30. Think college-age kid caught lighting up a joint. Now, multiply that by 775,000 — that’s where a significant chunk of your drug war dollars are going.

The price of deploying an army of local, state and federal cops, prosecutors and guards to arrest, try and imprison the perpetrators of this non-scourge? Using data from 2000, Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron estimated it as $7.7 billion4 per year while a 2007 study, by public policy expert Jon Gettman, figured it closer to $10.7 billion 5 per year.

Most of that money is eaten up by law enforcement according to Miron, with $2.94 billion going to prosecution costs in 2000, and less than half a billion toward incarceration.

Add in the revenue we’d eventually gain if marijuana were regulated and taxed like alcohol and tobacco (from $6.2 billion to as much as $31.1 billion per year), and you’re talking real money.

You're damn right you're talking real money.

So, add to that the tax benefits of legalization, much of which could go to paying for better border security–you find yourself with a weakened network of drug cartels, as the market for smugglers will basically dry up except for imported hard drugs, which have a much smaller market share; you have more money to combat harder drugs from all these new cost-savings and increased tax revenues--basically you get a three-in-one: economic stimulus, increased national security, and increased liberty for non-violent, normal, and suddenly law-abiding Americans.

The economic stimulus would be extremely beneficial for this country at this point in history, with the recession looming. Legalized marijuana would be good for a wide variety of businesses, from medicinal to fast food chains. It is becoming more essential than ever for national security, as Mexico is looking more and more as though it is on the verge of total collapse--right up there with our nuclear pal Pakistan.

So in sum, I think the libertarian ideal of "your body, do what you want with it" is noble in purpose, but simply not pragmatic. And I'm not sure it's morally right either, no matter how theoretically good it sounds. Some of these drugs are literally horrible, addictive poisons that should simply not be given a pass by society at large. Others, like pot, are misunderstood, have few if any side-effects save the munchies, and could act as a bridge to a better, more civilized nation.

When Radley Balko warns of the "militirization of our police" I concur, but I think legalizing pot and keeping the other drugs illegal wll so temper this whole "war" that this will become far less of an issue. Police will get to be cops, looking for real bad guys or people who are legitimitaly ruining their lives with actual drugs.

Fredoosso warns that:

"Despite the wishful thinking of its proponents, drug legalization would result in broader drug use, and for exactly the same reasons a legal narcotics market tends to reduce the size of an illegal one—lower prices, greater convenience, more reliable supply, and far more security in one’s transactions."

I agree with this, too. This is one reason I think only marijuana should be legalized and not the other drugs. While I think we should lose the misnomer "War on Drugs" I think we should maintain a robust police effort to combat drug smuggling, and a larger societal effort to help addicts. Legalizing pot would also take the dealer out of the picture. The number one reason that pot is a gateway drug is because it's purchased from a dealer. So take out that middle man, and replace him with a clerk at a supermarket. Then you're much more likely to purchase Doritos with your weed as opposed to an eight-ball of Columbia's finest.

Also, the hit that drug cartels would take from the money lost over pot-sales, and the increased expense of smuggling the harder drugs, would actually drive up the cost of these drugs, making them more difficult to sell and to purchase. Supply and demand would drop significantly, and a healthier, legal alternative would be right there at your local Conoco.

So keep heroin illegal, but stop locking up our potheads. Send our police out to bring down meth labs, but let our stoners have their midnight snacks in peace. Use our border patrol agents to stop human smuggling, or to sniff out shipments of cocaine, but let the joint-smoking-hippies cross freely. This is a national security issue as well as a moral issue. And it would be good for our economy to boot.

Love, love, love...

2009-01-16T20:55:00.000-08:00

~via Andrew

The War on Birds

2009-01-16T20:50:00.000-08:00

Drezner has this to say:

While most birds probably wish to peacefully coexist with humans, it is becoming increasingly clear that a small group of radicalized avians are hell-bent on destroying our way of life. These radical birdists hate us for our freedom. This can not stand.
I, for one, look forward to President Bush's declaration of a War on Birds. Unfortunately, this will last only four days, after which President Obama will no doubt appoint this guy as special envoy to the avian community.

I actually said something similar to this to a co-worker today, at least the part about a War on Birds. And you know, I thought at the time "Somebody else has already said this, I'm sure, by now. Somebody much more famous than myself..." That's the tricky thing about saying something funny or clever. It's almost never original, even if you did come up with it on your own. One more reason to embrace humility, I suppose...

C'est la vie. One thing is certain: Bush won't have time to declare a War on Birds. The Bush days are over.

Quote of the day

2009-01-16T20:33:00.001-08:00

"What the people of Gaza need, rather than this sort of hollow gestural pseudo-solidarity, is precisely a ceasefire and humanitarian assistance. Cheering on their war-mongers will not bring them justice or peace."

~Bob from Brockley

Questions of Inquest

2009-01-16T14:51:00.000-08:00

Paul Krugman is displeased with Obama's apparent unwillingness to investigate the Bush Administration:

I’m sorry, but if we don’t have an inquest into what happened during the Bush years — and nearly everyone has taken Mr. Obama’s remarks to mean that we won’t — this means that those who hold power are indeed above the law because they don’t face any consequences if they abuse their power.
Let’s be clear what we’re talking about here. It’s not just torture and illegal wiretapping, whose perpetrators claim, however implausibly, that they were patriots acting to defend the nation’s security. The fact is that the Bush administration’s abuses extended from environmental policy to voting rights. And most of the abuses involved using the power of government to reward political friends and punish political enemies.

I'm torn on this subject--truly torn. I can't see any fault with transparency, with holding those who occupy our highest offices accountable, perhaps even more accountable than any others. But if we are to go into it with Krugman's presuppositions--basically asserting that there was abuse even before it's been proven--than aren't we waging a political vendetta more than seeking justice?

Krugman declares that "the fact is" the Bush administration committed various abuses, though really, sans the inquest, how can he possibly know what any of the facts are? This isn't necessarily meant as a case against an inquest, but it certainly reveals Krugman's argument to be more emotionally based than anything. The fact is, we don't know anything. I think this is a pretty good argument in and of itself to do an inquest. But until that time we should be asking questions, not stating opinions as though they were facts.

Krugman's a smart guy. He should know better. A far better case could be made from a more nuetral standpoint. Hell, I think the case should be made that all outgoing administrations will be wihout fail investigated thoroughly by an independent inquest upon their departure from office. We should set precedent that regardless of a President's popularity or perceived honesty or dishonesty he or she, and the men and women in their cabinet, will be investigated for wrong-doing while in office.

We should keep all our elected officials honest. But honesty doesn't necessarily equate with popularity, and Bush's unpopularity should not be reason enough to investigate him, no matter how politically opposed we may be to his decisions. This should simply be status quo. Take the politics out of it, and demand the rule of law above all else.

Democracy and Irony

2009-01-15T15:00:00.000-08:00

One of the ironies of the Israel/Palestine question is that it is Israel's dual-nature that leads to this being an ongoing question. That Israel at once aids the population that sends rockets and suicide bombers into its midst, and yet won't take the real, serious steps necessary to create a true and lasting peace is a testament both to its humanity and its indecision--in a sense, to its democracy. Democracy is a fickle thing. Strong actions that are non-military are extremely hard to push through the halls of Parliament, or Congress, or the Knesset or what have you.

As Bush said, and I paraphrase: "This would be a lot easier if this were a dictatorship. As long as I was the dictator."

It's the ugly beauty of any democratic society. The masses are more easily pushed toward guns and glory. Freedom and the ability to choose our leaders gives us such a great deal of power to avoid getting anything done. Thus things are only completed to the halfway mark. Israel exits unilaterally from Gaza, yet leaves the West Bank occupied.

Half-measures are one of the curses of democracies. Then again, you run such a high risk of getting stuck with a bad leader when in any other system of governance. Watching the transition of power between Bush and Obama is testament to this. Democracy, coupled with the rule of law, is a fantastic thing. The one without the other, though.

You get Gaza.

For some reason...

2009-01-15T14:53:00.000-08:00

This post below has reminded me of this:

...which I find really, really disturbing. Free market, meet the seven deadly sins...

But in all seriousness...really??? "Life is short, have an affair." Really?

I suppose, taking the two posts together, the image of the Google Ad that asks "Is your husband gay? Give him this quiz to find out..." and this billboard...I don't know what to make of it--only that maybe gay marriage really isn't the thing threatening our "sacred institution" - perhaps the free market has a hand in it, or freedom in general. Perhaps gay men marrying women creates higher levels of divorce...

Just shooting these off the top of my head, though. Maybe I'm reading too much into this.

In the comments...

2009-01-15T14:44:00.000-08:00

In the comments below:

Max writes: "The fact remains that settlers in general hold strong anti-Palestinian sentiment, and could not be a civil component of a Palestinian state. That should be argument enough for forced removal."

TNC asks: "Is this also an argument for the forced removal of anti-Zionist Arabs from Israel? If not, why not?"

Good point.

My thoughts, off the top of my head--anti-Zionist Arabs do not present the same level of political inertia that the settlers in the West Bank can. In other words, the settlers represent an actual obstacle to a two-state solution, whereas the anti-Zionist Arabs present no such obstacle. They may, however, present a security threat, and once the two-state solution is realized, there may be a case for some forced-immigration to Palestine, though I would hope not.

The major difference, I suppose, is the Israelis are settling in the West Bank. I'm pretty sure the Israeli Arabs have been in Israel proper since 1948.

Just some thoughts.

Here's one more question: Can a Palestinian State ever become a reality with two disparate geographical regions (Gaza and the West Bank) separated by Israel in the center? Is this a possibility or merely a pipedream? Are we dealing with anything more than the geography of defeat, and do we need a new partition?

Is your husband gay?

2009-01-15T12:23:00.000-08:00

The Discussion is Like a Reflection of the Conflict Itself

2009-01-15T11:42:00.000-08:00

What I loathe, and why I enter conversations on the Israel/Palestine conflict with such trepidation, such fear & loathing, is how the conversation so perfectly mirrors the conflict itself. You have your very loud voices on the fringes, the one claiming that Israel was part and parcel stolen from Arabs and should be given back en masse, and you have the other claiming that Palestinians should suffer because they elected Hamas, or that they should somehow just accept their position as second-class citizens without question, or just choose to live in peace with Israel, and that all criticisms of Israel are bigoted or are examples of moral relativity etc. etc. etc.

Then you have all these quiet voices in the "center" though I'm not so sure that's the right word anymore. All these quite, reasonable voices trying to piece things together, trying to dig up the truth, constantly thwarted by those in the wings, shouting them down--equating them with the other fringe.

There are apologists for terror, for war, for whatever that are part of this debate but they are fewer and louder than the rest of us.

Can't I be pro-Israel and still decry this invasion into Gaza? Can't I see a picture of an 80 year old Gazan woman, with no home, no family, sitting forlornly and alone on a pile of rubble and believe that this is just wrong. No matter what, this is wrong--it's not helping anything! Nobody has shown, proved, demonstrated how this military action is anything beyond political posturing, or how it will achieve anything at all, or how the blockade of Gaza is actually pro-Israel somehow. Just because it's anti-Palestinian does not make it pro-Israel. And the opposite is true, isn't it? Just because it's anti-Israel doesn't mean it's helpful to the Palestinians. If Syria and Iran were to make peace with Israel and stop funding terror, they'd likely to a great deal more to help the plight of the Palestinians than their current "aid" does.

How to combat these extremists, on both sides, is an open question. I'm not a "moderate" in that lukewarm sense of the word. I'm extremely upset by all of this, and I think some very strong measures need to be taken--but not to benefit the fringes, but to benefit the maintstream, in all its diverse, normal, unremarkable ways...

Two States and the Settlement Question

2009-01-14T13:52:00.000-08:00

From discussion elsewhere, in a follow-up to this post...

Commenter:

I think you hit the mark dead on concerning the point of the idiocy of Walt's hypothetical. One point you do not discuss is the context leading up to the 6 Day War. Why was "Palestine" not founded sometime during, say, '44-48? (Lack of will and Arab assistance.) Why was land set apart for a Jewish state in the first place? (Holocaust.) Certainly Walt doesn't address this. So, you correctly squelch his premise.

One point I will pick with you is the issue of settlements. The stubborn Palestinian insistence upon rejecting Jews in their midst has led to even more separatism, let alone the economic consequences. If the whole world insists upon integration of Arabs into Jewish Israel, why do they not condemn Palestinians for their discrimination? Would not both of the "two nations" be better off for inclusion of the other? More discrimination will just result in more separatism. Indeed, it has with the outlawing of Arab political participation this week in Israel.

By far, Palestinians are guiltier of insisting upon separation...while still insisting upon freedom to come in and out of Israel at will...while publicly threatening suicide bombings. They are not known for their reason.

Me:

Why was land set apart for a Jewish state in the first place? (Holocaust.)

Not at all, actually. The Zionist movement and British support for it predated the Holocaust, which came later and did, indeed, spur global Jewish support (and immigration). But no, that was not why land was set aside--in fact, much land was actually bought and paid for by the Zionists, though after 48/49 the borders were re-drawn and indeed some land was stolen from the Arabs.

The reason Palestine was never founded was that Jordan and Egypt occupied the West Bank and Gaza, and now Israel does.

Again, I'll have to disagree. The Israelis simply have no business building settlements in the West Bank. They have every right to defend themselves, to even (to some extent) redraw the pre-1967 borders, but until they exit the West Bank it will be literally IMPOSSIBLE to achieve a two-state solution. Find me one Israeli settler who would live willingly in a Palestinian State, not as an Israeli settler, but as a citizen of Palestine.

If you can't find any, then there is no reasonable way to assume peace can be achieved at the same time as massive and widespread settlement of the West Bank. It is counter-intuitive and, I think, comes at too great a cost.

I agree that an ideal Two-State solution would include Israeli Arabs and Palestinian Jews...but the latter is simply not practical. Israelis will never consent to Palestinian rule, and thus have to go back to Israel if Palestine is ever to be realized.

Commenter:

Yes, you are correct about the Jordan/Egypt lack of interest in the Palestinian state before Israel got possession of the land.

You think Israelis have no business in Gaza, what do you think about Palestinians living in Israel? No inconsistency there vis-a-vis long term solutions? Smarter people than I have agreed with you on the settlement issue and I have yet to hear a coherent answer to these questions.

Me:

Palestinians--well, actually Israeli Arabs live in Israel, many of whom consider themselves such, some who would rather go to Palestine if that State were created. It's not really inconsistent, as by all rights, under the initial agreement (which Egypt and Jordan broke, not the Palestinians) Israel was given a certain territory, and the Palestinians were given a certain territory. Never once, save by the law of the sword, was Israel ever permitted to settle Gaza or the West Bank.

And I would say, regarding the law of the sword, "He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword."

There must be a better way.

How to go about un-settling the West Bank? It's so hard to say. This is where American aid becomes so vital, I think. Israel unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza, and the subsequent FOOLISH push for elections there by the US, was such a messy affair that we ended up getting a quasi-legitimate Hamas.

In any case, anybody serious about Two States has to figure out what to do about the settlements. Terror can be fought, but these settlers have political weight within Israel. It's going to be much more difficult to find a way forward there than against the Hamas threat.

Also important to remember is many of the West Bank settlers were born there, and are not guilty of anything whatsoever. All they've known is life in the settlements. Yet they will eventually pay a price for it, guilt or no.

______________________________________________________

I thought it was a good supplement to the post, anyways. Am I wrong in my responses?

A Hypothetical Gaza

2009-01-14T12:08:00.000-08:00

Stephen Walt has spurred much conversation and controversy with his hypothetical in which the Arabs win the 6-day-war and drive the Jews into Gaza where they are conversely oppressed until:

...a group of hardline Orthodox Jews took over control of that territory and organized a resistance movement. They also steadfastly refused to recognize the new Palestinian state, arguing that its creation was illegal and that their expulsion from Israel was unjust. Imagine that they obtained backing from sympathizers around the world and that they began to smuggle weapons into the territory. Then imagine that they started firing at Palestinian towns and villages and refused to stop despite continued reprisals and civilian casualties.
Here's the question: would the United States be denouncing those Jews in Gaza as "terrorists" and encouraging the Palestinian state to use overwhelming force against them?
Here's another: would the United States have even allowed such a situation to arise and persist in the first place?

To me this question doesn't even merit too serious a response, yet I will give it my best. The circumstances would be so utterly different. For one, Israel is already surrounded by Arab States, closed off, in a sense, from her neighbors. It is already (and was more so pre-1967) a sort of Gaza, albeit a rather strong and wealthy one by comparison. Nevertheless, it is a country surrounded on virtually all sides by hostile enemies and less hostile allies.

Had the Jews been driven into some Imagined Gaza, and suffered the same constraints the Arabs suffer in the Real Gaza, obviously much of the world would take pity on them. Surely the vast majority of humanity has a tendency to root for the underdog, after all.

However, and here's the sticking-point, Palestine would never have come into being, so the presupposition that somehow the hard-liners in this Imagined Gaza would not recognize the "State of Palestine" is simply an absurdity too great even for the hypothetical.

Had Israel actually lost the Six Day War, and been driven from Israel, then the outcome would have been a divided Palestine, wherein Egypt, Syria, and Jordan all took slices. Likely enough, Jerusalem and the West Bank would have gone to Jordan (which would perhaps once again take on the mantle of Transjordan) and the Holy City, if anything, would occupy a greater global scrutiny than the questions that Walt asks.

Even likelier, the Jews would not have been plotted off in a Gaza-like region, but forced into yet another Diaspora. Many would likely have been massacred by the various Arab factions, whose leaders have never blanched at massacring their own and would likely not bat an eye at killing off the defeated Israelis.

Even were Palestine somehow to have emerged as a Sovereign Nation, certainly no Arab Government there would ever tolerate rocket-fire into its borders, or truck in aid to its citizens, and would respond without doubt more harshly than Israel has responded to the Gazans. This is not in any sense a justification for the Israeli actions, or blockade, or the policies of its Government, which have often been stubborn, intransigent, and foolish. But I see no historical evidence that would allow for any more humanitarian treatment should the tables be turned.

So back to Walt's questions:

Here's the question: would the United States be denouncing those Jews in Gaza as "terrorists" and encouraging the Palestinian state to use overwhelming force against them?

Hard to answer since this situation would never have occurred under an Arab conquest of Israel. Had it, somehow defying all evidence to the contrary, I'm sure it would be denounced by much of the world. Then again, the Arabs started the 67 war, so not only would they be the victors, but also the aggressors. Digging deeper into Walt's point, I agree that the US should do more to constructively criticize Israel. After all, the one-sided outlook hasn't helped anybody, and at some point the US will have to help save Israel from itself--largely by denouncing the settlements in the West Bank. However, no excuse for Palestinian terrorism need be given. The terror, from either side--and there were, in the lead-up to Statehood, many Jewish terrorist groups as well, not to mention British officers acting as terrorists, and of course many Arabs playing that role from the earliest days.

I digress. Back to Walt:

Here's another: would the United States have even allowed such a situation to arise and persist in the first place?

Did the United States intervene in '67? Likely we would have let Israel fall at that point, and would have done very little to prevent the ensuing massacre. Had the Israelis actually been cordoned off into Gaza (Arabs do live in Israel proper, by the way) then I suppose it would depend on the situation as it unfolded. Like I said above, I simply don't believe that a Palestinian State would have emerged, so the comparison is almost impossible to make. Had it happened, though, I think America would certainly denounce both sides, though quite likely the Arabs more.

Does this confirm the notion of a too-strong Israel Lobby in the United States? I don't think so, though sometimes I wonder if our politicians are too short-sided. I think the Imagined Palestinian State that would have emerged would seem as foreign to us as the other Arab States in the region, whereas Israel feels a great deal closer to home. We should never underestimate cultural affinity. It has great power to sway public opinion, to shape policy, and to inform how we view the world at large--how we interact globally and across cultures.

Besides that, Israel/Palestine is an oil-free zone. There isn't much more beyond affinity, and trade, that binds us. It is also unlikely that without that cultural affinity we would have formed a trade relationship with Palestine It's hard to imagine a similarly healthy economic or political relationship would have ever developed.

So perhaps the final answer to Walt's question is that this story would have gotten very little Press or global attention at all, and would hardly merit much attention from the US, had all the tables been turned. It would be another in a long litany of terrible world circumstances, from Africa to the Middle East to East Asia that we only spend half a second at a time on.

Little quagmires. Little ripples on the global scene. A speck of dust in our collective conscience. Just another plight to overwhelm our empathy.

Further Reading:

Alex Massie

Daniel Larison

Megan McArdle

Ross Douthat

Peter Suderman

The Patron Saint of Mediocrity

2009-01-14T11:17:00.000-08:00

Daniel Larison writes, of the decision to send Joe the Plumber to Israel:

First, this does say something important about the miserable state of the conservative blogosphere as a journalistic medium, and it also tells us something about the thorough Palinification of the right. Palin was praised and embraced because of her perceved ordinariness, and her lack of expertise was regarded by her admirers as an advantage and a desirable trait, and now we are treated to the journalistic equivalent of Palin’s qualifications for the position she sought. In journalism as in politics, standards, qualifications and expertise are now to be thrown out; average-ness, ordinariness and ignorance are to be prized as proof of one’s authenticity. Like Palin’s pseudo-populism, which actually helps preserve and strengthen the hold the establishment has by making populism idiotic, this sort of “amateur” journalism does more to discredit amateurs and reinforce the pretensions of professional journalists than anything else. Far from marking the beginning of a serious rivalry with such outfits as TPM, this heralds the irrelevance of the conservative blogosphere as a vehicle for journalism.

This is important. Not only is the conservative movement entering a phase of "idiotic" populism, driven largely by mediocrity (there is a vast difference between "the common man" who happens to be extraordinarily qualified and "the common man" that is completely out of their league, as was Palin) but the very most populist efforts any political group can hope for these days--independent journalism and blogging--are becoming crippled in the process.

Save for a few good sites, and Larison's blog is among them, the conservative blogosphere is mainly just a lot of shouting. The tone is almost invariably angry or resentful or full of self-pity or indignant accusatory harangues.

So it comes as no surprise that Joe is on his way to becoming a sort of indie-journalist sensation, much as Palin was poised to take the second-highest seat in the Land...

Which calls to mind the final scene in Amadeus, as Salieri rolls through the insane asylum, the Patron Saint of Mediocrity:

Goodbye, Father.  I'll speak for you.  I speak for all mediocrities
in the world.  I am their champion.  I am their patron saint.  On
their behalf I deny Him, your God of no mercy.  Your God who
tortures men with longings they can never fulfill.  He may forgive
me:  I shall never forgive Him.

Mediocrities everywhere, now and to come:  I absolve you all!
Amen!  Amen!  Amen!

In bed with the enemy

2009-01-13T15:14:00.001-08:00

Lots of short posts today. What can I say? I have a terrible attention span on Tuesdays....

This was an odd piece of news.

Georgia has sold a partial management stake in the hydroelectric plant that supplies almost half the country's power to a Russian state-controlled energy firm for $9 million.

One might consider this a national security issue, depending on the nature of the contract and the business relationship. Then again, the devil is in the details. Russians were already using the plant for energy which they weren't paying for. It appears now they will be.

Will the wonders never cease?

Death and taxes

2009-01-13T15:04:00.000-08:00

Okay, well not death really, but most certainly taxes.

From the NY Times:

From 2001 until 2004, when he received his final payments from the I.M.F., Mr. Geithner paid his state and federal income taxes but did not pay self-employment payroll taxes. The I.M.F., as an international organization, does not withhold U.S. payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare from its American employees’ paychecks, so they are required to pay the roughly 15 percent tax on their own. The Obama transition is calling his mistake a common error for American employees of the I.M.F.
After a 2006 Internal Revenue Service audit identified the lapse on his 2003 and 2004 tax returns, Mr. Geithner paid tax and interest of $17,230 and the I.R.S. waived penalties, according to the transition.
But Obama vetters discovered the same lapse for 2001 and 2002 and brought it to Mr. Geithner’s attention last Nov. 21, after which he paid tax and interest of $25,970, transition officials say.
That leaves for Mr. Geithner the question of why he did not correct the earlier years’ non-payment of self-employment taxes after the 2006 IRS audit identified the problem for 2003 and 2004.

What really bothers me about this is that the last thing we, as a country, need right now is a dishonest, sneaky, tax-evading Secretary of the Treasury. We've had a bad enough time with Paulson, who I personally wouldn't trust with my money (if that were an option)--we don't need Geithner embroiled in a scandal the moment he hits the ground. Beyond the scandal, though, we don't want a man who can't be trusted to pay his own taxes running the Treasury Department during this period of turmoil. It sends the wrong message. Of course, with the inauguration only days away, we're awfully late in the game finding a new Sec. of the Treasury.

On the other hand, perhaps this is all much adieu about nothing...perhaps Geithner really is the man for the job, and he made honest mistakes, perhaps egged on by a willful subconscious.

Anything is possible.

And as I've argued in the past, I'm not in favor of disqualifying people based on suspicion alone.

Go Home Joe

2009-01-13T09:37:00.000-08:00

Joe the Plumber Update

2009-01-13T09:27:00.000-08:00

I have updates here on PJM criticism of the choice to dispatch JTP to Israel.

From what I've seen of Joe's dispatches, I wonder how any of them can still defend the choice. PJTV should have sent Sarah Palin. At least she has a journalism degree. She could have asked some "gotcha" questions, a la Katie Couric...

$96/hour

2009-01-13T07:38:00.000-08:00

To live here:

Wow.

The irony...

2009-01-13T07:32:00.000-08:00

My wife always finds these depressing tales. This one is also ironic, reaffirming my belief that Alaska has some serious issues. Too much sunlight or too much darkness or too much isolation. Something.

An Alaska lottery held to raise money for a group that helps sexual abuse victims had a surprise winner: a convicted sex offender.
Alec Ahsoak, who according to the state sex offender registry was convicted in 1993 and 2000 for sexual abuse of a minor, came forward Saturday with the winning ticket for the $500,000 Lucky Time Pull Tabs jackpot.
Proceeds of the lottery help Standing Together Against Rape in Anchorage, a nonprofit group that offers support to sexual assault victims among other services.
"It's not how we had envisioned the story going," Nancy Haag, the group's executive director, told CNN Radio.

No kidding? Also...

Alaska has the highest per capita number of rape cases in the United States, according to FBI statistics.

Not quite the vision I received watching Northern Exposure...

The Best Job in the Bloody World

2009-01-13T07:26:00.001-08:00

I was tipped off to this by NPR this morning. If I had been blogging about travel or scuba-diving or something I might have a chance to actually get the job:

Wanted: one "island caretaker", must be able to swim and willing to move to Hamilton Island in Australia's tropical Whitsundays to begin 1 July. Flexible hours, six-month salary of $150,000 (£75,000), non-negotiable.
Caretaking duties do not, island bosses insist, extend to litter-picking and sieving leaves and other detritus from the pool. Instead, the eventual incumbent will be paid to explore the crannies – both on land and underwater – of the Great Barrier Reef's 600 islands, reporting back through a fortnightly internet diary with photos and video.

That's right. Approximately $100,000 dollars to swim, sail and blog for six months in the Great Barrier Reef.

The BBC reports:

The job is being advertised around the world. Candidates have until 22 February to submit an online video application.
In May, 10 shortlisted candidates and one wildcard, voted for by visitors to the Tourism Queensland website, will be invited to the islands for a four-day final interview process. The successful candidate will start the new job on 1 July.
Mr Hayes says he is expecting thousands of applications: "I'm having to beat my staff off with a stick at the moment because most of them want to apply too."

Sounds just awful, doesn't it? Application information can be found here.

painting of the day "Virgin and Child Enthroned"

2009-01-12T16:06:00.000-08:00

~unknown Artist, Bohemia circa 1350

I wonder

2009-01-12T11:13:00.001-08:00

I wonder if anyone at Pajamas Media will come out with a scathing critique of the choice to send Joe the Plumber to Israel? Any dissenters in the line-up?

Have I missed one?'

UPDATE: Commenter Friar Zero has directed our attention to Balloon Juice. I stand corrected, mildly relieved, and waiting for more like-news. Thank you, Friar Zero and John Cole!

UPDATE II: Mark points to this item at PJM.

I have no objection to this internet sensation seeking to extend his fifteen minutes of fame. By all means, write a book, hit the Sunday morning chat circuit, or even run for Congress. These are opportunities for any American and Mr. Wurzelbacher should feel free to pursue them all. But we should probe a bit deeper into Joe’s qualifications as a war correspondent, as this is generally not the first assignment a cub reporter pulls upon joining a network. We might expect him to have a command of, or at least a passing familiarity with the languages spoken by the locals. He should be well versed in the history of the conflict, the primary participants, and the leading power figures. Lastly, as a reporter, we would expect an engaging figure on camera, exuding competence and armed with excellent communication skills in his native tongue. Have we any signs of this?

Good question. I think the answer is rather obvious....

some good reading, listening, watching, etc.

2009-01-12T10:47:00.000-08:00

Jon Schwenkler of Upturned Earth has an interesting piece up at Cutlure11 on Father Neuhaus. It's a nice, short piece that touches on the good and bad of the man. So many obits and reflection pieces abound right now, from harsh critiques by Andrew Sullivan, to plenty more graceful rememberances.

Jon and Scott Payne and Freddie deBoer have a dialogue on Same-Sex-Marriage at Scott's blog. Well worth the listen. (Freddie links there from his supposedly dormant blog...)

Tony Jones talks about gnosticism at his blog. He has a nice line: 'There's nothing secret about Christianity. There never has been. Let's make sure there never will be."

Mike Pontera thinks Obama, unlike his predecessors, has some "breathing space." We shall see...

And Max Socol has an interesting write-up on the question of cease-fire in Gaza. Jason Corley thinks we should "give war a chance" and while I think the phrasing is a little on the brash side, (though clever) the general idea that Israel ought to finish what it starts is certainly a good one. Different perspectives are always good to have...especially when it is not the ends, but the means that are in question...

Max:

Hamas may ultimately be destroyed by a Gaza takeover. But long after they're dead, it will be Israel that has to live with a new occupation.

It's therefore in our interest to make the ceasefire workable, before a messy invasion. Israel ought to concede to allowing Hamas to maintain oversight of its borders, alongside Israeli forces on their respective border, and international forces along the Egyptian border. I don't know what harm there could be in such a concession, as long as non-Hamas monitors still have access to everything coming in and out. And in exchange for this concession, Israel can demand that international forces be stationed within Gaza, rather than Egypt. Egypt, (which has nearly as much of an interest in concluding this mess, as it is nothing but a daily public relations disaster for Mubarak) for its part, should exert serious pressure on Hamas to accept this trade. And if it is unable to do so, Egypt should accept a multinational force in the Sinai, as a good faith gesture to make up for Hamas's intractability.

In exchange for the total cessation of rocket fire from Gaza, Israel should agree to a formalized schedule for lifting the blockade. This is in any case in Israeli interests, as many have pointed out that miserable conditions in Gaza have done nothing to damage Hamas, and may in fact have strengthened the organization.

Jason:

The message is a clear one. This is the price you pay when groups like Hamas are elected. This is the price terrorist organizations pay when you endanger the lives of citizens of other countries. The lessons and results may be more binding and constructive then permanent evacuations or cease fires that only secure the status quo and, ironically enough, contributes and guarantees more suffering and death in the future.

The region deserves peace and the people of Gaza and Israel deserve to live quietly and securely. I think its time we give war a chance.

It's hard to say what will actually achieve peace. I do hope Israel secures Gaza at least to the point that a lift of the blockade will become possible. I hope, also, that Egypt will find some way to clamp down on smuggling over their borders--not bread, but bombs and rockets and machine guns.

The commercialization of the Lord of the Rings (part 1)

2009-01-12T07:24:00.000-08:00

I first read Tolkien's masterpiece when I was nine. It was the third epic fantasy I had read, C.S. Lewis's Narnia having been the first; Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles the second. I had also consumed many Arthurian legends and other mythical tales.

The Lord of the Rings was by far the most difficult read of my childhood, and the most satisfying. I've read it many times since. If there weren't so many other books in line on my book shelf, I would probably pick it up again, but it will have to wait.

Then again, if I wanted a quick Lord of the Rings fix, I could get one just about any time these days. There are three overly-long movies available on DVD that only cut out some of the most essential parts of the story; there are at least a dozen or so video games to be found for Play Station (1, 2, and 3), Wii, Xbox, and the PC. There are strategy war games and third person hack-and-slash games, and even a World of Warcraft style Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG). I've seen action figures, costumes, party-favors...I'm not sure if one of the Fast Food Chains had Aragorn figures or little plastic orcs in their Happy Meals, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Of course, all of this "materialistic progress" that has lead to the easy availability of Tolkien's work is really just exactly what the man warned of, isn't it? Cheap commercialism and soulless industrialism. Why even bother with those long, wordy novels anymore? They are so time-consuming and slow. It took me an entire month when I was nine to read the Lord of the Rings. It only took a total of about 12 hours to get through the movies. I can play those video games without any committment whatsoever...certainly no committment to the deeper message Tolkien was attempting to convey.

I won't go into that too much now. I envision a part-two to this diatribe. But what modernity has done, it seems, is given people less of a reason to read Tolkien's work. It has sucked something vital and important from the work. The religion is gone from it, the age and the history of it are all dried up. We've replaced it with cool battle scenes and special effects. Hack-and-slash has usurped Frodo's journey. The mediocrity of the vast majority of the fantasy genre is all these mediums ever hope to attain.

We've all learned how to kill an Uruk-hai, or bring down a Nazgul with our Level 18 Elven Archer, but at the precipice, would any of us be able to throw the ring into the fire?

Interesting

2009-01-09T16:29:00.000-08:00

I guess this is why I rarely refer to myself as "moderate" but rather "independent." I am independent because I am fine with taking, at times, radically ideological views. I'm often referred to as moderate because I don't take sides. So in a sense I am non-ideologically centrist, but more in a zig-zag fashion (from left to right, haphazardly) rather than down the center in a straight line.

American Rail

2009-01-09T15:41:00.000-08:00

Shortly after my 21st birthday I purchased an Amtrak ticket to Denver, packed up my bags, and headed off to meet a girl (now my wife). It was all very romantic, save for the hangover I carried along with me that early July morning. It was also very comfortable. I was in a nearly empty car, and there was lots of room to stretch out. I could sleep easily, and reading didn't make me sick to my stomach as it does in the back of a car. It was far, far more cozy than flying.

Besides, it was a better way to travel--by which I mean to actually experience the world around you whilst transporting yourself from one location to the next. Unless you find a way to drive the backroads of this country, you're confined to the Freeways--which are fast, barren alternatives. We don't really travel so much as transport on a Freeway. Planes are worse, but the only really fast way to cover such vast distances.

The train was a good choice for me. I didn't own a car and didn't have much money, certainly not enough to spend on a plane ticket. And besides, it sounded fun.

It was an eye-opener for a number of reasons. First, I saw a side of New Mexico I'd never seen before--the shanty-towns and dilapidation of that State were very apparent from the tracks. Second, I realized how limited the rail-network really was. In southern Colorado we disembarked and boarded a bus for Denver. The bus was much, much less comfortable, and far slower, too. Essentially, I enjoyed every moment of the trip up to the point I boarded that bus. From that point on, and to this day, I lamented the inadequacy of our country's rails.

I'll say this, if I could take the train to Phoenix instead of drive, I would. If I had the option to travel by light-rail across country instead of fly, I would. Now it takes too long, with too much out-of-route involved. It's several days from the West Coast to the East by train, partly because the tracks are not direct (we simply don't have enough rail) and partly because the trains are not as fast as we know they could be. Europe sports trains that speed across the country at 120 miles per hour--some upwards of 200 mph. This is far faster than your typical Amtrak train.

So when I stumbled across Yglesias today, basically asking the obvious question (why is there no plan to expand rail in the Obama stimulus), I had to remark on it. First of all, here is Yglesias on the potentiality of a rail stimulus:

Like Special Agent Mulder, I want to believe in this. In particular, I do believe that it would be a good idea to make these kind of investments. But I also know that many people hear about the idea of spending $40 billion in California and $32 billion in the Northeast and maybe comparable amounts to build HSR systems in Florida and the rust belt and they start to blanche. So now that all of a sudden there’s broad political consensus in favor of adding a few hundred billion dollars to the deficit, I really want to put my hand up and say “hey! look over here! some productive infrastructure investments we should make!”

I want to believe, too. Read the rest of Yglesias's post, because he's absolutely right about this. Rail could do so much for this country--it's green, it's a long-term investment in infrastructure that basically is exactly the kind of thing Government should be involved in, and in creates American jobs, and lots of them.

There is huge potential not only for economic stimulus, but for a revolution in tranpsortation that may not only be good for America, but also necessary as gas prices will inevitably rise again in the near future. Also, as I've said before, I think mass-transit can actually be a positive force for community building. It's just one more way to be close to our neighbors--forced into proximity, as it were, in a world that does its best to keep us detached.

War between democracies?

2009-01-09T14:47:00.000-08:00

Does this current conflict count as a war between democracies?

One could also argue that both World Wars had democratic elements to them. After all Germany was a democracy, if an extraordinarily imperfect one, as were the Allied nations. The First World War is a tougher sell, but even so, democratization had occurred to such a point that the war and war effort became almost populist--a dangerous development especially in regards to war and peace.

In any case, to my mind, while democracy is the worst option save for all the others, it is utterly useless without the rule of law, and similarly it is ineffectual at best, and likely temporary, without, as Havers puts it, "the triumph of western liberalism, or the reasonable toleration of minorities within a majoritarian democracy."

This is one of the huge flaws in the philosophy of democracy spreading. It's one thing to spread the ability to vote, but quite another to ensure elections are fair; quite another to ensure that a majority population doesn't just use their democratic advantage to extinguish all opposition.

Our understanding of democracy is flawed because we exist within it--not as outside observers. We exist within a functioning democratic society wherein the rule of law still, for the most part, holds fast. We have not used our powers of empathy enough when considering just how alien democracy must seem to inhabitants of the Middle East--or how opportunistic people in positions of power can be, and what a weapon anarchistic democracy can be. And that's what it is prior to the rule of law, security, etc. It is anarchistic, essentially a ballot box and a void. And as with all voids, something has to fill it--so you see this happening with fledgling democracies. They quickly become totalitarian States, or are overrun by militants or terrorists or authoritarian religious groups.

Remember, unlike our Founding Fathers, the Iraqis and the Palestinians did not have the Magna Carta in their history, nor Parliament, nor a sense even of "taxation without representation" and so had not fostered similar minds or mind-frames as our Founders were blessed with--who saw democracy as a dangerous thing that must be checked and balanced, tended to like a fire and just as deadly and intangible, with great power to do good or ill.

The fact is, democracy settled into American history organically. It was the natural conclusion to centuries of European political evolution and the geographical and technological realities of the day. Such is not the case, not even marginally, in the Middle East.

And so we see two democracies at war. One is that hollow version of democracy, that cheap generic "exported" variety that America thinks can be foisted on all the underdeveloped nations of the world, true. The other is a young, embattled democracy with great potential and great divisions. But they are both democracies, and it does appear that they are at war...

more Palestine geography

2009-01-09T12:21:00.001-08:00

I've been writing about the geography of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and have a longer format essay in the works on this question, when I moments ago stop by The Dish and found this gem.

So the settlements appear less like Islands and more like cracks in a windshield, or the burrowed mines of ants. Either way, I imagine settling there is claustrophobic. This certainly illustrates just how difficult it would be for Israel to actually un-settle the West Bank, and similarly how difficult a two-state solution really is.

Videos of the IDF

2009-01-09T11:53:00.001-08:00

No, not as interesting as Videos of the Girls of the IDF (it's out there somewhere, and I think in calendar format too) but still pretty informative.

via James Poulos

Movement conservatism

2009-01-09T09:50:00.000-08:00

Mark Thompson sums up what he and I and Alex Massie and others have been saying about movement conservatives.

To catch everyone up on this, Mark has posted here and here on the subject (which has lead him to the term "talk radio dogmatism") stating that the GOP's problems

have not been caused by religious conservatives or adherence to free market beliefs, but instead by a sort of "talk radio" dogmatism in which any given issue becomes a litmus test for whether one is a "true" conservative or Republican.

Which is absolutely true, and essentially what I mean when I describe mainstream conservatives as "shrill" or "brash" and similarly when I complain that conservatives are rarely "conservative in disposition" anymore, but in talking points only. Which leads to my term "talking-points-conservatism." (we might also discuss "talking-heads conservatism")

You see, the problem doesn't necessarily arise due to differences in ideology, but rather the difference in approach. I may differ with Mark on the value of free markets or public education, or with others on the merits of defense spending etc. but the real crux of the problem seems to be that if one strays outside the accepted dogma, or talking-points, one is immediately labeled a closet-liberal, a protectionist, or a heathen. At one point Mark mentioned that Culture11 is part of the de-malkinization of conservatism (or the GOP, I can't recall), and I think this is also a good observation, as Malkin is the embodiment of talking points conservatism, and joins the ranks of Hugh Hewitt and Rush Limbaugh as the vanguard of talk radio dogmatists.

So what are these talking points which make up Conservatism 2.0? From whence does this litmus test arise?

Enter Alex Massie with his "Cult of the Idea of Reagan."

In that sense, then. the troubles of Republicanism now and of the Tories in the last 15 years, were built upon their previous successes. The difficulty is that the second (or third) generation is rarely as talented or adaptable as the trailblazers who won power in the first place. Instead of finding fresh ideas and solutions, they inherit positions and prejudices that, because they worked once before, are assumed to be eternal truths rather than particular answers to particular problems at a particular time.
And because they're seen as eternal truths, any deviation from them is grounds for heresy.

So here we have the framework of modern conservatism, with its foundational dogma stemming from the early 80's and anyone who strays outside of its ideological borders labeled heretics. My forays into the problems I see with supply-side economics are enough to ostracize me from many circles. I stress again, though, it is not so much the difference in ideology but in disposition and approach that causes this to be a problem.

Mark sums up the three terms we've come up with:

For what it's worth, I think of the three phrases to describe the problem, my "talk radio dogmatism" is the catchiest but probably least accurately captures the problem. Massie's "Cult of the Idea of Reagan" is probably the most accurate, but also the most verbose. E.D.'s "talking points conservatism" pretty much splits the difference.

I would suggest again reading Austin Bramwell's "The Right to Remain Silent" as it touches on the value (or lack thereof) in being part of "the movement." The trouble, of course, is that the movement is so much more influential on the face of things than the few independently minded conservatives out there, who choose to evaluate the world through lenses other than Reagan conservatism.

Essentially the side-effect of all of this is not only hyper-partisanship, but also to stagnation within conservatism, and a dearth of new ideas and creative thinking. It leads to a great number of supposedly intelligent people spending a great deal of time with their heads in the proverbial sand, chanting "Drill baby drill" or other such one-dimensional, quadra-syllabic intonations. It leads to the choice of Joe the Plumber not simply as Presidential mascot, but as war-reporter.

In the end, really, it leads absolutely nowhere. We become lost in the echo chamber.

UPDATE: Now I've begun pondering Mark's summation in a different manner. I think that the three terms we're using are not so much interchangeable as they are inter-functional. "Talk radio dogmatism" describes, in a sense, the sort of belief-structure that makes up modern movement conservatism (as dogmatic and shallow); "talking-point conservatism" describes the function or modus operandi of this belief structure; and "The Cult of the Idea of Reagan" provides the framework and historical basis for the belief-structure, and helps explain how the ghost of (the idea of) Reagan still haunts us (regardless of the man's obvious contributions to American politics).

I'd add that 24-media-exposure plays its part as well, but that's another story altogether.

Silly Democrats, tricks are for....

2009-01-09T07:53:00.000-08:00

Funny. Looks like the Democrats are taking my advice. Meanwhile USA Today has this emotional rant on the matter, citing the "American people" as one demographic that "gets it"...

The American public surely gets this: A majority in a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll say Burris should be blocked from joining the Senate and Illinois should hold a special election.

Yes, the reliable masses. Surely they can interpret the laws for us...

On settlers etc.

2009-01-08T15:50:00.001-08:00

Max responds to my confusion over the intent of settlers. There are extremist settlers, most certainly, but...

settlers are also Israelis of no particular ideological bent, who bought homes in settlements because they worked low-paying jobs, and couldn't afford to live in a city. These people live in places like Gilo and Har Homa, well-established communities whose crimes, while still very relevant to the future of a Palestinian state, are now 30 or 40 years in the past. Enough time, in other words, so that we must now grapple with the idea of second-generation settlers, guilty of nothing more than being born in the wrong place. These people deserve to be resettled fairly, and it should be the duty of Israel and the international community to look out for them just as carefully as we will look out for Palestinian refugees who have to be resettled outside of Israel.

This is a good point, and I know this has been faced on a smaller scale with the Gaza withdrawal, where certainly second (and third?) generation settlers were being removed from their homes, often to massive protests. The West Bank would surely be more difficult.

I like Max's take on the Israel question--and value it especially since he's there, in Israel, and leveling this message at Americans:

"We've been trying to tell the American electorate all along that there are better ways to be a friend to Israel than to give it a blank check and a license to kill -- but nobody listens until there's more blood in the street."

In regards to the impossible contradiction of West Bank settlements and a Palestinian State, Max agrees, and also notes that:

"maintaining such a contradiction has been in the interest of Israeli politicians for many years now, in no small part because of the United States' simplistic, dumb support of this little country."

I think it's good to hear this sort of thing coming out of Israel. And one wonders at the fact that if, as Max states, the Israeli moderates have been humming this tune now for years, why the American public seem so deaf to the message (and I've no doubt that's exactly what moderates have been saying for years, either...). It's possible that the so-called pro-Israel hard-liners are successful because there actually is and has been a very vocal anti-Semitic element to this debate, and they are able to crowd out honest critics of Israeli policy by playing the bigot card.

But I've seen where this sort of "blank check" leads and it tends to be in circles. Bloody circles, endless violence, and heaps and heaps of denial on both sides of the debate.

Just take a step back and read some posts from hard-liners on either side. One thing you won't find is empathy, and another is nuance. I'm afraid those qualities plus a whole lot of creative thinking are going to be necessary to solve this mess.

Oh, and another thing Max mentions in the post is that Israeli moderates are by and large realists when it comes to foreign affairs. In this age of rash neo-imperialism (global trade backed by military might and a rush to lay claim to energy resources) we need all the realists we can get.

Americans need to start supporting Israel the way they would their own country--by asking the tough questions, and demanding a higher level of accountability and common sense. It's our business because it has to be. It's been our business for decades now. Real live people on both sides of this conflict rely on a balanced broker in the US, and it's time they had one.

Oh, and further reading on the subject: Richard Spencer thinks this incursion into Gaza is A Damned Foolish Thing:

When Israel invaded Lebanon two and half years ago, the campaign was, by all conventional measures of military matters, a resounding success. The only problem was that Israel was fighting an asymmetric war—that is, an established nation-state (think F-14 firing missiles) was taking on an amorphous, state-like social charity and terrorism organization (think screaming poor person with a grenade launcher). The funny thing about this kind of conflict is that the little guy usually wins by losing, and the big guy is usually ruined by his success. On CNN International, Israel looked like a horrible monster, and on the proverbial “Arab street,” Hezbollah got cred for standing up to the “Zionist entity.” Hamas, which at the moment is much smaller and less well organized than Hezbollah, will undoubtedly benefit greatly from losing a war to Israel and will soon be rewarded with an enlarged donor base, new recruits, and a reputation for toughness. Getting attacked by the Israelis is good for organization branding.

I recall Max (and others) writing on how this was a push to gain enough security capabilities to actually re-establish pre-1967 borders. Hard to say, but I suppose this is a possibility. Then again, isn't it rather like the cart before the horse?

Valkyrie

2009-01-08T12:37:00.000-08:00

I really liked Valkyrie. My wife and I went to it knowing it had gotten hit hard by the critics. We always tell ourselves not to put too much faith in the critics, and then find that we spend too much time on Rotten Tomatoes before picking out the next film expedition.

But we also noticed that the unifying complaint was over Tom Cruise--who is just about the easiest target in Hollywood these days. And if there's one thing you can say about Tom Cruise, it's that you know what to expect (except in Tropic Thunder...).

You get Tom Cruise. He's no Robert Duvall, but he plays Tom Cruise well. He has a certain force of personality. And for Valkyrie, that force works.

In any case, don't read the reviews for this film. Just read this review. It is exactly, perfectly accurate, and I can't say it any better. Just a sampling:

These critics are missing the larger meaning in the film - all of it is taken from history. When Kenneth Branagh’s General von Tresckow says, “God promised Abraham that he would not destroy Sodom if he could find ten righteous men… I have a feeling that for Germany it may come down to one,” it does not sound odd or out of place in the film. It is a statement of deep value. The real von Tresckow said, “The assassination must be attempted at all costs. Even if it should not succeed, an attempt to seize power in Berlin must be made. What matters now is no longer the practical purpose of the coup, but to prove to the world and for the records of history that the men of the resistance dared to take the decisive step. Compared to this objective, nothing else is of consequence.” No wonder that after von Tresckow committed suicide, making it look like a partisan attack to save others, the SS dug up his body and had it cremated.

Perhaps movie critics have become so jaded - and who wouldn’t become jaded after being bombarded by all the garbage Hollywood produces - that they have largely become unable to judge the films they are charged with reviewing. Or, perhaps the critics pay too much attention to the non-stop coverage of the Hollywood elite whom they think they know and often loathe as a result. I can’t admit to knowing much at all about actors or their personal lives. If, however, an actor makes a pronouncement about public policy, I do pay attention - long enough to scoff - unless, of course, the actor was someone like Jon Voight or Gary Sinise. This might explain the critics’ rush to dump on Cruise and Valkyrie. Cruise appears to be Hollywood’s equivalent to the kid who got picked on on the playground. He is an easy target. But without Cruise and the money from his United Artists studio, Valkyrie never would have been made in today’s largely shallow and inane Hollywood pool.

It's a chilling film, and a stirring one. Watching German soldiers round up SS officers and almost, just almost effect a coup against Hitler is really a bitter-sweet experience, and well worth the price of admission...

geography and fear

2009-01-08T11:53:00.001-08:00

I keep thinking about this Israel/Palestine conflict in terms of geography. I think there's something here that goes beyond religion or nationalism and gets stopped up on something far more rudimentary--earth and water and the distances between places...

Max writes:

On the first day of the war, there were a few violent protests, not only in the territory but also East Jerusalem and the Old City. But I'm told that they fizzled quickly, and after eating lunch at my favorite place in the Muslim Quarter a few days back, I'm confident in that assessment.

That news is striking in and of itself, but it becomes downright portentous when you recall that, not a week ago, top Hamas officials were calling on West Bank Palestinians to initiate a third intifada. The proclamation alone was enough to send a collective chill through Jerusalem. (I began standing a few extra feet away from fellow bus and taxi travelers, to protect against stabbing. A friend confessed to me that she had gotten herself so worked up that she actually got off a city bus four or five stops early.)

Now not to dodge the point of his post, but I'd like to spend a minute remarking on the nature of geography and fear. Max notes that as a resident of Jerusalem, he's basically surrounded on three sides by the West Bank. Essentially, he lives in an Israeli peninsula that juts out into hostile territory, all of which brings me to the question of West Bank settlements and their unique geographical conundrum. See the map below:

What strikes me about this map is that Max notes the fear of Jerusalem residents who are surrounded on three sides by Palestinians. Settlers in the West Bank are literally dry-land islanders. They are totally cut-off from Israel proper.

How must they feel when calls are made for a West Bank intifada? I can't imagine, but judging by Max's description of Jerusalem reactions, I think the feeling must be fear. So I have trouble understanding the point behind settling the West Bank at all. I can try to relate it to my own ancestors' sense of manifest destiny but I think it comes up short. For one, the American West represented limitless possibilities, new freedoms, cheap land. I don't think that the West Bank represents all of that. I assume much of the motivation is religious--a sense of historical rights or obligations.

Still, it doesn't strike me as practical, or even really sustainable. It seems to me that the settlements really do make a two-state solution impossible. I simply can't reconcile the existence of two-states and settlements.

The alternatives to a two-state solution are both one state solutions. Either one mixed state, or one Jewish state and a whole lot more Arab expulsions to....where?

So maybe someone who understands this better than me can explain the point of having all these islands in the West Bank, and how they can ever do anything but prevent a real, lasting peace. Is it a matter of limited space for Israelis? Can't that be solved in other ways? Through innovative urban development? Israel is renowned for its technological and scientific savvy. I believe that the Israelis can come up with a brilliant solution to almost any problem out there if they want to badly enough. Their brilliance, though, comes up short when it comes to settlements. So far the policy has been stubborn and short-sighted.

The things we are proud of...

2009-01-08T11:37:00.000-08:00

My nineteen-month-old did this all by herself, which on first viewing may not seem like much. But really, when you think of how their minds develop, how she has gone from almost no cognizance of the world around her, to ordering these cups along the floor, it's amazing. It's stunning, really. She hasn't even been around for two years yet, and already she can count to nine...she can become absorbed in a book...

I am in constant awe. That is one of the gifts we receive as parents. Constant, unabashed wonder. It is the gift of another childhood, in a sense. The gift of re-birth...

America First with Caveats - Becoming an Owl

2009-01-08T10:41:00.000-08:00

The funny thing about my political writing is that it has been, from the beginning, very public. And it's gotten better over time, which is good, and bloggier, too. You learn the tricks. The pacing. All that.

But I've also found that I have gone through sea changes in terms of my politics--largely due to the constant writing, reading, and self-evaluation that this process entails.

Early 2008 I was staunchly behind Israel, all my talking points came from an almost neoconservative perspective. I truly believed in the force of good America could provide through humanitarian intervention, and truly felt that getting out of Iraq (a war I have always opposed) would be a tragedy for the Iraqi people.

But I've had huge awakenings on all these fronts. For one, I've learned that simply "supporting" Israel is not enough. To truly support our ally, we need to be critical. I still can't stand half the online attacks on Israel, the calls for the expulsion of the Jews, etc. etc. But that really is a symptom of the online format. All the lunatics with a PC and a keyboard can make their nutty views known loud and clear. It doesn't reflect the larger debate.

Fortunately I've moved beyond much of the brash, naive blogging that goes on in the intense Israel/US vs. Terrorists blogging circles. The whole "axis of evil" mentality never sat well with me, and as soon as I began to realize that much of what I perceived was only that--a perception, not reality--I began to back off my presuppositions and sit back, and listen carefully.

One might say, I moved from Dove to Hawk to Owl, and I believe Owl is where I will remain. For one, I'm not so sure as Freddie deBoer or Daniel Larison that there is never a time for intervention. Maybe they are few and far between, and certainly taking a neo-realist approach to foreign policy--call it "America First with Caveats"--especially in this age of turmoil, seems to be sensible and not so much cold as practical and wise. But there are just wars. There is a time for aiding our allies or the weak. We just have to be extremely cautious, and conservative, about when we make that choice. I have come to the point that I believe that choice should be almost never, and that yes, it should be grounded in our self-interest in some way. I certainly no longer support democracy promotion, as I have seen its effects with clarity in Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan--realms unfit for democracy unless home-grown and organic. The rule of law must precede the implementation of democracy; and the rule of law must have time to take root. A long time.

On domestic policy I've moved away from what I call the "talking-points conservatives" most of whom espouse free trade at all costs, tend toward a brazen form of debate, and shoot first, asking questions later (too late, too often). They are not so much conservative in disposition or temperament, but follow all the talking points (and heads) with careful precision. And they're rarely very interesting to argue with, so entrenched in their ideologies.

Paul Gottfried might sneeringly refer to them as "neocons" but I think that is a mis-generalization. I think TPC's works better.

I've moved into other circles, reading more of Daniel Larison and The American Conservative, finding myself at odds with some of it and agreement with some. I frequent Takimag and Culture11, read Andrew Sullivan and Ross Douthat, and numerous other thoughtful blogs with numerous viewpoints but one thing in common--they are all interesting, and present challenging opinions that don't necessarily represent the mainstream or "movement."

So the point I was getting at is that if I were to go back through all this public writing of mine I would find myself debating myself. Either that shows that I'm fickle or open-minded or both. I just think the truth is hard to pin down. Economics, foreign affairs, diplomacy, monetary policy--all of this is frought with nuance and consequence that this lone blogger can't possibly understand fully.

Honestly, look at all the brilliant economists out there disagreeing on this current recession. They're all far more informed than me on the subject. How am I supposed to make up my mind? I can read two totally opposing essays on the bailout and come away from both shaking my head, thinking "these both make sense." How can this be?

How can people become so partisan, when so little in politics is coherent or certain? I know that maintaining a conservative disposition is a valuable skill, and essential to the utilization of wisdom in politics. Beyond that, I want to know more. I want to question all these talking-points and haphazard ideological positions, and dig through the dirt of it all. I want constant revelation of my own intellectual fallibility.

The more I know, the less I know.

UPDATE: John Schwenkler from Upturned Earth leads us to Alex Massie discussing how "movement conservatives" have circled the wagons around the Cult of Reagan...

"But the Cult of Reagan actually helps explain the mess the Republican movement finds itself in. It used to be that it was the left that specialised in writing dissenters out of the movement; these days, in America at least, that's become a conservative trait. The RNC debate was illuminating in this respect: in addition to passing the Reagan litmus tests candidates were asked how many guns they own. And that was more or less it. Tick those boxes and you're a proper Republican; waver on either question and you're subject to suspicion."

This is exactly what I mean about Talking-Points-Conservatives. Read the rest to see what I'm getting at here...and for a bit more depth on the matter, read this as well...

Warren Harding Redeemed?

2009-01-08T07:59:00.001-08:00

I've been wrestling lately with the concept of "free trade" vs. protectionism. Read Tom Piatak on President Harding:

Jin Powell of the Cato Institute has an interesting article at NRO arguing that Warren Harding, not FDR, has the best record of any president in leading the country out of a serious economic downturn. Harding inherited from Wilson an economy that had shrunk 24% from 1920 to 1921, as well as a federal debt that had grown nearly 25 times from 1916 to 1919. Harding reduced income taxes, reduced federal spending, and led the country to its lowest level of peacetime unemployment ever, 1.8% in 1926. Mentioned only in passing by Powell is the fact that Harding “supported tariffs.” In fact, Harding signed the Fordney-McCumber tariff, which doubled the average tariff rate to 38%. In asking Congress to raise tariffs, Harding stated, “I believe in the protection of American industry . . .it is our purpose to prosper America first.” It is thus clear that a high tariff is perfectly consistent with smaller government and strong economic growth, and Americans looking to Harding’s policies for guidance today should not overlook his administration’s trade policy.

This basically aligns with what I've been thinking lately. There is a damn good reason to protect American industry. It protects American jobs, keeps more Americans in a decent position to be good consumers, and keeps the profits and means of production in the USA.

I plan on expanding on this more later. For now, I thought Tom's little history lesson was an eye-opener.

Of course, what brought the Harding era to an end was bad finance, trading on borrowed money, and the eventual crash...but none of that is due to tariff policy.

My article at Culture11

2009-01-07T10:07:00.000-08:00

Okay, so it may not be the subject of my passion, or the usual sort of writing I do, but I put together an op/ed piece and got it published at the fantastic Culture11...

You can read and comment on it here.

Thanks!

UPDATE: I think I'd like to add how appreciative I am of Conor and James and Joe and the rest of the editors and staff at Culture11, not only for letting me join in the conversation there, but also for creating such a wonderful forum in which to have the conversation. It's a breath of fresh air on the internet (a rare thing, indeed). I think others will back me up on this....

Is Freddie finished?

2009-01-07T08:36:00.000-08:00

It looks that way.

Has anyone started a petition?

Hamas Should Stop...But Probably Won't

2009-01-07T08:02:00.000-08:00

Mark Thompson responds and expands on this.

I had stated that "in the case of Hamas, while I would not presume to know their every intent, I would say that the continued firing of rockets into Israel, instead of meeting Israel's soldiers in combat alone, shows that they are not soldiers, but terrorists, intent upon provoking this sort of reaction from Israel."

Mark goes on to explain the intent in terms of perception of victory over Israel. In sum:

The fact is that Hamas is fully aware it is severely outgunned by Israel both in terms of manpower and in terms of weaponry. Thus, it has no possibility, ultimately, of winning a military victory over Israel - a fact of which they are most certainly aware. However, it can nonetheless legitimately declare victory if the Israelis are unable to achieve that which they nominally set out to achieve - which is in large part the cessation of the rocket attacks. So as long as Israel is unable, by sheer force, to put an end to the rocket attacks, Hamas will appear the victor to its constituents, as well as to its supporters in the rest of the Middle East and South Asia. Meanwhile, the continued rocket attacks don't have too much of an effect on international opinion because they are rather ineffective at actually killing people - this guarantees that the casualty figures for Israeli civilians will continue to dwarf the casualty figures for Palestinian civilians.

I honestly have very little to add. It's a spot-on analysis of the situation, and I really am still left wondering why Israel took the bait. Do they honestly think they will be able to end the rocket attacks? Do you think they have the resolve or political will to carry this mission out to the end?

I'm the consummate skeptic on this matter. Israeli resolve is almost an oxymoron.

For more on the subject of Palestinian intent, read the rest of Mark's post, and then head over to Chris Dierkes's latest at Culture11. A gloomy sample:

Even were Israel to break Gaza's government, Hamas will continue to have its social agencies, its shadow government of loyalty on the street, and its paramilitary. Any alternate government (a reinstalled Fatah?) imposed in the aftermath of an Israeli invasion will lack legitimacy. How could it not? A Hamas ejected from power might actually become more powerful, gaining greater standing in the eyes of the populace. No matter the end result — short of complete annihilation — Hamas will declare victory. If even one Hamas member remains left standing as the Israelis pull out, the banner of victorious resistance will be raised and new recruits will flock to the movement.

I'm not entirely in agreement, but only because I'm not entirely sure about anything in this current conflict. As I'm wont to say, "The more I know, the less I know" and so I keep trying to dig up as much information on the matter as I can.

The more I know, the less I know...

On potted plants, etc.

2009-01-07T07:40:00.000-08:00

von, at Obsidian Wings, really, really, really doesn't like Burris. Apparently Burris, as Attorney General, executed an innocent man...

Despite the recommendations of his top prosecutor. Despite the press reports -- which you, dear reader, should Google in detail. Despite the evidence. Despite, daresay, the truth.
There is no polite way to put this: Burris is a f_cking potted plant. At best. There are moments in your life when you can make a decision. It's rare and it can definitely sneak up on you. A mistake or two can surely be forgiven -- but some cannot.

And so von believes that Burris, due to his horrible, unforgivable (and I agree, it's pretty unforgivable) mistake should not be seated in the Senate.

Which strikes me as an emotional argument that holds nothing but emotional water. I could go searching for a legal precedent, something that shows that people with mistakes in their past are disqualified from receiving Senate appointments, but I doubt I'd find anything.

This sort of mistake is exactly the sort of thing that would get people (like me) to not vote for Roland Burris, but it's not a legal barrier to his appointment, which is really all that matters, isn't it? Not emotional response. Burris passes the basic litmus test. He's competent enough. He's been appointed by the scumbag governor of Illinois. In two years, the good people of Illinois can take matters once again into their own hands (unless we repeal the 17th amendment by then, which is just a little personal pipe dream) and vote the "potted plant" Senator out of office.

And good riddance. But until then, we need to be on the side of the law, however hard a pill it is to swallow.

Also at Obsidian Wings, publius is annoyed with Burris's arrival at the Senate , and the ensuing circus show:

It's one thing to accept an appointment and fight for it -- Senate seats ain't easy to come by. But it's quite another to actually show up on Day 1 and intentionally create a media frenzy and sideshow on a day that needs to be devoted to gathering momentum for a potentially historic legislative agenda. Instead of allowing the media to report on that, Burris's antics ensured that he'll be the story of the day.

Hey, I thought the move was smart. And besides, the media will still report on everything else. This was just a little publicity stunt by an obviously savvy politician.

And I don't much like Blago or Burris but I am going to keep saying that until someone shows me what law has been broken, what guilt has been proved, then I have no choice ethically but to back Burris's claim to the Senate.

So...

Viva Che! Glorifying "Idealist" Murderers

2009-01-06T09:21:00.001-08:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Ericka Anderson has some comments on the late Che Guevera--a cold-blooded revolutionary who signed thousands of death warrants for his political opponents in order to oppose imperialism. Women and children were some of the victims of Che's idealism.

Which reminds me of this post on the Cuban hero.

In any case, this is just another illustration of how out-of-touch with history so many people are, especially in Hollywood, but also in the wider culture. How many Che t-shirts did you see paraded about on your college campus? I guess a Bob Marley shirt seems adequate to me.

People Would Buy Them...

2009-01-06T09:20:00.001-08:00

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

via Peter Suderman

Hamas Should Stop

2009-01-06T07:26:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about this on the way to work. Hamas is under an all-out Israeli attack. Israel is moving into the denser urban areas, taking out Hamas targets as they go. They're leveling buildings with massive air strikes...

...and Hamas is retaliating by lobbing more rockets into Israeli towns. They're spending time, men, and ammunition firing at women and children rather than at the soldiers at their doorstep.

Freddie has a good post about intentionality up at his blog. He writes, somewhat glibly, that the

intent of countries is never uniform, is unknowable, and ultimately can't be a panacea against culpability for acts of aggression, or we lose any meaningful ability to judge the behavior of nations. Intentionality, also, becomes a maneuver used to absolve our country or preferred states from sin, and it again rests on pure assertion: the United States and its favored nations never intend to kill civilians, while the antagonists of the United States always do.

I understand and agree that we cannot know every intention of every actor on the world stage, let alone in our own office building or home. Freddie goes on to use Georgia and Russia as examples and I think these are fair examples. I have long wondered what the hell Georgia was thinking, and understand Russia's reaction whether or not I agreed with it.

However, in the case of Hamas, while I would not presume to know their every intent, I would say that the continued firing of rockets into Israel, instead of meeting Israel's soldiers in combat alone, shows that they are not soldiers, but terrorists, intent upon provoking this sort of reaction from Israel.

And, of course, Israel took the bait.

Marc Ash, at truthout, writes

There is a false and misguided notion that the rocket attacks or other random acts of violence are not really that significant to Israeli citizens. Nothing could be farther from the truth. These attacks, all attacks, on Israeli targets, both military and civilian, are viewed by the Israelis in the most serious light....

Hamas's current strategy of firing rockets into southern Israel is not just "fighting back" against an oppressor; it is a step that Hamas knew full well would provoke a major Israeli military response. This plays in turn to the interests of the Israeli right wing.
Israel can be moved to a cease-fire, but never with Hamas rockets incoming.

This seems like an obvious conclusion, but one wonders if it is practical. Israel has to decide what's best for it now that it has bumbled into Gaza, regardless of the cessation of rocket-fire. While that would be a good move by Hamas, it probably won't be taken in good faith, given their track record.

However, it might give the moderates in Israel more of a chance, and give a blow to the hawks and further enable some dismantling of settlements, an obvious necessity if we're ever going to achieve peace in the region.

Geography and borders

2009-01-05T14:36:00.000-08:00

It's extraordinary to me every time I look at a map of Israel/Gaza/Palestine. So much of the problem in this conflict seems to be mere geography. I wonder, had the partition worked out differently, had the borders been drawn in some other manner--say North and South, with Jerusalem, of course, at the epicenter (or perhaps East and West...) would this conflict have gone differently? It certainly seems that having only one region (say, just the West Bank, no Gaza) to worry about would have been much simpler. The current version of the partition is not the same as the several proposed initially (which the Arabs refused) though I am in no position to claim they may have worked any better.

But just envision your own State, and now imagine cutting it up in the fashion Israel is divided. How would this work? It seems enormously difficult...

Then, too, there was the land seized when Israel became a State, changing even the final UN plan:

And of course post-1967 we have basically the same geography as today, minus the Sinai which Israel gave back to Egypt in exchange for peace.

Another important point to make about the above maps. After 1949 Palestine didn't come into being merely because Israel seized the purple areas. Egypt seized Gaza and Jordan took the West Bank. Palestine didn't exist because of Arab intervention, not Jewish. Israel didn't take those lands for almost twenty more years--and once again, it was provoked by Egypt and Jordan.

Still, the ball is now in Israel's court.

Strengthening marriage

2009-01-05T14:01:00.000-08:00

Andrew responds to Larison's response to Conor. (Yes, there's a lot of responding going on out there. You can also read a pretty good post by Joe Carter on this, also a response to Conor, which Scott responds to here). In any case, here's Sullivan:

I think allowing gay couples to marry does strengthen the institution, because it ensures that everyone in a family has access to the same civil rites and rights, and so the heterosexual marriages are as affirmed as effectively as the gay ones. (It is not my experience that the straight siblings and families of gay people feel their marriages affirmed by excluding some of their own.) By removing the incentive for gay people to enter into false straight marriages, which often end in divorce or collapse, wrecked childhoods and betrayed spouses, heterosexual marriage is also strengthened. And the practical alternative to marriage equality - civil unions for straights and gays - presents a marriage-lite option for everyone that clearly does threaten traditional marriage in a way that gay marriage never could.

This is a good take on the subject, and quite close to my own, though I would also advocate stricter divorce laws and other mechanisms to increase marriage success rates. I would also argue that any conservative who has the time to argue endlessly against gay marriage probably ought to be spending that time finding ways to save marriage in general--the culture at present is drifting toward marriage failure. Gay marriage likely won't help or hinder that, so long as our society at large, including not only divorce laws, but also cultural attitudes toward marriage and commitment, remains as shallow and hedonistic as it is now.

This is greatly inflamed by the media, which glorifies sex and scoffs at commitment. There's no good way to change this, as we have a lovely little thing in our country known as free speech. However, as I've argued before, redesigning our communities to be more family friendly, walkable, and connected and then localizing and re-valuing our community institutions that teach our kids their values (like schools) could all go a long way toward creating a better value system in this country.

Where are we now, as a civilization? We have forgotten our history. We live between "anything goes" and "who cares?" in a sort of gluttonous apathy, fueled by disconnectedness from our larger family units and a love of materialism. We are not taught that it takes hard work to sustain a marriage. We are not taught that monogamy is natural, and while difficult, the far better approach to relationships. We may be told this, by our parents (so many of whom turn out to be hypocrites) or our pastors (also, lots of hypocrites there...my best friend in high school had a pastor for a dad, and his parents got divorced. In fact, out of all my old friends, my parents are almost the only couple still together...) But being told something and being taught something are not the same.

Without a larger community to fall back on and to be held accountable to, we become nihilistic and detached. I think Pearl S. Buck sums it up:

"The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people - no mere father and mother - as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself on in a wold of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born."

Do you see what I mean? We need a wider net. My mom comes from a family of eight siblings, and when I was younger I was constantly surrounded by family. We ended up moving (several times) and as I grew into those restless, rebellious years I had virtually no (extended) family to speak of.

Which led to a great deal of rebellion on my part, I think. It would have been harder to face all my uncles and aunts, cousins, grand parents, etc. than simply my parents. But I didn't have to. We'd cut ourselves off.

So as a society, as conservatives, the point should be finding ways to change the world to enforce family, connectivity, anti-materialism, and love. Gay marriage does no harm to any of these things. If anything, it strengthens society because it incorporates the non-mainstream into the mainstream. It helps settle people down.

More on this later...

The Queen

2009-01-05T11:37:00.000-08:00

a poem by E.D. Kain

Trumpets over glassy hillsides mourn;
The burning of gazettes and memories
Of Caesar’s fall; of heaving seas.
The jewels and lace, too pale to adorn

The Queen’s collarbone, her face
A paler shade of gray, of chalk.
Too brittle now, she rolls to walk
The slightest fall her coup de grace.

The sound of bells, she’s ripped awake
To shadows ball-room dancing on the wall.
His face reminds her of her life, that’s all,
In every frame and photograph she takes

Down from the pegs. In cabinets,
In drawers she leaves them flat.
Bins of water; saucers for the cats.
Wind catches every eve and bow in pirouettes,

While Fates drift silently from word to word
From death to death, from lips to air.
The people have all gone down to the fair;
They move about in miniature, like promises unheard.

Israel Gaza Cost Benefit Analysis

2009-01-05T08:50:00.000-08:00

Conor writes, in regards to Hamas and their daily bombardment of Israel:

Repeatedly firing rockets into populated areas hoping to kill as many Israelis as possible seems like a pretty intolerable provocation to me! Can anyone think of any country that wouldn’t consider it so?

It's true that this has been the question often raised by those advocating the strike (and I know Conor is very middle-ground on the whole thing, much as I am). The other side then complains of disproportionate warfare, civilian casualties etc. which are also all valid points.

In the end it seems to boil down to cause and effect, though.

The question really doesn’t seem to be whether or not Israel is rightfully prickled by these attacks, or whether the defense or even proportionality of response is “right” or not. The question ought to be limited to reaction and backlash. Does this operation have any chance at success? Will it lead to greater security, or heightened threat? Does it lead toward peace or away from it? Will the backlash be worth the effort?

Everything else is an argument of abstraction, bound up in immense controversy. However, sticking to cause and effect can at least bring us into the realm of logical speculation, sans emotion or bias.

It's sad to boil this down to a cost-benefit analysis, but that's the most realistic thing to do. Do the costs here outweigh the benefits? If so, what is the purpose of this attack? I think Peter Hitchens is right:

The operation’s real purpose is to improve the standing of two politicians, Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak, in impending elections. Nobody should die for such a motive.

I'm not even so sure the motive is important--it is the results that matter most at this point, and I fear that the results will be bad. This is a repetition of Lebanon in 2006. The Israelis do not have the resolve to finish this sort of mission. This will embolden Hamas, of course. The suffering will be most felt by innocent Palestinians, and innocent Israelis.

I'm not going to get into better alternatives in this post. There is no easy way through this mess, of course. I hope I'm wrong.

Stalingrad - a Villanelle

2009-01-02T20:03:00.000-08:00

by E.D. Kain

A girl in grey, a boy in soldier red;
the dust of summer blurred to winter snow.
The two in pirouettes, the lovely dead.

A star of scarlet rests upon his head.
A sepulcher for children dug below.
A girl in grey, a boy in soldier red.

They marched like toys beneath a child’s bed,
And fell like boys all strung out in a row.
The two in pirouettes, the lovely dead.

They gathered men and boys alike and wed
their wintry eyes with bullets to the snow.
A girl in grey, a boy in soldier red.

She barely slept, though winter was in threads,
and summer woke to darkened streets of crows.
The two in pirouettes, the lovely dead.

The guns like rapid drumbeats filled their heads,
The streets dyed crimson, almost seemed to glow.
A girl in grey, a boy in soldier red.
The two in pirouettes, the lovely dead.

A Better Option

2009-01-02T14:33:00.000-08:00

Daniel Larison disagrees with many in the "pro-Israel" camp (specifically Rod Dreher) who believe Israel is justified in the ongoing campaign against Hamas in Gaza because the Gazans voted for them, and thus deserve collective punishment (as though we are all responsible for George Bush's follies...) There are, Larison writes, other alternatives to all-out-war:

What else could the Israeli government have done? It could have lifted or ameliorated the siege, or better yet never imposed it. If we grant that cutting off Gaza was actually a blunder, remedying that blunder would be a first step. It is not certain that ending Gaza’s isolation would weaken Hamas, but its isolation has done nothing but strengthen Hamas’ position. Short of an extremely difficult and risky urban war aimed at destroying the organization entirely, which would cause massive dislocation and suffering, that seems the best means of weakening Hamas politically by forcing it to (mis)govern Gaza under relatively normal conditions. There will undoubtedly be a core of support for the group that will remain, but surely the political goal that Israel wants to reach is to have a majority of people in Gaza grow disillusioned with Hamas and to drive wedges between the group and most of the population.

I think this is very good advice, though I have one concern. If Hamas were to be pushed out, would it necessarily be Fatah who took their place? Or would Hamas 2.0 take over, much in the same way Hamas replaced Fatah?

The other possibility is that Hamas goes further mainstream, and actually does do a good enough job at actual governance--whereupon, can we expect a more radical element to simply replace them? Both options potentially lead to the same cyclical outcome, though that potentiality is not reason enough to dismiss Larison's argument.

Another outcome is Hamas becomes, over time, discredited and the two parties actually move toward reconciliation. In the current climate, reconciliation is impossible, and in fact has become less likely than ever. Hamas is responsible for provoking this response from Israel, but to invoke that argument is like saying of your younger sibling, "He hit me first!" and expecting that alone to be just cause or wisdom, or both...

Derbyshire v Stein

2009-01-02T09:36:00.000-08:00

Ben Stein has taken the 2008 Daily Dish Malkin Award (quite an honor) for this:

"When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you," - Ben Stein.

Stein's comment is taken from an excerpt of an interview with Paul Crouch Jr. which John Derbyshire brought to light at NRO. For more of Derbyshire's thoughts on Stein and his Intelligent Design documentary and overall distaste for science, read this piece.

Science, Derbyshire contends, is part of the great tradition and unique vitality of Western Civilization. I very much agree. And I agree that blaming pure science, or evolution in particular (Darwinism) on the Holocaust is nonsense--though evolution plays a part in eugenics, and in Nietzsche's "Übermensch" and thereby in the mechanics and philosophy of the Nazi Party. The question is whether Hitler and co. could have drawn the same philosophical conclusions without the foundation of Darwin's work. Would they still have tried to rid the German race of "impurities" and craft the ideal Arian people?

I imagine so. After all, humans were breeding dogs and horses long before Darwin and Mendel were born.

Eugenics just gave them harder science with which to spin their hatred--and technology gave them the ability to carry it out with unprecedented swiftness and efficiency. Derbyshire, whose own views on evolutionary development are quite controversial, has plenty of ground to dismiss Stein's statement as "shameful."

But I think we shouldn't dismiss Stein's overall thesis so quickly. While I disagree with it in tone and extremity, I find some real wisdom in this train of thought. Perhaps it is my background in science fiction that gives me such a mistrust of science and technology--and scientists whose work have political and human consequences, and deep moral implications. Derbyshire rightfully claims that science is one of Western Civilization's greatest achievements. But uncoupled with our other great achievements--Western ethics and Christianity, a sense of long-term consequence--science becomes bereft of guidance, a cold intellectual apparatus. All good science fiction warns of the dangers should science fall into the wrong hands. It is a weapon, after all, not merely a tool. Good sci-fi warns of a science that disrupts and usurps our other traditions,, a subtle coup. Huxley's Brave New World is a critique of both modern medicine and eugenics. 2001: A Space Odyssey brought about themes of intelligent machines that turn against humans--a recurring theme in the genre, before and since.

Science without ethics and morality, without a larger sense of civilization and history, becomes a cold and dangerous thing. It can easily be turned to such use as eugenics or human cloning or the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. Artificial Intelligence, despite its hypothetical consequences, is an emerging reality. The difference between medicine and poison is very slight, and the miracle cure lives only a block away from the super-virus.

So I do worry that in this current culture of materialism and excess, this empty-headed generation and its frivolity, with its lack of a sense of respect for Western civilization and tradition; the death of God and the commercialism of religion; the death of History; the leveling of all things, moral or otherwise; and the glorification of consumerism above all things--this dilapidation of society could very well lead us to a cold and immoral use of our science. This is the symptom of moving forward into history without a sense of where we have set out from.

Modern conservatism glorifies the free market and rampant individualism, while modern liberalism denies the value of our history as a civilization, "ready to abandon the work of centuries for sentimental qualms." Both have flaws and merits, but neither erects a blockade against the tyranny of abstract reason or cold, hard science in the hands of a dispassionate or malevolent power. Neither promises to keep the barbarians out--and as Derbyshire rightly notes, they are at the gates, or perhaps within them. Ben Stein has every right to worry.

Where he strays is to imply that the problem lies with the science, which is merely the tool--Raskolnikov's axe, as it were.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves...

A Sense of Proportion?

2009-01-01T07:18:00.000-08:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

quote of the day

2008-12-31T13:31:00.000-08:00

"Before we examine Conor’s response to Charen’s excellent and persuasive column, let’s state the obvious: there is no conservative case to be made for gay marriage. Gay marriage is one of the most radical changes to a social institution in the history of the world. Whether that is good or bad is debatable. What it is not, by any meaningful definition of the term, is conservative."

~Joe Carter

Well that sort of limits the terms of the debate, doesn't it? More on this later. For now I'm planning on enjoying my New Year.

more W.H. Auden - "stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone"

2008-12-30T20:40:00.000-08:00

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public
doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

more thoughts on public schools

2008-12-30T10:17:00.001-08:00

As a followup to my earlier "engine" post...

There are two huge problems with public schools that must somehow be remedied:

1) Lack of funding. The way we fund our schools, through property taxes, is wrong-headed to begin with. Then we under-fund them and complain when programs are cut, and students under-perform. With competition from Charters, etc. the funding issue becomes even more difficult. This has to be addressed.

2) Waste. Part and parcel with the funding issue is the amount of waste in many of our school districts. I was speaking recently with a life-long teacher from Oregon. In her neck of the woods there are several very small towns up and down the central coast of Oregon. They are within a handful of miles of one another. Once upon a time, one Superintendent managed all these little towns and villages, under one School District. Somehow, over the years, though population didn't increase much, they broke this one district up into several districts, and hired 6-figure income Supers for each one. So now you've got several districts, all paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in administrative costs--one must figure in all the other assistants and bureaucrats that go into running each of those districts.

Then they complain about funding problems--can't pay their teachers well, have to cut programs, etc. etc.

Now, this is not always the case. In my home town we do not have the same problems with waste, but we do with funding and competition. Charter schools have so bloodied the public schools that we are in fact shutting down an entire high school and moving its remaining population to the other two in town.

Still, from my days in high school to now, we've seen most art, theatre, and music programs cut completely. Even some history classes have been shut down. Athletic programs have grown smaller. I substitute taught at my old high school a while back, and the entire place had just changed--I'm not sure how to describe it. It hadn't been terribly long since I was there, but the atmosphere was different.

A new ubiquitous sort of apathy hung in the air. I think to myself--what would my high school experience have been like without the "unnecessary" programs? Without the theatre--yes, I was an actor then, and did my time on the stage--without the art classes? The extra stuff for bright or creative kids, or the technical stuff for the technically minded, etc. etc. etc.

I didn't need to go to private school then to get an amazing education--though I was a self-starter, and was quite good at occupying any down time with some activity or other. I know some kids need more direction than that, but surely an efficient, well-funded public school could achieve this...they have in the past.

Waste not, want not. First step seems to be, cut back waste--not art and theatre programs, but unnecessary administrators. Teacher pay isn't so huge an issue as some would think--but it is time we started, as a society, to start paying the respect teachers deserve. Finland is a good example of this, where teachers are paid a little better, but are considered professionals just like doctors or lawyers and so forth.

Then we need to do away with inequitable funding of public schools. If property taxes are the best way to fund, we should at least pool and evenly distribute those funds. And there should be transparency. The public should know if the bulk of their tax-dollars is going to pay some overpaid administrator, and that's why their little Picasso can't take art class anymore.

It's time for the system to be held accountable, for its own sake...

the engine of the republic

2008-12-29T22:00:00.000-08:00

The American tradition of public school is almost as old as the Union itself. The first major proponent of a strong public school system was Thomas Jefferson, who believed that in order for a Republic to function its populace must have at least a rudimentary education. The effect of a poorly educated populace would be poor choices at the voting booth—a fear of Jefferson's that, many would argue, despite our efforts at universal education, has already come to pass.

Over the years the public school system has changed and evolved with advances in science, politics, population and demographics. Basic subjects such as arithmetic and reading skills have broadened to include philosophy, art, theatre, and myriad different languages. One-room school houses have fallen by the wayside, replaced by gargantuan structures housing sometimes thousands of students.

Yet, for all the change, one thing has remained constant, and that is the public nature of the system itself. Private schools have existed alongside this system, and many have argued that these schools have done a better job educating their students, though this is debatable and difficult to prove. One thing is certain—as funding for public schools decreases, and waste in the system grows, students pay the price. Subject after subject is deemed “unnecessary” and classrooms become overcrowded.

The landscape of the American public school is changing once again, and this is probably for the best. Charter schools, magnet schools, and other innovations that seek to improve education and address the needs of individual students are becoming commonplace. The tradition of public schools in America has been one of continuous improvement. It has been a struggle, and yet modern public opinion has shifted to such a degree that many people no longer believe the outcome is worth the effort.

A debate has re-emerged recently over the notion of how to best resolve what is increasingly seen as the dilapidation of the American public education effort. The debate has been parceled in terms of school choice. Proponents of school choice argue that the public system is failing in so many ways that the only way to fix it is to replace it altogether, or to force the system to reinvent itself through competition. Opponents of this view believe the problems identified with public schools are exaggerated, and that competition is exactly the wrong approach to take. Rather, the continued lack of funding has lead to any decline in the system.

Indeed, the controversy over public schools is as old as the tradition of public school itself. Adam Smith was the first to argue in favor of school vouchers, a cause taken up later by Milton Friedman, and many of Friedman's students and successors. It has now become a mainstay of the modern conservative movement, with little room for debate.

Smith and Friedman argued that the public school system should follow the rules of the free market, and that the best way to do this would be to put the public schools in direct competition with their private counterparts. Conservative theorists today argue that taxpayers who choose not to send their children to public school ought to receive a tax subsidy, or voucher, to help pay for the private school of their choice. The voucher would be paid to the school of the taxpayer's choice, rather than directly into the public school system. This creates a very immediate competitive dynamic between the public and private spheres, as the funding of one is entirely dependent upon the funding of the other.

This competition, in theory, should lead to more efficient public schools, forced by the market to make the necessary hard decisions that will lead to better schools fought with less waste and flush with innovation and common sense—an outcome obviously preferable for taxpayer and student alike.

Still, such an argument does not take into account many of the obvious repercussions of a competitive landscape in which the public school system rather than improving vis a vis increased competition, is actually outperformed to such a degree that it is no longer a viable option. In other words, what if the end result of school choice is not better public schools, but no public schools at all?

When discussing competition in education, it is important to note the many inherent disadvantages the public school system faces in a leveled playing field with private industry. Public schools are forced to accept any and all who come knocking. This is their greatest disadvantage, and their most important function. Public schools accept students based not at all on merit, but on the very basic fact that they are citizens of this country, and in need of an education.

This also means public schools must accept all special-needs students, and find a way to pay for their very specialized education. One child with cerebral palsy costs a great deal more than an unimpaired child. Whereas a private school simply need not accept such disabled students, a public school must—and while there are, indeed, private schools that specialize in treating these special needs students, still there is no evidence that they have anywhere near the capacity to treat all of them, nor that vouchers would in any way cover those costs.

Merit-based admissions put the public school at a basic disadvantage as well. Public schools do not admit students based on test scores or admittance exams, and so they are left to the mercy of chance—and often chance is little more than the immutable circumstance of neighborhood. Due to the inequitable nature of school-funding, wherein the vast majority of a school's budget is made up of property taxes, this simply compounds the fact that in poorer neighborhoods where tax revenues are lower, test scores and student performance is also inevitably low.

Proponents of school choice argue that this is exactly the reason why vouchers are needed—that students in these poorer neighborhoods would no longer face the misfortune of attending their neighborhood's public school. Then again, perhaps a rethinking of the way in which these schools are funded would do a great deal more to help a great many more students attain a proper education. After all, if the disadvantage of poverty is crippling even before a child enters the school system, how can these disadvantaged children be expected to compete in a merit-based private school system? Can we truly expect these students to test competitively against a far more affluent demographic?

If this is hard to imagine, than it is even harder to presume that somehow the best private schools will suddenly begin accepting students the public school system can barely manage. Such acceptance and socialization of private schools would devalue them to unacceptable levels. The only alternative would be private schools that accepted the bottom of the barrel, as it were. Such schools, it can be imagined, paid for almost wholly by vouchers, and lacking any of the essential oversight present in the public school system, would hardly be the paragons of success that school choice proponents would have us believe.

With these inherent disadvantages, throwing the public schools into the arena of the free market would have many unintended, but disastrous, consequences.

For instance, let us imagine a town somewhere in America, which we shall call Town A. Imagine there are one hundred children enrolled in Town A's private school this year, out of one thousand total, and next year school vouchers will go into effect for $3000 a head. This means, that all at once, with no change whatsoever in school enrollment, $300,000 will be drained from Town A's public school budget.

There remain only one hundred students attending the private school. Likewise, the same number of children remain enrolled in public schools. Only now there is substantially less money for the remaining public school students, and substantially more for the private school students.

In the end the effect of this will be manifold.

First, public schools will face budget cuts, layoffs, and decreased enrollment. Students will have a harder time taking "unnecessary" subjects like history, art, theater, music, and so forth. This will have the long-term effect of “dumbing down” future generations of Americans, making it more difficult for Americans to compete in the global economy.

Second, vouchers will likely lead the better private schools, and perhaps many of the mediocre ones, to raise their tuition. There will be more money in the hands of people who can already afford a private education, so these schools will have no reason not to raise their rates, as well as admittance standards. This is why a need-based "grant" system, similar to the Pell Grant, might work better, though even that could cause the price of education to increase.

Third, it is true that vouchers would eventually lead to the opening of new private schools. Town A might have a second private school open and another one hundred students admitted (draining another $300,000 from the public schools). This still leaves the remaining eight hundred students without school choice; with further budget cuts; a higher ratio of problem students; and an even more burgeoning degree of special needs costs. Class disparity simply widens further under this outcome, especially if the private schools continue to admit students based on merit—arguably the very point of private school—vs. lottery or location-based admissions.

School voucher proponents believe that ideally, somehow all one thousand of Town A's students will be able to go to private schools paid for with government vouchers. This may very well be the outcome of the collapse of the public schools, as such a collapse, however gradual, would lead to market solutions for education.

This begs the question, however: if everyone attends private school, will we not see the very same decline in the private sector that we've seen in public schools? After all, the low end of the scale will be the least funded--perhaps solely paid for by vouchers, and populated largely by the lowest achievers and the poorest student demographic. The better schools will also be paid for by vouchers, but their tuition will be higher and thus inundated with a great deal more private money. The gap will be similar to what it is today, and likely much worse, only now students will not have the safety net of the public school system, or the guarantee of a free education. Nor will they have the democratic protection of elected officials taking stewardship of their children's education. Accountability will be all in capital, as accountability always is in the free market.

So the question inevitably comes down to our vision of what education should amount to for our children. Do we envision a robust American public school system—the sort imagined long ago by Thomas Jefferson and others of our Founding Fathers, to be the engine of our Republic? Or have we decided to give up on that institution? There is little doubt that improvements can, and should, be made in our public schools, but there seems also to be great potential for a system of public education that is at once efficient, free, and competitive not only with America's private schools, but with schools the world over, private and public alike.

Vouchers do not represent the whole of the school choice debate any more than Milton Friedman represents the whole of our economic debate. Michael Oakeshott famously wrote that conservatism is a disposition, not an ideology. The conservative approach to any problem is to favor tradition over reaction, the wisdom of generations over the singularity of isolated and abstract reason. In other words, to favor what has been proven to work over what simply might work in theory.

This seems to cut to the heart of the issue of school choice. The ideology of privatization over public administration has become such a driving force in conservative debate that we have forgotten that there are things, even in the public sphere, that deserve preservation — that “complete the circle” as Jefferson once remarked. Oakeshott wrote that conservatism is “a disposition appropriate to a man who is acutely aware of having something to lose which he has learned to care for.” Perhaps the loss of our public schools, a tradition as old as this nation itself, is something of which we ought to be acutely aware.

There is room in this debate to consider innovations, improvements, and necessary and long overdue changes to the way in which our schools are operated and administered. Merit pay, charter schools, and trade schools for those students the least likely to attend college, but who could benefit enormously from practical skill training or apprenticeships, are all ideas that deserve careful consideration. There is certainly a case to be made for poor kids to receive grants to attend private schools—though this really isn’t a “school choice” matter so much as a question of welfare.

Indeed, this entire debate deserves as much careful consideration as possible. Rather than latching on to a talking point or an ideology, or turning this into a political gambit—essentially, rather than couching this debate in terms of economics or politics at all—we should view this instead as a matter of tradition and civilization, of preservation of that which has worked for generations, and can be made to work again for generations to come. Sadly, this has become a debate in which the only acceptable conservative stance on the issue is that of school choice, quite frankly, is not always a liberating thing.

I find myself wondering how this can be, how an entire discussion of such a delicate matter can be confined so utterly to one dogmatic response. On this matter I call to mind another great conservative thinker, and in doing so find that I, too, am standing “athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”

Our public schools are a great American tradition, and they are worth preserving. They are worth the struggle. Let us not be too hasty in our attempt to dismantle them, lest we lose them altogether. Such a loss would be a historical one. On this matter especially, let us be conservative in our disposition, not merely conservative in what has become the generally accepted talking points and political strategy. Such a debate transcends politics, after all, and rightly so.

painting of the day "bacchanal"

2008-12-29T15:23:00.000-08:00

~Fransesco Zuccarelli

poem of the day

2008-12-29T15:20:00.001-08:00

Introduction to Poetry

by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

in the comments

2008-12-29T13:04:00.000-08:00

Commenter Wellsy writes:

I think in this situation you have 2 worlds: the world outside the conflict, where people debate statistics, records, and events, maybe from the comfort of their homes on the internet, and the world inside the conflict, where people are trying to live their lives and survive. Their homes might be in ruins.

The reality is that any good idea that may be hatched in the first world will probably wither and die when it makes the transition to the second world. Peace has to arise naturally in the region or else it won't hold. And it's not going to arise naturally unless Israel, obviously in better shape than the ragged "Palestine," decides to take the lives of Palestinians seriously. Israel's not exactly trying to win over Palestinian moderates here.

Anyway, ideas from the first world might not fare well when the rubber hits the road, but international support for peace, especially from America, is a step in the right direction. This means sometimes rapping Israel's knuckles and treating the Palestinian government as if it is completely sovereign even though, in reality, it may not be.

I can understand why objectivity may be hard for those that are directly involved, but for many in the blogosphere, I just don't understand why its lacking.

It is interesting how these two tumultuous worlds mirror one another--or rather how the "world of ideas" mirrors the conflict on the ground--becomes so divided and bitter and polarized. One thing is that in an online or television or even print format there is this dissociation from those with whom you conflict. It's pretty easy to get riled up and call names on an internet forum, or shout on some television pundit's show, or write something scathing about somebody else when you know, in this day and age, nobody will call you out on it and demand pistols at dawn.

Thankfully, I do see some true bi-partisan efforts emerging. I'm not too hopeful, as this conflict is older than any member of the commentariat, but I like to be the eternal optimist...

Three for the price of one

2008-12-29T12:54:00.001-08:00

More proof that Iraq was not a war that benefited Israel.

More proof that Iraq was not a war that benefited the United States.

More proof that democracy in and of itself is dangerous and combustible, and should not be "spread" without a good deal of contemplation--or by organic means...

Settlements, continued...

2008-12-29T12:48:00.000-08:00

Matthew Yglesias is among the many calling for US pressure on Israel to halt settlements:

Under the circumstances, throwing up our hands and saying “it’s too hard!” isn’t an option. We can decide we don’t want to be involved, which would mean unwinding the ties of collaboration and assistance between the US and Israel, or we can try to play a constructive role in bringing an end to the conflict. I’m not personally sure of how you do that. But I’m quite certain that the first step would be pressing Israel — hard — to stop expanding settlements in the West Bank and start dismantling them. To show to Palestinians interested in a two-state solution (perhaps including some Hamas people or perhaps not) that there’s credibility on the other side. I think Israelis wouldn’t welcome such action by us, but ultimately it would be in their own best interests. On the other hand, those who really do think the best thing for the United States is to just wash our hands of the whole mess have an obligation to really stand behind that belief and urge us to wash our hands of the situation. But just proclaiming a pox on both houses while in practice heavily subsidizing one side isn’t a viable option.

That's the first step we can make, but the Arab states in the region can make a step also, and that is to denounce terrorism and stop funding Hamas and Hezbollah. So yes, there's things people can and should do, and a role to play in the East and the West to come to a solution. Also, I think Yglesias is partially wrong about Israelis welcoming the US pressure. I think some would actually agree pretty strongly, but feel their own voices drowned out by the settlers...

It's not as though all Israelis are happy to have their military bombing Gaza, but many of them I think are confused, feel helpless, and are confounded by a mix of feelings on the issue. Just like a lot of Americans--and probably a lot more Arabs than we would imagine.

Eunomia?

2008-12-29T12:40:00.000-08:00

A while back Scott Payne asked "Whither Daniel Larison?"

To my knowledge, the question remains unanswered.

More on settlements

2008-12-29T12:28:00.001-08:00

I think John Marshall is exactly right about the settlement issue:

But no settlement of the West Bank issue is possible with continued expansion of settlements. Indeed, I would say no settlement is possible without uprooting almost all the current West Bank settlements, with the possible exception of some in the girdle around Jerusalem. That's the core issue. And what's happening right now in Gaza does not change any of that. Of course, Hamas makes no distinction of the Green Line. That's a given. But I don't think that's the point. Israel desperately needs the West Bank issue settled. Everything that makes that more difficult endangers the state.

My support of dismantling settlements is as much because of my admiration of Israel as anything else. I'd like to see Israel continue to exist, prosperous and safe, alongside their neighbors. That's not going to happen unless something is done about the settlements.

That said, this post by Dylan Waco, I disagree with on a number of levels,

As someone generally predisposed to the notion that states don't have any rights and international institutions are criminal cartels, it is especially annoying to me to see a country of sixty years, that owes its existence to the UN, constantly invoking its "right to exist" as a welfare dependent of American taxpayers. The unwillingness of America's political class to cut off the spigots is partially related to campaign contributions, partially related to our hyper-PC culture of victimization, and partially related to cultural and religious identity politics. Still, regardless of why it happens, this endless flow of weapons and money is the reason Israel survives.

First of all, Israel survived prior to America's "endless flow of weapons and money" and did so rather well. Israel's economy is quite a lot more than a subsidized American welfare state. I wish we would reduce or eliminate aid to Israel (not alliance, just aid) so that critics like Waco would see that they can be self-sufficient.

Then again, I'm all for pulling out all military aid and financial support to Europe as well, but that isn't in the cards, I fear...

the question of asymmetrical warfare

2008-12-29T11:10:00.000-08:00

In the comments on his blog, Freddie writes:

Should a 5 year old Palestinian girl be responsible for that? And does that responsibility, forced on her, carry a death sentence? That's what you're arguing, if you are indeed justifying these attacks. To be clear, that's the mainstream position; most people believe collateral damage is a sad but necessary aspect of war. And, indeed, the same argument cuts against the Palestinians-- even if I thought military aggression against Israel by the Palestinians was wise, beneficial or justified (and I think none of these things), I wouldn't allow it to justify killing innocent Israelis. That's, I know, an idealists take. But I can't stomach the moral consequences of collateral damage otherwise; I think it's as stark a question as I put it above.

Not to bandy about this Israel question too much with Freddie--not every question needs answering, nor will every question ever be answered in this debate--but the topic of asymmetrical warfare is one so close to the issue at hand that I have to make at least an attempt at a response.

First of all, I don't like it any more than the next guy. Civilian casualties should be avoided at all costs--and does Israel make every attempt to do so? I doubt it. Does Hamas make it quite difficult for Israel to avoid said casualties? Of course. It's part of the guerrilla/terrorist strategy. It's been used before in other arenas--Vietnam comes to mind. Beirut.

But what's to be done? I ask this in the comment section:

I'm not sure how one responds at all to terrorist attacks... There isn't really symmetry in combating such tactics (I suppose firing back rockets quid pro quo into Gaza might be, but that's just silly) which is why the entire notion of a "war on terror" is such utter, inexcusable nonsense, and why this debate is so difficult.

So perhaps the entire question of asymmetrical response is the wrong one--perhaps we'd be better off asking "What is symmetrical warfare when one side is using terrorism and the other is using a conventional military?"

How ought Israel respond to the rocket attacks? It's not quite the same as the Irish terror assault on the UK. After all, the IRA wasn't out to totally annihilate Great Britain, whereas the Hamas Charter states quite clearly that they will accept nothing less than Israel's complete destruction. Either this is rhetoric (with evidence to the contrary) or this is a real problem in negotiating peace.

I'm not saying I agree completely with Israel's response. I think they continue down this drunken path of half-measures followed by massive assaults followed by half-measures followed by shock and awe followed by....well, you get the picture. There is very little consistency in their approach, and then they lay into Gaza with this monstrous assault. It's confusing. It's hard for the rest of us to understand or follow--and it may very well be politically driven, as Freddie suggests. Politics are so often interfering with any coherent response, as Israel replaces government after government after government...

But Israel has to do something...and I'm at a loss to what that may be. What is the proper, or symmetrical, response to these terrorist attacks? I fear that Democracy has made it more difficult for Israel to deal with her neighbors. The new Democracy in Palestine (and the newly elected Hamas government) will only make things more difficult there...

extremism online

2008-12-29T10:36:00.000-08:00

Freddie has responded to a comment I made in this post which essentially speaks to Freddie's generalization of pro and anti Israel arguments. And it may be an exercise in futility, this whole definition of the argument and those who make it, but let me expand a little. Freddie writes:

I have a tendency to rhetorical maximalism that is nothing else than a character flaw. I'm working on it. I am perhaps overzealous in the prosecution of my arguments. But I don't back down from anything I said in that post, and this is why I think that examining the context in which those who oppose the hardline regarding Israel operate is so important: while I may be extreme in my language, I think my side's ideas, what we advocate (rather than how I express it) is remarkably moderate in comparison to the consensus position of Israel hawks. (As opposed to Israeli hawks.)

Ultimately, this is an impossible conversation to have in some ways, because you can never really pin down who, exactly, is an extremist in any given debate. Extremism is a relative quality. It seems to me, though, that the side that is consider extreme and the side that is considered mainstream are exactly opposite. As ED points out, there are not actual holistic camps on either side that have signed any affinity statements or endorsed any particular set of beliefs, so this is necessarily general. But I find that there are no real anti-Israel extremists in what I would consider the mainstream, national conversation.

I think the important thing here is the definition of mainstream vs. non-mainstream. I think that what a lot of pro-Israel people don't ever forget, and what a lot of critics of Israel simply don't notice, is that outside the mainstream there is actually an awful lot of really vapid, hateful, over-the-top criticism of Israel that is way beyond anything reasonable critics of Israel ever suggest. There are those who spend all their time and energy criticizing Israel's human rights record, ignoring utterly the track records of any other nation, turning a blind eye to Iran, China, etc. out of some strange, obsessive need to bash Israel.

What this creates online at least is a disproportionate debate--one in which the extremists have a much louder megaphone than anyone else. You get these hard-liner Zionists on the one hand, advocating the expulsion of all Arabs from Israel, and on the other you get these hard-line anti-Zionists who want to expel the Jews and give the land back to the Palestinians (an argument I, as a North American, find difficult to espouse, since it is just a tiny bit hypocritical unless we, too, give back our land to its original inhabitants...)

Of course, Freddie is right about the mainstream discussion, and certainly there is a lot less constructive criticism of Israel in the mainstream dialogue than there ought to be--and perhaps this is a reactionary trend. Perhaps things like the UN declaring Zionism was racist have had a backlash effect. Extremes beget extremes, after all.

This is a shame, because we do need legitimate criticism of Israel. I, for one, think the continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank needs to stop, and that the extremists behind the settlements are not only harming the Palestinians, they are also bringing about indirect harm to their fellow Israelis. But it's hard to say that in the current climate, and that's simply not conducive to a healthy debate.

There's a lot to admire about Israel, and hopefully someday we'll be able to say the same thing about Palestine. Two states living peacefully side-by-side is a good dream to have, and I think a lot of people in the middle feel that way. Does the mainstream conversation need to change to reflect this? Yes, it does. And we'd all do well to remember that the conversation online is usually a lot more virulent, heated, and outrageous than the conversation in the real world. So maybe a little less "rhetorical maximalism" would do us all good, though in Freddie's case at least his rhetoric, however maximalist, is at least coherent and sensible. Take a trip around the Israel/Pali blogosphere sometime. It's illuminating, to say the least...partisan to the point of inanity...

Bring out your dead...

2008-12-27T22:47:00.000-08:00

There is something terrible about these photos of Israel's attack on Gaza, and not just in the destruction. Quite frankly, Gaza had it coming. Hamas is just asking to be bombed, civilians be damned.

No, what's troubling to me is that at this point I don't know which of these photos represents actual casualties. After all, the Palestinians have made such an art out of fake-casualty photos that it's rather like the Boy Who Cried Wolf at this point.

Then, too, where is the honor in parading your dead about like this? Is international sympathy worth the shame of using one's dead to gain it? How about STOP lobbing rockets into Israel in order to gain international sympathy. That might work a tiny bit better.

Just a thought...

Reading List addition...

2008-12-27T22:12:00.000-08:00

Just added a fantastic new blog "The Left Conservative" to the sidebar... Dylan Waco and Daniel Bein are contributors, and just browsing for a few minutes convinced me that this was a top notch site.

Check it out.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-24T23:03:00.000-08:00

Scroll through the blogroll. All my faves have Merry Christmas posts, and they're all great. Go read them, and have a lovely Christmas with your families and loved ones!

How do you feel about Felt?

2008-12-23T12:22:00.000-08:00

Patrick J Buchanan has little sympathy and much disgust:

Indeed, if what Felt did was honorable, why did he lie and deny it repeatedly when asked if he was leaking to the Post? Why did he lie in his memoir in 1979, when, well into retirement, he emphatically denied he was Deep Throat? Was Felt so noble he could save our republic, yet refuse, to the point of lying in his memoirs, to take any credit?
Answer: Felt knew what he did was dishonorable, corrupt — and unnecessary. For honest FBI agents were steadily making progress toward proving that higher-ups at CREEP were involved in aiding those caught in the Watergate break-in.

Felt had another reason for lying about his role as snitch for the Post. Former colleagues would be disgusted, for his was not only a breach of law, but of faith and trust, a dishonoring of his oath as an FBI agent.

Read the rest. There's always more to the story.

Merry Christmas Mr. Potter

2008-12-23T12:05:00.000-08:00

Saturday Night Live - Its a Wonderful Life Lost Ending

Google link alerts

2008-12-22T13:30:00.000-08:00

Has anyone else noticed that Google link alerts has become totally worthless, reporting every comment, every blogroll link...dozens and dozens of posts with only a sidebar link to your site?

And then actual links don't show up?

One would think a company such as Google would be able to get this right. They have the funds...

Quote of the day

2008-12-22T13:16:00.000-08:00

I shopped today. Not for gifts, but for fruit and vegetables and Obama-esque arugula. There were 500 zillion people in every single store. There is no bloody way we are staring a Great Depression in the face, no way at all.

I’m going to take a Xanax now.

~Wendy Sullivan

I've braved a few visits to Target, the grocery store, the gas station...and I concur. It's bloody madness out there. The piles of snow don't help, but they don't seem to hinder shoppers any more than the recession has--at least here. Lines are long, people are typically hurried, harried, and rude, and maneuvering parking lots is an exercise in patience.

Fortunately, other than printing a few photos, I think we're about done with the gifting aspect of Christmas.

The irony here, of course, is that the more people who give up on this hyper-Dickensian consumerist version of Christmas, the more economically ugly the season will become. In other words, the closer we get to actually celebrating the True meaning of Christmas (even the secular true-meaning, i.e. love, family, lots of little glittering lights) the worse it is for our economy.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Do we shop like mad and spend outrageously for the collective well-being? or do we cut back, live more simply, give the gift of our time rather than go in to debt, and let the retailers wail? Or, do we as a nation and a people reevaluate the definition of "collective well-being"?

Twas the Monday before Christmas...

2008-12-22T11:18:00.000-08:00

Well I've been honored with a mention at the fantastic Ladyblog, where Elizabeth Nolan Brown drudges up my rather ambiguous post on social vs cultural conservatism and asks:

I’ve always thought "social conservative" and "cultural conservative" meant the same thing....So I thought I’d bring the discussion to Ladyblog. Do any of you make a distinction between ’social’ and ‘cultural’ conservatism? Or have you heard people make it? And, if so, what’s the distinction?

My response on her thread is rather messy and floundering, so if anyone has a better answer stop by Ladyblog (a Culture11 location) and air your thoughts...I admit this is one of my most difficult struggles. I view conservatism as a disposition, and a cultural disposition at that, not a set of ideologies, whereas today's social-cons tend toward a pretty defined set of ideologies. Maybe that's all the distinction I can muster...

It's a struggle because I am drawn most toward a brand of Christianity that is quite conservative--classic Roman Catholocism or Orthodox (I am still digging about the bones of my spiritual self to find what it is that Faith and God mean to me, and it is an endless struggle) and yet I'm drawn also toward political positions that generally reflect a much more liberal standpoint on such issues as gay marriage (well that's the big one, I admit.)

In other pre-Christmas happenings, John Schwenkler has moved his blog to Culture11... so go change your bookmarks and let the fact that all best blogs are moving to the same neck of the woods sink in for a while. (H/T Publius Endures)

Speaking of Publius, Mark and I (and others) have been engaging in a very healthy debate over school vouchers, though it has for the moment come to a close. In any case that has led to an exchange of blogroll additions, and exposure for yours truly to some really excellent commentary. Go check it out....

Elsewhere, please go read Jack Gillis's take on the Caroline Kennedy potential appointment and join him in his quest to repeal the 17th amendment! Probably the best commentary on the Kennedy mess I've read so far...

In any case, Merry Christmas everybody! Stay warm...

Pardonable Offenses - From Whiskey Rebels to Jihad Johnny: The Legacy of Presidential pardons

2008-12-22T09:26:00.001-08:00

In 1795 President George Washington pardoned members of what came to be known as the Whiskey Rebellion, exercising his right as President to pardon Federal offenders. The Whiskey Rebels took arms against what they believed were unreasonably high taxes on alcohol, and perhaps Washington, who had so recently helped orchestrate the American rebellion against the British, largely under the auspices of unfair taxation, felt sympathy for these men.

Since then countless criminals of all-stripes have applied for Presidential pardons. For the past few years John Walker Lindh and his family have appealed for just such a pardon.

Such a notion has dismayed conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, who is livid at the notion and the audacity of "Jihad Johnny" and his family, and somehow the entirety of the "Left", that an American member of the Taliban would expect such a favor.

If it’s December, it’s time for the Left to throw another shameless pity party for convicted American jihadist John Walker Lindh (aka Suleyman al-Faris, aka Abdul Hamid). Every Christmas season for the last four years, the Taliban accomplice and his parents have asked President Bush to pardon him. This country should save its tears and mercy for the defenders of freedom....

...In Afghanistan, I remind you, Jihad Johnny took up arms with the terrorists. His purpose was to kill Americans and his “reserve of will” accomplished the goal....and upon being captured [he] deliberately and defiantly chose not to tell American CIA officer and former Marine Corps artillery specialist Mike Spann about a planned Taliban prison revolt. Spann was killed in the riot.

It is, without doubt, a tragic story, and Malkin is right to be infuriated. Indeed, the very notion that this man even has the ability to be pardoned is extremely disconcerting. And yet, the best she can muster is a flimsy, "may American traitor John Walker Lindh rot in hell."

Well, okay, that's certainly the "Op" part of an Op-Ed. Nobody could say with a straight face that Malkin's opinions are in any sense of the word diluted. On the other hand, perhaps it would be more interesting to hear some analysis of the risk involved here--in other words, a little less opinion, and a little more dissection of the underlying problem, which isn't Lindh sadly, at least not directly.

Certainly Lindh represents a problem with this nation's disillusioned youth. He is a potential case-study in all sorts of misguided delinquent behavior, from gang activity, to school shootings, to membership in suicide-bombing clubs like Al-Qaeda, or misogynistic theocrats like the Taliban. But he's been captured, and those studies are ongoing sociological quagmires without any likely positive or definitive outcome. Boys will be boys, as the old adage goes.

More to the point is the question of Presidential pardons. The idea that President Bush would even consider pardoning a terrorist is absurd, of course, but then again, he pardoned a cocaine dealer the other day. Anything's possible when a man has the power to sidestep the law so utterly. Clinton pardoned all sorts of crooks and scumbags, including yet more cocaine dealers, embezzlers, and con-men. Potential campaign donors, I suppose, and future political allies.

Article II, Section 2 of the US Constitution states that the President "shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment." An official Pardon Attorney assists the President in the legality of his pardons, though the framework for such acts of clemency and reprieve seems woefully lax. After all, Nixon had no trouble pardoning that crook Jimmy Hoffa. It wasn't because he was innocent, either. And then, of course, Ford didn't bat an eye when he pardoned that crook Nixon.

At times the pardons do seem just. There are men wrongly accused, or whose sentences were too stringent, or perhaps faced sentences that were largely political. Andrew Johnson pardoned the entire South after the death of Lincoln. This was an important step toward healing the nation, and a just and noble thing to do. It should be noted that nobody pardoned the North, though arguably their crimes against the Constitution were as bad or worse than anything the secessionists did in exercising their right to secede. A pardon for the South's crime of slavery would have been more apt, in a way, though I fear no President can absolve men of such barbarism.

Still, the extraordinary power of Presidential pardons raises countless questions. A whole litany of potential abuses seems to crop up at the end of any Administrations term. So are Presidential pardons necessary? Do they circumvent our legal system too much? Do they undermine justice in this country, or do they provide a necessary safeguard against injustice that only a man as powerful as the President can exercise? Or do they place too much power in the Executive branch?

It's true that only a relatively few people are pardoned by the President. The most frivolous pardoner, FDR, was also the longest serving. He pardoned 3,687 criminals. Also true is the fact that information surrounding Presidential pardons is readily available and public--though the relationships between pardoner and pardoned tend to be less transparent.

Essentially, the problem with Presidential pardons is that they inherently favor prominent figures usually of political persuasions similar to the President who pardons them. It is a power without check or balance, a Constitutional authority that sits above the law, and anything above or outside the law has the potential to do great good, or be greatly abused, and usually the latter prevails. Certainly every President in the past few decades has pardoned people that most Americans consider at the very least controversial, from George Steinbrenner to Marc Rich. President George W Bush has actually pardoned far fewer people than his predecessor, and neither man came close to FDR's staggering figure.

President Bush has pardoned far fewer high profile offenders than Clinton, though with the emerging data on illegal torture activity condoned by the Administration, it is quite possible that more are in the offing. If there is one dark legacy that will stain the history of the Bush Administration it is the top-down orders for the use of torture as a method to interrogate prisoners. It will be blacker still if nobody is held accountable, and could certainly embolden future leaders to take similar steps outside the law.

The very fact that we are not as bad as our enemy, and that even the torture we utilized was not as heinous as the crimes of our enemy, should act not as justification for our actions, but the most pressing argument against them. Torture is simply not an American institution, and regardless of political persuasion or perceived threat, it should never be used, and never condoned, and never pardoned, lest it become one.

Nor should terrorism. John Walker Lindh should remain in jail, and feel lucky that he wasn't executed for his crimes against his country and people, something past generations would have had no qualms doing.

So here we face the true moral dilemma of the Presidential pardon. The terrorist we rightfully leave to spend his days in prison, yet the torturer goes free. The traitor is denied his pardon, but the men who acted as representatives of the American people and then used an abhorrent, un-American practice on the prisoners in their care should be pardoned de facto, sans trial.

Is that there any clarity in this, moral or otherwise? Was this what our Founders intended when they wrote this power into the Constitution?

Like so many of the powers granted to our Executive Branch, Presidential pardons do not have to be abused. It can be hoped that the men and women we elect to serve as our leaders can choose to rebuke the many corrupting powers they are given--to use them in the way they were intended by our Founding Fathers--carefully, and cautiously. Perhaps the model future Presidents should follow is not that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but of George Washington, who in eight years of service to his country pardoned only sixteen men. Maybe if our future Presidents look to his actions more often they will stray less from the mission they've been given--to lead us safely and honestly forward as a nation; to preserve our integrity as a people; and to act as our first diplomat to the world.

Somehow pardoning white collar criminals, cocaine dealers, and political officials responsible for endangering our troops through despicable acts of torture, simply doesn't seem to fit into that job description. These are hardly Whiskey rebels.

Somehow I doubt that George Washington would approve.

Bailout Santa

2008-12-20T14:27:00.001-08:00

Damn. I had this idea a few weeks ago--planned to write a story about it, actually. I probably still will...too funny.

Merry Christmas

Quote of the Day

2008-12-19T20:35:00.000-08:00

If I cannot pray with Rick Warren, I realize, then I am not worthy of being called a Christian. And if I cannot engage him, then I am not worthy of being called a writer. And if we cannot work with Obama to bridge these divides, none of us will be worthy of the great moral cause that this civil rights movement truly is.

~Andrew Sullivan

Scott Payne agrees with Sullivan's conclusions, arguing that "Divisiveness breeds its own and perpetuating stereotypes about those that oppose you only provides fodder for the perpetuation of the stereotypes you seek to address."

I was having this discussion with my wife last night actually. I argued that the gay activist movement had pushed this marriage thing too hard, and she said that while she agreed that it wasn't likely to move very far very fast, that the only way to really get anything done was to keep protesting, keep making noise, and not let the movement die out, or become too passive.

I didn't have an argument against that, though I still feel that the initial, short-term effects of overselling the gay marriage idea is more pain for the homosexual community--like here in Arizona, where the voters have decided to amend the State Constitution to legally define marriage as between a man and a woman.

Er, one man, and one woman. Gotta be careful with those definitions these days...

Essentially where my wife and I do agree is that nothing major will happen until the older generations die out and the newer, more open-minded generations take their place. Think how many more young conservatives support gay marriage than a decade ago, after all...think how much more support there is amongst the youth of today than the youth of yesterday.

Who said that--that most good ideas simply have to wait until their opposition dies out before they can be implemented? I can't recall, but it's very true, and I think we have decades to go before gay marriage becomes a national right in this country. I hope I'm wrong.

Orthodoxy

2008-12-19T15:33:00.000-08:00

I'm fascinated by the Orthodox Church, I must admit. I'm enthralled by the artwork and iconography. I love the history and the depth of theology. Still, I come at this world with a generally open-minded, even dare-I-say liberal view--I regard homosexuality, for instance, as totally normal, totally natural. I'm pro-life but I have huge reservations about banning abortion, as we are in no way as a society ready to handle that backlash, nor are we prepared, I think, to morally handle the rise of an abortion black market.

Certainly as a country and a society we haven't done nearly enough to change the situation on the ground that leads to abortion. We have not embraced or provided for the single mothers of the world, nor the rape victims, etc. To be truly pro-Life I think we must start from the other end, working toward fixing the problem rather than just sweeping it under the rug, as a ban would most certainly do.

I've always been at odds with my faith and my personal experience of the truth of this world. I think there is always something that draws me toward the Catholic or Orthodox Church--that sense of age, of history, of theology and a sort of deeper, more mystic understanding of the divine that you really can't find in protestant Church, and certainly not in something like the Unitarian Church.

Still, difficult to find a way to reconcile these conflicting things--the social conservatism of these older, more conservative Churches, and my own more modern views.

Well, Andrew Sullivan manages and he's Roman Catholic. So I guess anything is possible.

Poem of the Day - "The Fall of Rome"

2008-12-18T19:04:00.001-08:00

The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.

Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.

Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.

Caesar’s double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.

Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.

Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.

~W.H. Auden

Christmas is for atheists, too

2008-12-18T18:32:00.000-08:00

What a lot of nonsense. The point of cultural conservatism is not to do away with atheism or any other group. I consider myself a social liberal in the context of today's debates, and a cultural conservative, in that I believe in tradition and civilization and not being reactionary....and I see the sort of blustering reactionary talk in this video utterly absurd.

Conservative? More blow-hard than conservative. This talk doesn't represent my conservatism any more than silly atheist activists represent most atheists.

Allahpundit asks: "Um, what exactly is Gretchen saying here? Christianity’s going to disappear unless we … take away atheists’ First Amendment rights?"

Seriously.

The outrage game? Really?

2008-12-18T17:41:00.001-08:00

Kyle Smith thinks Parker and Stone should give it up and move on with their lives:

Having nothing left to prove with the show, Parker and Stone would be smart to cast it aside, knuckle down and come up with a full-length feature as enduringly hilarious as Team America: World Police every couple of years instead of spending that time spitballing their way through 28 or so half-hours of hit-or-miss comedy. Like immensely rich versions of your friend in study hall, though, they won't listen to reason: They're signed to produce more episodes through 2011.

Well, I for one am glad they're signed through 2011. South Park is the ultimate hit-and-miss show. I find some episodes utterly repugnant; others boring and silly; and yet every now and then there is an episode that just works on so many levels--from the vulgar potty-mouth to the extremely timely and satiric--that, well, I keep watching.

In fact, I'd say South Park really slowed down around season seven, and had far more misses than hits, but in recent seasons has made a huge resurgence. I mean, the World of Warcraft episode was pure genius--and the "Day Before the Day After Tomorrow" episode was hands down the funniest spoof on global warming I think I've ever seen.

So, I say take the bad with the good. It's not a perfect show, and it doesn't aim to be. It's just self-aware enough to not take itself too seriously, and just smart enough not to devolve into pure silliness.

So it may not be the "graduate-level satire" that the Simpsons is, but it fills a void in TV, between the silly and the serious, and the smart and the stupid, that is altogether its own...and that's something, isn't it?

Sullivan v Carter

2008-12-18T17:30:00.001-08:00

Carter responds to Sullivan:

I’ve been on record as supporting a form of civil unions for over four years. In fact, in November 2004 I wrote about it on my former blog. I noted that Dr. James Dobson and Focus on the Family Action, supported a bill in Colorado that would facilitate certain contractual obligations or legal arrangements for any two "unmarried persons who are excluded from entering into a valid marriage under the marriage laws of this state." I too supported the bill and believe that an expanded form of the proposed reciprocal-beneficiary contracts is the model for civil unions iin America.

Where Sullivan and I likely differ, however, is on the question of who should be allowed to participate in such civil unions. To me the civil unions should cover a broad range of domestic situations, such as two elderly sisters who share a home or a widowed parent of an adult child who has Down’s syndrome or other potentially disabling condition. Such legal protections should be completely desexualized and open to any two adults who desire to form a contractually dependent relationship.

Well, it's a novel idea. Personally, I like this a lot. I would just add the libertarian caveat that we do away with state-sponsored marriage altogether and replace it with, well, this idea. Then you can take your civil union paper down to whatever priest or pastor or rabbi you might occasionally visit and get hitched, or married, or whatever you want to call it. Two consenting adults--that's the qualifier.

Now go love each other...

more on vouchers and our tradition of public education

2008-12-18T13:13:00.000-08:00

Freddie has a post up in defense of public schools--a defense I share--which has got me thinking again about the entire subject. Freddie believes the entire debate has been skewed by misrepresentations of the failures (or lack thereof) of the public school system.

As someone who is an ardent supporter of public education, and a committed opponent of vouchers, one of the most frustrating aspects of the conversation is the amount of work done by completely unfounded and unsupported notions about widespread public school failure. Simply put, a huge difficulty in our discussion on education is really paralyzing lack of reliable data on which schools are succeeding and which are failing. We just don't know, really, how many school districts are reliably good, how many reliably bad, and we really don't know about individual school quality within those districts.

Mark Thompson weighs in, arguing that the questions being asked-, and really the entire framework of the debate--is all wrong:

Importantly, changing the debate to focus on the question of "how much control do we give individual parents over their child's education" avoids the moral absolutism and elitism that comes with the existing debate, which makes it difficult to discuss on terms that all sides understand. Instead, changing the debate puts us all on something of a sliding scale in which individuals are forced to recognize the complexity of the issue.

But I think Mark is entirely off-base with this. First of all, is it really a new angle, or is it merely reworking the issue to once again make this about school choice, which has been the modern conservative argument all along? Does this actually level the debate, as Mark suggests, or does it simply skew the question in favor of the presupposed conservative case? Mark's take undermines the larger question, which is simply this: do we want, as a nation, to maintain our tradition of a robust public school system or don't we?

We can't have it both ways. Vouchers will kill the public school system, I have no doubt. They will take an under-funded system and cut funding further. I wrote on this before, and stick by what I said, regarding the effects of vouchers:

First, public schools will face budget cuts, layoffs. Students will have a harder time taking "unnecessary" subjects like history, art, theatre, music, etc. This will have a long-term effect of dumbing down America and making it more difficult for us to compete in the global economy.

Second, it will cause private schools to raise their tuition rates. There will be more money in the hands of people who can already afford to send their kids to school, so the schools will have no qualm, and no reason not to raise the cost of attendance. (This is why a need-based "grant" system might work better, though even that could cause the price of private school to go up. Just look at college tuition. Direct funding of colleges rather than easy-loans and easy-grants would keep tuition and debt lower).

Third, it might lead to the opening of new private schools ... but if everyone is going to private school, then I imagine we'll see a very similar decline in quality that we've seen in public schools. The low end of the scale will be the least funded--perhaps solely paid for by vouchers, and populated largely by the lowest achievers. The high end will also be paid for by vouchers, but its tuition will be higher, so more private money will inundate these schools. The gap will be similar to what it is today, only now people will not have the safety net of the public school system, and that will be a great loss.

So the question to me is not to what degree parents have choice over their kids' education. As Freddie writes in the comments:

Now, if you decide you want to send your kid to a private school, go right ahead. But you can't have public money to do it, just like you can't take "your share" of public money to use a private subway, or a private fire department, or a private police force, or a private military, or a private water department. Sorry. It just doesn't work that way.

Parents already do have choice, but the choice is not about their tax dollars. They can spend their own money however they want, but they're still required to contribute to the public coffers. This is not "socialism" -- it's community. And giving people the choice to no longer contribute even that small amount to their community is not a course that America should take.