While I remember... thanks to Doug Turnball over at Beauty of Gray for describing my site as "one of the best and most interesting blogs out there". I have to admit that it's a little odd to be praised by the guy considering that he tends to disagree with me so much in my own comments section, but as he said in that selfsame area, "it's more interesting to talk about what we disagree about". I share the sentiment, but it's still nice to get a positive link, especially considering that I seem subject to a rather odd phenomenon where I get permalinked by a fair number of blogs, but rarely linked within a blog's editorial content itself. I would have thought it would have been the other way around considering my fairly small blogroll, but there you go.

The link was in regards to an earlier post of mine about Instapundit's lame response to a review in the New Yorker. While Doug makes some valid points about how the founders were somewhat distrustful of "mob democracy", his defense of the Senate hinges on a few points that I disagree with. First, there are actually studies in political science journals that I've read that conclude that American-style republics tend towards failure more than other systems, mostly because of their tendancy to gridlock. More to the point, though, Doug failed to engage the most valid critique in the original article: that the Senate is a profoundly undemocratic and (on a more basic level) unfair institution, because it grants far more power to individual voters in smaller states than in larger ones. This isn't the only way that small states wield a lot of power in the American system (witness the Electoral College) but it's by far the clearest and most egregious example of the phenomenon. How a nation that was built on the concept of civil equality managed to include such a blatently unequal treatment of voters based on where they happen to live is beyond me, and the argument in the article remains valid: if this were based on any other aspect of a citizen's identity, like race, class, ethnic background, language, profession, or what-have-you, the people would be up in arms. Geography is not destiny, and is not a valid reason for discrimination.

Oh, and about the blogroll? It isn't because I'm a snob, although I don't link to a site just because it's popular. (I don't link to Instapundit, for example.) It's simply because this particular template makes it somewhat of a hassle, and I usually write entries using the "blog this" widget, instead of actually going to the page. Since I'm not on the blogger site much, I tend not to monkey around with the template much. Rest assured, it's not personal. ;)

This assertion is laughable. "Kaus is burying Krugman"? This would be the same Mickey Kaus who sacrificed his credibility by claiming that everybody to the left of him is a dangerous terrorist, egged on by those horrible Marxist bastards at MWO? This is the same Paul Krugman whose popularity keeps on rising and who has been driving the public discourse lately, and who has been driving the Republican establishment (and E.C. bloggers) nuts because their carping criticisms are either ignored or brilliantly reposted on his personal page because the NY Times, understandably, would never deal with such small fry?

Riiiight.

For those who are wondering why I linked to the InstaPinion instead of to the person that he quoted... it's his uncritical and unquestioning quotation and linking that gives credibility and popularity to lame me-too E.C. blogs like "Just One Minute". I mean, what sane person attacks Brad DeLong for spelling mistakes? I can understand that Professor Glenn wouldn't want to criticize a point of view that the majority of his "Blogosphere" friends and collegues have adopted. Defending a target that so much of the blog community defines itself by opposing would be counterproductive for anybody who gains their notoriety by being a cheerleader for the medium and those who use it. He has every right to do so. On the other hand, those of us who disagree have every right to point it out. The right, and the responsibility.

Josh Marshall is taking up the question of whether Gore's populism hurt him or not. His reaction is mostly ambivalence on the subject, but annoyance that the media seems to always portray him in a harsh light. Myself, I'm seeing carts put before horses here; I keep going back to the difference in reaction between those who saw Gore's performance in the first debate at the time and those who had it filtered by the media. It's safe to say that the media was incredibly hostile towards Gore in the last election, and I think Josh is right in saying that populism doesn't really fly with the modern American media.

The problem is that people like Josh are forgetting that part of the reason a president wins or loses is the dedication of the partisans and the party that supports him. Bush had a full-court press working with him; he was being backed, aided, and spun by pretty much the entirety of the right-wing partisans of the United States and whatever right wing conspiracy does exist, whereas the Democrats were (as ever) weak and divided. They did a good job getting out the vote on the day of the election, but I think one of the main reasons that Bush kept on getting good press and Gore kept on getting bad press (aside from the desire to not "beat up on the dumb guy" on the behalf of credulous journalists covering Bush and anti-intellectualism on behalf of hostile journalists covering Gore) is because everything he said was spun in his favour by legions of supporters. To use a common sports term, the right "simply wanted it more".

Besides, is everybody forgetting the massive differences in how much money being spent? I remember that those media outlets that actually paid attention to such things brought up the huge differences in financial resources on behalf of the Gore campaign vs. the Bush campaign... Bush had a metric assload more money than Gore and was willing to spend it. Sure, Gore might have had a strong economy to back him (although he couldn't take credit for it, because the right was busily saying that Congress was responsible), but Bush had a hell of a lot more factors in his favour, and he still only barely won (if he won at all.)

Josh is right in that the media seems hostile to Al, but I think he needs to think about how far back that goes, and far deep it goes. Trying to seperate critical reactions to the Gore campaign that are happening now and critical reactions to the Gore campaign that happened at the time is somewhat pointless. They're one and the same- hostile then, hostile now.

Atrios has featured an interesting dissection of the "humiliation of Islam" argument that a lot of people attribute to Stephen Den Beste and his arguments (which I've dealt with here on numerous occasions), but which in some respects has more to do with Norman Podhoretz, prominent Weekly Standard neo-con who had a starring role in Blinded by the Right as one of the operatives who was more than happy to play fast and loose with the truth in order to get the "right" message across. Doesn't surprise me that the argument stems from him; what does surprise me is how many people are taking the arguments of a complete partisan hack as Revealed Truth.

In any case, check it out. (Including the comments section, for those interested in my take on it... I like the commentators and discussions that happen in his comments threads, and readers of this site might like it as well.)

One thing, based on a quotation of Kaus I saw on Avedon Carol's The Sideshow. What the hell, exactly, is "paleoliberalism"?

I may be no PoMo, but that thing is packed with so many assumptions, biases, political agendas and out-and-out lies that it'd take a team of English professors a week to drag them all out. I mean, paleoconservatism I can see, maybe, because it's that philosophy (at least its Tory flavour) that appeals to tradition and the past, but that just don't apply to liberalism and never has. It's just yet another attempt by neo-cons to paint their side as dynamic and "of the future", and liberalism as some variation of socialism, to be "buried on the ash heap of history". Which is, of course, entirely nonsense outside of the reflexive libertarianism that one finds in the hothouse environment of the Internet.

I'm not surprised that Kaus would use a term like that. It effectively signifies his cutting of ties with any liberal past, and allows him to keep that vital flow of positive reactions (and links) from liberservative bloggers coming his way. I am, however, surprised that he would be so blatently obvious.

(Edit: Ugh, spelling mistakes. Sometimes I wish the "Blog This" blogger widget linked up to some sort of spell checker. My apologies for the mangling of the language.)

Quite a few liberal commentators (especially Atrios) are discussing Josh Marshall's damning criticism of the Bush administration and its "roll-back on terrorism" that a new Time Magazine article has brought to light. No doubt that it's disturbing, and will hopefully put to a quick and painful death the Clausewitzian pseudo-analysis that some blogosphere types have been employing to blame the whole thing on Clinton. If anything, it shows how dangerous arbitrarily setting yourself against the actions of a previous administration can really be, like the Bushites did with the Clinton administration.

What really grabbed me, though, is this part about the attempts to equate the Clinton administration (through Robert Rubin and his non-connection to possibly unethical actions by Citibank):

It's time to say it: this is a stupid argument. It's being made by a) mau-mauing Republicans and their journalistic allies, b) morons, and c) chumps. Absent any new information those are really the only groups who can be involved. The first group I don't much begrudge. They're involved in a political fight and that's how the game is played. The second group requires no explanation. The rest are journalists -- largely, but not all, of vaguely liberal politics -- who have so long been slapped around and cowed by conservative complaints about liberal bias that the desired Pavlovian response has become second nature. In the seedy vernacular we call this being 'whipped.' The better analogy might be to the emotionally-damaged battered woman who perversely respects her abusive husband for keeping her in line.

This is why the question of liberal bias in the media is important. Not that such a thing truly exists, but because the continuing assertion of such will no doubt convince some credulous souls that it is truly the case, and the media will bend over backwards to placate the former and not lose the latter. Even if the media were liberal, it's eating out of conservative hands right now in a desperate attempt to not appear liberal, and Josh is right: "It's not a pretty sight".

Atrios has a new quiz game! See if you can identify this quote:

Goddamn you people. Goddamn you
stupid, doomed people. Enjoy your
teevee, enjoy your next two
months of economic fun. Because
it's over.

It's over, you fucking idiots.

It's over, Nader jackasses.

Thanks, to all of you. Thanks for
making this country the
mother-fucking laughing stock of
the Earth.

What I hope for those of you who
voted for Dubya, it's death. A
sad, slow death, in the night,
where nobody cares, and missiles
from Iraq and North Korea will
rain upon your fat, hydrocephalic
head.

Head over to his site for the full quotation, and don't go into the commentary section unless you've already made your guess because the answer's there.

I'll only give one hint: It's amazing how the faux-community of the "blogosphere" can overwhelm one's ideological consistency.

Enjoy!

Horowitz blathers on about IvP, as per usual, but I loved this one line:

"the West Bank must be occupied by military force, disarmed and denazified".

I'm amazed his gun-loving friends on the right haven't explained to him the contradiction between the latter two concepts. Besides that, however, what the hell does "denazification" mean, exactly? I'm aware of the efforts made to erase nazi propaganda from Germany after the war, and I'm also quite aware that it didn't quite work- that it was more the country coming to its senses than any "process". It certainly didn't quite work out the way it was supposed to in Japan, whose culture is hardly cleansed of nationalism and (sadly) xenophobia, and whose pacificism probably has less to do with anything MacArthur did and more to do with the immense psychological impact of the Big Freaking Bombs that were dropped on two of their cities? And for that matter, what the hell does either have to do with Palestine, except the enduring American propensity to think of every conflict in terms of WWII?

David's simplistic arguments don't stop there. What's up with him saying "The solution to the Mid-East tragedy is to turn the Arab-occupied West Bank over to Jordan and make it politically part of the Jordanian state?" If this were even remotely possible, wouldn't somebody have done it by now? Do the Jordanians get a say in this, and in the inevitable hostile reaction of the other Arab states in the region? Can the Jordanians give this region autonomy, and if they do so, what happens if the newly autonomous group of "Jordanians" decide to call themselves "Palestinians" and fight to get their land back from the Israelis (discarding, for the moment, the question of whether they're justified in this belief or not)? Will the Jordanian government be made responsible? Will the United States then call Jordan a "terrorist state" and invade it and replace the friendly regime with, um, a friendly regime? Will Israel attack Jordan, and annex some of the territory to ensure their security against the newly-hostile Jordanians?

Did Horowitz actually bother thinking before he wrote this, or is he content with the idea that any intelligent readers are going to consider him a clueless boob advocating useless "solutions"?

More disturbing than that, however, is the boundless confidence that David seems to have in the ability of the American government to re-educate and re-civilize Palestinian youth. I doubt he'd argue that the U.S. government does a good job of that now with its own children, and yet it's supposed to somehow brainwash Palestinian children into loving those that, in the scenario that David advocates, basically hold them and their parents hostage? Is this supposed to be some sort of induced Stockholm effect?

Well, no, of course not. It's nothing of the sort. It's just David, with his mouth writing sheet after sheet of checks that his ass can't cash. Horowitzwatch barely needs to exist when such blather continues to obviously negate itself. Who needs an offensive when the target is so busily shooting himself in the head?

Eric Alterman linked to a review of Robert Dahl's new book. The article painted the book in a positive light, and brought up quite a few valid questions about the superiority of the American system, and whether or not the Framers wouldn't have done things differently were they to have the experience that we have now. Slavery was the most egregious example of a bad constitutional judgement call, but the author of the article, Rick Hertzberg, was quite clear on how big a problem the composition of the Senate was, and how the concept of "equality of states" is problematic at best, and an example of smaller states holding the Union hostage at worst. He also brings up the fairly damning point that few other countries do it the same way, and those that have usually fail spectacularly.

All good stuff, and I was glad Alterman linked to it. Advantage: Blogosphere, and all that. Unfortunately, however, Alterman also linked to Instapundit's take on the whole thing, and upon being confronted with this reaction I was incredulous. Glenn doesn't like the article, but does a damnably poor job explaining why. He attempts to do so with claims that:

-the United States is a democratic republic, a claim meaningless to Dahl and Hertzberg's critique of its effectiveness and whether that form was really the ideal one that the founders could have chosen or would have chosen..

-that subsequent history "suggests that they were pretty damned smart to think that way", which is not only entirely unsupported, but contradicted by the examples that Hertzberg brought up..

-that attempts to make a "big deal about democracy" are somehow "propaganda", which is a transparent way of using a loaded term to delegitimize an idea without actually having to critique it..

-that liberals are only countermajoritarian until issues like school prayer or flag-burning come up ,which neatly confuses Hertzberg's critique of the structure of the Senate and the Presidency with the idea of constitutionally-supported rights, which Hertzberg does not attack and does not imply Dahl attacks,..

-that countermajoritarianism is somehow illegitimate or unethical, despite Hertzberg's arguments making a valid case that the opposite is the truth of it..

-and finally, the incredible and absolutely unsupported assertion that the "structural protections against tyranny have done more to protect freedom than the bill of rights", which flies in the face of the connection between the "countermajoritarian" aspects of the Senate and both the Civil war and the slaves that were at the center of it.

I have to wonder whether Glenn actually read the article in question, and how he was able to compose an entry with all that knee-jerking going on. I mean, half-assed attacks on political science aside... well, actually, the entire thing was half assed, so those were pretty much par for the course. This isn't a new thing, but I would have thought that the lauded and famed Professor Instapundit would put more effort into his critiques. As it is, I've read better on Newsmax.

While I'm glad that Alterman linked to an excellent article about an intriguing book, I've got to suggest to Eric that using his bully pulpit to unquestioningly link to this sort of unthinking, reflexive critique is a waste of both his time and that of his readers.

Josh Marshall wrote an entry complaining about the Daily Howler taking him to task for saying that "people never warmed up to Gore", when it was really the media that pretty much created that perception.

His defense? That it's easier to say. Well, not quite, but how else to explain this?

One can't say that people never warmed to Gore because then one is lumped in with the anti-Gore, ass-covering media conspiracy. One has to make the prescibed genuflection, stating that people never warmed to Gore because the press bought into the right-wing's long-standing and well-timed attacks on Gore's character, held him to a higher standard than the bumbling governor of Texas, yada, yada, yada.

Josh, the reason why people object to that sort of characterization is because it is incorrect, even if it is easier and puts the situation in a simpler light. While it may be annoying to have to admit and acknowledge that every time one discusses the election, there is nothing good that can come out of this sort of simplification. What starts off as a simplification of a complex situation with an understood "well, but.." will inevitably turn into that simplistic explanation. At that point, whether or not you believed that Gore was getting a raw deal "back in the day" becomes pointless, because the "oversimplification" will have become conventional and accepted wisdom. Hell, it's a pretty damned effective way of pushing a Big Lie, probably the most useful one I can think of.

Still, Josh goes even further:

In a similar fashion one can never write the grammatically elegant sentence "Gore lost the election" without a hundred yahoos writing in to say, "No, no, no, Gore didn't lose. He got more votes. He won. Bush wasn't elected, he was selected!"

First, it isn't elegant. It's short. That's it, and nothing more. It's also functionally and factually inaccurate in many respects. More importantly, if Josh is going to repeat this oversimplification and miss out on all that inconvenient truth, what's the difference between Josh Marshall and the people who (arguably) "selected" Bush in the first place? Both grant Bush legitimacy, especially considering that half the reason Bush always seemed "ahead" was because the press decided for him prematurely and therefore influenced the public's perception of the election. The only difference is that the former does it unwittingly, and the other knows exactly what he's doing and how to exploit those who are too lazy to make important distinctions.

Normally, Josh would be right, and the simplifications would be good enough. 2000 was not "normal", however, and simplifications play right into partisan hands. I hope that Josh would be willing to sacrifice percieved elegance to stymie a Big Lie.

While I'm a big fan of Tom Tomorrow's blog, I feel compelled to point something out:

Copying music is illegal.

Theft is illegal.

But...

Copying music is not theft. Period.

Copyright law and theft have very little to do with each other. Different rules, different punishments, different ideas, and different sections of the criminal code. Attempts to describe one as the other as such only reveal one's nature as either an unwitting dupe or as someone who appears to enjoy deliberate obfuscation, and attempts to describe those who point out the valid difference as mere "pirate apologists" is worse than useless. If this meaningless connection wasn't so widespread, we wouldn't be taking it on the chin every time Congress passes a new "Intellectual Property" law that serves as music industry welfare.

Atrios linked to a new and interesting blog called Pandagon.net. While checking out the entries, I ran across this gem of a post:

The trenchant fumbling for a way to refer to fundamentalist Islam has led to some fairly awkward constructions such as "Islamist"... a painful concatenation that adds no meaning to the concept (kind of like "homicide bomber", fiendishly redundant in its unnecessary particularity).... I'm not sure what prevents the mass punditocracy from calling it fundamentalist Islam.... Is it because we have such a strong fundamentalist Christian presence in America? Is it because we're used to intolerance, bigotry, sophistry and the implicit underpinnings of violence when the original text is in Aramaic rather than Arabic[?]

I've seen it said before, and said it myself, but rarely so elegantly.

It goes on to say:

Too many have, in the nearly eleven months since September 11th, reduced Islam to a man in a desert posturing in a sickening struggle, immaculate white wrap upon his head, desert-stripped gun borne on his shoulder, preaching hatred and murder. Some chortle, "Religion of peace, right," and use examples of fundamentalism as the core of one of the world's great religions, as if fundamentalists of other stripes, who may only kill abortion doctors or abuse their children, aren't just as sick, just as violent, just as despicable as those we rightly call terrorists.

Well, there is one key difference- those religions haven't declared their enmity to the United States and its principles or, when they have (as some hard core Christian fundamentalist groups have) haven't attacked it so spectacularly. After all, all this anti-Islam rhetoric started after 9/11, just as those of us who were horrified both by the act and the potential ramifications were warning at the time. Our concerns were salved by those who, like the president, claimed that the war is against theocrats and not Islam, but have become more and more justified as the net is cast wider and wider in the search for potential threats and perceived enemies.

I'd make one distinction, though: the point is not fundamentalism, but theocracy. One can be a fundamentalist if one wishes; the problem lies in attempting to turn your religious beliefs into the policy, law, and constitutional makeup of the state. Such things are hardly limited to Islam, but the right isn't going to make the comparison between its Moral Majority allies and its "Islamist" enemies. That would be political suicide.

(By the way, for those who haven't checked it out yet or were turned off by the increasingly Maxim-esque covers, Esquire actually had a really good series of stories about combat in Afghanistan. One of them was from the perspective of an American Muslim serviceman, and definitely helps one gain a little perspective on the differences between a Muslim and a theocrat.)

Sigh.

I know I shouldn't do this, as it has occupied far too much of my time recently, but I feel compelled to respond to Den Beste's latest article. A few points:

1) The claim that "There's no fairness or symmetry in international affairs. There never has been. Within our nation we try to live as civilized beings, but the world is a jungle, and despite what we'd all like to believe, it is a hostile and dangerous place where only force or the threat of force are truly effective"....

is nonsense. That was already obsolete with the Treaty of Westphalia, and was finally put to bed when multilateralism started in earnest this century. "Fairness" lies in countries making deals and sticking to them, and those deals are based more on mutual self-interest than the threat of force. The United States has done so, and benefits from those deals. Besides, there's no reason to believe that it's that much different within "our nation" either... we "try to live as civilized beings" at least partially because the threat of reprisal hangs over our heads like swords of Damocles. This illusory division between American civility and foreign barbarity definitely boosts one's American ego (to think that we're somehow special in that we obey the law and are civilized), but it's simply nonsense.

2) Den Beste is making an awful lot of assertions, delving into an awful lot of minds, and passing simple judgements on an awful lot of difficult questions through most of this piece. His simplistic interpretation of the Iraqi situation is only one aspect, although an important one. More important is his repetition of the argument that all foreign resentment and anger at the United States is rooted in a clash of civilizations. It's another big bolster to the American psyche, but doesn't really fit the facts at hand any more than the simplistic "they hate our freedom" argument does. Osama said why he was ticked off at the U.S., and while those reasons may not explain entirely why he attacked the U.S., they should not be arbitrarily ignored in favor of simplistic psychology and sociology rooted in, from what I can tell, no recognizable trends or theories within either social science. Repeating your own theories or the theories of your ideological peers as truth serves no one, even if it is convenient.

(By the way, the words "explanation" or "reason" does not mean "justification". Just in case that objection was going to spring to some lips).

I mean, this isn't a new thing: his simplistic and unwarranted description of the reason why King Abdullah of Jordan remains a moderate (he gets cash from the U.S.) defies all logic, and his cheerleading of U.S. unilaterialism remains rather disturbing in his belief that the United States should ignore the rest of the world but the rest of the world should bend at the knee to the United States. Still, it's rather astonishing to behold.

.....

Edit: another incredible assertion in the same vein:

Every nation and every people has its own agenda and its own interests. When they don't coincide with ours, they'll get different answers than we do about critical questions.

I have lamented the fact that it seems like leaders around the world spend all their time lecturing the US on what we ought to do, and precious little time trying to listen to what we think. I believe I understand why they do it now. It really should have been obvious to me; it's because it is their primary way of trying to influence the course of events. We have the ability to act, but all they can do is talk and try to convince us to act in ways which are to their benefit.

This assumes many things that are either unprove or demonstrably untrue. First, that the United States and other nations don't have shared agendas and interests that can override their differences. Second, that the United States does listen to other countries, and that other countries don't listen to the United States. They may not agree, but that doesn't mean they don't listen. The error of "I understand" shines through. Third, that the primary way of influencing the course of events is through speech- it might not be the only way, but the preferred way, which is something that the United States (or at least Den Beste) might not understand. Fourth, that influencing through speech is illegitimate, which again pits Den Beste against the entire concept of diplomacy. Fifth, that the United States shouldn't listen even if influence through speech is legitimate, because influence through force is somehow morally superior. (!) Oh, and finally, although I didn't quote it, the two ideas that the criticism of the prospects of invading Iraq are somehow not based on cost/benefit analyses and that such analyses are the only appropriate ones to be done are questionable as hell.

....

3)Iraq agreeing to inspections blows wide holes in what remains of Den Beste's arguments after the convenient and questionable psychology and sociology are pulled out, but even if it didn't his argument doesn't make sense. Why not invade Iran, who have also declared enmity and who also possess these sorts of weapons? Why not North Korea? Why not Russia, who can't be trusted to keep their material safe? Hell, why not China? This sort of justification is not suitable for invasion or regime change, but of empire, and I doubt even Den Beste is willing to make the argument that the United States could enforce imperial control on that scale.

4) as yet more proof that Steven seens to have a poor grasp on history:

I wrote about this on October 1 last year, shortly before our bombing campaign in Afghanistan began. The threat of non-support and of America-going-it-alone also hung in the air late last September, when our friends tried to get us to exercise restraint against the Taliban and hoped to get us to consider diplomatic solutions instead of military ones.

Funny, I seem to recall there was widespread support of the United States' actions in Afghanistan around the world, even if there was also dissent. Now it's all dissent, and practically no support. Even the allies that were fighting to be involved in Afghanistan (like Canada, a country that usually defers to the United States in pretty much all matters military) are questioning the wisdom of invading Iraq. Yet supposedly that doesn't matter, because they all happen to be wrong, and Steven happens to be right, based on nothing more than his absolute certainty that he knows what's going through the minds of anybody whom he happens to be writing about. Must be nice to have that kind of unshakeable certainty of the rightness of one's actions. It isn't exactly grounded in the lessons of history and of the relevant fields of study, but I imagine it makes life easier.

In the end, the simple question by one "Stuart" that started his restatement of his old (flawed) arguments is a valid one: "what gives America the right to attack another sovereign nation?"

The answer, of course, is that nothing that Den Beste has said does anything of the sort. The United States agreed to certain ground rules that define the rights and responsibilities of states and the subjects of those states. It did so as a condition of its membership in various international bodies and the international community in general. Under those rules, it currently has no right to invade Iraq, until it can prove that Iraq is dangerous to the satisfaction of the rest of the Security Council . Whether it cares or not is a different question, but the answer to the question Stuart posed is crystal clear. The United States agreed to abide by these treaties, and Den Beste himself insisted that the U.S. is a nation of laws and that those treaties have the force of law. If he truly wants the United States to no longer be bound by those laws, then let him advocate that the United States leave the United Nations, break its collective security agreements, and declare itself in a true state of nature in regards to the rest of the world. He wouldn't be alone- others have said the same thing. They might even be right. Trying to declare that such a state of nature exists when it certainly doesn't, however, is simply nonsense.

(Oh, one other thing: I just finished reading Phillip K. Dick's "Minority Report". I don't know whether the movie suits the situation as well as some argue it does, but I know damned well that the story does. The same questions that are raised by the story about unshakeable knowledge of the future are raised by the current situation, enough so that it's eerie).

Mighty Wurlitzer Watch:

I was glancing through the archives of theIndepundit, when I ran across an entry on acrylamide.. you know, that chemical that swedish scientists have been saying might cause cancer? Anyway, in order to prove that Acrylamide is overhyped he linked over to an "expert" on the Fox News website... specifically, this column by Steven Milloy.

I wasn't quite sure who this Milloy character was, but his article seemed hardly convincing. After all, since when do the Swedish scientists that brought this to the attention of the WHO care about EPA guidelines, and since when do reputable commentators use scare quotes around the word "scientist"?

Then I got to the end of the article, and discovered that not only was this guy an "adjunct scholar" at Cato (which too often means "partisan hack"), but he's also the publisher of Junkscience.com, which I had earlier encountered as the source of an incredibly dubious "debunking" of the effects of DDT that picked and chose sources that backed up its arguments and conveniently ignored those that didn't. Coupled with a link list that shows a pretty clear agenda (even if the connection to the bought-and-paid-for "scholarship" that Cato usually turns out didn't), we have an "expert" that appears to be no such thing.

Unfortunately, due to the connection between a website with an agenda, a network with an agenda, and a blogger that is either credulous or sympathetic to this agenda, we're left with quotation, argument, and sourcing that's unbelievably suspect, and an indepundit entry that's practically useless for anybody who's trying to figure out whether acrylamide is actually harmful or not.

So my question is this... what's the real deal with acrylamide, and can anybody cite someone that isn't an obvious mouthpiece with an agenda?

Well, Ken Layne was rather surprised to be added to the "lefty list" (I'm surprised by some of the additions myself... the net's being cast a bit too wide, methinks), and it promptedthis response:

I only read about 15 of these 80+ sites. Of those, I hadn't really considered any of them to be "lefty." Kaus? Jarvis? Freakin' Free-Trade-Or-Die Denton?

Have glanced at some of the other sites, but lefties generally can't write. They sound like earnest preachers. They're rarely funny. Everything's always horrible, the world is so mucked up, we have failed as a species, blah blah blah. As somebody said -- P.J. O'Rourke? -- you'll never hear a good bar described as "leftist."

First: he may be a fictional character, but somebody needs to aim Ken Layne in the general direction of Spider Jerusalem from Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan; if nothing else, Ellis proves that it can be done. Hell, I'll extend that to the rest of you: go read Transmetropolitan. Now. It's brilliant, funny, allegorical, poignant, horrific, enlightening, and damned entertaining all at the same time- living proof that you don't need to be Japanese or Neil Gaiman to create comics that not only transcend the genre, but transcend the label.

Second: Which blogs did he read? Tom Tomorrow, Vaara, and Atrios aren't funny?

Third: Why the hell does good writing have to be funny and unserious? I mean, I know too many "dittohead"-esque conservatives live for stupid, crude, inane and simpleminded humor aimed at their ideological opponents in order to make them feel better, but this sort of concept is astoundingly ignorant. Hell, my own namesake is living proof- Demosthenes was one of the best orators history has ever known, and he didn't need to rely on humor to make his point and capture his audience.

and finally...

Fourth: Brian, it's pretty obvious that Ken doesn't want to be on that list with the rest of us leftists. Judging by that post, the feeling is mutual. If he's going to be an ass, take your ball and go home. Let him go play with Instapundit or something.

The new story that Iraq is preparing to invite weapons inspectors is extremely interesting, if true. Various news reports over the past few weeks have made it pretty clear that the United States was planning on using the non-compliance of Iraq to weapon inspections as their official reason for going into Iraq. Personally, this bothers me much less than the idea that the United States is simply going to charge in because they don't like Saddam- it harnesses the same multilateral reasoning that prompted and legitimized the Gulf War (Saddam broke the rules and is a clear threat to his neighbours) and that has been used now to delegitimize the impending invasion.

The question that always existed, of course, was whether Iraq knew this (as is almost undoubtedly true) and whether they can do anything about it. This would seem to be an answer to both, and a fairly subtle way of playing the U.S. against the U.N. If the inspectors come in and find nothing (whether through Iraqi duplicity or because there's nothing there), then the main argument that the United States uses to justify invading Iraq evaporates, as well as the best possible avenue for the United States to legitimize invasion and regime change. The U.N. won't agree that Saddam should be removed simply because he's Saddam- as I've mentioned earlier, neither the treaties that underpin the U.N. nor the international system going back to the Treaty of Westphalia supports those sorts of actions in any way, shape, or form. The United States needs more, and everybody knows it, including Iraq. That "extra oomph" is WMDs.

Even without that, however, the mere request somewhat harms the U.S. cause. If Iraq looks to be reasonable and willing to undergo inspection, then the U.N. will no doubt begin preparations to resume that inspection, and negotiations under which that inspection can take place. While those negotations and preparations are going on, however, the United States is in almost as bad a situation as it would be if Iraq was given a clean bill of health, because any invasion would be seen as the U.S. "jumping the gun"... attempting to invade before the inspections can (theoretically) show the falsehood of the stated reason for U.S. invasion. It doesn't matter whether it's actually false or not (and it's very likely that Saddam does indeed have these weapons). The point will be that the rest of the world and especially Security Council will see one nation possibly trying to "get their licks in" because they're afraid of what investigation will actually uncover.

It might show that somebody in the Iraqi government understands U.S. electoral politics. Iraq might be hoping that if the U.S. is stymied in its plans for invasion the blame for domestic troubles and for this inaction will come down squarely on the White House. This benefits Iraq enormously. If an invasion does happen, then it looks even more like Bush is wagging the dog and Iraq looks better to everybody outside the United States; whereas if the invasion doesn't happen, it could sink the Bush Administration, and the new president won't be one with a personal grudge against Iraq for the attempted assassination of a family member. In that case, Hussein (and his successors) will remain secure.

Of course, all this depends on the United States giving a whit about what the U.N. thinks, and whether the U.S. thinks that it can invade, conquer, and rebuild Iraq even in the face of international condemnation. I have no doubt that the warbloggers feel this way, and probably most of the White House staff- but it's pretty damned certain that this isn't the dominant viewpoint at State, and all those leaked documents imply that there's rather a lot of people at Defense who aren't too keen on the invasion either.

Me, I've always considered Iraq a seperate problem shoehorned into the "War on Terrorism" using this WMD shibboleth (as if there weren't other sources that disliked the United States), and I imagine that I'm not alone in this view. Iraq's attempts to eliminate the perception that Iraq is afraid of weapons inspectors will go a long way towards the adoption of this viewpoint in the world community, and perhaps even within the United States. Rest assured that if the invasion happens and goes badly, it'll probably grow more popular within the United States as well.

There may be legitimate reasons to invade Iraq, and WMDs might well be one... but it looks like the U.S. may have a hell of a time convincing anybody else of it.

Edit: Kevin at Leanleft agrees. Nice template, by the way.

J. Bradford DeLong rips Glassman a new orifice for lying about his book and what he said at the time.

I've gotta tell you, there's very little more entertaining than watching a real economist tear a "policy entrepreneur" to shreds. I think half the reason I like Krugman's popular work so much is that he demonstrates a rare talent for this sort of work, but classic summaries by DeLong like this:

THE DOW SHOULD BE WORTH 36000 NOW!! THE DOW WILL BE WORTH 36000 SOON!! IF YOU DON'T BUY STOCKS NOW, YOU ARE MISSING THE ALMOST-CERTAIN OPPORTUNITY TO TRIPLE YOUR MONEY OVER THE NEXT SEVERAL YEARS!!

deserve every bit as much credit.

One day I hope to be this adept. (Courtesy of Atrios.)

Edit: Krugman took Glassman to task too. And by the way, anybody who hasn't gone through the archives on Krugman's official page (and the unofficial page at www.pkarchive.org) doesn't know what they're missing. Even if you don't agree with half of what he says, it's a great read regardless.

Oops.

Note to the Bush administration: when you base most of your policy decisions and defenses on a war, and when you ride in on a promise to be more honest and "grown-up" than the guy who preceded you, it's a pretty good idea not to get caught screwing with veterans' health benefits.

To be fair, these were the actions of a Bush appointee and not Bush himself, but we all know where the buck stops, and it ain't the office of the Veterans Affairs secretary. You wanted the responsibility, Dubya, so the responsibility is yours. Lap it up.

Someone should let Peggy Noonan know that the "Era of Weapons of Mass Destruction" started a long time ago.

Maybe I should apologize to Robert Musil. I was accusing Musil of incoherent rambling, but that accusation shrivels away and dies when confronted with the enormity of nonsensical blather in this Noonan article. Not being a big reader of her work, I've gotta ask: how can anybody actually take it seriously?

I'm not exactly a big booster of Robert Musil, but I loved this:

Well, Atrios confirms that he does, in fact, literally thinks that Howard Kurtz is a National Republican Committee shill. And all the little Atriettes in the comment box agree with him, too. Better that they do. Otherwise, Atrios would be labeling THEM RNC shills. Gotta keep the prols in line!

Atrios and the Atriettes? I love it! It sounds like a band you'd find in an Archie comic!

Screw the "left wing echo chamber", the "vast left wing conspiracy", or any of that noise. My vote's for "Atriettes". Thanks, Musil. That more than makes up for that "irony geiger counters" joke that entirely fell flat.

(In case the rest of you were wondering, the rest of the post is incoherent ramblings about the meaning of the word "shill" and silly attempts to draw equivalences between the NYT and Kurtz. Which, of course, has little to do with whether or not Kurtz is indeed a shill, or whether the criticism implicit in that term is correct, but since when has Musil cared about whether his arguments made sense?)

Atrios has a pair of brilliant links and quotations concerning Keith Olbermann, who left his MSNBC talk show in 1998 because he couldn't stand the idiocy of the anti-Clinton cavalcade that consumed the news that year. What really disturbed me (and Olbermann) was the revelation that people were actually talking about the possibility of a terrorist strike before the Clinton scandal really hit. I'm not saying that it would have led to real action (if I recall the era right, people were talking more about asteroid strikes than terrorist strikes), but it's rather chilling nonetheless.

(Besides, if nothing else, you have to read the comments section for some inspired trolling.)

Atrios linked to a very good article by Richard Goldstein about red-baiting. One would think that such a thing would be seen as archaic at best, but a cursory glance at Horowitz's latest screeds (and the bizarre defense of McCarthyism that graced his blog a few weeks ago) show that no such thing is true- that people can still get mileage out of calling everybody left of Rush Limbaugh some variation of "Stalinist", or "Commie", or "Marxist". Although, now that I think about it, that last one doesn't work so well- I know it's always made me think of French academics, not Russian totalitarians, and it certainly doesn't excite the middle-American "reds under every bed" McCarthyite twinges that red-baiting depends on.

What really grabbed me was the last paragraph, because it precisely echoes something that I've mentioned several times in this own space and continue to try to hammer home.

There's a lesson here about the true meaning of labels. Political correctness ought to describe blind adherence to the dominant ideology—and these days, that means American nationalism. But you'll never hear a guy with an eagle tattoo called p.c. In practice, the term applies only to those who fight the power. It's an enforcer of the order, just like its synonyms, Stalinist and Commie. In the fall of Bill Maher, you can grasp the clear and present danger of Red-baiting, even in a world without Reds. It shuts down critical thinking, and in that sense, it's the most effective instrument of conformity we have.

Now, there's no question that such namecalling isn't exactly limited to the right- just a few days ago a fairly radical friend of mine was using the word "liberal" as a pejorative (to my endless exasperation, although he was using it more in the classical sense) and the zillion "isms" that the left had conjured up to describe and pigeonhole its opponents were part of the reason why the right was able to disarm left critiques with this "politically incorrect" nonsense. A greater reason, though, is that Goldstein is essentially right- that the dominant ideology has moved in their direction, and the perils of opposing that ideology are absolutely and resolutely non-partisan. At the moment, that dominant ideology is a right-wing one (with some exceptions), and definitely such a creature online.

See, there is an additional interpretation of Goldstein's critique. He was talking about dominant ideologies on a national or societal level. Such things are undoubtedly important, but society is made up of numerous sub-groups, and each sub-group (and I'm not quite sure what kind of label to use for such things, as each one carries with it its own baggage) has its own dominant ideologies and dominant beliefs. Of course, another word for dominant is, yes, hegemonic. (It really is a handy title, isn't it?)

Here on the Internet, the hegemonic belief system is definitely a mix of some conservatism and a lot of libertarianism, depending on the issue involved and which area (or sub-medium) on the Internet you're talking about. Ironically, perhaps, Goldstein's point about political correctness is just as true here as it is in American society, as there is no doubt that to be P.C. here is to be libertarian. That's why I don't and can't take whining about being "politically incorrect" seriously here, because by and large, the arguments being (inadequately) defended are the very ones that are already hegemonic. If anything, to be political incorrect on the Net is to be liberal.

In any case, it's nice to have someone make the point as well and as adroitly as Goldstein has, and the next time somebody whines about "political correctness" on the Internet, I'm pretty confident that Goldstein has showed why they can be cheerfully ignored. (Unless, of course, they happen to be liberal.)

Comments are back up. Let's hope that they stay up, hmm?

Tom Friedman wrote an excellent defense of bureaucracy and regulation that nicely dovetails with the edit of my last entry.

What distinguishes America is our system's ability to consistently expose, punish, regulate and ultimately reform those excesses — better than any other. How often do you hear about such problems being exposed in Mexico or Argentina, Russia or China? They may have all the hardware of capitalism, but they don't have all the software — namely, an uncorrupted bureaucracy to manage the regulatory agencies, licensing offices, property laws and commercial courts.

Indeed, what foreigners envy us most for is precisely the city Mr. Bush loves to bash: Washington. That is, they envy us for our alphabet soup of regulatory agencies: the S.E.C., the Federal Reserve, the F.A.A., the F.D.A., the F.B.I., the E.P.A., the I.R.S., the I.N.S. Do you know what a luxury it is to be able to start a business or get a license without having to pay off some official?

This goes much farther than the countries Tom mentioned above, of course- there are many notorious examples of capitalism without regulation turning into a nightmare of greed and kleptocracy, and the notion that there needs to be institutions to defend, regulate, and support capitalism isn't a new idea and shouldn't be a controversial one. Yet it is, because some people seem to believe that capitalism and the markets that it consists of are somehow alien, biological, and unknowable except through the arcane science of economics. This is nonsense, of course- markets and economic systems are made up entirely of and by people, which is why economics remains and will always remain a social science, albeit one that can benefit more from modelling than most. Whenever people forget that, though, it's practically inevitable that disaster strikes.

So we get the Savings and Loan scandal.
So we get the Russian Kleptocrats.
So we get the Albanian ponzi scheme.
So we get Asian crony capitalism.
So we get Worldcom, Enron, and all the other imploding corporations, which show that crony capitalism isn't so Asian after all.
So we get Argentina (to an extent.)
So we get endless proof that working capitalism is supported by pillars of bureaucratic regulation, linked by bridges of shining red tape.

It may not be romantic, and it may not be sexy, and it may fly in the face of those who devoutly wish that economics was a natural science instead of a social one, or that believe that There Is No God But Capitalism and Hayek Is His Prophet... but it's the truth.

Nick Denton is pushing a fairly radical idea:European Independence. Well, not independence per se, but the idea that Europe should defend itself, and not rely on the United States to provide for its peace and security. It's not a new idea, and it's one that's often brought up when people talk about "countering poles" to the United States that may arise in the future. Nick definitely has a point about differing interests- Europe and the United States are seperating and growing apart, and the latest conflicts are only exacerbating this trend.

There are, however, several problems with this idea. First, is the simple fact that the United States has an awful lot of money- it's a huge economy supporting a fairly large modern population, and that creates an awful lot of leeway for military spending.

Second: the United States is a country. It is made up of states that have given up their sovereignty (for the most part) in order to become one larger nation-state. Europe is a continent, and a supra-national body that nonetheness does not eliminate the sovereignty of the countries involved. One is sovereign, one isn't. This presents a huge problem to anyone arguing that Europe should be on par with the United States, because it would be France and England and Belgium and Germany and Turkey (etc.) that would have beefed up militaries, and they wouldn't be able to coordinate as effectively as the armies of one state under one command, which is the case with the United States. These militaries would also be quite threatening to each other, and would mean a Europe that doesn't and can't trust itself to defend itself. Hobbes pointed this out quite well when he noted that voluntary associations of military equals are insufficient to maintain sovereignty and fend off the state of nature, as they simply can't trust each other. International treaties and agreements mitigate this somewhat, but they can't completely eliminate it.

Third: the United States is not only a country, but an island. Well, it's actually a continent, but it might as well be an island, as it's surrounded by water on two sides and abundantly friendly and utterly unthreatening neighbours that depend on it for defense (and which simply can't "go it alone"... even if Mexico and Canada had equal GDP per capita to the United States, their population isn't sufficient to marshall the amount of money required.) Europe, on the other hand, isn't just beset from within, but without- they have Russia (who isn't likely to give up its sovereignty to Europe any time soon) up north, China down south, the Middle East right next door... as Brooks and Wohlforth's article about the unlikelihood of "counter poles" to the United States pointed out, the United States is a faraway, distant threat, and most of these countries have much closer ones.

Related to this point is my final one: the United States is generally more useful as an ally than an enemy. Since there are plenty of nearby enemies, and since the United States isn't an especially harmful superpower compared to some in the past, it's usually better to have them onside. It is as much in their interests to keep the United States as an ally or at the very least a neutral presence, just as it is usually in the United States' interests to avoid destructive conflicts around the world. That doesn't mean that mutual criticism of foreign policy can't exist (which is a point many bloggers don't understand and Nick Denton missed)- even if it annoys the United States or whichever other country is in question, it doesn't change the coinciding interests of the two. Europe is not going to go to war with the United States to defend Iraq, even if they feel that the invasion is wrong, as that wouldn't be in their interests any more than a hostile Europe would be in the United States' interests. There are plenty of other, better ways to demonstrate displeasure than cutting military ties based on solely on coinciding interests.

So, how can you deal with these problems? Well, Europe is, I feel, in the process of dealing with the first one - their collective economy will grow enough to match the United States at some point, if only due to sheer force of numbers, economic integration, and the end of the United States' role as the absolutely safe investment that people used to believe it was during the 80's and 90's. The rest however, can only be dealt with by one act:

Europe must become a single country.

Not several countries, not a super-national body, not some sort of collective defense agreement, none of that. It must integrate at a sovereign level, going through the same process of integration that the United States did in the 1700's to defend itself from England, the superpower of the time. This can be and probably should be a loose confederation, as there is simply too much disparity between different parts of Europe and too many ties to the historical countries. Different sub-states (or regions, or provinces, or areas, or whatever) should be allowed to keep their own culture and control over their own economies to a greater or lesser extent, so as to mitigate the effects of the single currency. Let's make no mistake, though: that the only way that Denton and all the other bloggers and pundits who want to disengage from Europe will ever get what they want and the United States will ever be absolved of the task of protecting Europe is if Europe becomes another United States. Whether it happens today, tomorrow, ten months from now, or ten years from now is immaterial- it must happen. The United States proves it can work, if as imperfectly as any other country, and the conclusion is unmistakable. The only way that one can deal with a wealthy continent-sized state is with another wealthy continent-sized state.

Edit: Unfortunately, nonsensical spouting of ideology like this is one of the big barriers to this ever happening. Glenn Reynolds says that "Europe may declare independence, but it won't take up the responsiblities that implies because it can't afford to without dismantling large parts of its social welfare apparatus, and bureaucracy in general". Sorry, Glenn, but dismantling the welfare state has little or nothing to do with the possibility and usefulness of an independent Europe- it may somewhat increase the funds available to build up a military, but the big question isn't really spending, but sovereignty. I can understand those who believe that the solution to every problem is to cut taxes and regulation, Dubya style, but if anything this necessitates more bureaucracy, not less.

Regular readers probably believe that I'm not a huge fan of Henry Hanks' work. Some might think that this is due to the fact that he never posts on the comments section of this site* without including some sort of an attack on my arguments or my credibility, and therefore it's a "he criticizes me, I criticize him" kind of situation. One problem with that: I rarely if ever read his blog, and therefore can't really claim much of an opinion one way or the other. Having noticed the disparity of him reading my site and my not reading his, I decided to head over.

Unfortunately, this is what I found:

Alterman's labeling of National Review as "far right" and Newsweek and Time as "the center" is telling. However, if there's a "far right," there must be a "far left." So what would that be? I can only see one probable answer here and that's extremist leftist groups such as anarchists and eco-terrorists. So they are now comparable to a magazine? Just as the WSJ editorial board was compared to the most extremist right-wingers earlier?

Well, it's only telling in that Newsweek and Time are definitely centrist, and any attempt to label them as "leftist" only shows how Henry is trying to redefine the center. (He isn't the only one.)

What I'm absolutely baffled by, though, is this assertion that there are no magazines on the far left. Um, Henry? Have you read Alterman's blog to any extent? Have you ever read anything else he's ever written? I ask that because he links to Tapped, which is a part of The American Prospect, a left-wing magazine- and he's written quite a few articles for The Nation, another left wing magazine. Heck, they aren't even that leftist- if you're looking for hard leftism there's everything from the "The New Internationalist" to "The Socialist Review" to several scholarly journals to... well, there's lots of them, even if they don't usually enjoy the supporting largesse, attack dog politics and loose grip on the truth that the Weekly Standard is notorious for. Why this glaring error, which throws the entire point of his post into doubt?

Sadly, not much else I read really varies much from this sort of recycled talking point. Despite Henry's continual visits to this site, I'm unlikely to return to Crooow blog anytime soon.

*Yes, the comments will return. Frankly, it's very strange to see the page without them.

Two words: Savage Smackdown.

One of the reasons I really like Krugman's official site is that he can go off on people in a fashion that would be impossible at the NYTimes. I mean, I doubt even Raines would let Krugman say something like this:

But it took about 30 seconds for the right-wing scandal machine to pounce. Robert Rubin works for Citigroup! And he was a Clinton-era icon! So he's guilty! Off with his head! Republican operatives began sending thousands of faxes; talk radio made Rubin's sins topic # 1; and Andrew Sullivan dutifully attacked Rubin in his blog. And with amazing gullibility, the likes of Tim Noah at Slate jumped on board, without bothering to check even the most basic facts.

The big joke is that the Enron deal took place months before Rubin joined Citigroup. Oh, well, maybe he had a time machine. (Reports suggest that Sullivan does - that rather than admit to a mistake he revised his post, a big no-no in the blogging world.)

Krugman is hardly alone in hammering Sullivan et al for this, but few summarize the mighty wurlitzer so well.

Hmm... I wonder if Krugman will actually start a blog down the line, once that textbook is finished up? Now that would be a fun read.

Heh. I was just going to fire off an email to unmedia about Muslimpundit's latest bit about Jihad-as-bloody-holy war (as Aziz Poonawalla is an excellent writer on the subject of Islam and the Arabic language as it relates to the Koran), and I was delighted to discover upon linking to the site that there was already one there.

So, by all means, go read it, especially if you read the original article by Muslimpundit.

Letter from Gotham's author, Diane E., partially ascribes her movement away from liberalism to, oddly enough, Instapunditwatch. A relevant quote:

I'm downright uncomfortable with sites like Instapunditwatch...He's a blogger, fer goshsakes, not a paid pseudo-pundit like Sullivan and Kaus. I have my differences with him. I can do without yet another post directing us to a blogger who thinks that targeting Arab-Americans is not racial profiling. I have reason to believe -- though cannot prove -- that after I wandered off the reservation with respect to Sully he studiously ignored my blog. So what? He's got a right to post what he wants on his blog. It's his goddamn blog.

Which is true, just as anybody else has a right to respond. And it's nice to acknowledge that Instapundit is, much of the time, about as fair in his choice of sources as the Weekly Standard. Yet she goes on to say..

I want to say publicly that I am forever grateful to Glenn Reynolds for being a clearinghouse of information about anti-Israel bias in the press, especially the British press.

See, here's the first problem- he's a clearinghouse of claims of anti-Israel bias in the press... I've looked into some of those claims, and they're based on specious and useless arguments usually based on quotes taken out of context and frustration that anyone would take a different perspective on the issue. Even aside from that, though, the earlier paragraph that Diane wrote argued that Instapundit either has a clear agenda or simply picks his links from the same sources. It makes him unreliable- you never know whether there might be a scathing rebuttal or brilliant defense that Instapundit doesn't link to because it doesn't fit his beliefs on the subject.

I am positive that the Jenin non-massacre was exposed as a fraud as quickly as it was by the amount of information that passed through the Reynolds' blog, which functions as a central nervous system of alternative analysis during crises.

I doubt blogs had anything to do with it.. it was likely the fact that the press was allowed into Jenin and hysterical rumors turning into sober reality that caused it.

In any case, this is the real problem, and proof of the inconsistency in Diane's argument. If the Reynolds blog serves as a "central nervous system of alternative analysis", then it serves a real, important function. Yet Diane's first paragraph shows that he either has an agenda or a clear bias, and perusal of any site that discusses Instapundit in critical terms makes it abundantly clear that such a bias exists, even if the simple fact that he writes for an unabashedly libertarian website didn't. This means that he's important and directly influences what information people recieve (as any editor is), and yet entirely untrustworthy... and therefore, utterly deserving of criticism.

As someone who has despaired of the unanswered influence of Robert Fisk for years, I commend Reynolds for simply holding Fisk up to the clear light of the day and exposing that man for the fraud that he is.

Rebuttal, especially the invective aimed at Fisk and his type, is hardly "holding Fisk up to the clear light of day". Fisking is just an argument style based on Usenet quotation conventions that can take arguments out of context unless handled very carefully... and I wouldn't describe most warbloggers as "careful". While it's tempting for those who agree with the person doing the rebuttal to characterize it as some sort of "washing away the profane with the sacred", that's almost never the case, and certainly not with any rebuttal of Fisk I've ever read. I'm not a big fan of the guy, but let's be honest here.

One other thing... calling the act of dumping a pitcher of water over E.O. Wilson's head fascist is an insult to those who have been the victims or dupes of fascists in the past. It was ill-advised and unwarranted (although understandable- sociobiology is a huge threat to Marxian analyses, because it undercuts historical materialism, and therefore the hard leftists that do exist in universities), but not fascistic in the slightest.

Well, now.... this is an interesting analysis. Dick Morris is arguing that the Republicans are in deep trouble down the road, because the "immigrantization" of the United States shows no sign of stopping, and the Republicans have had very little luck attempting to convert immigrants to their cause. (Not surprising... even without the constant questions about out-and-out racism, their policy choices are rarely immigrant-friendly to anyone but the most blinkered GOP partisan). To correct this trend, Morris suggests...

Powell in 2008.

Yes, Powell.

Now, I'd be the first to want to see an African-American president- such a thing would be a real sign that the racial divide is finally healing, and a real signal by the GOP that they're willing to put aside their past. If, indeed, it is their past. Unfortunately, it's not going to happen- Powell is being demonized too much by the right for the party faithful to ever accept him as their candidate- the open loathing of the State department pretty much eliminates the possibility of any candidate with a past as Secretary of State.

So if Morris is right, then the GOP is pretty screwed, because Powell ain't going to get that nomination. Then again, considering their pet neo-con wankers obviously haven't learned their lesson about Big Lies, I'm not exactly going to shed tears when they go.

Atrios is absolutely right- this is a piece of unadulterated nonsense, designed solely to shore up the reputation of the people involved (one of the authours, James Glassman, was one of the starry-eyed "New Economy" boosters that helped put us into this mess in the first place, and the other, John Lott, is far out of his field) and to try to keep the faithful happy and protect "their side" as much as anything David Brock dishonestly and slanderously wrote about Anita Hill or Bill Clinton in those pages, and just as likely to be built on a house of lies, deceit, obfuscation and misdirection as Brock revealed his own work had been at the Standard.

For those that didn't follow the link I provided (I wouldn't blame you) it resurrects the "markets hates the government" shibboleth, and attempts to use it as an explanation of why there have been enormous falls in the market over the past few days- blaming it on the proposed or pending legislation on the matter. Other than the simple fact that a lot of these drops have happened when Bush has spoken using the same kind of reflexively pro-business rhetoric that Glassman and Lott are using, the biggest question that appears in my mind is "why don't we just, um, ask some people why they're selling the stocks"?

Glassman and Lott seem to buy into the "market as alien organism" argument, but like any human institution it's ultimately made up of the actions and behavior of large numbers of human beings, and can therefore be understood, at least on a broad level, by understanding those human beings. Therefore, by studying the organs that would shape the opinions of those human beings, by asking representative groups, and by understanding on a more theoretical level how they think, one can at least partially figure out why they're doing what they're doing. In none of these cases, in no conceivable analysis of these cases, does anything like Glassman and Lott's argument come about. When the relentlessly pro-business Economist (an elite opinion-shaper) savages the behavior of American business, why should we believe Glassman and Lott? When public opinion polls (a representative sample of Americans) consistently show that American corporate leadership is less trusted than the nation's drug dealers, pimps, and/or lawyers, why should we believe Glassman and Lott? When pretty much every theory aside from the utterly discredited Glassman's theory of the "Dow 36K" argues that investors are stampeding for the door because they've discovered that they can't trust the numbers in equity markets and therefore want to invest in something where they can, why the hell should we believe this load of farm fresh faeces shovelled by Glassman and Lott?

The answer, of course, is that we shouldn't. That this is yet another attempt by the "Mighty Wurlitzer" of the right to shore up the reputation of their pet president and, more importantly, their dangerous and ludicrous market fundamentalist ideology that has led American markets to disaster just as surely as they led Russian markets to disaster- both at the hands of kleptocratic "businessmen" who are less interested in the functionality and efficiency of capitalism than those aforementioned pushers and pimps. This brand of nonsense is what they're pushing. This type of deliberate spin is what they're pimping. If you don't want to help these people pull off the most brazen attempt at a Big Lie since the "vast right wing conspiracy" began, don't let them get away with it.

Ben Shapiro is an obnoxious little turd.

I'm not normally inclined to such hyperbole, but how the hell else is one supposed to respond to comments like "One American soldier is worth far more than an Afghan civilian", others that imply that all Afghans are terrorists, and the laughably outrageous conceit that the bombing of the wedding party was fine because American rules of engagement are unquestionable? And how does he reconcile that with the fact that the same sort of moronic mistake killed Canadian soldiers as readily as Afghani civilians?

Or, for that matter, the unbelievable ignorance of a statement like this?

The Afghans tolerated and supported the Taliban for years, no matter what President Bush says. A group doesn't conquer 95 percent of a country unless it has some support among the populace. The Afghans are fundamentalist Muslims. They didn't seem to mind too much that their women were treated like dogs or that the Taliban enforced Shariah (Muslim law). So frankly, it doesn't matter to me if some of their "civilians" get killed for involvement with the enemy.

I'm the one who's been defending the concept of national sovereignty, and even I can't justify this kind of nonsense- Afghanistan is about the best example of a failed and illegitimate quasi-state that the modern world has yet produced, and yet this nasty little twerp justifies blowing up weddings based on that?

(I'm not even going to get into the idiocy of a statement like "Twenty-three Israeli boys, the proportional equivalent of 1,000 Americans..." which manages to degrade and devalue the lives of not Afghanis, butAmericans.)

Townhall needs to pull this puerile brat from their site now, if they wish to retain any level of credibility outside their own worshipful believers. It's patently obvious he's just mouthing conservative nostrums and ratcheting up the rhetoric in a desperate attempt to seem worthwhile against his better-known and better-written compatriots. It's embarrassing to look at, and annoying to contemplate that somebody might actually believe this load. Horowitz would be preferable.

Thus I refute Coulter.

It is in and of itself rather telling that an article that says "all liberals are dumb" is in and of itself based on moronic chop-logic, baseless strawmen, and ludicrous generalizations.

And by the way, Krauthammer, not all liberals think that conservatives are evil. We do, however, think of some of them as selfish, venal, simpleminded, inclined towards misrepresentation or outright falsehoods in the construction of their arguments, too in love with a nonexistent past, and too attached to a simplistic and insulting notion of human relations and human behaviour. And, in your case, I imagine most liberals think of you as a moron who took Churchills line about Socialists at 20 and 40 and made a half-assed attempt to write a column about it that only embarrasses yourself and your ideological cousins.

(Why can't all conservatives write trash this lame? It'd certainly make our jobs a lot easier.)

Ok, I've pulled the comments, as they were being unresponsive to both IE and Mozilla, throwing back the same damned error. I'm going to attempt to republish them using that YACCS auto-attach tool, but something really screwy is going on here, and I frankly don't know enough about javascript to be able to tell why the server is continuously barfing on me.

(That last metaphor was for all those west-coasters who just finished lunch. You're welcome.)

More from Horowitz:

The Palestinians are the only people in the history of the world so far as I can tell who have systematically used their women and children as shields in war.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but wasn't this sort of thing fairly common during the Iran/Iraq war? And how, exactly, does being with your family count as "using women and children as shields"? That's like saying that George W. Bush is an immoral bastard for having Laura in the same house, and that housing the families of soldiers on army bases is an act of purest terrorist evil.

More to the point, does it make them any less dead? If assassination were impossible, then why the hell couldn't the Israeli army stage a SWAT-style invasion and arrest of the man in question, taking care to make safe his family? Not only would it have been a brilliant PR move (we're protecting his children even though he tries to use them against us) and shield Israel from criticism (we could have bombed those innocent people, but we don't believe in that sort of savagery), but if one wants to look at in a dispassionate fashion it ensures that any Israeli soldier or officer that was taken or killed in the execution of this order would be a shining beacon of civilization- an acknowledgement that Israel is willing to sacrifice its own soldiers in order to reassert its ethical and moral superiority. (This was the lesson that Jenin could have taught, were Israel not so inclined towards secrecy in that conflict and were reporters and NGOs not so credulous.)

Sadly, of course, all that is taken away now. Oh well; if the popular wisdom going around on the LGF comments boards and a good chunk of the warblogosphere holds true, it'll just speed that glorious day when those subhuman Paleostinians get forcibly thrown out of the territories and into the arms of their Arab brothers, so they can rot in "Islamist" hell together.

The Rittenhouse Review asks an important and relevant question

[C]ouldnt the Mossad have taken Shehadeh out with a single bullet at close range? This would have reduced the risk of collateral damage to roughly zero."

This is something I had been wondering myself... bombing buildings is not and has not been SOP for the Israelis for a while now, and for good reason; if you don't buy into the "death-cult" nonsense that permeates and pollutes discussion of the I/P issue in some circles, then you can logically conclude that the Palestinians can eventually be turned to peaceful solutions once they realize that the suicide bombings are pragmatically useless... but any senselessly or overly violent repression is going to toss them right back into the "tit for tat" mindset and provides ammo for the ready-made (and tragically circular) argument that killing Israeli civilians is fine, because Israelis kill Palestinian civilians. I'm sure the Israeli military and government knows this too, so why the hell would they have even risked an attack that lead to, what, almost 200 dead and wounded in an attack on one man that can no doubt be easily replaced?

It just doesn't make sense, especially if those rumors (again disparaged by the "subhuman warlike paleostinians" crowd) were true and a good chunk of the Palestinian leadership was willing to follow in the footsteps of those intellectuals who wrote that letter earlier and finally commit to ending suicide bombings of innocent civilians as a useless, futile, violent, cruel, and counterproductive tactic that has utterly backfired and should be discarded.

It is that realization and a commitment to putting it into action that is key to ending this conflict, not pop-psychological, base, insulting and ignorant diatribes about the supposed constitution of the Palestinian character, and it would be tragic were the resolution (or at least the beginning of such) to have been in our grasp, and then taken away not by malice, but by thoughtlessness.

What
The
Hell
Just
Happened?


No, seriously. I spend a day away from the computer to brush up on my GTA3 skills, and all of a sudden I end up with a monster discussion/argument/holy war in my comments section between Henry Hanks (whose continued reading of my website mystifies me in some respects) and jesse.

For those who didn't read it, it was between jesse (who argues that the right overpowers and namecalls the left in debate) and Hank (who thinks that it goes all ways on all sides.) Obviously, I come down on jesse's side, but Hank has a point. There are people on the left who engage in that sort of silly shit, but they're far outnumbered on the right, and the right has a number of bully pulpits (most notoriously talk radio) where they can feel free to say and do pretty much whatever they wish with the knowledge that they don't have to worry about offending listeners (which would check any weak "liberal bias" on behalf of the mainstream media, if such a thing existed) or about being simply ignored and/or misrepresented by the actions of others (which tends to happen to academics.)

It isn't just numbers, or degree, or reach: it's the combination of numbers, degree, reach, and the willingness to use all of these to put out a concerted message that seperates the right's "mighty wurlitzer" and any valid accusations of hostility and "namecalling" on the left. The right has an efficient machine with which it can find, attack, degrade, overpower, overwhelm, and eventually simply walk over people or ideas that might be a threat to it. If the left had anything like that, there wouldn't be protestors. They wouldn't be necessary.

Eugene Volokh wrote a very convincing post discussing the question of whether airport searches violate the Fourth Amendment or not. Eugene (not surprisingly for a security-conscious blogger) came down pretty squarely on the side of the searches, but had a good reason: the Amendment does not protect against searches without probable cause, but merely if they are "unreasonable"... a much weaker criterion.

What interested me were a few comments he made in support of this conclusion:

"reasonable[ness]" is the test that the Framers gave us -- and even though it has been in some situations instantiated through a set of brighter-line rules, I don't think that the vagueness and potential breadth of allowed searches can practically be avoided, precisely because some searches are indeed necessary to save people's lives.

Ok, so this sets Volokh down as a pretty strict constructionist... the important point is that it is "the test that the Framers gave us", and while open to the "it isn't the 18th century any more" critique, it's certainly a valid perspective, especially considering the extraordinary reverence that Americans have in the founding fathers and the belief that they wrote a document that is as relevant today as it was then.

However, this...

The Constitution is not just a charter for preserving our liberties against oppressive government, though it does try to do that. It is also a device for creating a government that can preserve our lives, liberties, and property against foreign and domestic enemies who would take them away. For the government to be able to do this, it must have various powers, including in many instances the power to search and seize us. We may want to see that power limited in various ways -- but the power to stop and screen passengers strikes me as eminently reasonable and necessary.

...confused me greatly. I think one thing that pretty much everybody agrees on about the founders is that they simply didn't trust government as far as they could throw it, and wrote a constitution that was painfully and obviously explicit about that very point. Volokh, however, has taken a rather different perspective- that the government can be permitted to act in order to defend us against "foreign and domestic enemies". This line of argument, to be blunt, defends monstrosities. It was the first argument that was used by the Soviets (with some justification- the United States really was trying to destroy them, although the Soviets did a pretty damned good job themselves) and by pretty much every tinpot dictator worldwide whenever he removes civil rights. Indeed, anybody familiar with the Lockean set of arguments would say that any act against even petty criminals is one against "domestic enemies". The precise reason why the Constitution is important is because it sets the ground rules by which the government can go after these "enemies, domestic and foreign", and so that the government can use strategies that keep this in mind- or amend the Constitution, with all the bad press and unrest that such a thing would no doubt entail. You can't arbitrarily throw away Constitutional rights because the threat greater than some petty thug, or else you've just justified even the most murderous third-world dictator and his "I was just defending the people against domestic enemies" line of bull. More than that, you open the door wide for such things in the United States, and I know for certain that the Framers wouldn't have wanted anything like that.

Then again, I always come back to the same point whenever I hear this sort of argument... It's not the Constitution of the Framers, but of the people of the United States. Although it was written by, yes, learned men in the past, it doesn't belong to them- it belongs to the current and future citizenry. If it fails to serve their needs, their interests, and to protect their rights, then it doesn't matter whether it's absolutely accurate to the Framer's intent... it has failed, and should be amended or (if such a thing can be ethically done in the case of Amendments with fairly wide interpretations, such as the Ninth) reinterpreted. Should this be done lightly? No, of course not, the United States is built on the concept of constitutional supremacy. Still, the option does exist.
(I'm aware this is somewhat contradictory, but I'm mostly exploring ideas here, rather than arguing a position.)

One thing to remember? This isn't a binary situation. There is some latitude between "let the terrorists win" and "give the government the right to do anything it pleases", and the key goal is to figure out where to draw that line, not necessarily which side of it you need to be on.

Edit: fixed up a few spelling mistakes.

Oh, and while I'm mentioning Sully, I read with great amusement this little blurb about the "British left's new litmus test of being anti-Israel".

Which fits in nicely with the litmus test here in Blogland of being anti-Palestinian, doesn't it?

And by the way, Sully and Ian- most leftists I know are pissed off about Chechnya, not the least reason being that it's ignored by the mainstream media.

I'm not exactly a SullyWatcher, but this is too good to pass up:

That's how the New York Times describes the results of the war to liberate Afghanistan. I keep thinking it can't get any worse, and then it does.

Now, other than the whining about the New York Times, where the hell did "the war to liberate Afghanistan" come from? Last I checked, the United States invaded Afghanistan in order to capture and/or kill Osama Bin Laden, to uproot the Taliban and pay them back for helping Osama with interest, and put a message out that terrorism Will Not Be Tolerated. "Liberating Afghanistan" was a tertiary objective at best- if it were actually about that, it would have happened years ago.

Then again, is it any real surprise that the description of what the war is about and who it's against keeps on changing, as the president's backers keep on changing the spin in order to make their man's actions look good? After all, Osama wasn't captured and quite possibly wasn't killed, and there are lots of Al Qaeda and Taliban people sheltered around the region (including Pakistan, which isn't nearly stable enough to take American troops rooting around for officials of a government it supported), implying that even if the organization's back is broken, the United States hardly achieved its goals. But, in the Newspeak world of presidential apologists, that doesn't matter anymore, because that minor, tertiary, unimportant aspect is now the raison d'etre of the war itself.

(And once again, Sully keeps up his near-perfect record of only linking to right-wing blogs that feature only the finest reactionary, knee-jerk "journalism". I'd link to it, but I don't want to engage in the same practices, and am hardly inclined to link to any page that continues to spout that ridiculous "liberal media through naming conservatives" shibboleth.)

Yet more proof, courtesy of vaara, that while the left will be jumped all over for things that they didn't say but that some people think they said (sully, anyone?), those that are accepted and supported by the right can say things like this:

[P]alestinians the smell of death pre-empts its actual event?

[S]lavery is an Arab creation, and is a further reminder of the Islamic capacity for depravity and wickedness.

[A]rabs eat sitting on the floor so they will not have to bend over to clean up after guests have thrown up their dinner.

[A]rab women are not fastidious housekeepers, and parakeets keep the bottoms of their cages tidier.

...they, of course, get away with it.

I wonder how long it'll take before even the right-wing bloggers start distancing themselves from David Horowitz? I mean, a quick glance of his latestentry confirms that either he's off the deep end or engaging in as much demagoguery as he thinks he can get away with- either way, he isn't exactly a useful ally. Kind of an embarrassment, really, to be associated with a man who thinks that TIPS doesn't go far enough, that anybody who is remotely sympathetic to the Nation of Islam or against the idea that they are terrorists should be under constant surveillance, that McCarthy was fully justified in his actions (because those who were leftists were "whole hearted sympathizers with [the Soviet] agenda, therefore dangerous", and, well...

The aura that surrounds the McCarthy era now, which casts it as a time of civil liberties violations rather than a time when a subversive network of ordinary Americans plotted against its own country in a time of war, speaks volumes about the danger of having our universities and schools dominated by their ideological descendants and their fellow-traveling defenders.

It is cast as a time of civil liberties violations because that's what it was; it's hardly the opinion of simply the universities, but pretty much everybody who isn't foaming at the mouth about "reds under every bed". Which, I suppose, would eliminate Horowitz himself.

(I'd mention that he Godwinned himself, but that goes without saying.)

Yeah, I know it's childish, but I couldn't resist posting this
...

"Behavior like that can give Freepers a bad name."

Snicker.

I've just run across an interesting article in Foreign Affairs about an interesting, vital, yet simple question...

what exactly is terrorism?

It turns out that the answer is extremely tricky, even if one uses the commonly accepted definitions of "use of force by sub-state actors" or "use of force against civilians". And no matter how you define it, those who you definitely would want to classify as terrorists slip through the cracks, whereas others end up wearing the label that fit it uncomfortably at best.

It's a good read- I'd suggest checking it out.

I hate to use an overused phrase, but Atrios's recent posting about the possibility of American arab internment camps (!) prompts no better reaction:

If this should ever happen, the terrorists have won.

Period.

It seems like too many people in the West tend to focus on one enemy at a time... or, more importantly, discount and/or minimize the problems of one party that they want to use against another party that is higher prioritized, despite the obvious fact that both are somewhat odious.

Case in point? This article on NRO, which advocates a closer relationship between oil-producing Nigeria and Washington in the interests of choking the Saudi oil supply, and therefore disentangling the United States with that corrupt regime. One problem, though.. Nigeria isn't really that much better. As I had mentioned in an earlier post, the previous Nigerian government engaged in brutal intimidation tactics in order to silence critics, especially those of the indigenous groups who have seen their land despoiled and their lives destroyed by the heavy, messy, and entirely unnecessary pollution that the Nigerian government allowed western oil companies to engage in. This culminated in the gangster-style execution of one of Nigeria's premier intellectuals, Ken Sero-Wiwa, who was neither radical nor violent... merely a dissident, in the best sense of the word.

Of course, that was a dictatorship, and things have changed, right? As I had also mentioned in an earlier post, however, it would appear that the situation hasn't improved much at all- the democratic government in Nigeria is still oppressing the people who get in the way of petrodollars (and who see little in the way of economic development from it.. the money tends to filter up to the government and away from the region), with what would apparently be the full consent of the rest of the Nigerian people.

So, we have an article advocating that the United States grow closer to one oppressive oil-producing country in order to distance itself from another one, a style tactic that the historical record shows is notoriously prone to disasterous failure. I rather hope that this is simply due to Lowry being ignorant of the situation, of the naive belief that a democracy can't be oppressive, and utterly missing the point- because otherwise this smacks of the same sort of relativistic moral calculations that the right is always complaining about. At the very least, Rich should advocate that Washingon require Nigeria to be much more conscientious before any closer relationship can occur.

Those complaining about the ignorance of others should probably be careful not to demonstrate it themselves. Case in point? Natalie Solent complains about the lack of historical knowledge on the part of the British. What she blames, however, is interesting:

history, geography, economics and social studies (especially social studies) in a big undifferentiated stew called "humanities"

Last I checked, Geography and Economics are both part of the Social Sciences, not the Humanities, and I haven't the faintest clue where she got the idea that the Humanities has absorbed Social Studies (which would logically be part of the Social Sciences). I mean, I can understand the complaint by some that the Social Sciences aren't real science, but I'm pretty damned sure they aren't part of the humanities. Among other things, the epistemological underpinnings are different.

Not that I have anything against Natalie, understand, but "the kids, they don't know nuthin' nowadays" arguments should really be carefully considered.

Every time I think "no, the hardcore anti-Islamic warbloggers can't actually mean what they say", I end up reading something like this. It's an article citing three radical Muslims who go on about fighting the corrupt west and the power of Islam and the usefulness and moral value of suicide bombing... you know, the usual stuff. You've read it before. You'll read it again.

Don't get me wrong. I have little sympathy or love for Islamic radicals, although it's interesting that LGF appears to believe that these people are somehow representative of all or even most Muslims. LGF itself isn't especially nasty, either, only pointing out that Martyrdom is important to Islam (and it somehow isn't to Christianity?) and therefore is a "death cult" (an obvious attempt to harness the rhetoric used against the Palestinians these days to make the entire Islamic religion culpable), and that there was a telethon supporting the Intifada in Saudi Arabia (which is a valid point, although it probably have more to do with the perception that the Intifada is effective and a desire to show solidarity rather than any specific love for the tactics on the part of average Saudis.)

No, what shocked me were the comments:

"if these fucking freaks want to die so much please, please, please, can't we just do it."

"I have yet to see a more compelling example of why these guys should be helped along to paradise and their 72 virgins as quickly as possible."

"This is a cancer that will continue to spread until it is killed. Can't we do some surgery?" (this was a popular analogy, by the way, used by authoritarian governments in South America killing off those they thought were communists or leftists.)

"This type of ideology can be easily cured with a daisy-cutter."

"These guys want to go to the afterlife. I say, let's send the there, ASAP."

And, of course, the grand poobah:

Let's see - we have a group of "repressed martyrs" fighting to "restore" a country that NEVER EXISTED in the history of the world, a group of religious nutbars that think that every square inch of soil ever occupied by the forces of Islam belongs to THEM forever, a bunch of people around the world holding public celebrations whenever one of their blessed "martyrs" kills a few dozen women and children (and let's not forget their joyous celebrations as the WTC towers fell). Oh, yeah, I almost forgot the slavers in Somlia and the Sudan. What to they all have in common?

The next time someone gives me that line about Islam being a "peaceful religion," I'm going to barf in his shoes. As soon as I finish kicking his ass. These people need to die, soon. Let's send them to Allah, and their 72 dark-eyed virgins, ASAP.

Lovely stuff, isn't it?

Over three thousand people died in the bombing at the World Trade Centre, a bombing that was masterminded and carried out by one group: Al Qaeda. It was not the greatest tragedy in history or the worst attack in the history of warfare, but it was unexpected, and brutal, and spectacular, and it was motivated by an alien sentiment that most westerners find baffling and frightening. It was also an attack on the United States, a country that thought it was safe on its continent-sized Island. For this attack on three thousand, people are now calling for the death of millions, if not billions. I supported Afghanistan (although I keep hearing that it failed miserably), but I can't support that. That's not justice or vengeance. It's simply thirst for blood, thirst for death, and the frightened desire to wipe "them" out in order to protect "us". I only hope that the government and the military have a better understanding- both of your average Muslim, and of how to protect the United States without resorting to genocide.

While I'm exploring astounding misinterpretation, what appears to be a collective blog called Citizens for a Constructive UN has written an article about the the UN's "Arab Human Development Report, 2002", which is widely critical of Arab states for being repressive and undemocratic. This is treated positively (no doubt because it coincides with CitCun's own beliefs), but another passage is attacked, albeit ineptly.

First, I'll cite the passage in question, then the response.

Firstly, for Palestinians, occupation and the policies that support it, stunt their ability to grow in every conceivable way. The confiscation of Palestinian land, constraining their access to their water and other natural resources, the imposition of obstacles to the free movement of people and goods, and structural impediments to employment and economic self-management all combine to thwart the emergence of a viable economy and a secure independent state. Moreover, the expansion of illegal settlements, the frequent use of excessive force against Palestinians and the denial of their most basic human rights further circumscribe their potential to build human development. The plight of Palestinian refugees living in other countries is a further manifestation of development disfigured by occupation.

Secondly, occupation casts a pall across the political and economic life of the entire region. Among neighbouring countries, some continue to suffer themselves from Israeli occupation of parts of their lands, subjecting those people directly affected to tremendous suffering, and imposing development challenges on the rest. In most Arab states, occupation dominates national policy priorities, creates large humanitarian challenges for those receiving refugees and motivates the diversion of public investment in human development towards military spending. By symbolizing a felt and constant external threat, occupation has damaging side effects: it provides both a cause and an excuse for distorting the development agenda, disrupting national priorities and retarding political development. At certain junctures it can serve to solidify the public against an outside aggressor and justify curbing dissent at a time when democratic transition requires greater pluralism in society and more public debate on national development policies. In all these ways, occupation freezes growth, prosperity and freedom in the Arab world.

Seems fairly mild- occupation, even if necessary, is playing merry hell with the Palestinian economy (such as it is), and the governments in the region are obsessed with the occupation and are therefore aiming criticism away from their regimes. This obsession could be a false front (and it probably is), but that's unimportant at the moment.

And now the response:

To summarize, Israel is to blame: human development among Palestinians is all but impossible under Israeli occupation, and, moreover, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict contributes to delays in democratic change. The obvious refutation is this: until 1967 there was no “illegal occupation” but the situation in Arab countries was essentially the same with regard to education and human development in general. One may also ask, how it is possible that the conditions of 1% of Arabs in a single “country” are responsible for the miserable conditions of the other 99% in 21 countries?

Huh? Nothing above supports this. Yes, occupation is certainly messing up human development in Palestinian lands... the assertion that it wouldn't is ludicrous. The question of whether the occupation is necessary in order to protect Israeli interests is a valid one, but the economic and humanitarian effects can hardly be in question- it can be both necessary and an economic and humanitarian nightmare. (Such is warfare.) And as to the question of the other regimes... please. First, the above section already answered "how they could be responsible"... they're a distraction to governments and to their subjects/citizenry, leading to bad policy and worse governance with a population that isn't doing anything about it. Second, trying to equate 1967 and 2002 just might possibly be a bad idea, as things have changed somewhat in those intervening years... not the least aspect being that the Nasserian quasi-socialist systems that dominated in the region have had the rug pulled out from under them with the collapse of the Soviet Union (as well as the military and economic support that that superpower might once have provided) as well as much lower oil prices, growing Islamic militancy, and the simple differences in the cultural environment. The important thing is to understand what the influences are right now, and the occupation, for better or worse, certainly counts as one of those influences.

This comes down to a fundamental problem that many people have- they seem curiously unable to distinguish between acts that are evil and wrong and acts that are necessary and good but involves wrongs as well. To note the economic effects of the occupation does not necessarily place it in the former category- it could be (and probably is) the latter, with the usual mixture of positive and negative effects that you'd expect from any event. This problem is at the root of this hysterical reaction to what is a fairly benign exploration of the problems associated with the occupation. I realize that CitCun is pretty obviously pushing an agenda, but they should really work a little harder, because right now it's pretty weak.

Horowitz's blog is, to me, something of a disappointment... he's pretty much recycling old material from other columns, while removing any real sourcing and upping the hyperbole a little. Case in point? His newest entry is yet another complaint about how conservatives are "forced to labor in a culture dominated by the illogical, mean-spirited, verbal assassins of the left." Disproving this assertion is, of course, best left as an exercise for your radio dial.

After bringing up that illogical and wholly ludicrous shibboleth, he backs it up by extensively complaining that, yes, academe is leftist! (And therefore murderous, but anyway..) Again, not a new thing where Horowitz is concerned, and it doesn't include the whiny calls for "conservative affirmative action" that his earlier comments on this subject did, but he still misses a key point: even if Academe were universally leftist (which it is not), his calls for the inclusion of more conservative voices in academe misses a key point that Stanley Fish brought up and which remains valid: academia is not about the left-right divide and never has been. There should be debate and discussion within a field about the aspects of that field, but why on earth should the terms of debate in academia be shackled to the ludicrously simplistic notions of "liberal vs. conservative"? I could see a complaint about a particular field overemphasizing certain interpretations and missing out on other ones (although this should be "field", and not "institution", unless he's advocating that Chicago include Marxians in its economics department), but that isn't usually what he's talking about. (His complaints about revisionism in Soviet studies obscuring scholarship, for example, might actually be worthwhile ones, although at this point his credibility is such that I automatically assume he's overstating the case, and his cited source, while lengthy, is somewhat polemical and certainly partisan.)

Horowitz also misses the point that this is only an issue in the relatively isolated world of the university. Outside it, of course, there are dozens and dozens of right-wing funded "think-tanks" that can and do put out as much partisan scholarship as necessary, and that happen to be quoted, cited, and respected by the popular media and policy makers as much if not more so than the university professors that Horowitz talks about! Even if universities were universally leftist, this simply wouldn't matter in the larger picture, which is something that Horowitz continues to ignore. The isolation of academia goes both ways- even if Horowitz's complaint that it is isolated from the political debates in society is true, society is isolated from it, and I certainly don't see Horowitz decrying that.

He supports this by noting an article by Ron Perlstein that examines a scholarly society (The Historical Society, or THS) that has the reputation of being yet another neo-con playground funded by the right, but which includes non-right-wing academics as well. It is, however, extremely marginal by everybody's standards, as Perlstein points out- both marginal in the field due to the right-wing polemics it funds, as well as marginal in the conservative scholarly community because it's fairly inclusive in the views that it will support. Perlstein thinks this is somewhat of an accident... THS was originally supposed to be yet another body of conservative writers, but ended up being something that Horowitz has entirely ignored- a protest against the bureaucratic side of academia, and a sign that the culture battles between left and right in academia that Horowitz is obsessed with are grinding to a halt.

Predictably, of course, Horowitz mentions none of this, preferring to talk about how the right is more inclusive than the left, saying that the American Prospect certainly doesn't welcome rightists and therefore shouldn't be making this argument. What kills me about this argument is that Horowitz himself is proof that this isn't the case! His Frontpage site is resolutely and unquestionably partisan, yet he was a commentator for the left-wing website Salon for years, and as far as I know remains so! How can he possibly make an argument that he himself proves is nonsense??

Horowitz draws a comparison between those who are funded by the left vs. those who are funded by the right... the Scaife foundation money vs. the Schumann foundation money. As the Prospect pointed out in another column what differs between the two sides is what they're funding. The left is funding issue-based scholarship, maybe a few liberal magazines here and there, but nothing that even remotely matches what you see on the right: people and groups funding scholarship, journalism, polemics and organizations built around a movement based on one simple goal: to justify, support, and advance conservatism as much as necessary to get into power.

Horowitz, in the end, serves merely as a useful object lesson: if you repeat something often enough and loud enough, people might believe it to be true. Unfortunately, however, once you get called on it, you look like a loon. No wonder he's dismissed by most as a partisan hack, flogging Coulter's entirely debunked book (more so than Horowitz ever debunked Brock) and has been reduced to becoming yet another johnny-come-lately mainstream journalist-turned-blogger. It'd be funny, if it weren't sad.

I've been thinking recently about symbols- the symbolism of events and how they shape the relative growth or weakness of different political ideologies. The left has been symbolically connected with socialism (for better or worse- most liberals are not at all socialists) More to the point, however, they are connected with the power of the state and the suitability of the state as a force in the economy and in society, and since the Russian system is seen as the symbolic endpoint of that, the end of the Soviet Union was by extension a hammerblow to the left- even if the left didn't support the Russians there was a symbolic connection, and the end of one weakened the other.

By extension, however, there must be a symbolic connection on the right. Not necessarily the religious right, but the economic right- the anti-state, lowered taxes, radical economic individualist ideas that have glued the right together since Norquist started having his Wednesday meetings. The symbolic connection of this is, of course, the business world and the stock market- they are supposedly the highest achievement of mankind, the engine of progress, and the greatest strength of the United States. More importantly, however, they provide what is almost a Hobbesian "leviathan"... which is, of course, the market and the economy. The economy (and markets) are described as living things, entirely seperate from the people that make them up and most powerful and useful when least fettered. This notion of the economy is what many call "market fundamentalism", and it is pretty much inextricably tied to the right, no matter how many farm bills Dubya passes. If a leftist tried pushing this sort of idea people would look at him funny... it just wouldn't seem quite right.

If this is the case, then the important question becomes simple: will the symbolic connection between the market and the right hurt the right to the extent that the failure of Communism (and by extension "statism") hurt the left? I think this is quite possible, and worth watching. This isn't likely to mean that people will start overtly proclaiming the death of economic conservatism, but the enormous problems that this supposed Leviathan faces is going to subtly affect the way that people look at the right and its ideas, because the idea that the market is some sort of alien being that we depend on for our safety and prosperity and that is best left alone is looking less and less appetizing these days. This is important because it means that the fundamental disparity that existed between the "discredited" left and "triumphant" right is dropping faster than the Dow Average, and we're once again moving back to a position of parity.

The old symbols are dying or dead, so the question becomes: what will the new symbols be? What is the face of the new left? What is the face of what will have to be a new right?

Ok, so what was up with Coulter on "The Daily Show" last night? I couldn't figure out whether Jon was actually taking her seriously, stringing her along because it was fun and he wanted to stare at her, or was actively making fun of her and her beliefs. There seemed to be examples of all three, although there did also seem to be a transition from one to the other.. that "extremist vs. moderates" bit was priceless, especially considering Stewart had to know who his guest was and what she had said.

Still, I was able to overcome my gorge rising at seeing Coulter hocking her thoroughly-debunked book thanks to Jon, and that takes skill.. so once again he gets my vote as one of the funniest guys on TV right now. I'm glad that CNN is picking him up.

This, by the way, is another Den Beste talking point that I'd like to address: the idea that Europeans and the rest of the world are somehow "talking down to the United States" whenever they criticize it.

I'll respond with a few points:

1) "The Great Game" is another term for how states relate to each other- it's based on the old competition between great powers in the era between the Treaty of Westphalia and the onset of WWI. It's rooted in ideas that I mentioned earlier.. that states relate to each other as sovereigns in an anarchic environment, and that the leaders of those states are assumed to be the representatives of those states. The fact that the United States doesn't recognize the sovereignty of other governments and that peoples should be allowed to choose their own leaders is more a commentary on the United States than Europe.

2) There is great hay being made with this "Europe talks down to the United States, and we should therefore ignore them" meme that conservatives are merrily passing around. Besides the fact that it provides an obvious deflective tool for real criticism, conservatives seem to have forgotten than Americans really are notoriously unable to look beyond their own borders- foreign policy is mostly influenced by domestic politics, the education level about non-American peoples, countries, and nations is well known even by many Americans, and the sort of myopia in political philosophy that Musil demonstrated when he went on about his "self-evident truths" is glaring to anybody who doesn't share that particular political philosophy. In other words, the Europeans just might have a point, especially considering that the United States has traditionally heeded practically no outside criticism and commentary on its foreign policy and domestic affairs, and is a relatively idealistic country. (Which is, of course, one of its strengths, but every strength can also be its weakness).

3) This argument is usually used to support unilateralism, although lately Den Beste hasn't even bothered to say why he's cheerleading unilateralism... he simply is. It's odd how he seems to want to have it both ways, though... he wants a United States that is active and willing to influence governments, states, and peoples as he wishes in the defense of its own interests, yet has little desire to see anybody else influence the United States, and at the same time shrinks from anybody who would level the accusation of empire on the United States (despite the fact that that is clearly what he is advocating). Perhaps this is becaues empire has historically been a rather bad deal even when the empire starts off with only the best intentions.

4) If you think it's just Europeans who consider Bush an uncivilized cowboy, Steven, you obviously haven't been paying attention. The right wanted the "down-home country boy" image for its pet president... now that that image is coming home to roost, why exactly should those who are criticizing it lay off? The president is the symbol of the people, and Bush is, for better or worse, the symbol of the United States. If he's a bad symbol, well... I know I didn't vote for him.

5) Steven complains that people insist that people play by the rules, saying that this is "too damned important to play by silly rules as if it were a soccer match where the outcome wasn't important." Does he even know where these rules came from, how they evolved, and why people started following them in the first place? Does he think that nobody should be bound by "silly rules" or is he just talking about the United States? If the former, then by all means, let's hear him advocate the end of the international system and defend the chaotic results of a "might makes right" international community- it worked so well before, after all. If the latter...

actually, that's pretty damned consistent. Which, of course, means there are no rules anyway, because nobody is going to accept the United States as a free rider and play the suckers. It looks like we're going back to the Hobbesian war of all against all. Oh goody.

Edit: another example of what I'm talking about.

He quoted the Russian Defense Minister as saying: "Russia will oppose any unilateral military action undertaken against Iraq without the approval of the United Nations Security Council" and one Archbishop Williams as saying "It is our considered view that an attack on Iraq would be both immoral and illegal and that eradicating the dangers posed by malevolent dictators and terrorists can be achieved only by tackling the root causes of the disputes."

His response?

Whether they are correct about this specific issue, they are wrong about a more fundamental one. They, and everyone else whose nose has been getting pushed in by the Bush administration's unilateralism, have somehow gotten it into their heads that we Americans are not permitted to ever do anything without asking our parents for permission. (It's never really been obvious where that idea came from. Perhaps it's just habit, or maybe it's arrogance.)

As regular readers would know, I've mentioned exactly "where this idea came from"... it has nothing to do with ignorance, and everything to do with the international system, international treaties, and the United Nations, a body that (as is perfectly obvious) Den Beste wants the United States to listen to only when it's convenient. What's odd, though, is that you can't get to point "a" from point "b"... they aren't saying that the United States can't do these things, but that they oppose it, and in the former case that their government will oppose it. What, exactly, does this have to do with "telling the United States what to do?" They're strongly disagreeing, but there is nothing there saying that they intend to stop the United States, just that they don't support it.

In the end, it's pretty obvious that Den Beste is making a simple, schoolyard argument: I wanna do what I wanna do, and if you don't like it, go screw. That this demonstrates a pretty clear ignorance of what exactly International Relations is is rather shocking- I had expected better of him. He says that "The reason I'm cheering for unilateralism is that it's time for the world to start asking us what we want to do, instead of peremptorily telling us what they want us to do." Unfortunately, however, there is little reason to believe that the Bush administration and people like Steven Den Beste would care either way. To them, the only world that matters ends outside of the United States' borders.

Steven Den Beste has written a long post about what amounts to two concepts: the "intoxication of executive power", and Chairman Arafat.

The first one is a defense of the 22nd Amendment; the idea that a president should not be allowed to hold office for more than two terms. Now, to be honest, term limits are a concept that has always bothered me and probably always will- it's a direct limitation of the power of the voters, because it removes from them the opportunity to choose who they wish to be president for what appears to be entirely arbitrary reasons. (There might be an argument to be made about the power of incumbents, but let's be honest- there's no way that the American party system and the American people wouldn't overcome that if the situation warranted it.)

His defense of it is actually fairly weak, to my surprise: he only defends it by saying that Washington set a precedent because he left office after only two terms, and that Nixon was a bad president and would have wanted to retain power for more than two terms. (The fact that he would need to gain the support of the electorate seems to elude him- like a lot of conservatives, he seems oddly hostile to democracy in some respects). The problem, of course, is that term limits create a host of issues in and of themselves, chief among them being the problem of the "lame duck"... a president who knows he cannot be reelected and therefore is not respected by the country or other members of the government. This problem has a darker side as well, however... a politician that does not face the prospect of reelection is free to do pretty much whatever he wishes, without having to worry about whether the electorate agrees or not- and thanks to the relative power of executive orders and the various subbranches of the executive, there's an awful lot he can do. In other (in my mind more democratic) systems, this never happens... a prime minister or president is always looking towards the next election, and his (or her) actions are limited by that.

Plus, there's the threat of a president using extra-constitutional methods to keep power owing to the lack of constitutional ones- this can lead to the "legitimate dictator" scenario I mentioned earlier in situations where said president is extremely popular. This doesn't normally happen in the United States, but certainly has in South America.

So much for the 22nd Amendment (which I still cynically believe was a reaction to the incredible success of FDR)... what about Arafat? Well, Den Beste is trying to argue that the Bush position is legitimate because "Arafat is not the Palestinian people". Well, no, he isn't- but his argument that an elected Arafat is somehow divisible from the Palestinians is an entirely erroneous one- if they choose him as their representative, then he is indeed their representative... the mocking use of "L'etat, c'est moi" is actually quite true, just as it is with the American president as head of state or, in fact, any other head of state. And as I said earlier, neither Bush nor Den Beste gets to choose who the legitimate leader of Palestine is... only the Palestinians. They can react to that choice as they wish, of course, but they do not have either the power or the authority to choose Palestine's own leaders unless they are willing to assert their own sovereignty over Palestine. That, um, would be problematic.

(The hatred of Powell and, by extension, of being reasonable and willing to compromise in any respect on the part of the Right still baffles me considering he was their hero a half-decade ago, but that's not important. They can hate him if they wish.)

What links these two elements together is Den Beste's notion of "the intoxication of power"... the idea that the powerful become accustomed and eventually enjoy power, and are loathe to give it away. My reaction upon reading the article is "so?" If someone loves leadership and power, then so be it. Indeed, I don't necessarily think the idea of a leader that likes being a leader is a bad one- the sort of self-loathing that conservatives seem to desire in a government would be baffling if it weren't so silly. Should businessmen hate being in business? Should doctors hate healing? Why is government any different? The important question is whether they use that power and leadership wisely, and whether they can be removed when the people decide that they no longer want that person as their leader. In the American system, there's no way a president can retain power if the people decide they want him to go- it's their decision, not his, and if they want an "intoxicated" president then that's their choice. (Or was until the 22nd Amendment came to be.) While there is a danger that a president that has been voted out might try to hold power, what difference is there between that danger and that of a president who faces a term limit in the face, except that the former has fought and lost an election and the latter has four years to prepare for the day he seizes control and convince the people that (as they rightly intuit) term limits are a seizure of their own power to decide their own leadership? So it is with Arafat... whether he loves being President or not is immaterial if the Palestinians vote for him (which is by no means a for-gone conclusion considering the current protests), but giving him no way out means he has zero incentives to change anything and every reason to convince the Palestinian people that their right to choose their own leaders has been stolen from them by the United States.

I'd like to close with this quote from the article:

If the Palestinians are given a real choice, and a real opportunity to express it, and if they are presented with a situation where there is a substantial price to be paid for selecting Arafat again, Arafat will lose.

If you truly believe this, Steven, then put your money where your mouth is and allow the Palestinians to make a real choice. Or just admit that you have as little patience for real democracy as your comments on term limits seem to suggest, and stop wasting everybody else's time.

Eric Alterman rips Kaus a new one.

No complaints here, but I'd like to highlight a certain passage as particularly insightful:

Where is the Journal’s equivalent of William Safire? How is that Howell Raines was one of Bill Clinton’s most devoted enemies and great fan of the fanatical Ken Starr? (Maureen Dowd was no picnic on that score either.)

Where is the Times’ equivalent of John Fund, who worked with Paula Jones’ lawyers, Richard Mellon Scaife agents and other nefarious individuals to try to bring down Clinton? Who are the Times’ Bob Bartley and Jude Wanniski, proud papas of the disastrous supply-side ‘riverboat gamble’ of the early eighties? Where — now that the nutty Abe Rosenthal is out to pasture — is their equivalent of supernatural dolphin-imagining Peggy Noonan, whose paeans to both Bushes and Ronald Reagan are practically pornographic in their naked hero-worship? (And by the way, Rosenthal was on their side too.) When has the Times done anything as loony as trying to blame anti-abortion terrorism on the sixties, or corporate accounting scandals on Oval Office blowjobs? What Times editor ever celebrated the kind of “bourgeois riot” in Florida that helped land “W” in office?

Besides ripping apart Kaus' comparison, this highlights an important point: conservatives have been far, far, far more aggressive in attacking their political opponents than liberals have, long before 9/11 gifted the conservatives with being able to wrap themselves in the flag whenever they or their president were criticized for anything, whether in regards to the war on terrorism or not. This isn't just on the part of the American Spectator or Rush Limbaugh- this goes all the way to the most mainstream conservative news sources in America, and is pretty consistently the case.

(which is why Coulter is getting her own ass handed to her by the fact checking of Tapped, Scoobie Davis, and others, but I digress...)

This is really why I don't buy the "liberal bias" argument... even if most journalists actually were liberals in some way (which I don't concede), the sort of things we expect of conservatives- to be devoutly partisan, utterly unapologetic, and utterly dedicated to their movement- are simply nowhere to be found on the left, which bends over backwards to accomodate even those it finds nauseating (like the Times with Safire and Salon with Horowitz), and which can't really be described as a movement in any way, shape, or form.

One more quote:

This phony equivalence argument is just one fashion in which the right dominates. There are many others. (Hmmm, maybe there’s a book in this.)

There is: this is what "Blinded by the Right" is really about. Not the stupid gossipy bits, but the examination of a movement totally dedicated to electoral success, policy influence, and integrity of its members and its message, no matter the cost. What struck me about the book wasn't how goofy the right was or how dishonest, but how dedicated and disciplined they were when it came to sticking with their talking points, using intimidation tactics and ad hominem attacks to shock and disarm their rhetorical opponents, ensuring as much media dominance as humanly possible in ways that really mattered, being unapologetic about their beliefs yet willing to pretend to be more centrist than they are in order to get those votes and get the presidency (and then, in the case of Reagan, singlehandled deifying an inunspiring and senile president and an utter failure of an administration, economically)...not to mention creating an entire army of pseudo-scholars to crank out so much partisan nonsense masquerading as real research that nobody could possibly debunk it all (even if Academe realized the danger that think tanks represented, which it obviously doesn't).

I had said a while back that I was going to write a detailed examination of Blinded by the Right and a defense, but honestly... it simply isn't necessary. Whether the little points are true or not, the portrayal of a successful and focused (yet utterly amoral and frightening) society of people dedicated to obtaining power is shocking and educational enough that the rest could be all lies and it simply wouldn't matter.

Hillary Clinton had warned us about this, and we hadn't listened. Now Brock has warned us about this, and I hope that this time we're listening. If the left doesn't learn the lessons that the right's ascendency should teach us, they'll remake the country in their own image- and, by extension, the world.

Huh?

Every so often I forget that Max Sawicky is at least in some respects Marxian in his outlook, and then I read something like this:

Authentic populism stems from class antagonism founded on economic inequality.

Max, I love ya, buddy, I really do, but that just ain't true... populism can arise from a variety of sources, and leftist class antagonism is only one of them. After all, populism is in the end a political phenomenon, and only an economist (and a really leftist one at that) would think that the only "authentic" form of populism is based on class antagonism and economic inequality.

Matthew Hoy (whom I don't read much anymore, but felt like checking out today for some odd reason) repeats a common complaint about Social Security from the right. Listen here:

I've said before that Social Security is broken. It's a simple issue of demographics -- in coming years there won't be nearly enough workers to support the growing number retirees. Many officials have set the date that Social Security stops being able to pay its obligations at sometime in the 2040s or 2050s, depending on the economy at a particular time.

Now, aside from the economics of the whole thing, isn't there a simple answer... Immigration? The west is aging, but the rest of the world is "younging", and it would seem that increased immigration is a simple solution that benefits both parties: the United States gets workers and the immigrants get, well, the United States. (or Canada, or England, or whatever.)

I realize that this isn't exactly an opportune time for this, but by the 2040s or 2050s, either the war on terrorism will be over or it will have become an infrastructure thing akin to the war on drugs. Assuming that the boomers are a one-time-only thing (and what happened to the echo boom?) immigration can be reduced again when their numbers decrease or when some weird singularity-related event happens that makes increased immigration unnecessary.

(Oh, you don't know what "the singularity" is? It's a term in SF for when people become functionally unable to predict the future because it's simply too far away and too much will have happened between now and then. It used to be farther away. Technology used to move slower too.)

Brad Delong commented on Scalia's speech, in which he claimed a divine right of government and the immorality of those that attempt to defy it. Odd that a sitting supreme court justice would say such things: not only is it (as DeLong pointed out) profoundly against American conceptions of rights, government, and justice (and therefore raises the question of what he's doing in a government that is supposed to reflect those beliefs); but it betrays a shocking ignorance of political philosophy in the exact opposite direction of Musil et al.

Musil made the mistake of thinking that there was no important political philosophy other than the Declaration, and that the Declaration invalidated anything that preceded it. Scalia, however, has somehow entirely ignored the works of John Locke, whose first treatise of government was based entirely on breaking down once and for all the notion of "the divine right of kings", which Scalia seems to be resurrecting for some bizarre reason. (Even staunch monarchists don't believe that anymore.) Since Locke's work is one of the pillars on which the American Constitution is built, the idea that Scalia as a supposed legal scholar is unaware of it is absolutely mindboggling.

I mean, this isn't even some sort of neo-Hobbesian argument as you'd expect an argument for strong government to be: although Hobbes supported a strong government, he did so because he felt it was the only way that people could protect their rights and escape the misery of the state of nature. God has nothing to do with it, except to hold a Damocles' sword of divine retribution over the King if he steps out of line and misuses the powers that the people have granted him. Scalia isn't claiming that people should behave the government because the alternative is chaos, madness, and death; he's arguing that you should behave because you'll go to Hell if you don't.

Naderites who may be reading this, this is why the Democrats are important. Not because there's a difference between them and the Republicans, but because the Republicans can and will fill the benches with Scalias with nary a peep from their more libertarian wing that might be uncomfortable with the idea. In some respects the deep and crippling division within the left might be a good thing, because it'll ensure that any theocratic Democrats are forced to stay in line, else the rest of the party will descend upon them en masse.

Well, according to my Site Meter, I've reached 10,000 unique visitors!

Thanks for visiting, folks, and I hope you've found the site interesting.

There was an excellent examination of the Iraqi situation in today's Globe and Mail. It echoes a lot of the themes and concepts I've been bringing up in regards to that conflict, including a rational exploration of the risks and benefits of different ways of approaching regime change in Iraq. I'd suggest checking it out.

(I sent a comment to David's new Blog, but it would appear he doesn't have visible comments. Pity. In any case, I figured I might as well reproduce them in this space as well. If you want to understand the context, follow the link.)

It's good to see that the "AIDS is a gay disease" meme is alive and well, if only because it serves as the sort of useful falsehood that Mills explained was necessary in order to reconfirm and remind people of the truth of the matter.

It's also helpful that David seems to feel no need to support this assertion, either, especially considering it opens wide and indefensible holes in the methodology of the study he cites- both it's external validity and usefulness for policy formation. I wonder what the scientists involved would think of David's conclusion?

(Honestly, it's too much.)

*gape*.
*snicker*.
*chuckle*.
*guffah*.
Haha.
Hahaha.
Hahahaha.
BWAHAHAHAHA!

Yes folks, it's true, it's ranting about the Rittenhouse Review, it's on frontpage.com (natch) and it's probably frothing at the mouth as we speak...

David Horowitz has a blog.

This oughta be good.

Well, site meter is back up, so at least that's something.

(This is, of course, assuming it works)

I had intended a long and complex response to Robert Musil, but in some respects that won't be necessary, as the response can be limited to a few key points.

1) Arguing that the Declaration of Independence is any sort of universal law of political philosophy is completely clueless. Ask a Brit of the time what he thought of the American Revolution, and you'd likely get an earful of a very different interpretation of events than Jefferson's. Or, indeed, if you had asked any of the loyalists- all those people who thought that Jefferson et al were wrong, that the revolution was against their rightful king, and when the revolution happened left the United States to become part of (and help found) Canada, which still recognizes the British monarchy. Which, by the way, Musil has declared his enmity to by declaring it illegitimate in a way that even Jefferson had not. Jefferson's beef was partially that the United States was being ruled badly by a faraway king not interested in the States themselves but only in the resources they could bring. He never said that George should stop being the King of England, nor would he. Has Musil forgotten the apocryphal story that originally they wanted to make Washington a king?

2) In response to his diatribe about Korea, let me cite the opening passage of the report he quoted:

Responsibility for the aggression. The invasion of the territory of the Republic of Korea by the armed forces of the North Korean authorities, which began on June 25, 1950, was an act of aggression initiated without warning and without provocation, in execution of a carefully prepared plan.

Any assistance on behalf of other nations to defend Korea at the time does not invalidate the international system, because North Korea had already violated the RoK's national sovereignty by the very source the Musil cited! After that, any assistance that the (relatively young) U.N. provided could have been and indeed was requested by the RoK.

As to his implication that report on the source of the conflict in any way invalidates my observations about sovereignty:

Had internationally supervised elections been allowed to take place in the whole of Korea, and had a unified and independent Korea thereby come into existence, the present conflict could never have arisen...Experience suggested that the North Korean authorities would never agree to such elections... Notwithstanding the continued efforts of the Commission, it appeared on the eve of the aggression that the Korean peninsula would remain divided indefinitely, or at least until international tension had slackened.

Musil seems to argue that this report supports the idea that democratic systems are the best ones and should be implemented. Quite possibly, but it also recognizes that you can't arbitrarily force an unwilling state to become democratic, otherwise the U.N. would have done so. (And keep in mind that this was during the Cold War... if North Korea could have been forced by the free world to become democratic, they would have done so in order to fight communism. The existence of a great power (the Soviets) with completely different views, interests, and objectives, however, prevented this from happening.)

In any case, silly misrepresentations and ludicrous attacks aside, Musil has shown nothing that invalidates what I've said before. The Republic of Korea became democratic (with the consent of the citizenry, thus lending the process real legitimacy and the government real sovereignty) whereas North Korea (which already had a non-democratic government that was hostile to the idea) was not. North Korea invaded South Korea in order to annex it, South Korea (obviously) didn't intend to submit, and the United Nations came to South Korea's defense, because North Korea had broken the rules.

3) Musil, it isn't just that Anarchists don't believe in those "universal principles"... rather a lot of people don't believe in the "universal principles" of the Declaration of Independence, including (as I mentioned) the ancestors of the United States' closest neighbour! (Is Musil not aware of the river of loyalists that left the United States during and following the revolution?) Anarchists be damned, Canadians thought it was bunk! The whole "that's not an anarchist" argument is a sideshow, because I was referring to "those that believe in radical democracy"... if "anarchist" isn't the proper word, then I invite Musil to name those that believe that property rights are not as important as democratic rights. Marxist, socialist, anarchist, liberal, Canadian, whatever- the point is that they exist, they reasonably disagree, have valid reasons for doing so, and therefore make the word "universal" absolutely mistaken. As it usually is in political philosophy.

4) This isn't a point that Musil brought up, but was brought up by some people in the comments section of an earlier post. I responded there, but I'll respond here, too.

Machiavelli once said: "Anyone who ignores everyday reality in order to live up to an ideal will soon discover he has been taught how to destroy himself, not how to preserve himself". This is an important insight: there is a fundamental distinction to be made between looking at the world as you think it ought to be, and the world as you know it to be. They aren't the same thing, and sometimes you need to deal with the peculiarities and problems of the latter in order to best get to the situation as it exists in the former. Denying reality is comforting, but useless for those that want to both create and safeguard positive change. This, not Wilson, was the reason the League failed: it assumed everybody shared the same views it did, operated entirely under that assumption without even a cursory examination of the international community as it really was, and was flabbergasted when it discovered that that wasn't the case (first when the United States opted out, then when Japan left, and finally when Germany made a mockery of it.)

The problem with national sovereignty is, of course, that legitimacy can indeed by gained at the point of a gun... as Fukuyama's citation of Hegel in "End of History" made clear, deals made in the defense of one's life are still valid deals. It is true that such legitimacy is pretty weak, however, since it means that anybody with a bigger gun or a faster draw gets to run the show- it's a recipe for instability and a rebellious populace. This is why governments try to find other reasons to name themselves the legitimate government- including things like elections, a monarchy, "states of emergency" (in the case of coups), or simply appealing to the popular sentiment- when popular presidents become dictators, they often claim that the people want it to be so, and sometimes it may even be the case if the democratic system is ineffective and deadlocked. While the United States may be able to afford the luxury of a weak government, many other states cannot.

Still, unfortunately, it remains the case that sovereign, legitimate nations (whether democratic or no), can and do do awful things to groups of people if the vast majority of the population is willing to let them get away with it, rather than rise up in defense of that minority. This doesn't invalidate the idea of international treaties and bodies... in fact, that is the reason they exist. After all, a sovereign nation need not deal, trade, or ally itself with countries it finds despicable, and can do everything in its power to hamper their goals. So countries make agreements- "you don't behave this way, and I don't make your economic and strategic life a living hell, and may even help you out". Agreements like this between large groups of countries is a big reason why rights are as relatively well-protected as they are today (they certainly weren't in Musil's vaunted 18th century) and forms the foundation of the concept United Nations. National sovereignty exists, but it isn't enough- the problem (to get back to the original point) is that those that forget that national sovereignty exists despite the form of government and that those forms they don't like are illegitimate are saying that that government should not exist. (This, in Musil's case, includes the Queen of England, which means that if Musil were running the United States he'd have just called Britain a sham government. I doubt Blair would let that slide.) This means that those necessary agreements cannot take place (because one party doesn't recognize the other one should even exist.) Unless the judging party is then willing to take control of the other government itself (although that isn't exceptionally democratic in its own right), that means that you get the worst of both worlds: you get a government that you can't do anything about completely unhampered by international treaties and bodies, and which knows that no matter what it does, it cannot live up to your expectations and therefore can feel free to be as repressive as it wishes.

If you want to advocate slaughter and strife, then by all means, continue complaining that the only valid form of government is republicanism and reap the enormous harvest of enmity, desperation, and hostility that that will create. Those of us that live in the real world and wish to make it the best place possible will try to deal with the situation as it currently exists, try to make it as good as possible, and work to show the people of the world that democracy shouldn't be adopted because it is the only legitimate system, but that it's the best system for all involved, even if we disagree on the particulars.

Anyway, this will be my last post on the subject for a while. Not because it doesn't interest me, and that it isn't important, but because Musil's complaints have become repetitive and it's pretty obvious that he's trying to catch me in some sort of contradiction or portray my observations in the most negative light, rather than attempting to engage, understand, and respond to them. As long as he thinks that the declaration of independence is the final and only work of political philosophy that exists, that republicanism is the only legitimate form of government, and that anyone who points out that he is incorrect is a fascist (who, by the way, didn't recognize the legitimacy of other forms of government either... they thought socialism was evil and democracy was so ludicrously ineffective as to be dangerous), I find myself with little more to say. If Musil wishes to persist in his dreams of political uniformity, let him. I have laid out the international system and the concepts of legitimacy and sovereignty as they exist now, and the inevitable flaws and problems in both that lead to the creation of collective bodies and international treaties. If he wishes to find universal political principles, then I wish him luck, because what I've just mentioned is about the only universals that exist in politics. Whether he wishes to believe it or not will change nothing.

Whatever it is that's been plaguing blogger since Wednesday, it's obviously affecting my page. I can update, but I get error messages and (as one can note by heading down to the bottom of the page) my counters aren't working.

(Just in case you're wondering why updates have been sparse lately)

Edit: and perhaps it was a poor time for sparse updating, considering the furor that the discussion with Musil has provoked on behalf of some people, including Musil himself. To be honest, the entire field of International Relations (I.R.) is like this in some respect, which is why rather disquieting insights into the nature of power and legitimacy, such as Machiavelli's and Hobbes' usually carry the day. (It's also the best argument I've seen against anarchism of any stripe, but especially the radical-individualist kind as opposed to the radical-democratic kind. Musil continues to mistake the one for the other, by the way.)

I'll respond in more depth later to the various charges, but I'd like to reiterate one point: an empirical observation is not a normative claim. In other words, describing things as they are doesn't necessarily imply that these are morally right, justifiable, or fair, or that methods don't and shouldn't exist to ameliorate the drawbacks of the situation as it exists. A naked man cannot kill a tiger, and any man that doesn't understand that will end up tiger spoor- but a tiger cannot hope to kill a group of armed men, and any man that remembers and applies that knowledge can live without fear.

Musil, I've said it before and I'll say it again: Lexicography is not an exact science, and a dictionary is not an irrefutable source.

Those that willfully or accidently forget these things do so at their own peril.

Robert Musil has written an unutterably goofy response to my points on the concept of sovereignty.

Why is it unutterably goofy? Well, for several key reasons:

1)He mixes up concepts of sovereignty and international law. Sovereignty predates international law and international bodies as they exist today, and the necessity of such treaties is due to the nature of the sovereignty of the nation-state. (or of any government- a tribal leader can be as sovereign as a president.) I wonder whether Musil even understand what the word "sovereign" means, and where a state derives its power from- the reason why I argued that "sovereignty exists" is because somebody has to, by definition, wield governmental power.

2) No, Robert, anarchists do not reject "all law"... they reject a state body, but most true Anarchists believe in radical democracy... government by consensus. In any case, he obviously missed why I cited anarchists- they are an example of a group of people who do not hold his "universal truths" to be "self-evident". No argument that reasonable people disagree with can be "self-evident". This is not some sort of radical PoMo argument (as Musil seems to imply)... it's simply an observation of reality as it exists. I can see how he'd make this mistake, though: anarchy is a tricky concept, and there's a difference between the concepts of anarchy-as-chaos and big "A" Anarchism.

3) He seems to think that I'm against the concept of human rights. Musil, nothing could be further from the truth, but rights don't exist in a vacuum. They are defined by society and protected by the state- that's one of the roles of the state that, if abrogated, can lead to the loss of its legitimacy, because the people will rebel against it. What those rights actually are varies from society to society and from state to state, of course, and other states are free to criticize if they feel that rights are not being adequately protected. (This is the foundation of the Marxian critique- they believe that economic equality is a human right, that liberal systems cannot provide it, and therefore should be overthrown. Even Marxists don't deny the idea of state sovereignty and the idea of legitimacy derived from the people, however).

Indeed, many of the "deals" I mentioned earlier have to do with states agreeing to certain ground rules in how they define and defend human rights in exchange for other goods (such as increased international prestige, increased popular support, or more tangible things like military aid and freer economic trade).

4) He tries to cite South Africa, yet it's a perfect example of the dealmaking I talked about. The UN boycotts were part of the deal that the U.N. members had made with each other to act collectively, and can easily be explained as "proxy" morality... it wasn't that the U.N. forbade South Africa from acting as it saw fit, but because it didn't believe that its members should encourage or aid South Africa in an act it found immoral by trading or associating with it (and therefore tacitly approving its behavior), it decided to require those members not to trade with South Africa. That wouldn't stop, say, Switzerland from trading with South Africa, and it certainly didn't affect South Africa's sovereignty within its own borders. South Africa ending Apartheid was, in the end, its own doing.

If Musil's argument were actually correct, the U.N. would have authorized forcible change in South Africa, and it knew that it had no authority to do so. (Nor did it in the informal traditions of the international system... one of the key precepts of that system is that what goes on within a state's own borders is its own business, although other nations are free to disassociate and/or condemn that state if they wish). He also attempts to argue that the U.N.'s exclusion of South Africa meant that South Africa wasn't legitimate. That, of course, wasn't true: it simply meant that the U.N. would not accept the membership of any country that engaged in Apartheid. Whether the language reflected that or not is immaterial- as I said earlier, legitimacy is derived from the subjects (or citizenry.) Nobody else gets to decide that, and that includes the U.N.

5) and finally, he does a little free-form ranting about how evil my position is. Ah, ad hominems. Musil, it isn't a normative statement, it's an empirical statement ("Ought implies Can"). I merely described how systems of power, sovereignty, and legitimacy work by definition- normative claims have nothing to do with empirical observation, and these concepts are hardly original to me: basis of modern international relations. (Yes, I tend towards a Neo-Realist analysis of I.R., mostly because the school of I.R. thought that Musil unknowingly advocates, Liberalism, failed so spectacularly with the League of Nations.) Normative questions only come into play when that state (and by extension that society) decide what they want to do with that power- and in some cases, they decide that liberal democracy is the safest, stablest, and most economically effective system, so they decide to switch to that system. (or social democracy, or the odd Asian free-economic-but-restrictive-social-systems such as those that exist in Singapore, or mixed monarchy/democracy systems such as the English one, or whatever.)

In the end, democracy shouldn't be defended because it is the only legitimate system... that's nonsense, and dangerous nonsense at that. It was that sort of blindness that hamstrung and eventually destroyed the League. Democracy should be defended because it does the jobs of the state best- protecting the rights that the society deems important (as well as helping the society to determine which rights it deems important... a more important question than it seems when you get into the question of human rights vs. property rights), defending the subjects (or citizenry) of the state, promoting economic growth, ensuring domestic tranquility and stability, and best reflecting the wishes of the society. This is why democracy can't be imposed, however, but must grow from the desires of the people themselves... because if they don't grant a democratic government legitimacy, Robert, it doesn't matter how much you rant: it isn't legitimate.

Heh. Musil's response is up to my, um, fisking(?) of his post. It isn't exactly authoritative.

...although at least one of his commenters may want to consider reading beyond Hobbes and Locke, maybe starting with the self evident truths of the Declaration of Independence.

You forgot Rousseau, Robert, and I didn't even get into what ol' uncle Karl thought about the whole thing. What a fascinating non-response. If Musil can rebut Hobbes and Rousseau (who had opposed but equally valid critiques of his "self-evident truths") to any significant degree I will be greatly surprised.

When the response is this weak, I'm rather tempted to declare victory and go home.

To continue with what I was talking about earlier, and to address Dean's objections in the comments section:

Sovereignty does exist. That isn't in question. What's in question, then, is how one sovereign body can influence another. There are, of course, ways of influencing governments to do what you wish. First, of course, is the threat of war, occupation, or outright slaughter; it isn't "just", but it can exist, and can work quite well. The problem, of course, is that using that style of bargaining ("war is diplomacy by other means") tends to lead to a lot of dead people and destroyed property on both sides and is usually best avoided. it can also lead to unexpected side effects, and the possibility exists that the aggressor can lose, in which case it becomes vulnerable itself.

The other, and often superior way, is to appeal to the government's own self-interests. This is where the concepts of international law, international treaties, international bodies and bilateral and multilateral agreements come into play. None of these are sovereign in-and-of themselves- they simply represent agreements between sovereign governments to play by the rules if they know that the other guys will too. This doesn't remove the government's sovereignty, it simply provides a guideline by which that government can best use its sovereignty to avoid prisoner's dilemmas, tragedies of the commons, arms races, and all the other problems that can affect or disrupt security and trade. This even extends to the UN... if a state is not a member of the UN and not a signatory to its treaties, then the UN has no authority over it, and it need not pay attention to a single word the UN says. This also includes less formalized agreements- the evolution of the current international system may have got its start at the Treaty of Westphalia, but it's largely informal. Nothing wrong with that- tradition can be even more powerful than law.

The problem, of course, comes up when somebody makes a deal and then breaks it. On a certain level a sovereign nation (such as the United States) is perfectly free to attack whomever it wishes, with the understanding that it is in return a target that can be attacked itself. However, most sovereign nations (including the United States) is beholden to a number of treaties and bodies that have set down ground rules by which it can operate, under the expectation that it can enjoy the knowledge that everybody else who is a signatory to the treaties (or whatever) is playing by the same rules. If somebody signs a treaty and then breaks it (or agrees to be involved in an international body and then ignores it), then the whole thing falls apart, because the expectation that everybody else has that you were going to play by the rules disappears, and they immediately ignore the rules as well; nobody likes a free rider, and nobody likes being a sucker.
(Yep, we're back to game theory again... free riders are those who enjoy the benefits of a collective action without having to be subject to the rules, and suckers are those who are subject to the rules but don't recieve the benefits. The one creates the other). In essence, this is why so many people get so (legitimately) pissed off at certain states (including, notoriously, the United States)- signing and breaking a deal pretty much ruins it for everybody, including (usually) the party that is breaking the deal.

So how does this enter into Iraq? Well, Iraq is part of the U.N., and is subject to the unwritten traditions that underlie the international system. The United States is part of the U.N. too. When Iraq breaks a deal (as it did when it invaded Kuwait) it opens itself up to retaliation: from Kuwait itself, its allies, and the members of the international bodies and treaties that it has agreed to be subject to (either explicitly or tacitly). The severity and nature of the deal-breaking action usually determines the reaction, of course- nobody is going to suggest invading Hong Kong, for example, because it plays merry hell with international copyright laws. They might sanction it, or cut off trade status, but they aren't going to invade. In the case of the Gulf War, though, Iraq had already invaded one country and was threatening others, the U.N. was expected to respond, and therefore authorized the action to liberate Kuwait from Iraq- both because Iraq had broken its deal, and not freeing Kuwait would break the deal the U.N. and other countries had with it.

(Incidently, this is also why the Gulf War wasn't "just about oil"- oil may have been the reason why it was prosecuted so quickly, but the U.N. and U.S. had perfect justification to do what they did.)

A similar justification existed for the invasion of Afghanistan- the government of Afghanistan (or at least an allied body) had directly attacked the United States and it threatened to do so again. The United States was perfectly justified in what it did- even if the U.N. hadn't approved it yet, there's no doubt that the U.N. (at the very least the Security Council) would have. (The taliban was not a member of the U.N., however, so it isn't quite so clear as it was in the case of Iraq.) It's important to note, however, that the attack had already taken place- anticipatory attacks are by-and-large not kosher- we'd end up with thousands of wars between governments that are hostile to one another and are absolutely convinced that the other guy is going to attack first and they're simply acting "in self-defense". (Or they'd simply use that as an excuse. Not that it would really matter, in the long run.)

Now, of course, it's a different story, because while Iraq is still breaking deals by not letting the inspectors in and (presumably) creating weapons of mass destruction, only one nation (the United States) is saying that this is grounds for invasion. More importantly, though, that nation isn't satisfied with simply ensuring that Iraq plays by the rules.. it wants to force regime change in order to further its own interests and security. (Which no state agreed to, and no state is likely to do so). If the United States invades, then all of a sudden its the deal-breaker- it's the free rider that is attempting to enjoy the benefits of international treaties and bodies without having to be constrained by their rules. Whether this is "just" or not is immaterial- it's a simple matter of contracts made and broken, and the United States will be breaking practically every contract it has made by doing so, and in so doing make those contracts meaningless. Without those contracts, of course, all you have is anarchy.

That is why the rest of the world is pissed. That is why the warbloggers who have been calling for invasion are apparently either completely unaware of how international law and international relations work, or have ceased to care because of the United States' power. That is why Europe is going absolutely batshit right now, because they place great value on these sorts of treaties and bodies. And that is why any invasion of Iraq is something that needs to be considered very carefully, and probably is the reason why George H.W. Bush didn't take out Saddam in the first place. Yes, the United States could invade Iraq. It's sovereign, it has that ability, and could probably go it alone if necessary. By doing, so, though, it risks tearing apart the foundations of the vast majority of the collective and bilateral security agreements and bodies that keep what is an incredibly anarchic system somewhat peaceable and orderly. It becomes a free rider, and the rest of the world will know that, and will know full well the implications of a hyperpower breaking practically every deal it has made.

(There is, of course, another way of creating order in an anarchic system. It's one that has become increasingly popular lately, and serious people are starting to advocate it, despite the problems that it has had in the past. It's a system where one government gains sovereignty over most of the rest, and ensures security through its own strength. You probably know that system. It's called Imperialism.)

And now my comments are down. (Although oddly enough, the archive seems ok).

Now I've just got to try to figure out whether it's YACCS that's screwed up or my page. I'd ask for comments, but, well...

(Hope to fix this soon.)

Edit: Ok, scratch that. The comments work, just not in Mozilla/Netscape. This blows (to put it mildly) as I've become quite addicted to the convenience of tabbed browsing and the relative speed of the Gekko engine. Since my copy of Mozilla hasn't changed, I guess it's YACCS. Anybody else run across this problem and know a fix?

Oh, bloody hell, I've just noticed that I've been bitten by that weird blogger archive bug.

Anybody know how to go about fixing it?

While my questioning of the basic notions that Robert built his argument on is already past, I should highlight a point he made in a followup to the other post:

One hears a false version of these principles from the UN and its apologists in the form of: "Every nation has the right to defend itself." No. Every democratic nation has a right to defend itself and be free of unwarranted outside force on the basis of its own legitimacy.

Fine. How does one define the proper style of democracy? Is it American-style constitutionalism, British Parliamentarism, or something different? Should it be the sort of radical democracy that Anarchists tend to advocate, or a minarchist system that you tend to see argued for online? Are there term limits? Does the head of state have to be elected? Can a state religion exist, and if so which one? Can private property exist, and if it can should it be protected as a natural right outside the purview of the government, or just by the decisions of the electorate? (Rousseau, Hobbes, and Locke would have very different answers to this point.) And what about the tyranny of the majority? How do we account for it? And what about the socialists and communists who argue that the state is just a tool by one class to exploit another, and believe that democracy is pointless until the classless society comes to be?

More to the point, who gets to decide this, and why? And if you disagree with them, do they get to blow your head off, or do you get to blow their heads off? Or does it come down to who has the bigger guns? Not a recipe for a safe international community, especially if people take these questions deadly seriously. And, yes, they do.

That's why the quotation above is no falsehood- because there is no universal standard on what makes a good government, and nobody can stand from on high and decide "this is real democracy, and that is not". That's why the UN doesn't make the mistake that the League of Nations did (which people today forget) of only letting in governments that it likes. National sovereignty exists for a damned good reason, and as much as we'd like to reach out and change other governments into the kind we'd like, we can't do so and not leave ourselves open to being "adjusted" by others as well. Then, well, it just comes down to who shoots fastest.

Matthew Yglesias and Robert Musil (the Man Without Qualities) have been having a discussion about why the international community should recognize illegitimate governments, which was kicked off by this post here. As it's short, I'll post the vast majority of it, and comment as I go:

It also seems an appropriate day to consider some principles which events of this day not really so many years ago helped to establish. One very odd aspect of international law is its failure to incorporate some basic eighteenth century political insights. For example, political thinkers of the eighteenth century (including the signers of the Declaration) recognized the universal principle that the only source of governmental legitimacy is the consent of the governed. And "consent of the governed" means frequent, free and fair elections - not some dictator telling the world that if an election were held he would win. And "consent of the governed" doesn't mean some dictator or oligarchy explaining that their country is not "ready" for full electoral democracy. These are universal democratic principles, not details subject to ad hoc consideration on the basis of cultural relativism. There is room, however, for various uneasy "virtual representation" theories which disenfranchise some classes of people (children, criminals and others), and for significant constitutional variations.

Bolding mine, and for a good reason: although this is consistent with American conceptions of legitimacy, it does not and never has meant a hill of beans historically. Robert, put down the Federalist Papers and go read some Hobbes- legitimacy does not come from elections, it comes from the consent of the governed (the subjects) to obey the will of the government. If that consent is withdrawn, then (as John Locke pointed out) the alternative is armed revolution or (as Thomas Hobbes pointed out) leaving that country. Free and fair elections mean that it's more likely that the government is representative and reduces the likelihood of the necessity of armed regime change, but it doesn't eliminate it... that's the entire reason the second Amendment exists, and it's a pretty important concept in international relations. Indeed, free and fair elections don't necessarily have anything to do with important elements of modern states, or else how would the Queen of England gain her ceremonial (and very real, if only symbolic) power as the head of state of not just England, but a fair chunk of the commonwealth as well?

Hell, Rousseau and other critics of liberal democracy (including most Anarchists) would argue (and did argue) that "free and fair elections" are meaningless if certainly things aren't "up for grabs", a concept that formed the basis for Lockean liberal democracy. Rousseau famously said that "people in democracies are sovereign only on election day", and it's a sentiment that exists to this day.

And how can something be a "universal principle" when most of the world doesn't recognize it, recognizes the legitimacy of non-democratic governments and is willing to normalize relations with them? The United States is (notoriously) no exception to this rule. You can't arbitrarily declare that a principle is universal.. it has to be empirically demonstrable, and by no means is the Declaration any kind of empirical demonstration of the universality of the principles it sets out. It is the justification for rebellion by the Founders, yes, and important in that respect, but it doesn't mean a hill of beans outside of that nation's borders. They may hold these truths to be self-evident, but I doubt the British agreed at the time, and I doubt a lot of the planet would even now.

But most forms of international law continue to inhabit some pre-Enlightenment sphere in which even a simple dictatorship can claim to be the legitimate government of a nation with rights to defend itself and the nation. This form of international law dominates the United Nations. And it is completely anacronistic and wrong.

If by "anachronistic" you mean "traditionally the case", then yes, the concept of national sovereignty has been observed for (I believe) longer than the United States has been a country, and certainly longer than any of us have been alive. It recognizes what I just said above: that legitimacy does come from the people, but not from elections: it comes from their willingness to be subject to its authority. (This is true in the United States as well- the difference is that the final authority is the Constitution, not Congress. In other countries it's entirely different- in Britain, for example, it's the Queen and her Parliament that is supreme, and the constitution that is subject to the will of that Parliament.) If the people didn't obey the government, if they didn't agree to be subjects, then that government has no legitimacy. Period. End of story. Even if it slaughtered them all like hogs, it still wouldn't gain legitimacy, as what's a government without the governed, and how can you govern the dead?

(Besides, dictators can be popular and even beloved by their subjects. Unlikely, yes, but certainly possible. What if the general will was that they wanted the El Presidente to be dictator-for-life, and were willing to defend him against those who attempt to impose a democratic system? Is he not legitimate then?)

One consequence of these universal principles - a consequence which is not openly vetted in what E.B. White called the little green glass shee-bang on the East River - is that all governments that do not conform to such principles are illegitimate.

Again, the concept of "universal principles" is deeply problematic within the political sphere- precious little is universal, everything is up for debate, and assertions that any system is The One Best System are usually quickly and brutally shot down by those who point out the flaws of that system. (As I said earlier, this includes liberal democracy.)

In other words, governments that do not conform to these "universal" principles don't lose their legitimacy- their subject-derived legitimacy invalidates the universality of the principles. A distasteful notion, perhaps, but just try getting a few beers into an Anarchist and start hearing about how screwed up liberal democracy is. That's why national sovereignty is, in the end, so important: if countries tried to impose their vision of good government on everybody else, the world would never cease warring, and most people would, unfortunately, be too dead to argue.

While interesting, this post by Joe Katzman makes me want to remind people that there are different parts of the Iranian government, and only a part of it (the clerics) is especially repressive. While I'd welcome the eclipsing of the clerics as much as anything else, an Iran collapsed into chaos is a much more dangerous Iran than an Iran where the reformist government took over the reigns completely and gave the clerics an "out" that everybody could accept. Sure, it would mean that those terrorist-backing bastards in the clergy get off scott-free, but sometimes regime stability, legitimacy, and strength are worth the price of vengeance.

Once again, I've noticed that "fisking" is seen by some as a complete rebuttal and debunking of someone's arguments. It isn't, of course; it's merely a debating style, and a ridiculously flawed one at that- it usually misses the forest for the trees, and almost always leads to back and forth ping-pong quotation. That isn't new.

What is new is that pretty transparent strawman or simply weak arguments are now getting the "fisking" label for some reason. Indeed, if anything this was an anti-fisk argument, because H.D. Miller managed to somehow write page after page of lengthy rebuttal to convenient points that have little or nothing to do with the argument at hand!

For those who didn't follow the link, he basically pulled out the old "Malthus was wrong before, so he must be perennially wrong forever" argument, which seems to imply that the Earth could support an infinite number of human beings. Ludicrous, yes, but especially when it has little or nothing to do with the material arguments actually being made by his target. What were those arguments? You've got me: this is the entirety of his quotation:

A study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), to be released on Tuesday, warns that the human race is plundering the planet at a pace that outstrips its capacity to support life. In a damning condemnation of Western society's high consumption levels, it adds that the extra planets (the equivalent size of Earth) will be required by the year 2050 as existing resources are exhausted.

That's it. This is fisking? I mean, at least Julian Simon actually engaged Paul Ehrlich's arguments, even if his infamous "bet" probably had more to do with lucky economic timing than an actual lessening (?) of scarcity. Miller pulls off the Bush-esque tactic of answering questions that were never asked, and ignoring ones that actually are. Like Simon, he either forgets or ignores the simple truth that substitution only goes so far, and trying to extending current trends indefinitely would earn any stats student a vicious smack on the back of his head from the irate professor.

Whenever I read something like this, I too often thing "why am I even paying attention to this obvious tripe?" Then I remember that people believe it. And people link it. And therefore other people read it, and often haven't the faintest idea that there might even be a debate on the subject, let alone that arguments like Miller's are of questionable worth.

Oh, and lest I forget, that last piece was courtesy of Instapundit, except that at least Jonah didn't Godwin himself. Little by little, it seems like Instapundit is becoming a parody of himself.

Ok, stripped from all the verbiage, what I've been abled to discern from Jonah Goldberg's latest piece on Stanley's Fish's defense of PoMo is that he believes:

a) Ideas are dangerous

b) Post-Modernism is a dangerous idea that has spread everywhere

and...

c) Stanley Fish should be blamed not for what he says or believes, but what other people think- that the simplistic misconceptions about Post-Modernism that people may hold are not their own fault, but the fault of those who actually try to explain what PoMo really is.

Whatever the hell happened to the "individual responsibility" meme in conservatism? It seems that conservatives start embracing otherwise-repugnant "root cause" arguments the minute they get within fifty feet of a University. Professors wish they had that kind of power. Even if this wasn't absurd (Fish should be held responsible for trying to correct other people's misconceptions and for those misconceptions in the first place) it's incredibly off-message.

Edit: Ugh. "Goldman" instead of "Goldberg". Noted and corrected. Oddly enough, I have to give the credit to Glenn Reynolds for that, and I didn't picture him to be a regular reader. What's next, Glenn hanging out at Maxspeak and Eschaton?

Oliver Willis adroitly and succinctly answers the Kaus alarmism about the newly emergent and assertive liberalism:

For eight years we heard about "Bubba" and how he and Hillary had supposedly killed dozens of people, Rush Limbaugh offered daily nightmare scenarios of how liberalism was destroying our great nation (and continues to this day through outfits like the GOP mouth-organ Washington Times) - but now that the right is in power we shouldn't give as good as we got? Bulls**t.

Namby-pambyism died with a 5-4 vote.

I could quote everybody else tearing him a new asshole, but I think Oliver summed it up more than well enough. It's always a pity (as a liberal) to watch a liberal turn to conservatism; it's even more so to watch that same shift render someone seemingly incapable of rational thought. Kaus has gone from interesting to alarming to simply somewhat embarassing.

Some of those long comments threads make me wonder if I should start a message board like Judah's.

Speaking of Judah, what's going on with his site? Hasn't posted in a while, and I'm really missing it.

A comments post made me think of something from Ender's Game (and other books) that both ties into the "Pax Americana" and the missile defense issue, as well as the standard problem of U.S. unilateralism. I had always based my critiques of missile defense on the idea that it doesn't work; that the technology we currently have is insufficient for the job, which may be physically impossible anyway. Here's an interesting question, though:

What if it does work?

I don't just mean works pretty good, I mean works according to the wildest dreams of Reagan; a shield that pretty much renders nuclear weapons utterly pointless, as it can be used on the coasts for cruise missiles and sub missiles and in space (or ground-launched, whatever) for ballistic missiles. And let's say that Bush passes the technology around like he said he would or (more likely) it gets leaked by some DoD folks who get astonishingly rich and move to Morocco. Nukes have become passe- fighting, if it is to be done, is to be done by manned weaponry because missiles simply don't work anymore. There might be in-theatre weapons, but you have to get there first, and Metal Gear style gun-fired nukes are not an issue. (As an aside, if something like Metal Gear Ray ever was created...)

This would not, of course, be a recipe for peace. It would be a recipe for war. A lot of war, actually, because all of a sudden all those fabulous military toys that are still pretty much obsolete thanks to the threat of nukes when reasonably big two powers go toe-to-toe become usable again. All of a sudden the world becomes a much more dangerous place, because the apocalyptic threat that serves as a check to ambition disappears and wars for conquest, for vengeance, or simply because a quasi-fascist government is really bored and wants something to do become perfectly acceptable. Money starts pouring into military R&D again, because all of a sudden those nukes that provided the last line of defense don't mean squat any more, and the only thing between, say, Russia and conquest is the strength of their force of arms.

Europe would suddenly become a much more dangerous place to live, and Asia even more so. Even the United States wouldn't necessarily be invulnerable, although it would be a world where the United States could act as a spoiler in any conflict you'd care to name; unless the world actually did become bipolar and the United States was placed up against a foe that could conceivably defeat it. I mean really defeat it: as I said, without nukes, the only thing between the United States and its enemies is the traditional tools of air, sea, and land- tools that aren't nearly as reliable a deterrent as the threat of apocalypse. In turn (and probably because of this) the United States could become a much more belligerent power, because that hanging threat in the back of American minds could turn Bush-style unilateralism into the pacifistic side of the American military discourse. The argument for empire would be a lot stronger, perhaps even unassailable. America's opponents and even allies would know this too.

There would probably be other repercussions too; those are just the ones that are at the top of my head. (What would a world where world conquest is conceivably possible be like?)

Right now, of course, it's very unlikely that Bush's vision of limited NMD would create anything even remotely like that. Still, like in the last entry, it's useful to think long-term, and long-term it's conceivably possible that nukes will by-and-large be relatively unimportant. If it happened to coincide with the growth of an anti-American opposition that I mentioned in the last post...

Well, let me put it this way. The Outback would look very, very tempting. Mate.

It is said that there are two kinds of true statements. There are those whose opposites are false (such as "the sky is blue" vs. "the sky is not blue"), and those are the normal truths. Then there are the great truths, where opposite statements are both true (such as "love sucks" vs. "love is great". Both are true, and yet contradict each other).

I was struck by this when I read an article in the Washington post, liked by Alterman, that brought up the old question "why don't we listen anymore?" This article (like many others) points out that around the world people who were once reliably pro-American are becoming increasingly suspicious of, if not hostile to, the growing amount of American unilateralism. The classic response to this is "the United States can do what it wishes; it has the right to do so and the responsibility to do so". This is true, but it doesn't negate the previous statement. It is perhaps one of those Great Truths; that while the United States either should or must behave as its own requirements and beliefs demand (as many have argued, including Steven Den Beste in the article I referenced earlier), it is also perhaps inevitable that this will alienate its allies and further enrage its enemies (if not creating new ones.) Sometimes good and necessary actions have repercussions and negative reactions from those who are also acting in their own best interests, and who honestly believe that they are in the right. This doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the War on Terrorism; conflicts like those over the ICC and Kyoto seem to pivot on these fundamental differences in perspectives, interests, and conceptions of the good. (Going back partially to that "government as public good" vs. "government as necessary evil" division that seperates the United States from the rest of the first world.)

This, of course, is the center of what I think of as the "polarized world" thesis; that the rest of the world will start opposing the hegemonic power whether tacitly or openly as that power works to secure its own interests and the interests of those who are not part of that power become more and more opposed to that power. In terms of economics this wouldn't seem to make sense, but nobody sensible believes in the sort of economics-uber-alles arguments that infested the public discourse during the latter part of the 20th century; and relative national and strategic power (as opposed to economic power) is largely a zero-sum game.

Where is this going? I'm not sure, honestly. It's pretty obvious that Europe is going to start growing closer together and away from the United States at this point with or without the conflict between the United States and Islam, and Asia's not going to be as strategically friendly with the United States as some would like: the article's references of concerns over China are a good example:

In Seoul, American hostility toward North Korea is seen to be undermining President Kim Dae Jung's efforts to engage the North. Several top South Korean leaders emphasized to me that Washington either doesn't understand or doesn't care that South Korea cannot afford to take over a collapsing North Korea. "How can we make Washington understand that we need a long transition and that we must prevent, not precipitate, a sudden collapse of the North?" asked a key Korean negotiator.

In China there is widespread disappointment and resentment over the recent U.S. designation of China as a "strategic competitor rather than a strategic partner" as well as over the president's declaration that America "will do whatever it takes" to defend Taiwan. Both are seen as needlessly hostile... As for Taiwan, no one I met in Asia believed there is any danger of invasion...The only circumstance most observers can imagine that could provoke an attack would be a declaration of independence by Taiwan, something that, ironically, recent U.S. policies are seen to be encouraging.

This isn't about whether the United States is wrong or right in its actions, but how the rest of the world will react to them, and it seems to be increasingly likely that there will be friction if not outright fracture between the United States and the rest of the world, region by region. Even if the actions of the United States are totally justifiable and logical, that may end up being entirely meaningless if those totally justifiable and logical positions alienate a good portion of the globe.

Then again, no country can really afford to set itself against the United States, not with its huge economy and (arguably) even more impressive military. Even entire regions probably couldn't deal with the military and economic might of the United States. Everybody knows this, and I don't see it changing soon unless the corporate fallout becomes a heck of a lot worse than it already is and Japan and Europe become economic powerhouses. (Or China takes its rightful place as a key economic player; its internal economy alone could be staggering in fifty years). However, economics change much faster than diplomatic attitudes do, and the seperation of the interests of the United States and other regions around the globe isn't likely to reverse any time soon.

When the United States finally deals with the threat of militant Islam (or is consumed by it, although this is vanishingly unlikely), it may look up to see a world very different than the one it left behind in the 1990's. Even if every act it takes is a good and wise one, it may be the victim of one of those Great Truths: in doing what is in its best interests, it could simultaneously break down the international trust and respect it depends on at the same time. I don't expect the long rule of a Pax Americana.

Edit: Ugh. "Article Article".

Oh, and while I'm here, this springs to mind as a useful example of the new right-wing spin:

This, even though the matter was investigated and no charges were filed by the SEC. While Bush's actions may have been technical violations, they were not uncommon, and were generally considered "fairly trivial" by the SEC.

Now, as most people who actually know anything about the issue and aren't playing spin doctor could tell you, the SEC was very clear to point out that the issue was not settled and that Bush was not exonerated; they just weren't persuing it at the present time. The right seems to be taking this as an admission of innocence on the part of Bush, however, and that just goes to show that any claim they have as to a superior grasp of the facts and a more honest attitude towards politics and politicians is simply yet more spin.

Once again, however, they're deliberately obfuscating the real issue. The real issue is not to show that Bush pulled off some neat insider trading (which he almost certainly did) and that "technical violations" are not necessarily minor ones (especially in the case of securities fraud, where it's all about "technicalities); the real issue is that he was both beneficiary of and party to the same sort of fraudulent and unethical practices that are bringing down huge corporations and (lest we forget) costing thousands of people their jobs completely out of nowhere.

Then again, anybody who spouts this:

This, of course, forgets that they spent the eight years of the former Narcissist-in-Chief's administration defending every kind of dishonesty, corruption and vileness, and at the same time claiming a moral high ground; that such incessant investigations were wrong, and harmful to the country.

...probably doesn't deserve to be taken seriously, considering that all that "dishonestly, corruption and vileness" was pretty much made out of whole cloth by the same people who are desperately defending Bush now. That's the difference, Mr. DiBenedetto: the former assertions were nonsense, whereas this investigation is based on fully documented evidence of the sort that the Republicans would have killed for four years ago. The Republicans had to catch Clinton in a perjury trap in order to get their party-line impeachment off the ground, whereas all the Democrats have to do is do a little digging into the "MBA president's" business dealings. The sad part is that it doesn't look like Bush's exploits are anything special; they're just par for the course.

And, of course, the whole reason anybody even knows this guy exists is because, yes, Instapundit linked to him. Just in case anybody had forgotten about the ol' Echo Chamber and Instapundit's big publicity gong.

Every time I think that maybe there's a little growth of appreciation for non-conservatarian views online, I run across something like this:

Is there the slightest possibility that Paul Krugman will write something other than a flat-out hit piece on the President? By my count, 17 of his last 18 columns have been precisely that, including today's.

We know. Bush is evil. Corporations are evil. Energy companies are doubly evil.

How about: Krugman is simpleminded, petty, and obsessed. That makes sense to me.

Or how about "Krugman has been highlighting pretty glaring problems in the current administration, current economic climate, and in the past of 'the MBA president', George W. Bush"? I mean, "simpleminded"? This is a new one; even Jane Galt and the rest of the Krugman watchers don't make that assertion. Honestly, does this guy even know who Krugman is? Or maybe "considering that the stock market is getting beaten like a bad monkey thanks to the sorts of corporate fraud that Bush himself was tied to and which he is expected to clean up, this sort of story is profoundly important"?

(I mean, who honestly can say something like "corporations are evil" sarcastically nowadays and still think they can get away with it?)

In any case, I get the feeling that if Blogs were popular during the Clinton administration, the constant attack columns that infested the right-wing press over far more trivial matters would get a pass. It's not about the criticism, it's that Krugman is criticizing their guy. If Krugman wants to spend every column attacking the administration (which he hasn't; the piece from last week about the little games that corporations play to inflate their earnings mentioned Bush only parenthetically), then that's his right. If the criticism needs to be made, then that's his responsibility. If it prompts more substantial investigation, then that's to his credit. Judging by the controversy swirling around Bush thanks to that column, I'd say that Krugman said what needed to be said.

I have no intention of turning this into some sort of Den Beste watchblog, but honestly, Steven, what the hell is this?

(For instance, in Vaara's perfect universe, education programs in Africa can actually convince the people there to stop engaging in sexual behaviors which are at risk for spreading HIV. In the real world, on the other hand, such programs aren't practical because of other issues like wars and revolutions and incompetent governments.)

This is the textual equivalent of saying "look out behind you!" and running off when you get in trouble. Other then the fantastically unproven assertions involved in that last sentence, it shows that the "perfect is the enemy of the good" email that prompted this entry still permeates his blog in general and that he seems to feel the need to pull it out whenever he gets contradicted. He's still saying the equivalent of "nothing can work, we shouldn't even bother" even as he denies it, and attempts to misdirect criticism of that stance. Vaara still had a point.

This also enters into the rest of the entry, which talks about vouchers, school choice, and the (seemingly non-controversial) idea that some kids are just naturally kind of dim. Which is true, so far as it goes, but what is in question (and which goes begging in Den Beste's entry) is why this happens to be the case, and whether someone can do anything about it. Those kids who are "just plain stupid" could have ended up there because their education happened to be somewhat substandard, or because they have a specific learning disability that, when overcome, would show that they are actually pretty damned bright. (One of my best friends is dyslexic, which up until very recently would be classed as "a dim kid". She's brilliant.)

This is, in fact, the main argument against school vouchers that has always made sense to me... public schools are a "default" version, and private schools can exclude problem students, so private schools are going to be able to leave the public schools with the problem kids, reap the rewards of higher test scores and the increased enrolment that that provides, all while public schools have their funding removed and in a desperate attempt to rectify what cannot be rectified start cutting special education courses. Then, of course, my brilliant friend is called an idiot because she doesn't read the same way everybody else does, thinks she's an idiot because she hasn't the faintest clue that her problem is dyslexia, and "shuts off her brain", so to speak, because the assumption breeds the reality.

Does this mean that Den Beste doesn't have a point about the difference in potential between different students? No, of course some students are going to be smarter than others. Unless he can pull out much better evidence as to why this happens to be the case and why we're helpless to do anything about it (which seems to be a common thread in his entries- a curious attitude for someone who admires engineering so much), I'm not buying that it's a justification for school vouchers or anything much at all, in fact.

Like the unspoken yet still obvious assertion that governmental intransigence is so ingrained and unstoppable in Africa that we should just let them all die, the idea that we can't do anything for the dumb kids is one which is most assuredly not self-evident.