Thoughts from
San Diego on Law, Politics, and Culture

 
While the Supreme Court is at it
By Tom Smith

We may have to get rid of our national anthem (adopted in 1931) as well as the Pledge. What, you don't know the fourth verse?

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation,
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n - rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserved us a nation.

Then conquer we must, for our cause is just,
And this be our motto--"In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.


Hat tip to anti-idolitarian rottweiler for the reminder.
posted by thomas at 10/31/2003 11:07:00 PM

 
Problems with the Political Compass Test
By Michael Rappaport

A growing number of bloggers have taken the political compass test. Larry Solum collects the results, while Brian Leiter bemoans that so many (legal) bloggers are right wing.

As should be pretty obvious to anyone who takes it, the test is problematic. It is not at all clear what it is measuring. Brian Weatherspoon says that one problem is that extreme positions balance out. Another problem though is the ambiguity of the questions.

Consider the first question: “If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations.” Do you strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree?

Given my views about the world, I could justify giving each answer. First, the question assumes that there is an opposition between humanity and transnational corporations. If one accepts that assumption and one must choose between these two groups, I would certainly choose humanity. So I might strongly agree.

But, of course, the question really seems to be saying two things: 1) There is an inevitable and important opposition between the interests of transnational corporations and humanity, and 2) We should prefer humanity. In my view, 1 is mistaken. It is an important truth that in a functioning market, transnational corporations can serve the interests of humanity. Yet, I might still agree with 2 as to cases where there is an opposition. So I might answer either agree or disagree.

Finally, one might simply interpret the statement as expressing the world view of the typical person who says this type of thing. If one understands the statement in this way, then I would strongly disagree with it.

So how should I answer? I think I said I disagree with the statement, but I wonder if I would answer it the same way the next time, or how many others, with my views, gave the same answer.

posted by Michael at 10/31/2003 11:02:00 PM

 
Don't mess with Catholic Schoolgirls
By Tom Smith

This story of Catholic school girl vigilante justice doesn't surprize me. Hat tip to my corporations student Gina Kim.
posted by thomas at 10/31/2003 01:54:00 PM

 
Philosophy memories
By Tom Smith

Brian Leiter has an interesting history of the ups and downs of various philosophy departments over the years. It brings back some memories for me. I was a philosophy major at Cornell when it was a powerhouse department. Terry Irwin taught the Greeks, Kant and Rawls and was a dedicated teacher of undergraduates as well as graduates. To say he was held in high esteem by undergraduates and graduates alike would be a gross understatement. Norman Kretzman gave me the first "C" on a paper I had gotten since about 6th grade, woke me from my doctrinal slumbers and got me fascinated with medieval philosophy as I have been since. Nick Sturgeon was super smart and another dedicated teacher. Stalnaker was a bit of a cold fish but also scary smart. Dick Boyd taught philosophy of science and was good. Visitors included Saul Kripke, Rawls, Max Black, and on and on. It was pretty thrilling to a kid from Boise, Idaho.

After Cornell I went to Oxford and tried to decide if I wanted to study more philosophy and ending up compromising. I was in the B.Phil program for a term, but found myself assigned to P.M.S. Hacker, whose first initials aptly describe him. R.M Hare and Jeremy Waldron proved you don't have to be a jerk to be a top philosopher, but I had ended up with Hacker. So I quit the B.Phil. and read PPE and ended up with Waldron as my top tutor (I forget the official Oxford slang). He was great; another great teacher.

After that I went to law school at Yale, mostly because I did not know what else to do and vaguely thought it might lead to an exciting career in Washington. Intellectually speaking, I found Yale a crushing let down from Cornell and Oxford. I was used to small seminars with great minds. At one seminar at Oxford, led by Dworkin, Derek Parfit and AK Sen, I found myself sitting next to HLA Hart and Charles Taylor. Parfit, widely regarded as a genius but pretty full of himself, was going on with some theory about moral consensus. I asked a question intended to puncture his theory and with Dworkin's help, it did. Parfit was really pissed off, and Dworkin came up afterwards to introduce himself to me! From that, I went to being condescend to by Bruce Ackerman at Yale, who wanted nothing to do with any student not licking his shoes and who, whatever Brian says, I just don't consider to be a serious philosopher, not in Dworkin's or Parfit's league anyway. It was pretty depressing.

After law school I decided to apply to philosophy graduate school and got into Harvard and Princeton, which were, as no less an authority than Brian confirms, the best departments at the time. I was ready to either give up law or do real philosophy and law. I visited Harvard, thinking, I could be studying with Rawls and Nozick! They were both there at the time. But the graduate students told such depressing stories. No need to bother with Nozick, they said. You're not a hot babe; he only likes hot babe students. As to Rawls, he doesn't like grad students at all. And watch out for [forget the name], the director of graduate studies, he's a sadist, no, not figuratively speaking, they said, a real DSM-IV, diagnosable sadist. Yikes. So I called Princeton on the phone. It actually seemed like a much better program, but their idea of what a good job was was so depressing, I gave it up and took a job in law teaching instead.

A few weeks ago, I was looking at some book about Wittgenstein and my wife said, "Oh, Wittgenstein. I have a patient who likes him." "Is he a philosopher?" I asked. "He has a PhD from Pittsburgh," she said "but he works as a groundskeeper at a golf course. He likes it. It leaves him lots of time to read philosophy."
posted by thomas at 10/31/2003 12:16:00 PM

 
Even More Moderate
By Maimon Schwarzschild

According to this political identity test, I'm pretty close to Jean Chretien. Yikes! (Economic Left/Right: -0.38. Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.10.) But the trouble, I think, is with the test and not with myself. (Hat tip: Wm Shakespeare.)

posted by maimon at 10/31/2003 11:25:00 AM

 
Oh dear, I'm a moderate
By Tom Smith

My political identity test. I find it reassuring that I'm pretty close to Milton Freidman.
posted by thomas at 10/31/2003 09:56:00 AM

 
Hanson On Antisemitism
By Maimon Schwarzschild

Victor Davis Hanson has it right, unfortunately, about the stunning strength of anti-semitism around the world.
posted by maimon at 10/31/2003 08:54:00 AM

 
Helicopter Insanity
By Michael Rappaport

Yesterday, I reported that I had seen "a string of at least 10 or 15 [militiary] helicopters carrying large waterbuckets" and had bemoaned the fact that they had not been used sooner to fight the fires. Now it turns out they were not being used to fight the fires even then. Television station KUSI reported that the helicopters were practicing fighting fires while real fires, enormous ones, were destroying the area around Julian. This is INSANITY.
posted by Michael at 10/30/2003 10:26:00 PM

 
The Political Identity Test
By Michael Rappaport

A number of bloggers have taken the political compass test, which provides a measure of their political views on two dimensions: Left versus Right, and Authoritarian versus Libertarian. Like many such tests, it all depends on how you interpret the questions and multiple choice answers, but for what it is worth, my results were 4.25 to the Right and 0 between Authoritarian and Libertarian. I sound so moderate. Nonetheless, as a libertarian conservative or conservative libertarian or fusionist, I suppose this is right. I am awfully close to Stephen Bainbridge, which I would not have predicted. Very far from Brian Leiter, which I certainly would have predicted.
posted by Michael at 10/30/2003 09:19:00 PM

 
Left-Wing Hypocrisy; Dog Still Barking
By Tom Smith

I'm working on my cardboard sign. How does this sound: "Will engage in left-wing rants for use of private jet, fleet of SUVs and large sums of cash." Comments welcome. (via andrewsullivan.com)
posted by thomas at 10/30/2003 08:52:00 PM

 
Juicy Corporate Law
By Tom Smith

I admit it. A lot of corporate law cases are boring. So much the better when something juicy comes along. No I'm not talking about Kozkiwski's party for his (second) wife's birthday, complete with well-oiled male models. I'm talking about the Disney/Ovitz matter going back to court. This case was brought by none other than our local plaintiff's canine Bill Lerach on behalf of the long suffering shareholders of Disney, complaining about the $100 million plus severance payment that Michael Ovitz got when he left Disney, as everybody knew he would as soon as he signed on there. The Delaware courts will get another chance to decide how stupid a Board can be and still be protected by the business judgment rule. Case law establishes that profoundly stupid is not stupid enough. How about Unbelievably-stupid-to-the-tune-of-more-than-$100 million? We shall have to wait and see. As Fortune magazine wisely notes, the atmospherics are different now, in a post-Enron, post-WorldCom, post really tasteless ice sculpture etc. etc. world.
posted by thomas at 10/30/2003 01:38:00 PM

 
Bad News For Blair?
By Maimon Schwarzschild

Britain's Tory Party has voted to drop Iain Duncan Smith as leader, and the Tories are widely expected to name Michael Howard, now the "shadow Chancellor", as Smith's successor -- and hence as Leader of the Opposition to Tony Blair.

This is interesting in various ways -- certainly for Britain, but (everything connects) with implications for world politics as well.

There is the fact that Howard is a Jew: as Andrew Sullivan notes, the first person of Jewish birth to lead the Tory Party (assuming Howard gets the nod) since Disraeli. This in a country where there are significant traces of anti-semitism in the national bloodstream. Where Jews are concerned, as in everything else, England is in no way the 51st state. British Jews are made to feel foreign in unmistakable ways: Jews there experience frequent sneers, sometimes subtle, often stunningly overt, and almost all Jews in Britain do feel themselves outsiders to some extent. (This is utterly different from the experience of Jews in the US.) One sign of it is that although Jews in Britain think and speak of themselves as "British", few if any of them would un-self-consciously call themselves "English". And at the political level there is a clear note of anti-Jewish animus in the widespread and visceral pro-Arab feeling in Britain.

And yet the Leadership of the Opposition is about to be held by a Jew. The current Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, is also a Jew, and there are quite a few others in important and honoured jobs. A complicated country. (You read it here first.)

(So many of Mrs Thatcher's cabinet ministers were Jews that Harold Macmillan famously wondered out loud why there were more "Old Estonians" than Old Etonians in her cabinet. It was a very funny -- and not at all good-natured -- remark by the old Tory leader.)

Then there is the question of what the Tory coup means for Tony Blair. Blair hasn't had to worry much about opposition from the Tories lately. They were at each other's throats, not at his.

(A scene in Parliament last week: a Tory spokesman was earnestly reading crime statistics aloud showing growth in serious crime. "There is a rise in armed robbery, assault, burglary..." A voice calls out from the Labour benches: "stabs in the back..." The debate dissolved in laughter at the allusion to the Tory leadeship troubles.)

Michael Howard, unlike Iain Duncan Smith, has a reputation for deadly effectiveness as a debater and critic. (Howard is a barrister, in the rapier-wielding style.) With Howard, in fact, Blair could find himself in a two-front war. He may face a newly effective Conservative opposition. And that will only encourage the opposition that Blair has most reason to fear, namely opposition from his own mutinous Labour ranks. Most of the Labour Party, unfortunately for Blair, now loathes him: for having allied with the US and the hated President Bush in Iraq; and for the sin of insufficient socialist zeal at home.

So stabs in the back are liable to be a clear and present danger for Blair, especially if the Tories now pull together and put themselves beyond teasing for having had the knives out for their own leader.
posted by maimon at 10/30/2003 07:33:00 AM

 
Helicopter-gate
By Tom Smith

Roger Hedgecock is reporting on KOGO AM600 that the California Department of Forestry refused an offer to use Navy and Marine choppers to fight the fire for bogus safety reasons, questioning the training of military pilots. This story needs a full investigation. Arnold needs to do a full audit of CDF procedures when he gets in. If Davis did not order the CDF to get over itself and reach out to use any and all resources necessary to save people's homes, he should be impeached . . . Well, it's late for that. But if this story is true, it's truly an outrage.

And this L.A. Times story is a must read. I know Davis is a weak leader, but how much courage does it take to yell Help! San Diego congressman Duncan Hunter should push through legislation that makes it easier to use military helicopters. Apparently the private helicopter charter lobby doesn't like the idea. Now there's a group we ought to care about.
posted by thomas at 10/29/2003 05:04:00 PM

 
Military Helicopters
By Michael Rappaport

It appears that a scandal may be emerging concerning the refusal of California to use available military helicopters to fight the fire. From what I just saw, the refusal to use them may have been an enormous loss. As I drove by the Miramar Marine Base, I saw a string of at least 10 or 15 helicopters carrying large waterbuckets. In the main, the helicopters appeared to be flying to the northeast of Miramar, but one dropped its water on an area that was either on the base, near it, or perhaps even in nearby Scripps Ranch. What a difference these helicopters might have made if employed earlier.

In view of the reports that California officials refused to use these helicopters, perhaps Arnold will have to reprise his role as The Terminator.
posted by MichaelTom at 10/29/2003 04:37:00 PM

 
The International Red Cross Attack
By Michael Rappaport

Michael Totten has an interesting post on the attack on the International Red Cross. It is a strong statement, but it is hard to argue with its logic.

[Totten begins]: Even after the terrorist massacre at the International Red Cross center in Baghdad, Red Cross spokeswoman Nada Doumani still doesnt understand the world she is living in. [He then quotes the spokeswoman]:

Maybe it was an illusion to think people would understand after 23 years [working in Iraq] that we are unbiased. I can't understand why we've been targeted.

[Totten continues]: Mrs. Doumani. You are not unbiased. You are trying to help the Iraqi people. You are not on the side of the Baathists or the Islamists. You represent civilization and the West. And you work for the Red Cross, not the Red Crescent.

More than two years have passed since Al Qaeda attacked New York and Washington. For more than two years the world has known, and should have been able to grasp, that the “infidel” is their enemy. You, Mrs. Doumani, are an “infidel.” You are not an Islamic fascist. So you’d better watch your back and quit pretending you are a neutral. You will never please them. You can never appease them. You will never earn their trust, their thanks, or their respect. Never. Get used to it. When they say they want to kill you, for your own sake, for all our sakes, take them at their word.

(Emphasis added).
posted by MichaelTom at 10/29/2003 03:03:00 PM

 
New Media For New Ideas
By Maimon Schwarzschild

City Journal has posted a detailed survey by Brian Anderson of the new media which are ending the "near monopoly" commanded by left-liberal media of opinion and information. "Almost overnight" says Anderson, "three huge changes in communications have injected conservative ideas right into the heart of the national debate" Anderson cites talk radio (of course), cable TV (not just Fox News but cable comedy too), and the internet. Anderson sees a growing political pluralism in book publishing as well. "No longer can the Left keep conservative ideas out of the mainstream or dismiss them with bromide instead of argument. Everything has changed."

I think Anderson's shakiest claim is about book publishing: the book world remains heavily tilted to the left, although Anderson has a case that even here the "bien pensant" monolith is cracking.

Read the survey. It is extensive, thorough, and full of citations to interesting people, programs, journals, web-sites, and books.

But a Bronx cheer to City Journal for failing to web-link the citations!
posted by maimon at 10/29/2003 01:11:00 PM

 
Back to the Future: The Iraqi Constitution of 1925
By Michael Rappaport

An interesting Op Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal by two of the best: Bernard Lewis and James Woolsey. They suggest that the Iraqi Constitution of 1925 be used as the basic law of Iraq. It could then be updated to modern circumstances.

The Constitution itself has some intriguing features:

The 1925 Iraqi constitution--which establishes that the nation's sovereignty "resides in the people"--provides for an elected lower house of parliament, which has a major role in approving constitutional amendments. It also contains a section on "The Rights of the People" that declares Islam as the official religion, but also provides for freedom of worship for all Islamic sects and indeed for all religions and for "complete freedom of conscience." It further guarantees "freedom of expression of opinion, liberty of publication, of meeting together, and of forming and joining associations."

Using this Constitution, which they suggest is still in place since the Iraqi people never repealed it, is an appealing idea. First, it would help to combine the innovation of democracy with the traditions of Iraq. The plants of freedom and democracy grow best in the soil of history and tradition. Second, using this Constitution would also emphasize that the Iraqi people were previously on the road to democracy, when their country was hijacked by the military and the Baath Party. This would only reinforce that the United States is liberating Iraq. And it would indicate that the United States is not attempting to recreate Iraq precisely in its own image.

posted by Michael at 10/29/2003 12:17:00 PM

 
Poverty and Philosophy
By Tom Smith

I seem to have irritated betrandrussell with my post about Stupid Philosophers. It might be worth a word in reply to what might be called betrandrussell's temperate attack on my comments.

As to philosophers, I think a lot of professional philosophers overestimate their intelligence relative to people in other professions and to people generally. Philosophers tend to be good at some forms of reasoning, but often have very little in the way of what you might call practical wisdom in other areas. I have found it amusing over the years to observe, for example, that many moral philosophers seem to have trouble living very morally. My philosophy advisor, a truly wonderful man and teacher, Norman Kretzman, who died some years ago, once remarked at a meeting in which one of his (now pretty well known) philandering colleagues was assigned to teach the course "Contemporary Moral Problems" that "it takes one to know one." Sometimes you have great moral philosophers, but having an insight about metaethics or whatever does not give you a leg up on insights into the world's problems. But I have no reason to think Honderich is even a particularly good philosopher. Honderich seems to me to be a second rate philosopher at best, and one who is spouting wicked nonsense. That he is well insulated from the consequences of his ideas just makes him more contemptible. His gesture of trying to buy off his critics with a scrap of his wealth is disgusting. OxFam showed a bit of real moral rectitude by refusing his donation. The idea that his moral wisdom on any topic is worth listening to, is ridiculous.

As to my views on terrorism, I think it is wrong under all circumstances. By definition, it means killing the innocent indiscriminately. I would be willing to fight for liberty, and kill its enemies as necessary, but that does not include waging war on civilians. I'm not interested in the opinions of philosophers who support terrorism, when I know it's not their children who will be blown to pieces or forced to murder themselves to avoid a worse fate. That's why I suggested Honderich put in a year in Africa working with people who are poor and suffering. Maybe if he acquainted himself with some real suffering, he would be more circumspect about advocating doling it out.

On the point of suffering and poverty generally, I think that Marxists and other materialists overestimate the role that wealth plays in making people happy. Empirical social science tends to support this claim. The very poorest of the poor, in Bangladesh and parts of Africa, are indeed unhappy. But most people, including people very poor indeed by American standards, tend to be pretty happy with their lives, and do not miss the things Americans put so much stock in. When people like the Shining Path start killing people in order to bring about more equality and justice, I think as an empirical matter they are causing more unhappiness than will ever be outweighed by the changes they seek to bring about. It just would not occur to most philosophers to actually inquire, using social science, how unhappy poor people are, before advocating equality. I was struck by the dignity and relative simplicity of the life of Peruvian Indians, though they are very poor. There were not miserable that I could tell. They were not particularly friendly to tourists--they were too proud for that. They were surrounded by a rich environment in which they were intensely interested. Their kids did not watch TV for 4-6 hours a day like many American kids. The idea that we should start a civil war so they could have all the pleasures of modern life strikes me as ridiculous. As to whether I would choose to live the life of a hunter-gatherer in the Amazon, well, I have a wife and kids and wouldn't impose that choice on them, but as for myself, I wouldn't mind trying it for a year or so. Lice don't bother me that much.

posted by thomas at 10/29/2003 09:57:00 AM

 
Battle of Julian
By Tom Smith

As I write this, firefighters are battling the Cedar fire which threatens to engulf the mountain town of Julian, famous in San Diego as a resort and destination for Sunday drives, and home to many who love its unique Southern Californian mountain beauty. It does not look good. The winds that shifted and saved many in my part of East San Diego County have sent the fire raging toward Descanso, Cuyamaca and Julian. The community of Cuyamaca has, reportedly, already been destroyed. Local news channels are reporting 90 percent of the homes have been burned. Julian is a much loved community in this area. We all hope somehow the fire will spare it. The courage and physical stamina of the firefighters is remarkable. They face not just exhaustion, but an unpredictable enemy that can reach temperatures of 2000 degrees. I am still somewhat fearful that a shift in the wind could send the fire barreling down Pine Valley toward my home--it is eerie to hear described as burning places are am used to driving by. But the weather report predicts no more winds from the East, and I somewhat guiltily pray that is right, even though it would be bad news for my neighbors to the the northeast.

NBC News, I am happy and surprised to report, did a good job on their national news, reporting with dignity and sensitivity the losses of the families who live 5 miles to my north in Crest, who lost homes and family members in the fire. They did a good job capturing the suddenness of it, and how easy it is to get trapped at the end of these rural roads in east county.
posted by thomas at 10/28/2003 07:02:00 PM

 
John Hart Ely, R.I.P.
By Michael Rappaport

I was saddened to hear of the death of John Hart Ely. In the last year or so, many of the thinkers who influenced me during my school years have died, including Robert Nozick, John Rawls, and now Ely. In each case, I was quite attracted to their ideas for a while and then moved on, but not without incorporating much of what they said into my own world view. I am happy to hear that another of the people who influenced me (and continues to do so), Milton Friedman, is still very much alive and thinking.

For me, Ely’s work must be understood in its historical context. The right wing originalists of today might be surprised that he should have been an important influence on such originalists in the past. But in 1980, originalism (whether right or left wing) was a very unpopular view and one took one’s inspiration from where it came. At that time, the world was filled with “noninterpretivists,” which were the living constitution people with a different name. They abandoned that name, in my view, because it exposed too clearly the nature of their interpretive practice – they were not interpreting, but rewriting. It says something about the 1970s that this name was not deemed a political defect for several years.

Ely helped to change all that. The parts of Democracy and Distrust that criticized noninterpretivism were extremely powerful and they still read well today, even though scholarship on these matters has developed for over a generation. Of course, I was moved much less by the parts that criticized “Clause Bound Interpretivism” and sought to justify the Warren Court.

For those who want a taste of the power of Ely’s view (and of the sustenance it gave to those of us who believed in originalism when few professors – certainly there were none at Yale after Bork and Winter became judges – embraced originalism in any form), consider this paragraph from page 3 of Democracy and Distrust:

“In interpreting a statute . . . a court obviously will limit itself to a determination of the purposes and prohibitions expressed by or implicit in its language. Were a judge to announce in such a situation that he was not content with those references and intended additionally to enforce, in the name of the statute in question, those fundamental values he believed America had always stood for, we would conclude that he was not doing his job, and might even consider a call to the lunacy commission.”

Ely’s unpopuarity at places like Yale was perhaps due in part to the fact that it may have led some of the faculty to wonder whether men in white coats, carrying funny jackets, might be waiting outside their door.
posted by Michael at 10/28/2003 05:03:00 PM

 
Fire Photos
By Tom Smith

This is what fire looks like. Thanks to instapundit for the pointer. Try stopping this with your garden hose. Here's a fire map I stole from signonsandiego.com and posted on my personal website. You can click on it twice to enlarge it. Here's a gallery of photos from Crest, a small community about 5 miles north of Jamul, where I live.
posted by thomas at 10/28/2003 03:47:00 PM

 
Islamic Antisemitism
By Michael Rappaport

Charles Jacobs writes a powerful column about Islamic Antisemitism. (Hat tip: Little Green Footballs). He identifies four reasons why the Jewish community has largely ignored this problem:

1. Psychological denial. Who wants to think, 60 years after the Holocaust, that a new, religious campaign against the Jews could be taking shape? We liked to think the hatred from the Arab world was "street talk" that would dissipate "when peace came." It probably won't.

2. Media's selective reporting: The media is reluctant to discuss the religious dimensions of the conflict in the Middle East, because its preferred prepackaged view is that this is a secular struggle for national liberation. It is also reluctant to report negatively about Islam. Steve Emerson is boycotted by PBS.

3. Jewish Politics: Many in the Jewish community want very much to think that the war in Israel is primarily over borders, where compromise is possible. To think that the conflict is about the Jewish right of self-determination in the Islamic realm is daunting. They are also concerned that examples of Islamic anti-Semitism may be used to justify certain Israeli policies.

4. Political correctness: We are a liberal people and do not want to speak badly about a race, religion or a people. We seem unable to distinguish between simple factual truth and bigotry. I our multicultural society, we have not yet developed a public language to describe Islamic anti-Semitism without potentially being accused of insensitivity or prejudice.

Each one is on the money.

posted by Michael at 10/28/2003 10:31:00 AM

 
What do you call a right-wing comedian?
By Tom Smith

Senator. To answer the Daily Standard, yes, I'm ready for Senator Dennis Miller. Liberal Hollywood hates him. He calls the French "les bags du scum." He has been denounced by Sir Elton John. He renamed the San Andreas fault Grey Davis's fault. He's tough. People will vote for him. Another reason. Barbara Boxer. Oh, and he said of a tired Robert Byrd "he must be burning the cross at both ends."
posted by thomas at 10/28/2003 08:26:00 AM

 
BBC glorifies communist spies; dogs bark
By Tom Smith

So what else is new. BBCAmerica begins its mini-series tonight or maybe last night on those darn glamorous, aristocratic Cambridge spies. I think I'll give it a miss. They were young, they handsome, they were rich . . . they were in league with the most murderous regime in human history.

And while we're on the subject of glorifying murderous regimes, there's this little nugget on ANSWER, the anti-war folks. Thanks to Left Coast Conservative (worth a visit) for the pointer.
posted by thomas at 10/28/2003 07:49:00 AM

 
Davis's Fire 2
By Tom Smith

Here is the site for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. It is showing the national fire alert level at 2. A couple of summers ago, when forest fires were burning in Western states, but far fewer homes were threatened, and fewer acres actually burning, the alert level was at 5. This is messed up. My older brother, a volunteer fireman and lawyer, tells me it is only because Sacramento did not request federal assistance that federal resources stayed on the ground and the alert level remained at only 2. He says he thinks it has to do with rivalry between the California Department of Forestry and national agencies. So San Diegans have to watch houses burn to satisfy bureaucratic egos. This is not the time for recriminations and finger pointing. But the time is coming for that, and it is yet another mess Arnie should sort out. Perhaps a good start would be firing the people at the top of CDF. They should have told Davis they needed help in time to stop the fire's march in San Diego suburbs, which the right aircraft may well have don.
posted by thomas at 10/27/2003 10:30:00 PM

 
Meanwhile Back at the Ranch
By Gail Heriot

I've been trying to ready my house in case of fire for the past two days, clearing debris from my Spanish tile roof, clipping bushes and planning what to do if I am ordered to evacuate. It's somewhat disconcerting work, especially when I take the time to watch the ashes raining down into my yard. What used to be a picturesque canyon view along the back of my modest freehold has begun to look a little menacing in the smokey glow that is enveloping much of Southern California.

I feel useful when I'm clearing brush and debris (even though I have no particular talent for the work). I know that there isn't a lot that I can do to alter the odds in the immediate run, but like most games, this one is played at the margin. I do the best I can, given the cirumstances, to protect my property and the property of my neighbors. If that's only a little bit, that's okay; the stakes are certainly high enough to justify the effort. Those who moan that they want to be able to shift the odds more decisively in their favor frequently wind up doing nothing. When they repeatedly fail to do the little things that move the odds just a little bit, they usually end up worse off in the end. Little improvements are the stuff that real life is made of.

Here's what's bothering me. On television, civic leaders and media talking heads seem to agree that the fire storm is something that must be taken care of by professionals. Either you are a firefighter (or policeman, doctor, nurse, or relief worker) or you are a victim. There are no other categories. Professionals are praised for their heroism (both when they have earned it and when they have not). Victims, on the other hand, are praised for their docility--that is their willingness to evacuate their homes when ordered to do so and to place their trust entirely in the hands of professionals without complaining.

It would be nice to be able to rely on the professionals completely. But nothing is more obvious than the fact that our firefighters are stretched too thinly to control the 50-mile fire fronts that currently snake across San Diego County. To place one's trust entirely in their hands is foolish; despite their spirit and dedication, there just aren't enough of them. Last night, for example, television crews showed home after home aflame without a firefighter in sight. I am not at all certain that I will leave my house immediately in the unlikely event that I am commanded to leave. What if that order comes in too soon? Should I be required to abandon everything I own, taking only my purse and car keys, no matter how far away the fire is and no matter how much I might to able to accomplish by staying a while longer? What motivation do the authorities have to avoid ordering an evacuation prematurely?

California wildfires are just like the rest of real life. If you want to make sure that your interests are being attended to, it's best to attend to them yourself. That doesn't mean that a man ought to stand there like an imbecile defending his house from a 50-foot high wall of fire with a garden hose. But it does mean that he must occasionally employ his own judgment in determining whether or when to fight a little longer or turn and run. There's something to be said for the feisty homeowner (even the one with the garden hose) who refuses to abandon his home to be defended by the non-existent firefighter. He's like the law-abiding citizen who insists on the right to carry a gun to defend herself against street thugs or like the concerned parents who insist on home-schooling their children rather than to submit meekly to substandard public schools. I can't help feeling that we all benefit as a result of some of these feisty souls.

One of my favorite movies is the Seven Samarai. In it, seven samarai come to the rescue of a small Japanese village that is under attack by brigands. Good triumphs over evil; I can't help but love it. Still it has one fault. The villagers are not portrayed as idiots; they take some responsibility for recruiting the samarai to protect them and they cooperate with the samarai to help drive off the bad guys. But in general, theirs is a passive role; it is the samarai who save the day, just as it is the firefighters and policemen who are being set up as our sole protection this week. I prefer my peasants a bit more self-reliant.

The Seven Samarai was re-made into an American Western--the Magnificent Seven--starring Yul Brynner with excellent support by James Coburn, Charles Bronson and Robert Vaughan (in a wonderful role as a Southern dandy gunslinger who loses his nerve and then, briefly, gets it back again). But it was obvious from the beginning that this sort of story just didn't fit in well with the average American's concept of the American West. American farmers might benefit from leadership from some professional, but in popular memory they were full participants in their own protection, not passive peasants. So the Magnificant Seven was set in Mexico rather than in the United States. Evidently, Hollywood thought that American moviegoers would be more willing to tolerate the notion that a Mexican village would need seven deliverers. American frontiersmen were expected to be feisty.

Is California still home to self-reliant homeowners prepared to stand their ground sometimes even when the authorities tell them not to? I hope so. But you couldn't prove it by the television coverage of the last two days. Television's homeowners seem to be a dependent lot.
posted by Gail at 10/27/2003 06:31:00 PM

 
Stay Cool
By Michael Rappaport

There is something else that just gets a New York boy like me going. It is the way that San Diegans just seem to calmly accept getting screwed. Consider the following two paragraphs from the local newspaper:

Mayor Dick Murphy says that the Cedar Fire has been declared "the state's No. 1 priority" but added without irony, that "until resources are released from other fires, we won't get the resources."

Murphy added that the federal emergency agency (FEMA) is "standing by, ready to declare this a disaster area. ... We hope to get that declaration today. .... They understand that this is a crisis ...ready to recommend to president that this is a disaster, as soon as they get sufficient information."

By all means, take your time geting the information to the President. No need to rush.

The New Yorker in me -- and after 13 years in San Diego and 5 in Washington DC, he is still very much alive (Just ask anyone who knows me) -- is saying, What the F**K is going on? San Diego is a place where "No incidents of looting, violence or related problems were reported overnight in the affected areas." Of course not. The people are too calm, too law abiding, and too ready to take it. Now I am not recommending a riot, but if there was a chance of that happening, perhaps the State and the Feds might be moving a wee bit more quickly.
posted by Michael at 10/27/2003 11:46:00 AM

 
Davis's Fire
By Tom Smith

Fox News 6 here in San Diego is now reporting that there are military tankers waiting on the ground for Gov. Davis's order to help out with the fire. Any time now would be fine, Grey. Maybe this is the Grayman's revenge on San Diego County. Seriously, there should be a full investigation of where the hell the helicopters and tankers are while San Diego burns. If the answer is, "they're busy," then we need to find out why there is not more federal help on line, and why we don't have more state and county resources on tap.

There is a fire to the south of me in Proctor Valley, where I go hiking because it's only a five minute drive away. Maybe 3 or 4 miles. The Crest fire is about four miles north. The San Diego Sheriff's department just drove through a neighborhood about 10 minutes north of here telling people to get out. But now the news says that CDF (California Department of Forestry) has said, no, that was a mistake. Those people can stay where they are, according to CDF. So, I guess the message is, evacuate! or Don't! Or, as they tell you on the evacuation help line: USE YOUR DISCRETION! Or as they say here in California, how do you feel about it? Do you feel like you are in danger? If you feel like you are in danger, then FLEE!

When this is over, this little corner of Jamul is going to become a fire department of one. Pool pump. Foam generator. Regulation quality fire hose. Maybe it's time to put down that well. 50 horsepower diesel generator to power the firehose. Maybe I could buy my own firetruck on ebay.

Across the street one of my charming neighbors, who violates the CCR's by keeping part of the inventory of his used car business parked in his driveway, has hired somebody with a bobcat to clear out brush in the ravine next to his house. Illegal because of environmental regs, I think, but I say, die Mormon Tea bush, die! Scrape it down to DG (that's decomposed granite for you city folks)!
posted by thomas at 10/27/2003 11:26:00 AM

 
Ring of Fire
By Michael Rappaport

Yesterday was not a good day. Lets hope today continues to be better. Where I live in San Diego, which is pretty far from where Tom Smith does, the fire appeared to be surrounding us. The biggest destruction hit Scripps Ranch, which is the next neighborhood to the south of us. To the immediate north, Carmel Mountain, it was reported, was starting to burn. And to the northeast, Poway was on fire, also threatening my wife’s dental office.

Having been born in New York City, I did not initially appreciate the dangers from these fires. With the winds gusting yesterday, the fires in these nearby neighborhoods could have spread to our neighborhood within a hour or two. In New York, a fire was something that hit a tall building and the fear was that you would be trapped and die. Here, the fires spread long distances, mainly destroying houses – but sometimes a lot of them.

The biggest frustration is the small number of firefighters, and the lack of firefighting from the air. According to the news, San Diego sent many firefighters and most of its equipment to San Bernadino and it cannot get them back until they are released. So we get nothing. Certainly seems sensible to me. Hopefully I have not fully appreciated the subtleties of that wonder of wonders – the government of California.
posted by Michael at 10/27/2003 10:11:00 AM

 
The Evil Rich
By Tom Smith

OK, we can confiscate wealth just this once.
posted by thomas at 10/26/2003 10:59:00 PM

 
Fear of Fire
By Tom Smith

It's that time of year in San Diego again, when you watch the flames on the ridge line and wonder if you will still have a house in 24 hours. It doesn't sound fun and it's not. I should not complain. Hundreds of people have lost their homes already and a dozen have died and not in any way you would choose. I am situated between two fires which the knuckle head on the news has predicted will merge by morning. I am betting they won't, but will check every so often through the night to make sure.

The information hotline was amusing. I had my wife call, because I have a tendency to get irritated. She asked if we should evacuate, and the operator said if the sheriff had not come by to tell us to leave we had no worries. But the news said there were not enough personnel to do that, my wife observed. Well, that was true, the operator admitted. Could we see flames? Oh, yes, my wife confirmed. (But about 3 or 4 miles away on a ridgeline). Well, we would just have to use our own discretion. Good to get that learnt.

For some reason, Jeanne is taking this fire quite seriously. I wanted to leave during that last scary fire, some 3 or so years ago. Our neighborhood was 'voluntarily evacuated,' which means leave, unless you are stupid. Jeanne said we should stay, since we could not actually see the flames yet. The sky had that soothing nuclear winter look, neighbors were packing up and leaving, but we stayed. I adjusted the sprinklers on our patio cover and bargained with God. The wind and the fire just stopped about a mile from our house. Being scared with a mile between you and the fire line is considered wimpy by old hands. If the wind had not just stopped when it did, our house had about 6 hours of life left.

Pack up, they say. Just what are you supposed to bring? Photo albums, various documents, OK. But after that? A despair sets in when you realize you cannot really pack for losing your house. Underwear, socks, your PDA and cellphone. Your two big dogs. Dogfood. Your current trashy novel. A family size bottle of Valium would be nice if I had one.

I am being cute now, but if this fire gets much closer, it will cease to be funny in a very big hurry. The ceasing to be funny part is bad. Fear, anxiety, more fear. You get the idea. I never want to find out what it feels like to find you have no house. I hereby take back all the nasty things I've said about my house.

My precocious 12 year old is reading The Art of War. Watching the news, he says to me "If your enemy leaves a door open, rush through." And then, after the news idiot predicts an even more general conflagration, my son helpfully observes "the door is closing, Dad." I hope it is not a long night.
posted by thomas at 10/26/2003 10:43:00 PM

 
One More Bumper Sticker
By Michael Rappaport

I haven't followed all of the posts on bumper stickers, so perhaps my favorite has already been listed. But if so, it is worth repeating. As a environmental law teacher, I am particularly found of:

Save the Planet; Kill Yourself.

Sadly, this one has gained greater resonance with the recent suicide of environmentalist icon, Garret Hardin.


posted by Michael at 10/26/2003 12:52:00 PM

 
The Left Coast
By Michael Rappaport

I have started to visit some of the blogs on the most popular blogs list. Given the name of our blog, I thought it would be interesting to look at "The Left Coaster," which gets 1650 visits per day. One post is more than enough for me. After noting that Paul Wolfowitz was unharmed after a couple of missiles were fired at his hotel, this blogger wrote:

"Hope he had a blast! Bet he doesn't get the message, however."
posted by Michael at 10/26/2003 01:41:00 AM

 
Cambridge Antisemitism
By Michael Rappaport

I just came across this letter from Andrew Sullivan's blog. Here are a few lines:

"At Cambridge University, where I attended law school in England, the Jews exist in a state of perpetual vigilance and, often, fear of personal harm. As an American Jew I was used to wearing a kipa (yarmulke, beanie, skullcap, bowl-o'-soup, whatever) walking around town. . . . But in Cambridge it was like I had a bullseye on my head. Not a week went by that something didn't happen - curses from a group of Middle-Eastern looking "blokes" on the street, laughing references about the "cross you have to bear" from other students, white hot abuse about being a "Zionist Nazi" from a middle-aged white woman boycotting Sainsbury's. Once, memorably, I got hit with a piece of raw potato and turned just in time to hear the sniggers of "shalom!" as the window of a restaurant kitchen banged shut. . . . When I discussed this with my friends in the Jewish Society (JSOC), they were completely nonchalant. I was stunned to hear that every single one had, at one time or another in their youth, been chased, threatened or beaten for being Jewish in the towns where they grew up. In one memorable case, a kid had been stabbed with a butcher knife, when he was 15 years old, by a man on a bus in Manchester."

This is an extremely sad letter, for what it says about England, and its elites.
posted by Michael at 10/26/2003 01:29:00 AM

 
The Most Popular Blogs
By Michael Rappaport

This page lists the most popular blogs from those who use site meter and make their visit statistics public. (Hat tip: AndrewSullivan.com.) Two things that stand out. First, I have not visited most of the popular blogs on this list, and some of them I have never even heard of. Second, one really has to be impressed with Glen Reynolds: 75,000 visits per day -- incredible.

posted by Michael at 10/26/2003 01:15:00 AM

 
Vouchers and Problem Students
By Michael Rappaport

Brian Leiter criticizes David Bernstein for Bernstein’s analysis of how private schools would operate under vouchers. In response to liberal critics such as Mathew Yglesias who claim that there would not be enough private school capacity for the additional children from public schools, Bernstein rightly argues that the demand from vouchers would bring forth an additional supply of private schools.

Leiter admits that this may be true, but argues that private schools would not take “the problem students” and they would end up in the public schools, which would now be worse. After all, that is what private schools do now. Interestingly, Leiter makes the same type of mistake that Yglesias does. Leiter assumes that private schools would behave in the same way under vouchers that they do under current markets.

It is not clear what Leiter means by problem students. Are they 1) smart students with behavior problems or 2) students of average or less intelligence with behavior problems? Assume he means the second category. Although private schools might handle these students in a variety of ways, let me just mention two: Some schools might cater to students with behavior problems, largely restricting their classes to such students. Other schools might admit such students to separate classes and structure these classes to address these students' special needs.

The basic point is that markets respond to demand and markets are pretty good – indeed, much better than governments – at responding to varied demands and changing circumstances. In the end, of course, vouchers would not eliminate all concerns. How could they? Critics on the left (and on certain parts of the right) have always found things to criticize in markets (even when the markets work quite well). My point is that the problems Leiter and Yglesias identify are not the one that I believe would arise.
posted by Michael at 10/25/2003 12:46:00 PM

 
Concert Goer's Diary
By Maimon Schwarzschild


This RightCoaster is actually on the cartographic Right Coast: in New York City, "visiting", as we lucky academics say, at New York Law School for the autumn term. One of the dividends of a semester in New York is the chance to go to lots of concerts. This week alone, I will have heard Andras Schiff play Bach, Beethoven, and Bartok at Carnegie Hall; Lorin Maazel conduct the New York Philharmonic in an all-Beethoven program; and the Guarneri Quartet (Beethoven again) at the Metropolitan Museum.

The New York Philharmonic Friday night was a revelation. (Every good concert is a revelation. Bad concerts can be a revelation too -- or at least an indecent exposure.) For most of my lifetime, the fashion has been for "historically authentic performance", which usually means small orchestras for classical music, and very small ensembles for baroque music. Part of the pitch (as it were) for small orchestras is that the sound is very clean, clear and sharp. But Lorin Maazel appeared onstage at Avery Fisher Hall this week (I still think of it as Philharmonic Hall -- but then I am a conservative) with an orchestra of at least one hundred to play Beethoven's First Piano Concerto and Third Symphony. Amazingly, the sound was still clean, clear and sharp -- almost (well, not quite) like Glenn Gould playing a big nineteenth century orchestra. But the sound was also very deep and rich.

I'm not sure I understand the sociology of classical music in the US today. By all accounts, professional musicians are better than ever; at least better than ever in living memory. They are amazingly good technically. But that needn't, and very often doesn't, mean soulless playing, or music that's merely technically good. Audiences, meanwhile, are often packed, as they were for Andras Schiff and for the Philharmonic this week. And at least in New York, the audiences often seem quite knowledgeable as well as numerous. They certainly know when to applaud and when not to; and they often seem especially keen on the pieces I like, which means they are truly sophisticated -- right?

Yet classical music isn't taught much in school anymore; certainly not in most public schools. ("Ordinary" schools, I mean: conservatories are obviously a very different story.) A student can easily finish college in the US without ever having had a course in classical music, even music appreciation. And classical music is much less of a presence in popular culture than it once was. Listen to the classical music on the sound tracks of quite a lot of movies from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. A 1950s television series like "The Lone Ranger" made Rossini's William Tell Overture (more) famous. (The "Lone Ranger" used Mendelssohn and Liszt, too, as background and "bridge" music.)

A little hard to imagine that kind of music on the soundtrack of, say, "Kill Bill". (Which I haven't seen. And if I do see it, I won't blog about it. Not a word, not a single word, about Jewish movie executives...)

So where do the (excellent) musicians come from? And the audiences? Some are from abroad of course. There has always been a lot of German spoken among New York concert goers; there still is. Nowadays there is a lot of Spanish, Hebrew, and some Korean too. But the audiences are mostly American, and American-born by the look of them: more so, if anything, than they used to be.

Perhaps it's another example of "narrow-casting": an ever-expanding national (and world) population, subdivided into ever finer, but ever more loyal and knowledgeable marketing and taste niches.

But whatever the sociology, it is certainly a fact that Carnegie Hall and Philharmonic Hall are often sold out if you show up at the last minute looking for a ticket. Evidence, anyway, that classical music is alive and reasonably well: and a small rebuttal, at least, to any (conservative) tendency to lament the end of civilisation as we know it.
posted by maimon at 10/24/2003 11:23:00 PM

 
Child Saved from Burning House; Women's Right to Choose Eroded
By Tom Smith

From an AP story yesterday:


. . . Dr. David Grimes, a North Carolina physician who formerly headed the abortion surveillance division of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called [the decision to reconnect Mrs Terri Shiavo to her feeding tube] "a very sad day."

"Here we have a governor of Florida interfering with a family's choice and Congress interfering with a woman's right to choose," Grimes said yesterday. "I thought this administration's role was to get government off people's backs."

Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said people need to realize "it's not just a fight about abortion. It extends far beyond, to family planning and other personal, private decisions."

These people are starting to really creep me out. I understand how non-Catholics could view as unreasonable the stance that a little cluster of cells should be treated as a human life. But with Terri Schiavo, it is members of her family, her parents and brother, who want her kept alive and her husband who wants the plug pulled. The husband may be right, but it is at least worth inquiry as to whether he has his wife's best interests or just his own at heart. The pro-abortion people are acting as if the principle is, if it's alive and we can't kill it, it's a set back for a woman's right to choose.

Similarly with the partial birth abortion debate. Late term abortions of babies who would be viable if put in a neo-natal care unit are morally problematic, at best. The vast majority of physicians won't go anywhere near them. Yet the NARAL etc. view seems to be Congress should not even be allowed to discuss regulating them, for fear legitimate abortions would be impacted. That is nuts. It lends weight to the claim of the right-to-life people make that the logic of abortion will spread outward to include other vulnerable people. Can it really be the pro-abortion people do not recognize there is a public interest in making sure decisions about ending a life are made properly? Do they seriously expect us to treat these decisions as entirely "private"? How can they be called private when the life of a person (or quasi- or semi- person) who by hypothesis is not consenting to being killed, is involved?
posted by thomas at 10/24/2003 12:06:00 PM

 
Statutory Intrepretation
By Tom Smith

I confess I often don't like scholarly presentations by law professors. Many of them strike me as having been done only because everybody likes to feel productive. But today's by Einer Elhauge on statutory interpretation was really very good. His article is at 102 Columbia Law Review 2027. As my cell phone rang in the middle of my asking him a really deep question (it was my wife saying she could not get the oven to work), I must go, but let me just commend it as a really careful and serious grappling with various jurisprudential issues of statutory interpretation, as well as a careful avoidance of others.
posted by thomas at 10/23/2003 06:08:00 PM

 
Stupid Philosophers
By Tom Smith

Philosophers can get away with making arguments that would be laughed out of other disciplines. Causing controversy is the latest missive from Ted Honderich. (thanks to NRO for the pointer.) I read a book of his called if I remember correctly "Violence for Equality" back in the 1970's. I remember thinking at the time it was pretty lame. The argument goes roughly, it's OK to kill people in a good cause, and equality is a good cause.

The review of the new book, After the Terror, in the CHE is pretty stupid, I'm afraid. It just assumes the usual cant about the causes of third world poverty (globalization, blah, blah), and goes from there. The reviewer timidly suggests, maybe there are moral dangers in approving terrorism. You think?

(To digress a bit, I also just don't see what's so bad about a lot of third world poverty. I hung out for a while in the Amazon last summer, and frankly I would much rather be a Peruvian Indian fishing that big river for a living than some Manhattan investment banker drone or Wall Street law firm associate. You fish for a living, you're in great shape, nobody seems to be working very hard. So you have lice and die younger. I'd rather do that than pull 80 hours a week in a glass box.)

Honderich's new book is said to be written in an offhand, chatty style. How odd. That's how his 1970's book was written, too. Other terms might include sloppy, full of unsupported assertions, presumptuous, and so on. Oh, yes, and windy.

How's this for slimy: to try to defuse controversy over his apparent approval of terrorism, Honderich offered to give 5000 pounds to OxFam, which, get this, refused the donation on ethical grounds, saying it held that all humans had a right to life and it was wrong to kill some of them to try to achieve political ends through the terror thereby created, and it wouldn't take money from somebody who supported terrorism. Oh, how very philosophically confused of OxFam, or maybe they're just Kantians (or Christians). Still, good on OxFam! But 5000 pounds is a lot for a philosopher to offer, no? No. Honderich hails, how shocking!--from a very wealthy family. Would it just be too incomprehensible for Ted to leave off advocating killing people for say, one year, and spend that year maybe working with AIDS victims in Africa? I could him in touch with lots of groups that would welcome the help. But I guess advocating roasting people alive (those that couldn't get to the windows in time to put themselves out of their misery) in buildings in New York from your, let me guess, fashionable west end of London address, is a finer thing, in some philosophical sense. And there are better restaurants nearby as well.

My impression from the outside is that there is very much a hierarchy in philosophy, with the smartest people going into quite technical areas such as epistemology and metaphysics, in which there have been some bona fide geniuses in recent decades (such as Saul Kripke, I would say) down to very applied ethics and political theory, where stuff gets said and written that strikes me as downright embarrassing. I would put Honderich in very much the latter category. I have certainly sat in philosophy workshops where not well-known but at least tenured philosophy professors made generalizations about, say, contract law that were so wildly wrong that any half-intelligent business person who had occasionally to read a contract would be chagrined--not to mention any first year law student. Yet at the top of the philosophy profession are people who probably compete with Nobel prize winning physicists for sheer brain power. Go figure.
posted by thomas at 10/23/2003 09:27:00 AM

 
Bumper Sticker Wars
By Tom Smith

Blame the Volokh conspiracy for this post. Where I live, bumper stickers are a major cultural form (one of the few). These favorites bear repeating:

Jesus loves you. Everybody else thinks you're an asshole.

God is my co-pilot. But we crashed in the Andes and I had to eat Him.

Then the environmentalist stickers:

Earth First. We'll log all the other planets later.

Hug a logger. You'll never go back to trees.

Out of toilet paper? Wipe your butt with a spotted owl.

Hard to argue with:

Maybe you'd drive better if I crammed that cellphone up your ass.

Honk again. I'm reloading.

Then there's the evolution wars.

The Christian fish symbol, of course (means I'm an ancient Christian, presumably)

The little fish with feet (means I believe in evolution, though I may not be a particularly advanced life form myself)

Christian fish eating Darwinian fish (My Christianity will swallow up your evolutionary philosophy, hopefully by non-violent means)

Darwinian fish eating Christian fish (My evolutionary philosophy will outcompete your Christianity)

Large Christian fish with little Christian fish following (I am a Christian who has reproduced)

Shark (screw all of you; I'm a predator--normally seen on muscle cars or show-off pickup trucks)

When I finally get my Yukon XL with big tires, I want to get a little chrome silhouette of an oil tanker to put on back.


posted by thomas at 10/23/2003 09:13:00 AM

 
Beam Me Up, Chief O'Brien
By Michael Rappaport

Randy Barnett and Jacob Levy of the Volokh Conspiracy write about the Star Trek shows. Now this is what blogging is all about. Randy recommends watching Enterprise and I may take him up on it, since I stopped watching it in the first season.

Jacob defends Deep Space Nine and I must agree. Although I do think The Next Generation was a great show, there was something special about Deep Space Nine. The war between the Dominion and the Federation, pursued over the last two seasons, was something that the other Star Trek shows were never able to equal.

One aspect of Deep Space Nine merits special attention: the show’s interesting take on religion. The show attempted to reconcile science and religion, suggesting that the prophets (or gods) were people who lived in a dimension which transcended time. They could speak to mortals, inspire them to make religious predictions, and these would turn out to be true because the prophets knew the future – for understandable scientific or at least science fiction reasons.

The character of Major Kira was one of the focal points for this intersection of science and religion. She was a believer who saw her boss as the Emissary to the Prophets – a special religious figure with a connection to her gods – but also as her commander who merely had contacted some advanced aliens who lived in a worm hole.

Given the negative take on religion on many television programs, this aspect of Deep Space Nine was something special. But other aspects of the show were also great, including the Maquis, a Federation splinter group engaged in terrorism because of a Federation sellout, and perhaps my favorite character from all of Star Trek, the tailor / spy with a gift for ironic humor – Garak.
posted by Michael at 10/22/2003 11:37:00 PM

 
Violence in the Grocery Strike
By Tom Smith

Here in San Diego, strikers followed and beat a replacement worker with a baseball bat. Surgeons will have to rebuild the guy's face. I wonder if the UFCW will pay his medical expenses.

Maybe I should wear my football helmet on my next shoping trip.
posted by thomas at 10/22/2003 04:57:00 PM

 
The Imminent Threat Debate
By Michael Rappaport

I previously wrote one post on the media’s assertions that the Bush Administration claimed that Iraq posed an imminent threat and another post stating that Daniel Drezner was hosting a debate on whether or not the media assertions were accurate. The results of that debate are now in: Jonathan Schwarz, who argued for the media, won. How can that be?

First, I disagree with some of Drezner’s analysis. To take the most important example, Drezner points to Administration statements that the traditional meaning of “imminent threat” should not be applied to terrorists and therefore one needs a new interpretation of the term. Drezner mistakenly suggests that this supports the media. When the media says that the Bush Administration claimed there was an imminent threat, they do so without explanation and therefore are properly and normally understood to be using the traditional and conventional meaning of the term. But if the Bush Administration claimed that the threat was imminent, it was with a new and different meaning of the term.

Second, the debate selected a problematic question to debate: The question was whether the media had “completely fabricated” the imminent threat claim. But this is not the morally or politically relevant question. The correct question is whether it was accurate for the media to assert the Administration made the imminent threat claim. And there is no doubt about the answer to that question. Indeed, Drezner admits as much in an aside: “So, [I’m] saying that Schwarz wins, but that in winning he doesn't vindicate the bulk of the anti-war criticisms.” Conducting a debate with a morally irrelevant question is misleading. Although I certainly learned a lot from the debate, the structure of the debate actually reinforced the media misinformation.
posted by Michael at 10/22/2003 01:22:00 PM

 
The Boykin Controversy
By Tom Smith

As Hugh Hewitt points out, it sure would be nice to know what Boykin said before we decide on his punishment. In Saudi Arabia, I suppose he might have his tongue cut out, but here, resignation in disgrace might be enough. According to this dim-witted, even for John Carroll, piece, Boykin said he was fighting for the real God, while that of his enemies was only an idol. This smacks, according to Carroll, of "exclusivism." What is "exclusivism"? You know, that sort of thing where you get put in prison for practicing a religion that the medieval theocracy doesn't approve of. I'm not a theologian, but when someone drives an airplane into a crowded building and says God told him to do it, it's not disrespecting Islam to say they got their orders wrong, or were listening to the wrong guy. Hear voices telling you to slaughter infidels? Work on plague viruses to spread among people whose women don't wear parachutes? Which says lots of nasty things about Jews? Important hint for you: It's not God. Check your area code and number and try again. As for Boytin: he should be ordered not to wear his uniform while he is talking in church, saying things like, no true God would tell people to use weapons of mass destruction on innocents. He should only wear his uniform when he is doing things like dropping 2000 pound bombs on them. Blowing people into little fragments is one thing. Hurting their feelings is another.
posted by thomas at 10/22/2003 10:44:00 AM

 
He Vas Only Using Ze Jews as a Scapegoat!
By Tom Smith

I'm so relieved. I had thought President Mohammed Mahathir of Malaysia was just engaged in hateful anti-Semitism when he made his recent speech about Jews ruling the world and so forth. Paul Krugman explains he was only scapegoating Jews for domestic political reasons. This was "inexcusable," Krugman says, which makes it somewhat puzzling that he takes the rest of his column trying to explain it. I also feel better about Hitler, now that I understand he was just using his hatred of the Jews for political reasons. I thought he hated Jews for, I don't know, religious reasons. Perhaps Krugman could give some P.R. coaching to Hamas. "We don't hate the Jews because they are Jews. We want to exterminate them because we want to take their land. I hope that distinction is clear." Paul Krugman is proof of the well-known phenomenon. Person achieves well-deserved academic renown. Person decides he is a genius. Person loses ability to be self-critical. Person says stupid things. Person does harm. Krugman should shut up about Jews and go back to making mathematical models.
posted by thomas at 10/22/2003 10:16:00 AM

 
North Korea's Gulag Archipelago
By Tom Smith

An important new report is out detailing North Korea's massive system of slave labor camps. Opinionjournal has a good summary.
posted by thomas at 10/22/2003 09:53:00 AM

 
Sullivan -- Church's Sexual Advisor
By Tom Smith

This is an interesting reaction to Sullivan's apparent departure from the Church. Camassia makes a point I was hestitant to make myself, about Sullivan's libertinism. If you read enough of his posts, you're bound (no pun intended) to come across some celebration of the gay bar scene in Provincetown. It's a free country, and all that, but if you're going to celebrate the scene that is located sexually and morally in about the same place as it is geographically (on the very far edge of the country, for you geographically challenged folks), I think you're just not in much of a position to be advising the Church on its sexual morality. It comes off like Bill Bennett lecturing us on virtue, so he can raise the cash to settle up with Fat Eddy. Sullivan's personal life is relevant only because he is making such a big deal about his leaving the Church, rather than just criticizing the Church's view on gay relationships per se. Even if the Church did approve of gay marriage, there be no more fun with bears and otters for good gay Catholic boys.
posted by thomas at 10/21/2003 01:50:00 PM

 
Thank God for Clintoncare
By Michael Rappaport

Marginal Revolution has a list of some of the waiting times for medical procedures in Canada. For example, "median waiting time for radiation treatment for breast cancer in province of Ontario: 8 weeks." It has been about 10 years since the Clintoncare proposals, and I never fail to be amazed at how we dodged a bullet that time. Perhaps it was the conservatism of the American people or perhaps it was due to the political incompetence of the co-president political savants, but whatever the cause, I am grateful. What is more, the political fallout from the failure of Clintoncare helped to produce Republican congressional majorities. If someone at the time had told me that the Clintoncare proposal would be a good thing for the country in the long run, I would have thought them crazy. But it seems to have been true.

UPDATE: One might argue that the Republican majority may enact a seriously flawed prescription drug plan this year and therefore there is not that much to be grateful for. If that happens, it will certainly be a serious setback. Yet a Democratic majority would enact a worse prescription drug plan and would also be attempting to lower the Medicare eligibility age to 55, as Clinton attempted to do at the end of his presidency. That would be much worse.
posted by Michael at 10/21/2003 11:51:00 AM

 
Want to Be Scared?
By Tom Smith

This detailed article from opinionjournal.com about our friends the axis of evil and their efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

Here's a good place to buy your survival gear.

But see this good news from Iran.

On the other hand, there's this from the Philippines.
posted by thomas at 10/21/2003 08:54:00 AM

 
When Labor and Management Get Along
By Gail Heriot

I confess that I do not understand the current grocery strike in Southern California. It has been a week now with no agreement in sight. The non-unionized Wal-Mart, whose consumer-friendly low prices have made it the most popular grocery retailer in the world, is sure to be the major beneficiary. Southern California appears to be witnessing a suicide.

But I will resist asking Rodney King's question. The last time labor and management in the traditional grocery industry "got along" with each other, it was to persuade California's daffy legislature to squelch their competition. The statute that got passed would have made it illegal to sell groceries in a building the size of a Wal-Mart or CostCo. It was one more occasion for the California legislature to demonstrate what a carnival of special interests it had become.

Fortunately, this was back in the year 2000, when now-recalled Governor Gray Davis was still in his responsible moderate phase. He vetoed the legislation. In his scathing veto-message, he called it "anti-competitive and anti-consumer" and "the worst kind of end-of-session manuevering by special interests." Had Gray Davis continued to stand up to the California legislature the way he did that day, he might not have been recalled.
posted by Gail at 10/20/2003 03:21:00 PM

 
A Way to Kill Kill Bill?
By Tom Smith


The Easterbrook Donnybrook, as Mickey Kaus calls it, will probably wind down soon. It may be worth recalling what got it started--Greg Easterbrook's outrage at the level of violence in the new Quentin Tarantino movie Kill Bill.

Easterbrook was presumably trying to put pressure on Michael Eisner and the other folks at Disney to reconsider the distribution of such ultra-violent fare. I haven't seen the movie myself. I'm not sure whether I will or not. I generally don't mind violence in movies, if it's appropriate, as in Saving Private Ryan or Schindler's List. Making violence seem fun, though, contributes to the cultural degradation that Hollywood seems, for reasons I don't fully understand, to want to actively promote, at least if it is profitable to do so, and sometimes even if it isn't.

What is to be done? One technique that I am not aware being used before, or at least not much, against violence in movies is the filing of shareholder proxy resolutions that would be put before the shareholders of Disney and other studios. If may have been done before, I'm not sure, but it certainly could work as a way to get the attention of top management in the entertainment industry. All it takes is a shareholder who holds a fairly minimal dollar value of shares in the target company, and a resolution crafted to avoid various objections the directors can put up to stop it. Typically, a resolution is drafted requesting the Board of Directors appoint a special committee to study some topic of concern. In this case, a resolution requesting study of the potential impact of a movie with the level of violence in Kill Bill might be appropriate.

These resolutions never pass, but that does not mean management does not really hate them. If the resolution qualifies for inclusion in the corporation's proxy statement, it means the target company, Disney in this case, has to send out, at corporate expense, the resolution plus a brief supporting statement, to every shareholder of the company, all over the world. For a company that spends millions nourishing its corporate image, this is most unwelcome to say the least. Moreover, it means every institutional shareholder, which maps pretty well on to the power structure of the US, has to consider how to vote its shares on this resolution. So the trustees of CalPers, Harvard, the Ford Foundation, etc, etc. etc. down to the American Kennel Association, will have to consider, how do they want to vote on the Kill Bill resolution? That means they have to think, for at least a moment, Just how bad is this movie? You can start to appreciate why companies hate these things so much.

Filing these resolutions is pretty easy. A group I belonged to as an undergraduate filed some resolutions against various big corporations regarding investment in South Africa (yes, I was an undergraduate leftist. You grow.) and we did all the work ourselves. For some reason, social conservatives and others on the right have rarely used this technique. It has long been a favorite of left-wing activists. Unlike perhaps some in the corporate law area, I see nothing wrong with shareholders getting the board of a company to ask themselves whether they really want to be, for example, selling particularly harmful violence (if that's what it is). The technique is susceptible to abuse, but I don't think complaining about a super-violent movie would be an abuse. It's better than showing up with swords and chopping their heads off.

posted by thomas at 10/20/2003 02:17:00 PM

 
Women and the Military
By Michael Rappaport

According to the Washington Times, "Young women who are drafted into the Israeli military will be barred from most combat duties because of a medical study that has determined they are, after all, the weaker sex." The study found that women can only carry 40 percent of their weight (as compared to 55 percent for men). When combined with the fact that the military age women weigh 33 pounds less than the men, this results in women being able to carry 44 pounds less than men. The study also found that the "oxygen-carrying hemoglobin in women's blood was more than 10 percent lower than in men's blood, limiting their ability to undertake extended physical efforts." It is interesting that these results come from Israel, one of the modern pioneers of employing women in the military.
posted by Michael at 10/20/2003 08:51:00 AM

 
Ecumenical Humor
By Maimon Schwarzschild

Catholic humor? It's the oldest Jewish joke in creation (well, in America anyway). A Jewish businessman makes a lot of money -- in the garment industry, presumably -- and decides to buy himself a Jaguar. (This joke long, long antedates the Lexus.) He goes to his Orthodox rabbi, an eastern European immigrant of course, and asks him to "make a beracha" (a Hebrew blessing) on his Jaguar. "Vot's a Jeguar?" asks the little rabbi.

So the businessman goes to a Conservative rabbi, American-born but still out-of-touch. "Would you make a beracha on my Jaguar? "What's a Jaguar?", asks the rabbi.

So our hero goes to a Reform rabbi.

Well, you know what the Reform rabbi asks...

(Greeks and Turks drink the same coffee and eat the same honey pastry. Palestinians and Israelis eat the same felafel and humous. Why shouldn't Catholics and Jews have the same jokes?)
posted by maimon at 10/19/2003 08:06:00 PM

 
Easterbrook's Dismissal
By Michael Rappaport

Greg Easterbrook has been fired from his job on ESPN, apparently because of his post on Jewish movie executives. Like other bloggers, I feel bad for Easterbrook. Given his apology, it seems excessive and therefore unfair to have fired him for the post.

Judging ESPN, however, is a bit more complicated. They recently fired (or at least were happy to let Rush Limbaugh go) for his remarks about the media's attitudes toward black quarterbacks – remarks which did not appear racist, whether or not they were accurate. Thus, they have to worry about treating different controversial remarks differently. They also have a business to run and it is at least plausible for them to avoid the problems that such “scandals” create.

That said, I am happy to endorse the idea of sending e mails to ESPN asking them to reinstate Easterbrook, and I hope he gets his job back.

posted by Michael at 10/19/2003 04:52:00 PM

 
It's Anti-Cathlic Sunday at the New York Times!
By Tom Smith

The Gray Lady is in rare form this Sunday. In the national edition anyway (available at my local Starbuck's) there are four above the fold stories. From left to right, we learn that Bush's popularity is falling with older voters (according to a NY Times / CBS poll); Bush thinks Iraq is like the Phillipines; The wise heads at the State Department forsaw current troubles in Iraq, but were ignored, and the creation of new jobs is being stalled by overcapacity. In my edition, there is a full-color picture of President Bush looking dorky in one of those Philippino light cotton shirts (with his T-shirt showing through -- at least it's not a tank-top), next to a demure looking President Arroyo. Below the fold we learn that life sucks in Zimbabwe, as it does for the poor of New York, and in the bottom right hand corner, that the beatification of Mother Theresa is really just an excuse to sell religious kitch of the sort we simple-minded but pious Catholics are so fond.

With such an appetizing menu, it's hard to know what to choose first. More out of duty than curiosity, I turn to page 10 to read the rest of the Bush in the Philippines story, and am greeted by a picture of Philippinos burning American flags in protest over Bush's visit. Of course, whether this is typical of his reception, we have no way of learning in this newspaper. We are reminded, however, that the Philippines was yet another victim of American imperialism, which dumb old Bush apparently did not appreciate to the Time's satisfaction. Of all the Americans who died rescuing that nation from the Japanese, we hear little.

Flipping back to page 8, I look at the Mother Theresa story. This a hard one for the Times. A life of heroic virtue and sacrifice, helping the poorest of the poor. But we musn't like Mother Theresa, no, no, no. She was also an arch-conservative, against abortion, and not really very keen on sex of any sort. So what to do? Cover all the commerce around the event, that's an angle! So we get some nice photos of Mother Theresa statues for sale. I guess helping all those dying Indians was just an elaborate marketing device for rosaries.

But this is just one of several Catholic-themed stories this Sunday. The next I noticed was a profoundly clueness reflection in the Week in Review section about the pope growing old in public. How remarkable it is, muses Frank Bruni, that the pope appears in public even though he is so old. I mean, he actually looks old. He looks sick! He drools sometimes! He nods! But, he's a celebrity! Why is he letting us see him in this very un-photogenic state? Oh, I know, we are informed, it is to put before us all those issues that come from technologies that extend life! Look, the pope is saying, look at my quality of life issues! In fact, clever readers may infer this is probably not what this religious leader is doing. Try this, Frank. He is showing people that he is dying, that thing we do before we are dead. That thing we are all going to do, even the fetching model on page 11 in the Allen Schwarts champagne satin gown. And before we do, if we are lucky, we drool, nod, have trouble standing up and all the rest. It's called being old and sick, and it's part of being human. Then we die, and the religious part kicks in. Momento mori. Don't these people read books?

Finally, we are treated to an update on Andrew Sullivan's conscience as a gay man in the Catholic Church. I wonder what the odds would be of getting one's struggles of conscience published on the op-ed page of the times if the chase was, "you know, I should go back to the Church," or "I guess conventional morality was right about X after all." Remote, I should think. We find out Mr. Sullivan was unable to bring himself to go to Mass this Sunday because a gay couple he knows was kicked out of their parish choir for getting civilly unionized in Canada. (I should disclose that I was unable to bring myself to go to Mass this morning because of a combination of 2 Stone Pale Ales, half a bottle of some decent cabernet, being awakened at 2 am by our 2 day old, then again at 8 am by my wife who said 'I need to leave for William's first communion meeting in 12 minutes. I need 2 fried eggs and a copy of his Baptisimal Certificate.' In a clear act of divine grace, I was able to find the certificate in the garage file cabinet.) I guess the gist is that Mr. Sullivan is threatening to quit the Church if it doesn't shape up on gay issues. But he's not quite fed up yet, I guess. Maybe the Church can have one last chance. Me, I think the corruption at Vatican I than Acton complained about is embarassing, the whole Spanish Inquistion thing was bad, persecuting Protestants generally no better, priests taking part in recent genocides in Africa even worse, pedophile priests awful, etc., etc. Being a Catholic is like being an American. There is a lot you have to put up with. But the best of it is pretty good, and we have good enemies.
posted by thomas at 10/19/2003 04:46:00 PM

 
The Real Materialist Origins of Marxism
By Chris Wonnell

Yes, we're having another strike in California, this one involving the grocery workers. The various unions have been trying to show solidarity for each other, and the politicians have been stepping all over each other trying to show the maximum possible solidarity with the workers.

And here we see it: the origins of the ideology that ruined the twentieth century for much of the world's population, and that even in the United States and other fortunate places made the century much less wonderful than it could have been.

Karl Marx said that the increasing misery of the proletariat would create the materialist conditions for a social revolution. Since real wages in the United States have increased approximately tenfold in the last century, it would be a mild understatement to say that this prediction was off the mark. The embarrassing claim of labor leaders that unions are responsible for this wage increase is directly contradicted by the evidence showing the almost perfect correlation between the long run trend in wages and the trend in labor productivity, a correlation that has stayed intact through periods of weak and strong unions, and through Republican and Democratic administrations. Simply put, capitalism means decreasing misery of the proletariat.

So what the heck is happening at the grocery stores? It is reported that the workers there are making $18 an hour, which is not a terrible salary given the skills required for the jobs. But that is beside the point. Labor union action is often undertaken by the most privileged of workers, by airline pilots or movie scriptwriters or baseball players. Labor unions lash out at capital not because of their misery but because there is potential short term gain from confiscating some of the fixed capital in order to earn monopoly returns for themselves.

But here is the problem. The workers on the picket lines do not see it that way. These strikes are defining events in the political lives of the workers. Political consciousness comes from moments like these, where workers are running a big risk in the hope of a big gain, and feel the need for friends and allies. The slow progress of incremental growth, by contrast, is not dramatic. It is not accompanied by struggle and fear and hope for sizeable immediate improvements. No politician seems responsible for it, and after the growth has occurred people are not even certain that it ever occurred.

Workers are struggling against capital during the strike. Isn't it a natural extension to say that all workers are struggling against all capital, and that the goal of politics should be to elect representatives sympathetic to labor and not to capital? The material condition for class consciousness is not economic deprivation; it is the possibility of gain through strikes. It won't matter a bit if the next hundred years see real wages increase another tenfold, and workers are all living in mansions. Let those workers experience the possibility of further gains through strikes, and the ideology of class warfare will continue to thrive.

It is not a particularly happy story, because we know how false the global story of Marxism is and how much genuine misery it can cause. The fact that intellectuals are only too happy to further their own power vis-a-vis the business class by creating spurious defenses of class warfare such as Marxism only makes matters worse. But the lesson should be the need to create institutions that will make the experience of potential gain through strikes less prominent. In particular, we need to have free trade and deregulation to reduce the number of merchants earning monopoly rents that provide a natural target for strike activity.




posted by Chris at 10/19/2003 03:33:00 PM

 
How Popes are Elected
By Tom Smith

Here is a good description of how papal elections work. (Thanks to relapsed catholic for the pointer.) This is the leading description of vatican institutions. (Bear in mind it's by a Jesuit, as in "Mrs. O'Mally went to a Franciscan and asked, 'Father, may I say a novena for a Lexus?' The Franciscan replied 'What's a Lexus?' So Mrs. O'Malley went to a Jesuit and asked, 'Father, may I say a novena for a Lexus?' The Jesuit replied, 'What's a novena?'" Catholic humor.)

And speaking of Anglicans, this is interesting too. (relapsed catholic again.)
posted by thomas at 10/18/2003 08:59:00 PM

 
A Kinder Look At The Archbishop
By Maimon Schwarzschild

A reader sends a link to the Archbishop of Canterbury's speech last week, which I blogged on October 15. The Archbishop, Rowan Williams, was reported in the British press to have said that terrorists can have "serious moral goals", which he did. ("What about the Irgun?", as he put it.) But Williams was also reported to have denounced Anglo-American military action against Saddam Hussein, which he did not do in this speech at all.

Williams' topic, in fact, was "just war" theory. The speech was a serious-minded rebuttal to the American theologian George Weigel, not a political polemic -- although the implications of Williams' speech were surely sceptical about the justice of using force in Iraq.

Williams has in the past taken a clear, even strident line against Anglo-American and coalition action in Iraq. His speech this week puts unrealistic faith, I think, in international law. His idea of an international "council of experts" to decide when and whether force is justified is, to put it gently, unserious.

Still, Williams probably took an unfair beating for this particular speech, including from me. Is it any comfort that the continuing and grave crisis in his church gives him other things to worry about...?


posted by maimon at 10/18/2003 05:23:00 PM

 
Easterbrook's Apology
By Michael Rappaport

The Right Coast is already having influence. On Wednesday, we criticized a Greg Easterbrook post as being nearly antisemitic and asked for an apology. On Thursday, he provided one. Of course, we did have a little help from a few bloggers who might have one or two more readers than we do.

While some bloggers are not satisfied with his apology, I am. His apology was a long one that admitted wrongdoing. It is true that he did attempt to explain why his actions were less problematic than one might have thought at first and did place the blame on the speed at which blogging takes place, but he did not pull a Clinton: He actually said he was wrong and said he was sorry. That is more than adequate.

Some are troubled by the fact that his writing of the offensive words, even under time pressure, suggests that he thought this way, at least some of the time. Yet, I do not think that is an entirely fair or realistic criticism. We are all imperfect and have our impure thoughts. What is important is not acting on them and making amends when we do.
posted by Michael at 10/18/2003 02:46:00 PM

 
Moderate Islam and Development
By Michael Rappaport

An interesting post from Daniel Drezner on the State of Islam 2003. Here is a taste of it. Speaking of Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad's speech to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Drezner writes:

The scary and pathetic thing is, Hamid Albar is correct -- relative to a lot of Muslims, Mahathir's position is moderate. He's not advocating the use of violence to exterminate the state of Israel. He's advocating the use of brainpower -- to exterminate the state of Israel.

Drezner also sees the key point: The question is whether the Islamic world could actually develop a scientifically and technologically sophisticated civilization without changing their ultimate goals. Russia and China suggest that some technological improvement can be had with limited liberalization. Happily, at this point, genuine technological development appears to require a more complete liberalization. The free societies are now the most powerful. Lets hope it stays that way.
posted by Michael at 10/18/2003 10:38:00 AM

 
Safire on UN Victory
By Tom Smith

Last night on the Lehrer News Hour, William Safire of the New York Times finally provided some insight on the sources of Bush's recent victory at the UN. According to Safire, Bush and Putin made a deal at their recent meeting at Camp David. At the time, the New York Times played it as yet another defeat for Bush, where the Russians refused to stop helping Iran with their nuclear program. Here's part of what Safire said:

Something happened and what happened was the Russians. And where did the Russians suddenly become our supporters? Go back two weeks to Camp David, and that meeting between Bush and Putin and what came out of that meeting was a terrible statement by Bush saying that freedom and democracy and the rule of law was the vision of Putin. I said -- Putin, you know, the KGB cadre running that place is running down human rights and all.

Well, evidently, a deal was struck that I'll put a good face on our relationship, but we expect real help in the U.N. And, sure enough when push came to shove, the Russians went to the French and Germans and said we'll broker the deal.

When you look at the deal, you see what the French wanted. The French wanted a provisional government taking power . . . away from the Americans, and the Americans said no. So what was worked out was some nice language saying that the sovereignty will be embodied in this governing council -- I noticed that an 'and' was changed to an 'or' -- which lawyers think is very important -- but what happened was unanimity on the Security Council.

When the Russians turned, the Chinese turned and the French and Germans realized we can't be out here by ourselves and that left Syria, which didn't want to vote for that but they just had a black eye and they didn't want to be all alone in the U.N., the Security Council, and so they went. And so what we got: a fifteen to nothing vote for continued American political control in Iraq

I still wonder what all Bush offered Putin to get him to support us in the UN. Simply a statement putting a happy face on Putin's regime in Russia does not seem like enough to secure Putin's support.
posted by thomas at 10/18/2003 08:54:00 AM

 
Smells Like Victory
By Tom Smith

Who says we don't have culture in San Diego?
posted by thomas at 10/17/2003 11:22:00 AM

 
Taming the Poodle
By Tom Smith

Why did the U.S. get what it wanted at the UN? As usual, American press coverage of the event is equal parts spin and misdirection, aimed more at convincing readers this was not a real victory for the U.S. than explaining the behind-the-scenes politics. To me it looks like the Colin Powell made it clear that if the Security Council did not pass the resolution, then that would be the end for meaningful U.S. participation in the "process," which would effectively mean the end of the U.N., at least in Iraq. Why else? We made no meaningful concessions. And it is not as if European politics have shifted recently, as far as I can tell. As the WSJ explained in their editorial today (subscription required), France and Russia flat out capitulated to U.S. demands. Why? The language of the editorial hints they know something they're not telling. Something quiet and deadly serious happened in the background here and as usual the media is missing the story in their haste to recast events as something they're not.
posted by thomas at 10/17/2003 11:17:00 AM

 
Social Conservatives, Gay Marriage, and Civil Unions
By Michael Rappaport

Two points on David Frum’s interesting, but curious Wall Street Journal op ed making the social conservative case against gay marriage. First, while Frum presents his argument as one against gay marriage, he mainly addresses civil unions. Frum asserts that civil unions would be offered to both homosexual and heterosexual couples. He then predicts that providing civil unions to heterosexual couples would lead many people to have children in civil unions, which would be harmful to the children and further undermine marriage. While Frum has therefore explained why he is against civil unions, he has not told us why one should be against full-fledged gay marriages. All he says is that gay marriages will not be enacted in the United States. Even if this is true now, it says little about what may happen in the (near) future, since political opinions on this subject have been changing. Moreover, Frum’s argument against civil unions are ambiguous as to gay marriage. If one had previously thought that civil unions were attractive but was convinced by Frum that they are not, one might then conclude either that there should be no same sex unions of any kind or that the case for full gay marriage was even stronger.

Second, Frum makes some strong arguments (from the social conservative point of view at least) against providing civil unions to both gay and straight couples, but it seems to me that he is too quick to dismiss the possibility that civil unions could be provided only to same sex couples. Both politically and constitutionally, one might argue that civil unions should be limited to same sex couples because they are a substitute for marriage and because civil unions for heterosexual couples would endanger traditional marriage. Perhaps this argument would lose politically, but it hardly seems clear.

In the end, Frum’s essay mixes both moral arguments (based on consequences) and political feasibility arguments. Many social conservative arguments against gay marriage rely on this same strategy, but what is politically feasible can change over time. If social conservatives are to participate in this debate, they need to articulate why they think gay marriage is a bad thing rather than merely explaining why it will not happen in the face of trends that appear to suggest just the opposite.
posted by Michael at 10/17/2003 07:07:00 AM

 
More on Imminent Threats
By Michael Rappaport

Previously, I posted on the claim made by many in the media that the Bush Administration asserted the threat from Iraq was imminent. This question is extensively debated on Daniel Drezner’s blog. Although the debate is not complete, it has only strengthened my view that the Bush Administration did not make the imminence claim. Interestingly, Jonathan Schwarz, who is defending the media, has a significantly lowered bar: He claims that all he has to show is that the media did not make up the imminence claim "out of whole cloth," which is different than saying that the Administration actually asserted that the danger was imminent. Still, he must make some pretty big stretches. Most importantly, he must explain away that the Bush Administration’s most publicized and authoritative statement – Bush’s State of the Union speech – very clearly denied that an imminent threat was required. But judge for yourself.
posted by Michael at 10/16/2003 03:35:00 PM

 
I knew there was hope for me
By Tom Smith

And all this time I thought I was just lazy.
posted by thomas at 10/16/2003 10:28:00 AM

 
Another Setback in Iraq
By Tom Smith

They better get busy at the New York Times figuring out how to cast this as another setback for the U.S.
posted by thomas at 10/16/2003 06:28:00 AM

 
The Ba'athist Party At Prayer?
By Maimon Schwarzschild

The Archbishop of Canterbury's church -- the world Anglican communion -- may be breaking apart. But the Archbishop, Rowan Williams, took time out this week to deliver a grotesque statement urging America to recognise that terrorists can "have serious moral goals". Williams was morally uncompromising about one thing though: his speech otherwise was a straight denunciation of the Anglo-American coalition that liberated Iraq. No shilly-shallying on that score, at least.

The crisis Rowan Williams is facing is not about Iraq. It is over the appointment of an actively gay bishop in New Hampshire. Most Anglican bishops in the US and in England endorse the appointment; Anglican leaders in Asia and especially in Africa vehemently oppose it.

A majority of the world's Anglicans are now Asian and African, and the conservative and evangelically-minded African church is growing especially fast.

African bishops, and some conservative dioceses in the US, are threatening to pull out of the Anglican communion unless Williams finds a way to stop the consecration of the gay bishop and the ordination of actively gay priests. A few days ago, as many as 20 leading bishops from around the world were threatening schism, though yesterday the number is said to have gone down to "only" sixteen or seventeen. The Vatican, meantime, is quietly offering attractive terms to disaffected Anglican bishops, priests, and parishes if they cross over to the Roman Catholic Church.

Williams' personal sympathies are with the church left, but he will probably try to assuage the Africans and conservatives somehow. One theory is that the "terrorism" statement is a bone being thrown to the left before Williams sides with the conservatives about gays. On the other hand Williams is plainly sincere, as far as that goes, in his denunciations of the United States (and of Tony Blair).

What are the terrorists' "moral goals"? A growing feeling in the English Church is that the annihilation of Israel would be one such goal. The English weekly, The Spectator -- which has no reputation for being judeophile -- ran a lengthy piece last February documenting the growth of overt and aggressive anti-semitism in the English Church. In fairness to Rowan Williams, the piece described him as recognising this development, and being very unhappy about it.

I always had a soft spot for the Church of England. My feelings may partly be a relic of the days -- long gone -- when the Church of England was said to be "the Tory Party at prayer". But the Anglican Church is the keeper of the King James Bible and Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer: they are soaringly, ravishingly beautiful. True, most Anglican churches don't use them much any more; but some do, at least sometimes.

Then too, the Church keeps the English choral tradition alive. Very few people go to church in England, especially to the Church of England, but the choristers and the church music schools are subsidised by the taxpayer -- that is what "establishment" means. Quite seriously: if you ever visit England, be sure to hear evensong in a Cathedral or Abbey, or in an Oxford or Cambridge college. You won't regret it.

But perhaps the thing that always charmed me most was the Anglican tradition of not being too serious about things. For centuries, the Church of England was a home for cheery, good-humoured churchmen and churchwomen, who above all deprecated "enthusiasm" and fanaticism of any kind.

The Anglicans are still a pretty safe bet not to burn anyone at the stake on a point of Christian theology. But if religious "enthusiasm" is out, political "enthusiasm" seems to have come in, and in a big way. Those "serious moral goals" of terrorism. And the grim, politicised anti-semitism which the Spectator reports. It's sad, but this is no longer a Church that it is easy to root for.


posted by maimon at 10/15/2003 10:17:00 PM

 
The Grocery Store Strike
By Tom Smith

In the unfashionable part of San Diego country in which I live, the grocery store clerk's strike is a big deal. Some 7000 or so clerks are striking throughout southern California. The union decided to strike Von's, then Albertson's and Ralph's locked out union workers pursuant to a previous agreement. The main issue seems to be a surcharge the stores want to impose on workers to help cover health care costs. The charge proposed is small, something like $5 per week (I heard), but the union sees this as the thin edge of the wedge.

What is really driving the stores is the plan by Walmart to open a series of stores in Southern California selling both groceries and other goods. Walmart is a ferocious competitor. It pays something like $10 per hour to its workers, versus $15 to $17 for unionized stores. Walmart also offers little to nothing in the way of health benefits. How this will square with the new legislation Davis just signed required employers to offer health care, I don't know. Perhaps as part time employees, most won't be covered. The unionized stores are trying to position themselves for the arrival of the big retail gorilla in town. Walmart sells an astonishing 7 percent of all goods sold retail in the U.S. I read in the WSJ years ago that every cash register in every Walmart can be monitored centrally in the head office in Arkansas, and management can pick up very quickly on anomalies that suggest employee theft (a very big problem at these establishments) or other problems, such as the thermostat being set too high or low for maximizing sales. Walmart is scary efficient.

My wife is not crossing the picket lines because she knows all the checkers and wants to be friends afterwards. I'm more the sort just to cross the lines, but at a store I don't usually go to. It's important to be principled about these things. The stores are a mess inside now. Produce rotting. Shelves getting empty. The replacement workers are pretty clueless. There seems to be quite a lot of sympathy around here with the strikers. La Jolla is probably a different story. We're not planning any fish dinners.

I feel sorry for the workers at the unionized stores, but it seems to me they're on the wrong side of history. There seems to be a cheaper more efficient way to get food to people, and charging a tax on everybody who eats hardly seems like the best way to finance the health care of grocery store workers. To the extent the health care charges are structured to provide incentives to use health care rationally, I would even be in favor of them. In any event, it doesn't look like it will settle soon.
posted by thomas at 10/15/2003 09:19:00 PM

 
A Disturbing Post by Greg Easterbrook
By Michael Rappaport

This is very disturbing. Greg Easterbrook who is normally a pretty sensible guy has written something that comes pretty close to being antisemitic. Easterbrook spends the first 8 paragraphs of a post on his New Republic blog site criticizing the new Quentin Tarantino movie, “Kill Bill,” which is distributed by Miramax, a Disney company. He claims that the movie glorifies the killing of innocents. I haven’t seen it, but lets assume it does.

Then Easterbrook concludes the post with this precious paragraph:

Set aside what it says about Hollywood that today even Disney thinks what the public needs is ever-more-graphic depictions of killing the innocent as cool amusement. Disney's CEO, Michael Eisner, is Jewish; the chief of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein, is Jewish. Yes, there are plenty of Christian and other Hollywood executives who worship money above all else, promoting for profit the adulation of violence. Does that make it right for Jewish executives to worship money above all else, by promoting for profit the adulation of violence? Recent European history alone ought to cause Jewish executives to experience second thoughts about glorifying the killing of the helpless as a fun lifestyle choice. But history is hardly the only concern. Films made in Hollywood are now shown all over the world, to audiences that may not understand the dialogue or even look at the subtitles, but can't possibly miss the message--now Disney's message--that hearing the screams of the innocent is a really fun way to express yourself.

(Emphasis added.) What is going on here? Why is it relevant that the leaders of the Disney and Miramax are Jewish? Perhaps Easterbrook means to say that Jews have a special reason not glorify the killing of innocents. And so they do. But that is not all that Easterbrook is saying here. After all, he could have written: “Eisner and Weinstein are both Jewish and should know from history the dangers of glorifying the killing of innocents.” Instead, he turns his point into a moral condemnation of “Jewish executives.” Sorry, this is bad form. At best, Easterbrook was careless about his writing – one only hopes that this accident was not a Freudian slip. At worst, Easterbrook made antisemitic statements, which are not cured by mentioning that there are “plenty of Christian and other Hollywood executives” who do much the same thing. In either event, Easterbrook should explain himself and apologize.
posted by Michael at 10/15/2003 08:28:00 AM

 
Holding My Nose
By Michael Rappaport

I hate the New York Times. There, I said it. Not news to anyone who knows me, but it is great to get it off your chest. Sort of like Jonathan Chait. He's a Bush Hater, I'm a Times Hater.

I do read the Times, however. I make sure to read the news pages, because -- well a lot of people think it is the newspaper of record. But I draw the line on columnists. While so far I enjoy David Brooks, I cannot really stomach any of the others, including William Safire and especially Tom Friedman (but thats a subject for a different post).

About once a week , I try to read a bit of one of the columnists, because -- well I am not sure why, but I do. Today I started with Nicholas Kristof, but he quickly convinced me to stop. He started his column, called Holding Our Noses, with this nugget:

I haven't written about Iraq lately because, frankly, it felt like shooting fish in a barrel.

It was sporting to write columns opposing the war back in January, when the White House was conjuring enough Iraqi anthrax "to kill several million people," as well as hordes of cheering Iraqis casting flowers on our soldiers. These days, with that anthrax as elusive as Saddam himself, with the people we've liberated busy killing us, with the bill for Iraq coming in at $90,000 a minute - well, criticizing the war just seems too easy, like aiming a bomb at Bambi.

So I won't do it.

Once again, confirming my view about Times columnists.
posted by Michael at 10/14/2003 10:17:00 PM

 
New Baby
By Tom Smith

Today I spent in the hospital getting a new son. Here's a link to my (still work in progress, i.e. pretty lame) personal webpage with some photos of the "cute but weird-looking" (as Patrick put it) new boy. I have not always been happy with my encounters with American medicine, but gosh, these people today were professional, friendly, fun, everything that could possibly be wished. We were at Scripps Memorial in La Jolla. I can enthusiastically recommend their baby service.
posted by thomas at 10/14/2003 08:33:00 PM

 
Berkeley's Honest Mayor
By Gail Heriot

The City of Berkeley's efforts at self governance are always entertaining. UC-Berkeley's Daily Californian reports that the city council is expected to pass an ordinance at tonight's meeting that will outlaw the theft of free newspapers. Why is this necessary? In Berkeley, it has become a common occurrence to heave thousands of newspaper copies in the trash when one disagrees with its editorial endorsements. Up until recently, the most notorious case had been in 1996 when 25,000 copies of the Daily Californian were stolen in order to prevent voters from learning that the student editors had endorsed Proposition 209. Affirmative action zealots couldn't stand for anyone to know that not everybody on campus endorsed racial preferences.

A more recent incident concerned Berkeley's mayor, Tom Bates. Just before last November's mayoral election, then-candidate Bates pitched 1000 copies of the Daily Californian when it endorsed his opponent, former Mayor Shirley Dean. I know what you're thinking: Recall the bum. But after the election, he promised to outlaw the practice in the future. And he appears to be delivering on that promise. In ever-earnest Berkeley, I suppose that has to be worth something ....


posted by Gail at 10/14/2003 07:22:00 PM

 
Shakespear For Bush
By Michael Rappaport

Harold Bloom endorses Wesley Clark for President. There goes the literary critic vote. If the defender of the canon won’t support President Bush, how will we ever get the deconstructionists? Bloom argues that the nation needs a general in the White House. Let me assure him that it has one. This is not a question of titles or background. I’ll take Lincoln over McClellan every time.

Bloom also claims that "we are now well along in the first decade of a religious war that could endure for another century. All this is piously denied by nearly everyone, yet all the deniers know better.” No, we are engaged in a war for civilization. The Islamic Fundamentalists are against it. We are not fighting for a religion: it is only they who want to impose religious tests. Our side consists of various religions, including those Muslims who embrace civilization. Bloom has no more insight here than he does about Harry Potter.

posted by Michael at 10/14/2003 08:21:00 AM

 
Conventional Wisdom Wrong on Political Effect of Affirmative Action Initiatives
By Gail Heriot

A Michigan Civil Rights Initiative similar to California's Proposition 209, which passed by a wide margin in 1996, is currently being proposed. If passed, it would prohibit the State of Michigan from discriminating or granting preferential treatment on the basis of race, sex, color, ethicity or national origin.

Conventional wisdom has it that when such initiatives are put on the ballot, Republican candidates are hurt even though they tend to side with majority opinion in opposing racial preferences. The reason is voter turnout. Those who oppose racial and gender preferences seldom consider the issue to be the most important issue of the day. Hence putting it on the ballot will seldom cause them to turn out to vote if they were not going to do so anyway. On the other hand, those who favor such programs may bother to show up only because the issue is on the ballot. Once there, they vote for Democrats.

Under this view, it doesn’t matter whether voters overwhelmingly oppose racial preferences (as indeed polls indicate.) Nor does it matter that initiatives opposing racial preferences tend to pass by strong margins. All that matters is that having the issue on the ballot might induce a number of Democrats to turn out at the polls who otherwise would not have, thus disadvantaging Republican candidates.

The conventional wisdom is not ridiculous on its face. Certain hot-button issues do indeed affect voter turnout in the way that the theory suggests. In 1994, for example, California’s Proposition 187, which prohibited the state from providing certain taxpayer-supported services to illegal immigrants, Latino voters clearly and unequivocally turned out in greater numbers than they otherwise would have. In California, 50% of voting-age Latino citizens voted that year as contrasted with 34% in New York, 39% in Florida, 29% in Texas and 33% in the rest of the United States. Although California Latinos had traditionally voted in greater numbers than Latinos in other parts of the country, the gap has neither before nor since been as large as it was in 1994. Hence while Proposition 187 itself passed overwhelmingly (with quite a few Latino votes in its favor), it is likely that Democratic candidates picked up some votes they would not have otherwise gotten. The effect was small. Republican Governor Pete Wilson, a strong supporter of Proposition 187, was nevertheless re-elected by a strong margin. Indeed, some commentators attributed his victory to his support for Proposition 187.

The question is whether there is any support for the conventional wisdom as applied to Proposition 209. The answer is no. The bump in minority turnout that the conventional theory predicts did not occur. The turnout of voting age African American citizens actually went down from 67% in 1992 (the next previous Presidential election) to 65% in 1996; Latino numbers held steady at 54%. These California numbers do not by themselves disprove the conventional wisdom, since white turnout declined even more steeply form 1992 to 1996. But they put it in doubt.

And when one compares California with other states, the conventional wisdom is discredited entirely. The pattern in California–big drop in white vote turnout relative to 1992, modest drop in black turnout–was mirrored throughout the country. This is reflective of a long-term trend towards higher levels of black voting. In some states, like Texas, the effect was even greater than it was in California. Yet in Texas there was no Proposition 209. It is difficult enough to account for how Proposition 209 could have caused higher than expected turnout for African Americans not just in California but around the country. Accounting for how it could have affected African Americans in Texas more profoundly than African Americans in California is just impossible.

Republican fear of addressing the issue is thus misplaced and Republicans need not fear taking a principled stand against racial preferences. The turnout issue turns out to be a chimera. Indeed, taking principled positions may do the GOP some good with minority voters. While George W. Bush received a only 9% of the African American vote, Proposition 209 received 26% according to exit polls.

Why was Proposition 209 so different from Proposition 187 in its effect on voter turnout? Among potential voters, Proposition 187 had its most profound effect on recently-naturalized Latinos who often had friends or relatives in the country illegally. These recently-naturalized Latinos are likely to be less well-educated and less affluent than the average voter, including the average Latino voter. Since less well-educated and less affluent citizens do not vote in high numbers whatever their race or ethnicity, when an issue comes along that concerns them specifically, they have plenty of room to ratchet up their turnout. Proposition 209, on the other hand, primarily affected middle and upper income African Americans and Latinos. These groups already enjoy relatively high voter participation. Indeed, when African Americans are matched with whites with similar socio-economic factors, African American often vote at higher levels than whites. And although Latinos are somewhat less likely to vote than whites with similar socio-economic factors, the gap is small. As a result, it is difficult for them to increase their numbers at the polls. There simply isn’t much room for improvement.

Why does the conventional wisdom persist despite the lack of evidence to support it? If a small group of preference supporters wanted to persuade a larger but less-focused group to leave the issue along, what better way to do it than to argue that it will be costly to them on issues they care more about? They emphasize their voter turnout theory to the media, which then report the theories as fact. In time, such propaganda becomes the conventional wisdom.
posted by Gail at 10/13/2003 09:49:00 AM

 
Sabine
By Tom Smith

Glen, Glen. You tell us about the "highly photogenic" new Joan of Arc in Paris, braving the commies, the whiners and the America haters, and don't give us a link to a photo? Well, here. (Picture takes a minute to load for some reason; try scrolling up and down a few times.) Libertarians in love.
posted by thomas at 10/13/2003 09:03:00 AM

 
Israel and the Euro Left
By Maimon Schwarzschild


Here is a letter to the London Review of Books from Peter Connolly: a Washington lawyer, a Democrat, and an occasional contributor to the socialist quarterly Dissent. (Connolly's politics are basically Dissent's.)

The letter is a reply to an article by Judith Butler, which claims to be a defense of the right to criticise Israel. Ms. Butler's piece notably ignores the visceral loathing for Israel that is a regular feature of the London Review of Books. (The London Review is also a relentless Euro anti-American voice. It was, famously, in the London Review that, a month or so after September 11, 2001, the Cambridge classicist Mary Beard gave her considered view that the Americans had it coming.) (The Beard piece is not online: I resist the Leninist formulation that "perhaps not accidentally, it is not online".) (OK, I don't resist.)

The London Review has been a frequent forum for supporters of the European academic boycott of Israel: a widespread and apparently growing European boycott of all academic exchange (including a publishing boycott), directed at scholars and their institutions in the Jewish state.


To the Editor:

Judith Butler goes on at considerable length to defend her "right" to be critical of Israel without being regarded as anti Semitic or self hating, a right any sane person would concede in a second. She fails however to grasp what actually annoys people like Lawrence Summers about much recent criticism of Israel, namely its simple unfairness. Israel is a small country, founded in 1948 in part as a refuge for the remaining Jews of Europe, following the unimaginable horrors they had endured. But on three occasions, in 1948, 1967, and 1973, it has been compelled to fight for its existence. Had Israel's neighbors left it alone at the outset, accepting the 1947 UN partition plan, there would have been no Palestinian refugees, though the Arabs would have to have lived with a small Jewish country as a neighbor. In 1967 following Nasser's call for Israel's destruction and the closing of the Gulf of Aqaba, Israel attacked Egypt and occupied the Sinai Peninsula. Jordan and Syria then went to war against Israel, which resulted in Israel's being in control of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Much of the world however(and evidently Professor Butler) assumes that the 1967 war should simply be annulled and Israel should return the territories occupied in that defensive war to the Palestinian Authority. Usually in history, however, national acts have consequences. Some Germans may pine for the East Prussia or Silesia they lost and had to leave as a consequence of their country's aggression in 1939. The world does not take their claims seriously. But where the West Bank is concerned, the world sees things differently. Why?

In that connection, however, it should also be noted that from 1967-1977, when Israel held the West Bank and sought to return it(except for Jerusalem) in exchange for peace and did not allow settlements of any consequence, there were no takers on the other side. That failure to act began having consequences when the Begin government assumed power. After 1977, Israel has pursued a settlement policy which I agree with Ms. Butler has been a grave moral mistake and should be the cause of US government pressure on the Israeli government to cease and desist as part of a reinvigorated effort at a negotiated peace. But how many countries can she name which have
returned or refrained from settling territories captured in a war they did not start(or did start for that matter), especially when their enemies daily proclaimed a desire to annihilate them? One might also note that Israel has indeed "returned" territories, in Sinai and south Lebanon, without visible consequence in terms of improving Arab attitudes toward Israel.

Every day Israelis have to live with the real possibility that they and their children will be blown to pieces by suicide bombers, at whose activities the world essentially shrugs. But Israeli retaliations against the leaders of organizations which carry out these acts are universally condemned. How does Ms. Butler think the US or Britain or any other country would react in the face of similar actions by similar organizations? The US went to war in 2001 following Sept 11 and overthrew the Afghan government which had harbored al-Qaeda. It has held al Qaeda prisoners without trial There has been little criticism outside the sectarian left anywhere in the West, and nothing compared to what Israel is subjected to every day from across the European political spectrum, despite the fact that for Israel September 11 happens about every month.

What truly gets to Israel's friends is the sanctions campaign. Is Israel really to be compared to apartheid South Africa, the only other country to get this treatment? Are their histories and actions actually morally equivalent? Do Weizmann and Ben Gurion stand in the shoes of Malan and Verwoerd? Some of us say "no" and argue with those who say "yes." That is really the source of Professor Butler's complaint, namely that people don't agree with her. She ought to defend her position with facts and arguments which occasionally descend from the Olympian heights of abstract morality. She might even compare Israel's behavior to that of other similarly situated countries living on Planet Earth and leave the straw men involving her "right" to think what she thinks out of it.

Peter M. Connolly
Washington, D.C. 20006


Almost needless to add, the London Review has not published this letter, although since the Judith Butler article the LRB has found space for more supporters of the academic boycott against Israel.
posted by maimon at 10/12/2003 10:46:00 PM

 
These Guys are Good
By Tom Smith

These guys are good on the media on Iraq. Pointer thanks to instapundit.com.
posted by thomas at 10/12/2003 08:43:00 PM

 
Why Buy the Land When Politicians are Cheaper?
By Tom Smith

Fortunately, here's a bill Gray won't get to sign. This (outrageous) Indian Sacred Sites legislation basically would have allowed an Indian Tribe to put a hold on the development of any land that had something on it they considered sacred. It almost passed. If you or I wanted to stop development on some bit of earth we liked, we would have to buy the land. But this would not be fair to Indian tribes, because they are so poor. Oh wait! That doesn't work! They are absolutely rolling in gambling money! Tax-free gambling money! So what can the justification for this bill possibly have been? And now, it's too late, at least for a while. I guess they were crying up in Sacramento. What a heart-breaker.
posted by thomas at 10/12/2003 08:31:00 PM

 
Buy Now Before It's Too Late!
By Tom Smith

This is disgusting. You would think mere decency would stop you from using your few weeks left as a lame duck governor from polishing apples for your campaign donors. Or maybe it's just Davis being an "honest" politician (def: an honest politician is one who, once bought, stays bought.)
posted by thomas at 10/12/2003 08:14:00 PM

 
Imminent Harm and Rational Irrationality

By Michael Rappaport

There is something interesting occurring on Andrew Sullivan's marvelous blog. Sullivan is attempting not merely to compete with the mainstream media, but to change it. Sullivan, along with others, has already influenced the mainstream press by helping to oust Howell Raines from the New York Times. In my view, if it were not for the blogosphere, Raines would still be leading the Times.

Now Sullivan is attempting to stop the media from falsely asserting that the Bush Administration premised the Iraqi war on the claim that the danger from Iraq was imminent. As Sullivan documents repeatedly, the Bush Administration consistently claimed that the danger was not imminent but that the imminent standard was the wrong one to apply because terrorists do not give imminent warnings.

Yet the media repeats the falsehood over and over again. Sullivan has his readers alert him to these mistaken claims so he can publicize them. Some of Sullivan's readers have been doing a great job. Consider this exchange between Frontline Producer Martin Smith and a viewer taken from a Washington Post online chat.

Boston, Mass: Why did Martin Smith at least twice say while conducting an interview in the program that "Americans were sold this war as an imminent threat..." That is a bold face lie, an untruth from beginning to end. In President Bush's state of the union speech, he specifically countered that argument by in essence saying we cannot afford to wait until the threat from Iraq is imminent. For a program with Truth in it's title, that's a big slip up and I heard Mr. Smith say it at least twice.

Martin Smith: I'm glad you asked this question. I believe I may have used the term "imminent threat" more than twice. If you go back to the records you will see that while the president does not use the exact phrase, he talks about a "grave and gathering danger." He talks about Saddam's ability to launch chemical or biological weapons in 45 minutes.

No one that I spoke to in the administration who supported the war quibbled with the use of the term "imminent threat." It's simply not a quotation - it's a summary of the president's assessment.

Boston, Mass: No, Martin: it's a bold face lie, an untruth from beginning to end.

(Emphasis added). I don't normally envy people from Boston, but it would have been fun to say that to a Frontline producer.

Given the strong evidence that no one in the Administration claimed an imminent threat, the question is why the media regularly makes this claim. There are three interesting possibilities:

First, the media may just be ignorant. If one is in the liberal media echo chamber, one may simply not know that the Bush Administration never made this claim. Second, the media may be acting out of political bias. If one can assert that the Bush Administration claimed that there was an imminent threat, it is easier to criticize them, now that it seems there was no imminent threat. It would be far harder to prove that that the imminent threat standard was the right one or that the Bush Administration's standard was correct, but was not satisfied in the case of Iraq. This political bias possibility assumes that the people making the assertion know that it is mistaken at some level, but dishonestly pursue it for political advantage or because it makes them more comfortable criticizing the war.

While each of these possibilities may capture part of what is going on, my guess is that the best explanation lies in a third possibility: an idea from public choice theory known as "rational irrationality." The idea here is that people enjoy believing certain things -- for various reasons, including that it accords with their other views or furthers their strategic advantage -- and will continue to believe these things unless they have an incentive to subject these beliefs to rational scrutiny. This view is often employed in the context of voting: no individual voter is going to decide an election, so there is no incentive to critically examine one's prejudices (as there might be if one were purchasing a house or health insurance policy). But the idea also works when you know that the primary audience for your view is other people who agree with you. Unless you are likely to be criticized, you just follow your political preferences and those of your audience.

This explanation brings together both the ignorance and political bias explanations: the media mistakenly believes, because of the echo chamber and because of their political views, that the Bush Administration justified the war based on an imminent threat and they have little incentive to reexamime their beliefs.

The question is whether Andrew Sullivan, by himself, or with help, can change those incentives enough to rid us of the "imminent threat" lie. While common sense always suggests that a David cannot defeat a Goliath, the Howell Raines case suggests otherwise. Here's hoping another giant will fall.
posted by Michael at 10/12/2003 07:27:00 PM

 
Telephone Solicitors as High-Tech Parasites
By Gail Heriot

One more point on telephone solicitations: In addition to the the evolution of etiquette in dealing with telephone solicitors, there is the related evolution of technology to consider. Sure, most of us have learn over the past couple of decades to say no and to get rid of unwanted telephone calls with dispatch. Nobody in his right mind would think ill of a person who declines to engage a telephone solicitor in the kind of pleasant banter that is prelude to the solicitor's sales pitch (though I might think ill of a customer who is similarly abrupt towards a clerk in a department store). But technology has come to our rescue also. Old-fashioned answering machines allowed us to screen calls by simply listening for the caller to identify himself before deciding whether to take the call. More modern caller id and call screening services make it even easier. These innovations alone would probably have sealed the fate of the telephone solicitation industry had it not fought back.

Unfortunately, two can play at the game of technological evolution. Like a parasite, the telephone solcitation industry has had to adapt to changes in the public's behavior with a few changes of its own. In the old days, each solicitor had to dial each number by hand. Such a technology would never work today, since so many people are, through one technology or another, screening their calls. It's just not cost effective. Then came automatic dialers that saved a little time, but still allowed the solicitor to deal with only one call at a time. Today, these solicitors can handle several calls at the same time and attend only to the comparatively rare call that is answered by a live prospect. When the number of calls a solicitor can handle in a day rises exponentially, it doesn't matter that the yield (that is the number of actual sales per 100 calls) has declined significantly.

Maybe Mike is right that I am overly optimistic to suppose that this evolutionary arms race is going to wind down and that the telephone solicitation industry is doomed. It is certainly true that the industry's litigation against the "Do Not Call" list shows that it has no intention of going quietly into that good night. Still my instinct is that one way or another it is about to go the way of small pox. I would give it more thought but my telephone is ringing off the hook, so I'd better go deal with it ...
posted by Gail at 10/12/2003 01:40:00 PM

 
Just Say No -- To Telephone Solicitors
By Michael Rappaport

My fellow Right Coaster Gail Heriot says that "one way or another the [commercial telephone solicitation] industry is doomed." I hope so, but at present the prospects don't look so good. Even if the government's rule restricting solicitors is allowed to be enforced, newspaper reports suggest that it may not be that effective at preventing telephone solicitations.

As has often been pointed out, telephone solicitations occur because people often buy what is offered. Even though they do not want the phone call in the first place, they become persuaded to buy the product. The problem is that the telephone solicitors are then induced to call not only the purchaser but everyone else.

There may be a better way to stop the telephone solicitors: a boycott. People should get together and agree to refuse to take telephone solicitations. When someone calls, people should simply say: "Sorry I can't listen; I am part of the boycott." Such a boycott would be effective for a couple of reasons. First, it should be easy to organize. There is now a great deal of attention paid to the issue in both the media and among the public. Second, it should be easy to get people to join the boycott. In fact, so long as people hang up at the beginning of the phone call, there is no real cost from engaging in the boycott.

This seems like the ideal issue for a boycott. Many boycotts are difficult to organize and involve great sacrifice; this one would avoid those problems. And if it is successful, it will put an end to those horrible solicitors, without anyone having to be rude or the government having to enforce a law.
posted by Michael at 10/11/2003 11:11:00 PM

 
Inside Dope on Clark Campaign
By Tom Smith

I worry about Clark. Inside baseball here, thanks to instapundit for the pointer.
posted by thomas at 10/11/2003 04:09:00 PM

 
Japan: The Strange Country
By Tom Smith

My oldest son is fascinated by all things Japanese. It is one strange country.
posted by thomas at 10/11/2003 03:34:00 PM

 
Is That You, Mom?
By Gail Heriot

The argument currently being put forth by the telephone solicitation industry--that the First Amendment prohibits the federal government from creating a "Do Not Call" list applicable only to commercial solicitors and not to political or charitable solicitors--strikes me as non-frivolous under current case law. One way or another, however, the industry is doomed. There are few issues about which Americans are in any more agreement: They hate getting these calls.

I've been impressed with how American culture has changed over time. The first telephone solicitation I ever received was for some dubious charitable cause back about twenty years ago. I don't recall what the caller said, but I ended up purchasing a box of washcloths from him. Like most people, I quickly learned to say no. In time I even learned to be quite brusque. The Gail Heriot of 1983 would think the Gail Heriot of 2003 unnecessarily rude (although the Gail Heriot of 2003 hasn't had to spend her hard-earned money on any low-quality washcloths to benefit a probably nonexistent charity). I can't help but wonder if this shortness with callers has any spillover effects into other areas of my life.

I hadn't realized just how far it had gone until this week when I called my elderly mother. Now remember, this is my mother. Unlike her daughter, she has never used foul language in her life. And she's had almost eighty years of opportunity. But when I called on my cell phone, the connection was bad, so she couldn't hear me say helllo. Mistaking me for a solicitor, she muttered, "Screw you," into the receiver and hung up.

MMMooommm!!! Is that you? Obviously, something has to be done before all the little old ladies in the country go bad.
posted by Gail at 10/11/2003 02:58:00 PM

 
Why I Believe in the Death Penalty
By Tom Smith

This San Diego case involving the torture and murder of two young boys by miscreant and serial rapist Scott Erskine speaks for itself.
posted by thomas at 10/11/2003 12:32:00 PM

 
Capitalism and Jews
By Michael Rappaport

A great essay by Tyler Cowan of Marginal Revolution and The Volokh Conspiracy on "The Socialist Roots of Antisemitism." Here is an excerpt from the article:

Capitalism and the market economy encourage racial, ethnic, and religious tolerance, while supporting a plurality of diverse lifestyles and customs. Heavily regulated or socialist economies, in contrast, tend to breed intolerance and ethnic persecution. Socialism leads to low or negative rates of economic growth, disputes over resource use, and concentrated political power-all conditions which encourage conflict rather than cooperation. Ethnic and religious minorities usually do poorly when political coercion is prevalent. Economic collapses - usually associated with interventionism-worsen the problem by unleashing the destructive psychological forces of envy and resentment, which feed prejudice and persecution.

While discrimination is present in societies of all kinds, discriminators must pay pecuniary costs for indulging their prejudices in a market setting. Even the prejudiced usually will trade with minorities; bigots attempt to oppress minorities by socializing the costs through government action, but bigots usually are less willing to bear these costs themselves. Repeated commercial interactions also increase the social familiarity of customs or lifestyles that otherwise might be found unusual or alien. Sustained economic growth alleviates political and social tensions by creating more for everybody.

The history of the Jewish people illustrates the relatively favorable position of minorities in a market setting. Hostility toward trade and commerce has often fueled hostility toward Jews, and vice versa. The societies most congenial to commercial life for their time - Renaissance Italy, the growing capitalist economies of England and the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, and the United States - typically have shown the most toleration for Jews. Ellis Rivkin, in his neglected masterpiece, The Shaping of Jewish History.- A Radical New Interpretation, wrote:

Since World War II Jews and Judaism have been liberated in every country and territory where capitalism has been restored to vigorous growth-and this includes Germany. By contrast, wherever anti-capitalism or pre-capitalism has prevailed the status of Jews and Judaism has either undergone deterioration or is highly precarious. Thus at this very moment the country where developing global capitalism is most advanced, the United States, accords Jews and Judaism a freedom that is known nowhere else in the world and that was never known in the past. It is a freedom that is not matched even in Israel... By contrast, in the Soviet Union, the citadel of anti-capitalism, the Jews are cowed by anti-Semitism, threatened by extinction, and barred from access to their God.

Read the entire essay.

Sadly, many Jews, especially Jewish intellectuals, have been hostile to capitalism during at least the last century. This hostility has gone against their own self interest as well as the public interest. Perhaps we are beginning to see a change in attitude among Jews. Perhaps.
posted by Michael at 10/10/2003 10:10:00 PM

 
Halloween Lit
By Tom Smith

It's October and time for one of my favorite holidays, Halloween. It's fun and a lot less stressful than Christmas, which we Catholics celebrate with double Manhattans and . . . oh, don't get me started on Christmas. Turns out, I am your source for the best scary books of at least some literary merit. You can begin with this classic anthology, which was reviewed by Edmund Wilson back in the 1940's and sort of made this sort of fiction respectable for a while. A more contemporary collection is The Dark Descent, which contains a nice introduction to the various sub-genres and good lit crit analysis of the psychology of each (including interesting speculation on why some of best ghost/horror writers are lapsed Catholics). The ghost story reached its peak in Victorian and Edwardian England and one of the pleasures of the genre is its depictions of everyday English life in the period. The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories is a gem. This Oxford collection of Victorian Ghost Stories overlaps some, but is also pretty good. One of the very best writers of ghost stories was Edith Wharton, who of course wrote great novels as well. This collection of ghost stories includes "Afterward" considered by some the finest such story ever written. Anglophiles and folks who like stories with a scholarly angle will like M.R. James. If these stories catch you in the right mood, they can actually be pretty scary. A very different sort of writer is Algernon Blackwood, whom you will love or hate. His stories are often set in remote, wilderness locations, such as an island off the coast of Sweden, or in a marsh on the Danube. Take it on your next camping trip and terrify the kids! Ambrose Bierce was an American writer and by all accounts an extremely unpleasant man. Wrote pretty good stories, though. You may have read "An Incident at Owl Creek Bridge" in your Junior High English class. All this bunch in this post are of pretty high literary quality. I used to read these stories to my kids until my mother-in-law made me stop.
posted by thomas at 10/10/2003 04:01:00 PM

 
What Saved Arnold
Maimon Schwarzschild

The New York Times, in its own inimitable way, is trying to come to terms with the California recall election. Yesterday's front page was dominated by an Adam Nagourney/Jim Rutenberg "analysis" piece attributing Tuesday's outcome to the presence of Maria Shriver and her Kennedy family connections at Schwarzenegger's side. (The internet link doesn't do justice to the big central chunk of the Times front page which this piece occupied.) "Ms Shriver played an increasingly pivotal role", says the story. A Stanford professor is quoted as saying Arnold "would have been dead if she hadn't come to his side over the weekend".

That gives Nagourney and Rutenberg their opening to be judicious: in their one qualification in the whole piece, they allow that "given the margin of [his] victory, he might well have succeeded even without his wife." "But", as the following sentence begins, returning to the theme, Ms Shriver gave Arnold "extraordinary validation..."

One ought to encourage the Times, of course, in any efforts it might be making to understand California voters, or for that matter to understand any of the misguided Americans who fail to accept the Times' political worldview. But the idea that the reasuring presence of Shrivers and Kennedys made it, just barely, possible for Californians to defy the New York Times this week, suggests that the Times may still have work to do.
posted by maimon at 10/10/2003 01:27:00 PM

 
Harry Potter and the Axis of Evil
By Michael Rappaport

I have just finished the fourth book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It was my favorite of the four (although my son, who has read all the books numerous times, says the fifth is the best). While the Harry Potter Books are a cultural phenomenon, they also have something to say about the war on terror. (WARNING: Spoilers below).

The villain in the book is the evil Lord Voldomort, an extremely powerful and dastardly wizard, who had killed many innocent wizards and had nearly seized control from the good guys, when he was defeated. At the end of the fourth book, Voldomort returns and starts to bring together his evil servants. Having discovered Voldomort’s return and the identities of his followers, Harry informs the government – the Ministry of Magic – but the Minister plans to take no action.

Dumbledore, the wise leader of the forces for good, says in frustration: “Voldomort has returned. If you accept that fact straightaway” and “take the necessary measures, we may still be able to save the situation.” But the Minister cannot believe it has happened. He doubts Harry, fears for his job, and does not want to make enemies.

When I first read this, I was, of course, enraged – how could the Minister not want to fight such evil when it was clearly exposed? – and I thought it unrealistic. (What? A Harry Potter book unrealistic?) Upon reflection, though, I realized that I was mistaken: It is not all that far from our world. Writing in 2000, Rowling was even prescient.

After all, following 9-11, many people argued that the United States was wrong to invade Afghanistan, believing it would lead to intractable problems. Some of these people anxiously waited, like New York Times correspondent Johnny Apple, for the quagmire to emerge. Many people also opposed the war in Iraq, again believing and hoping for that quagmire, and what is worse, some of them, too many, appear to be rooting for the United States’s reconstruction of Iraq to fail.

Of course, there are differences between Harry Potter’s world and ours. Voldomort is unbelieveably evil and Osama Ben Laden, Mullah Omar, and Saddam Hussein are, er, no that won’t work. Well, Voldomort is a threat to good wizards, but these three were not threats to the United States – no that won’t work either. But at least Saddam Hussein didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. Yeah, that’s the ticket, especially if one does not examine David Kay’s report too closely.

I am sure that seeing President Bush as Dumbledore will not go down well with the President’s critics (many of whom would deem themselves, if they were on the other side, “Bush haters”). But the analogy is apt: Bush sees the evil, while his critics make excuses.
posted by Michael at 10/09/2003 10:45:00 PM

 
Suicide Bombers as Death Eaters
By Michael Rappaport

While I am at it, J. K. Rowling has another contribution to make to the war on terror. For quite a while, there has been a debate about what to call suicide bombers. Fox News has called them homicide bombers. Yet none of the names quite captures how evil they are and how they produce and glorify death. In naming Voldomort’s followers, however, Rowling, has the perfect term for the groups that employ suicide bombers: Death Eaters. People who consume death – who seem to gain fuel and energy from it.
posted by Michael at 10/09/2003 10:45:00 PM

 
Red but Right
By Tom Smith

Sometimes the far left gets it far more clearly than the right. Marc Cooper is dead on here in his analysis of the recall (except for the army of progressives bit -- we like it in the suburbs, Marc). What a contrast to the clueless George Will. I guess it helps to pound the pavement in LA. (Thanks to WSJ's OpinionJournal.com for the pointer.)
posted by thomas at 10/09/2003 06:13:00 PM

 
Most Tedious Pundit of the Year
By Tom Smith

Normally the prize for most tedious pundit of the year goes to some rabid feminist sort advocating reeducation camps for boys who like football, but this year George Will is going to be tough to beat. I just love it when some bow-tie wearing, Eastern weenie conservative who doesn't know Temecula from Tuscany tells us in California how we should govern ourselves.

Professor Will is just outraged by the "odor" of direct democracy in our recent recall. The Framers would not approve! Oh, Pa-leeeeese. A little direct democracy is just what you need when a government has been hijacked by comically corrupt politicians.

But that's not all -- George is afraid our exercise in government, explicitly authorized under the constitution of our state, lends credence to the claims that Bush stole the election. There's a difference, dude. It's called the law, as in the rule of. Our law says we can have a recall, and we did. As to democracy, if you had bothered to come out to California and do some real reporting, instead of curling your toes in your Persian rug in whatever tony DC suburb you abide in, you would have seen just how inspirational democracy can be. There was no circus. You should not believe what you read in the Washington Post. Instead, in one of the highest turnouts in California history, ordinary people stood up to say, enough is enough. And our constitution, which is, thank God, a lot clearer than Bush v. Gore, gave its express blessing to the whole exercise.

Will regurgitates the usual baloney about the whole recall effort being the product of a few millionaires conspiring together, led by Congressman Issa. Here's the news, George. Two million bucks is chump change in California politics, which you would know if you lived here. Lt. Gov. Bustamante raised twice that in little more than a week from Indian Casinos and spent it in even less time. The reason why the recall was a landslide was because of the thousands of people who worked on it and the millions of people who followed it by newspaper, talk radio and the internet. News flash for George: It ain't the 18th century out here, and we don't wear powdered wigs or knee socks either.

Speaking of bad smells, Will's screed just reeks with contempt for voters, for democracy and for everybody who isn't the kind of conservative who carried a briefcase in junior high. Well, he's full of it. I have never been as proud to live in a democracy as when I was waiting in the orderly line to cast my vote last Tuesday. No anger, not even any talking. It was quiet, like people were in church. These were ordinary people, and a lot of them, who took their duties seriously, who were taking time off from working for a living (and not by telling other people how to govern themselves) to be citizens. Will needs a little more Ron and a lot less Nancy Reagan in his conservatism. Maybe somebody should buy him a horse (but, please, with a Western saddle!).

Will is upset that the recall will hurt Bush in California. Oh boo hoo. I guess I missed the part where he explained why we have to run state government as an adjunct to the reelect Bush campaign. We have serious problems out here that need to be addressed now. If Bush wants Californians to vote for him, he should come out here and convince us. That's how it works in democracies, George. You have to get out of the imperial capitol every so often.

George is just outraged that we voted for Arnold in spite of his groping and even though he is pro-choice and pro-gay. This Will dude is clueless. I disapprove of Arnie's Id, but I disapprove more of a crook in office. And George, your precious framers were some of horniest people in history. Good lord, Ben Franklin's musings on older women are unfit for mixed company, Tom Jefferson's bastards could probably populate an independent state, and who knows what the rest of them were up to. As to Clinton, he was plausibly accused of rape and certainly perjured himself. A big difference. On abortion and gay rights, well, welcome to California. I may disagree with them, but the majority of people out here think abortion should be legal, and besides, that decision was taken out of our hands by the geniuses in Washington a long time ago. As to gay rights, well, what about it? I know I have some gay friends, I'd bet I have some gay students, and some of the best priests in my (Catholic) church, though celibate, are probably inclined that way. So what? Anybody who lives in a big city in California just runs up against good, gay people every day. Call it diversity, or democracy, and frankly, I could care less whether James Madison would like it or not. I have come around on this issue, but as far as I'm concerned, a lot of the opposition to gay rights is just hate, and the sooner Republicans get over it, the better. Will accuses us of compromising our principles just to win an election. Uh, no, George. It's more that we think some of your principles suck.

I have some advice for Will, since he seems so full of wisdom for us Californians. Lose the bow tie. Get some Lasik, dude, and lose the nerd glasses. Eat some protein and go to the gym. Get off your high horse. Check back in a year and see whether we have sorted a few things out with a new governor. We like to surprise people.
posted by thomas at 10/09/2003 09:35:00 AM

 
Some Thoughts on the Election
By Michael Rappaport

This election took place on two levels. First, it was Republicans versus Democrats, and here the Republicans obviously enjoyed a landslide. Add Arnold’s votes to McClintock’s, and the result is astounding in a state where the legislature is dominated by the Democrats.

Second, this was a battle between types of media. The Democrats had the “old media” of newspapers and network television. The Republicans had the “new media” of talk radio and at least a significant portion of the internet. The victory, in part, was a testament to the power of the new media.

The new media were not only more effective, they were also fairer. The elite newspapers like to portray themselves as superior to talk radio and the internet, which they describe as unreliable. Not this time. The LA Times, of course, behaved atrociously, but the NY Times may have been worse, releasing information that suggested Arnold admired Hitler. The information was released only a couple of days before the election, although the book proposal from which it was derived was made in 1997. Moreover, the Times failed to have the producer check the actual transcript from which the quotes were taken. Once he did, Arnold was exonerated, as the book proposal had misleadingly and inaccurately rendered his language. Quite a performance for the Newspaper of Record.

Finally, the Republicans also played fairer than the Democrats. The Republicans could have spread information about Davis’s meanness to his staff, but appeared to do very little of this, and only in defense. Also, they could have demagoged Bustamante’s use of the N word last year in a speech, but said very little about that. (And I won’t even mention the Democrat judges of the Ninth Circuit who sought to call the entire election off.)

All in all, the Republicans and new media were both fair and effective. Given the weak performance of California Republicans in the past, this was quite an accomplishment.
posted by Michael at 10/08/2003 11:18:00 PM

 
You Know It's a Big Deal When . . .
By Tom Smith

My fifth grader was sent home with a homework assignment tonight to write an essay: "A New Governor for California." A sample sentence: "The people of California recalled Governor Gray Davis because they thought he was not fulfilling his responsibilities." (No, I had nothing to do with it.) He asked if he could just call the new governor "Arnold," rather than coping with the formidable last name.
posted by thomas at 10/08/2003 06:16:00 PM

 
Arnold's Revelers
By Gail Heriot

Well, I couldn't resist. I got an invitation to go to Schwarzenegger's Victory Celebration at the Century Plaza Hotel, so I decided to brave rush hour traffic and make the trip up to L.A. It turned out to be a surprsingly easy drive. And I wasn't even out of San Diego before I received a telephone call from a journalist friend of mine assuring me that the exit polls showed that Arnold was a sure thing. This was not going to be a stressful night.

If the news media were looking to see either peasants with pitchforks or Hollywood glamour types at party, they would have been disappointed with Arnold's supporters. They looked pretty normal (although a few had that alternately nervous and expectant look that political operatives get when they are clutching their resumes after an election). This was a happy crowd, of course, but as political victory celebrations in my experience go, it was more sober than average. And fittingly so. There was a sense that something significant had just happened, but no one had yet articulated just what it was and where it's going. Judging from the comments made while gathered around the television monitors, these people understood that dealing with California's comically corrupt legislature won't be easy. But they also understood that Schwarzenegger has certain political assets that no other politician can claim. And they're optimistic.

If I were an ancient Roman, I might be concerned about whether the gods were giving me an omen during the drive back to San Diego very late that night. In contrast to the easy drive up, the return was horrific. Interstate 405 was closed down and following the detour signs was no easy task for this very sleepy law professor. But for now I choose to take my sign from the the mouth of the young Marine I sat near while drinking coffee at the Denny's in Oceanside a little before 2:00 a.m. "Are you kidding? Arnold's going to kick butt," he said to his companion. The companion seemed ready to believe. Maybe it's true.
posted by Gail at 10/08/2003 03:15:00 PM

 
Martha Stewart Again
By Tom Smith

Steve Bainbridge is right on about Martha Stewart. He is perhaps too polite to add, however, that the ill-defined insider trading laws are perfect tools for ambitious prosecutors who want to go on scalp-hunting expeditions. Is Martha the most egregious insider trader in Manhattan these days? Hardly. But she is a high profile celeb with a reportedly obnoxious personality that the press would love to see fall. The Bonfire of the Vanities with the feds roasting their marshmellows on the flames.
posted by thomas at 10/08/2003 09:04:00 AM

 
Well, That was Satisfying
By Tom Smith

I would settle for a news media that wasn't actively trying to deceive me. Fortunately, I'm old and jaded enough not to be fooled. Any doubts that I had that Arnie would win were driven away when I showed up at my polling place, and found it the most crowded I've seen in ten years, with a palpable determination in the air.

My expectations for Conan are not terribly high. I'll be happy if he gets rid of the new car tax hikes (I really don't want to pay $500 to register my POS minivan--it bad enough to have to drive the thing!) and slaps a new tax on the casino gangs. (Disclosure-- a village of Jamul Indians is attempting to build a casino in my neighborhood, starting with six acres of land and about two dozen Native Americans, this after a tribal election in which the relatively full blood Indians who did not want a casino were thrown out, in a campaign that featured such novel events as arson, by Indians of fractional ancestry who want the casino. In the meantime, we are inundated with an ad campaign insinuating that gaming with put us in closer touch with the Great Spirit (come to think of it, a lot of praying does go on in casinos) and anyone who opposes a 100 acre gambling complex a couple of miles from the local high school is a racist. Stay tuned. Tax them, Arnie, tax them!)

Mickey Kaus, gets the reasons to have voted against Davis just about right. Everyone expects a little log rolling in politics, but the truly prodigious levels of corruption in the Davis administration are a lot to swallow when you're talking about national security (the drivers' license give away) and when the California economy is gripped so badly by the European disease. Kaus is right. Arnie does seem to have character issues, but a lot of successful leaders have been cruel SOB's, and this one has a chance of being more honest than most.
posted by thomas at 10/08/2003 08:36:00 AM

 
Coming Out Fighting
Maimon Schwarzschild

For a gutsy example of how a politician can come out fighting -- instead of grovelling -- when under attack, read the full text of Tony Blair's speech to the Labour Party Conference in England last week. It's no exaggeration to say that Blair is now a hated figure to many (probably most) Labour Party activists. Blair's support for the US in Iraq has earned him the loathing of many of these people, who mistrust him anyway for his "deviationism" from old-time socialist orthodoxy. For a taste of this, watch "Prime Minister's Question Time" any Sunday night on C-SPAN and keep an eye on the body language, and sometimes the spoken words, of the Labourites sitting behind Blair -- the people who are supposed to be supporting him. These Labour "backbenchers" are often visibly hostile to their leader, which is breathtaking in Britain's usually tightly-disciplined Parliamentary politics.

Going into the Party Conference, it was widely expected that the activists would find a way to purge Blair. His speech seems to have turned things around, at least for now. Blair's theme is: "if you yield to leftist rage, you will be back in the political wilderness for a generation". It's a tough, elegant speech. And it seems to have been very effective. There may be a lesson here for Democratic would-be Presidential nominees in the US, although it may not be a lesson the Democrats -- including the candidates -- are in a mood to receive.
posted by maimon at 10/07/2003 09:09:00 PM

 
And Woe for the Tories
Maimon Schwarzschild

For a woeful assessment of the state of Britain's Conservatives, read Peter Hitchens' cover story in this week's Spectator from London. Hitchens says the Tories are internally divided about everything important -- from the Iraq war to the euro to what to do about Europe -- to the point that the Conservatives are dying, or dead, as a party.

The Spectator is one of England's most influential -- and best-written -- weeklies. It has a definite Tory tilt and readership.

Hitchens is a story himself. Hitchens is a "traditionalist" conservative. He is also -- in a very English twist -- the brother of Christopher Hitchens, the flamboyant left-wing writer: or formerly left-wing writer, since Christopher H. has come out in favor of war against "Islamo-fascism". In fact, Christopher H. took American citizenship this year, and makes it clear that he plans to vote for Bush in 2004. Meantime, Brother Peter -- the Tory -- is dead-set against the Iraq war, and there is more and more of a British upper class anti-American tone to his writing.

All that aside (or sort of aside), Peter Hitchens' diagnosis, or autopsy, of the Tories is pretty convincing. His tone is on the apocalyptic side. But the British Tories are clearly in trouble. And, after all, Canada's Tories really did collapse: they've all but disappeared, after having been either the governing party in Canada or the main opposition for more than a century.
posted by maimon at 10/07/2003 09:06:00 PM

 
Sleeping with the Enemy
By Sai Prakash

Hyderabad, India--Everyone, it seems, has identified his own epicenter of terrorism. For some the epicenter is Iran and its intolerant mullahs. For others, it was Saddam Hussein. Here in India, many view the epicenter of terrorism as Pakistan. Yes, Pakistan—America’s loyal ally in the fight to capture Osama Bin Laden. After 9-11, America apparently approached Pakistan with an offer it couldn’t refuse: help us defeat the Taliban and crush Al-Qaeda or else. General Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani strongman, took the hint and opted to side against Pakistan’s own creation, the Taliban. At times it appears as if the Pakistani government is helping eradicate Al-Qaeda—remember the capture of a disheveled Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. Given Pakistan’s assistance, the Bush Administration conveys the impression that General Musharraf is the indispensable man, the one who stands between Pakistan’s many religious extremists and Pakistan’s “Islamic” bomb.

Yet one cannot help but have a profound sense of unease. The press has been full of reports that Pakistan traded nuclear weapons know-how to the North Korean in return for missile technology. More recent reports suggest a link with Iran’s nuclear weapons program. And there are nagging doubts about Pakistan’s willingness to completely abandon the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. It is understandably hard to give up one’s own creation, especially if one still shares an ideological and religious affinity with it. The Pakistani’s likely believe that after a few years, America will abandon Afghanistan and leave a vacuum. Given America’s recent history, why shouldn’t the Pakistani’s play both sides of the fence? The Pakistani strategy appears to consist of conceding as little as possible to the Americans because the Americans aren’t long term players in the region. When pressed by the Americans, cite domestic politics as making further Pakistani assistance impossible.

America has long chosen its allies pragmatically. We allied with the Soviets in World War II; we allied with the Afghan Mujahideen more recently. We even sided with Saddam Hussein during his war on Iran. So America’s relationship with Pakistan is entirely keeping with tradition. The question is whether we will ever pay a price for this pragmatism. Pakistan actively funds, trains, and equips terrorists in India. So long as these terrorists don’t provoke a subcontinental war, America seems prepared to let Pakistan continue its dangerous game. But the jehadis who currently train their weapons on India, can easily shift their sights to America and her interests. I would argue that this is already happening, for the jehadis in Kashmir view themselves as fighting a global Christian-Jewish-Hindu conspiracy and they have no love for pluralistic, tolerant America.

Yes, Pakistan is a frontline state in the war on terrorism. The question is on which side of the line does it lie?

posted by Saikrishna at 10/07/2003 08:22:00 PM

 
Mystery of Divorce and Daughters Solved!
By Tom Smith

My colleage Shaun Martin makes a very insightful point:

I don't know [Shaun writes] whether anyone else has made the connection, but here's my take on the subject. The problem with the existing theories (the ones that didn't persuade you on slate.com) is that they conflate causation and correlation. It's not that baby girls tend to cause divorce more than baby boys; rather, it is that the things that tend to cause baby girls also tend to cause divorce.

Absurd, you say? What could possibly cause both baby girls and divorce? It seems that the answer is simple: Stress. At least (for the former point) according to the latest -- fairly large -- study of births in Germany from 1946 to 1999 http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/09/16_stress.shtml

It is fairly clear that stress -- particularly economic stress -- causes divorce. So if stress -- particularly economic stress -- tends to increase the number of baby girls, that explains why couples who have baby girls more frequently get divorced. It's not because of the baby girl; rather, it's from what helped to cause the girl in the first place. And no, I don't mean the sex part. I mean the stress.

If Shaun keeps up this kind of clear thinking, he's bound to become a Republican. Shaun made the news in San Diego this summer with a lawsuit to reform the recall ballot (which he won).

posted by thomas at 10/07/2003 04:04:00 PM

 
Insider Trading -- It's a Good Thing
By Tom Smith

It's that time of year again when law students are looking for supervisors for their law review comments, papers, etc. As the professor who can't say no, I have a large number of students eagerly scribbling away, and probably because of Martha Stewart, insider trading is once again a popular topic.

Personally, I really hate insider trading laws. The law itself is an embarrassing, incoherent mess, as Daniel Fischel captured well in his book about Michael Milken, Payback. Many law professors seem to find the prospect of insiders making money on information professors have no access to particularly outrageous, and there is no end to academic proposals to stop the "abuses."

My thought today on insider trading is this--I wonder whether a robust insider trading market would have made it harder for managers at Enron, Tyco, etc. to pull off their accounting shenanigans, which really were wicked and harmful to shareholders. Wouldn't information about bogus off-shore corporations hiding losses, etc., tend to leak out to the market much faster if it were legal for insiders to place bets on it not remaining secret forever? You would be pitting private greed against private greed, surely more effective than the SEC.

By the way, about Martha Stewart, try this tip for peeling kiwis. Normally when you peel this tasty fruit, half of it ends up going down the disposal. Instead of peeling it with knife like a peach, try cutting it in half then scooping out the flesh as you would a soft boiled egg! It really works! It would be wrong to put such a clever woman in prison.
posted by thomas at 10/07/2003 03:38:00 PM

 
Escape this Mundane World
By Tom Smith

In the market for a deep, serious but still bizarre exploration of philosophy and cosmology? My copy of Infinite Minds: A Philosophical Cosmology, John Leslie's new book, just arrived from Amazon. It develops a creation story along Platonic and Spinozan lines. A previous book of his got a very positive review from J.L. Mackie, an Australian philosophy not exactly sympathetic to theism.
posted by thomas at 10/07/2003 02:20:00 PM

 
Fighting Terrorism
By Michael Rappaport

The cycle of violence is one of the most pernicious phrases used to describe the terrorism and responses to it in Israel. Not only is the message conveyed by that phrase morally flawed, it is also factually mistaken. It turns out that Israeli military responses work. Consider the following from a piece in the Jerusalem Post (hat tip Little Green Footballs):

In the intifada's grim second year, from October 2001 through September 2002, Palestinians killed 449 Israelis and foreigners present on Israeli soil, including both civilians and soldiers. Yet for the year that ended last week, this figure was down 47 percent, to 240.

On a monthly basis, the comparison is even more dramatic. Never again has there been a month even approaching the horror of March 2002, the month before Operation Defensive Shield. The 134 Israelis killed that month is more than three times the death toll during the worst month of the past year, and almost 2.5 times the 58 people killed in the second-worst month of the intifada (June 2002, the month after the army withdrew from Palestinian territory following Defensive Shield. It was this renewed surge of killing that persuaded the government to send the troops back and this time, to keep them there).

Furthermore, two of the worst months of the past year were months in which military activity was drastically curtailed: June 2003, with 32 deaths, and August 2003, with 29. June was the month of the road map "peace process," during which Israel largely suspended military operations so as not to disrupt the "momentum toward peace." August was the month of the famous Palestinian cease-fire, to which Israel responded by restricting its own military activity. (In fact, the death toll that August was higher than in 22 of the 34 months without a truce!) One could thus reasonably assume that had Israel maintained the military pressure over the summer, the year's death toll would have been even lower.

There have also been long term effects due to Oslo (besides bringing Yassir Arafat back to Israel):

Israel, in contrast, allowed its capabilities to deteriorate drastically during those eight years. After it pulled out of what became the PA in 1994, its vital network of Palestinian informants was almost completely destroyed, and this network had to be painstakingly rebuilt over the past 18 months.

Sometimes military solutions are necessary.
posted by Michael at 10/07/2003 08:14:00 AM

 
Boy Babies are Good
By Tom Smith

Couples with daughters are apparently more likely to get divorced than couples with sons. (Hat tip to slate.com.) The effect is strong, especially in LDC's (do we still call them that?). There's probably some evolutionary psychology explanation for this; none of the theories in the slate piece seem very convincing to me.
posted by thomas at 10/06/2003 08:47:00 AM

 
News Junkie Alert
By Tom Smith

When I'm in pure news junkie mode, after I've scanned the headlines of WaPo and NYT, the WSJ, LA Times and various local California rags and still need more, I visit this page at FreeRepublic.com. It's pretty raw right (definitely Field Conservative, indeed ready to hit the overseer on the head with a hoe conservative), but it works. Right wing nuts all over the country (planet?) scan news sources and then post links to whatever strikes them as interesting. Everything mixed together, long on national security.
posted by thomas at 10/06/2003 08:32:00 AM

 
A Virtual Public Meeting
By Michael Rappaport

On Saturday, Little Green Footballs had a post on the suicide bombing in Haifa. There have been a whopping 674 comments. These are not comments on the post, which merely reported the story. Instead, the blog appears to be functioning like a virtual public meeting, where people can publicly express their feelings and views. Another function of the blogosphere.
posted by Michael at 10/05/2003 10:06:00 PM

 
Letter from Israel
Maimon Schwarzschild


An Israeli academic friend -- Menachem Kellner: a Maimonides expert at Haifa University; a moderate-to-liberal politically and an Orthodox Jew -- returned to Israel this week after a month or so in Europe and the US. These are some of his reflections on his return. Kellner is well "wired" in Israel; he reflects some of the broader trends there. There does seem to be a chastened feeling among many who had been on the liberal side of the spectrum in Israel: a disillusion about the prospects for peace with the Arab world, and -- far from wanting to throw in the towel -- a heightened feeling of national solidarity.

" Returning to Israeli reality is always a bit of a shock: abroad one gets used to public politeness very quickly,
and it is a bit jarring to be confronted once again with the way Israelis treat each other.

But after a few minutes of adjustment – watching people who had been oh-so-polite on the British Airways
flight now cutting each other off with their luggage trolleys 5 minutes after de-planing – we were used to it again,
and even found it comforting to be back in our home surroundings.

This morning we decided to extend our vacation a bit by breakfasting at a pleasant open-air cafe near our home in
Haifa. Walking in the cool sunshine towards the cafe we passed a kindergarten, and then it hit me, and hit
me hard. Sitting in front of the kindergarten was an armed guard. I was sickened. There is not a single child in all
of the occupied territories who has to worry that he or she will be the object of a purposeful attack. There is not a
single child in all of Israel who does NOT have to worry that she or he will be the object of a purposeful attack.

Next to this stark fact all others pale to insignificance: the stupidity and brutality of many of our policies; the
degradation often suffered by Palestinians at Israeli roadblocks; the apparent corruption of the Sharons; the
lunacy of keeping our settlements in Gaza; the futility of thinking that we can keep most of our settlements on the
West Bank; etc. etc. But the profound and utterly irredeemable immorality of our enemies makes all of our
mistakes and sins look trivial and calls into deep question the moral sense of all Palestinian apologists.

While abroad, we were often asked about the mood in Israel. Hard question to answer, of course, since there is
no such thing as a "national mood." Most of the people we talk to here, though, seem to share the following:
anger at the Palestinians and (even more intensely among many of us) at their foreign apologists. Also
resignation. Many of my foreign interlocutors expected -- and some were clearly hoping -- to be told of weakening
resolve in Israel. I don't see it. On the contrary: having enemies who target babies does wonders for national
unity and strength of purpose.

Moreover, I think that Israelis are coming together in unexpected ways. Likud voters increasingly realize that the
dream of "one Israel from the Jordan to the sea" will never be realized. Labor party voters realize that socialism
(or at least Bolshevism) is totally dead. Even Ha-Aretz (the New York Times of Israel) occasionally now sounds like
a Zionist newspaper. Israelis are famous for overcoming differences during wartime and we are certainly now at
war.

Whenever my kids leave the house here, I always say: "avoid bombs." Good advice, just not so easy to put into
practice. May we all be blessed with a year of successful bomb avoidance."

posted by maimon at 10/05/2003 11:20:00 AM

 
Private Ownership of Iraqi Oil
By Michael Rappaport

A great essay by Vernon Smith (via The Knowledge Problem) recommending that the ownership of Iraqi oil be distributed equally to all Iraqi citizens in the form of stock that can then be sold on international stock exchanges. Two great virtues of the piece. First, it recognizes the importance for individual freedom and prosperity of private ownership of Iraqi oil and of a fair initial distribution of ownership rights. Successful implementation of Smith's plan would promote free markets and property, and deprive the government of the ability to distribute rents – two important conditions for a prosperous Iraq. Second, the essay emphasizes the importance of real world effects rather than abstract theory, which can be abused in practice. Smith notes that the government assets sold in Russia somehow went into the hands of insiders. Also, while he is not able to give many details in a short essay, his specific recommendations come from his own experimental work concerning auctions. I was not familiar with Smith’s work before he received the Nobel Prize last year, but the essays I have read since then suggest that he deserved the prize.

posted by Michael at 10/04/2003 05:49:00 PM

 
Aristotle
Tom Smith

I'm reading Aristotle's Politics these days. Two translations worth looking at are that of T. A. Sinclair, revised by J. Saunders, and a new translation by Carnes Lord. A translation I have not looked at, but which is supposed to be good is that of C.D.C. Reeve. I'm interested particularly in Aristotle's conception of association, which gets translated variously as association, community and partnership. The Sinclair translation is certainly more idiomatic. It sounds like a don lecturing at Oxford, like someone with a fine command of the English language. Lord's version reads pretty clunkily, as if Aristotle did not speak English, which of course he did not. Lord's style is Staussian literal translation. So for example koinonia gets translated as 'partnership' instead of the more abstract 'association.' I don't have any Greek, so I can't really judge for myself which is better. I do confess to a certain knee-jerk suspicion of Straussians and I don't regard Lord as a professional scholar, a status I probably find more reassuring than I should.
posted by thomas at 10/03/2003 03:41:00 PM

 
What You Need
By Tom Smith

Politics can be so disgusting. What you need is to watch a truly uplifting, inspirational movie like A Man Called Peter. It is the story of a Scottish immigrant who ultimately becomes chaplain of the U. S. Senate. His sermon to the midshipmen of Annapolis on the morning of December 7, 1941, shortly before news of the attack broke, is perhaps the most moving statement of the Christian hope of eternal life that I have ever heard.
posted by thomas at 10/03/2003 10:49:00 AM

 
Those Darn Politicians and Their Nonconsensual Sex Acts
By Tom Smith

I probably shouldn't, but I keep making the Arnie/Bill comparison. Are any of the allegations in this Capital Hill Blue catalog less well documented than the L.A. Times story?
posted by thomas at 10/03/2003 10:34:00 AM

 
Davis Behind Closed Doors
By Tom Smith

I heard Jill Stewart refer to this story last night on Fox News. According to the story, Davis has a bad habit of physically roughing up staff members who displease him. I'd say it might be a good idea to give the dude a wide berth next week. But I suspect Arnold could handle him. Once again, it's via master blogger Sullivan that I am able to follow up on the Fox News story.
posted by thomas at 10/03/2003 10:15:00 AM

 
The Gipper
By Tom Smith

I have a picture on my office wall of Ronald Reagan shaking hands with me. I was Senior Counsel and Economist in his Council of Economic Advisers for one year, I will always be proud of having served at the pleasure of the man who was our greatest president since Lincoln. Andrew Sullivan captures some of the deep decency of the man. Sullivan is just an invaluable resource.
posted by thomas at 10/03/2003 09:54:00 AM

 
The Growth of Iraqi Freedom
By Michael Rappaport

An excellent post by Steve Den Beste (via Randy Barnett). With all of the negative news about Iraq being reported by the mainstream media, it is easy to forget that there are also positive occurrences. Don suggests that the main development in Iraq is the growth and internalization of freedom in Iraq. He writes:

“I suspect that for most Iraqis, the single most astounding aspect of the American occupation (besides the fact that it finally happened, at long last) has been that we have not been arresting those in Iraq who have publicly criticized us. When mullahs returning from exile in Iran made speeches demanding we withdraw and that Iraq become a Khomeneiite theocracy, we left them alone.

Some here feared that tolerating that would cause more and more Iraqis to flock to support such movements, and that the majority Shiites might coalesce around such a political position.

But the exact opposite has occurred: those early opposition speakers were seen by most Iraqis as being noteworthy because of their public opposition, not because their message was attractive. Many watched attentively to see how we'd respond. When the proto-theocrats were not persecuted, other Iraqis with other opinions began voicing them, too. Some were critical of the Americans, some were supportive, some were mixed. A lot of what they talked about didn't have anything to do with us at all. But the one thing most of them came to agree on was that free expression itself was a pretty neat thing, even if they didn't agree about much else. Since the would-be Iraqi theocrats wanted to take that away from them again, support for the theocrats has not materialized, and most of them have ceased advocating establishment of an Islamic Republic in Iraq.”

Don goes on to claim that we are winning the war because people are becoming attached to freedom. He makes a good case and, whether or not he is too optimistic, certainly this is part of the story – a part that is generally ignored.

I would be especially gratified if Don is right, since I have always thought that the main reason to go to war in Iraq was to help develop a new middle eastern democracy. This was not the justification for the war: Intervention was properly justified based on matters such as UN resolutions and the threat of WMD. But the main reason that the war was prudent was that establishing a liberal democracy in Iraq (or even something that approaches it like Turkey) was one of the best ways to battle radical Islam. Thus, our actions may help protect the United States and promote civilization and prosperity in the region.

If Don is correct, then we may wake up one morning soon and see the clear beginnings of a free society in Iraq. It is quite possible that the media naysayers will continue to predict doom and gloom until that day, much as they predicted quagmires throughout the military phases of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – until the minute the US prevailed.
posted by Michael at 10/02/2003 09:19:00 PM

 
How Do You Spell Blog?
By Michael Rappaport

How ironic. I just did a spell check of a post and the Blogger spell check did not recognize "blog" as a word.
posted by Michael at 10/02/2003 05:07:00 PM

 
Arafat's Terror
By Michael Rappaport

My first post on this blog examined what Israel should do about Arafat. For a discussion of some of the evidence of Arafat's terrorism, see this issue brief via SFA Politics and Religion.
posted by Michael at 10/02/2003 05:02:00 PM

 
California Recall Updates
By Tom Smith

As usual, realclearpolitics.com is a great place to get your political news fix. Here's their recall page.
posted by thomas at 10/02/2003 01:12:00 PM

 
Why Arnie will win
By Tom Smith

As he so often does, John Fund gets it absolutely right about the role of non-traditional media in the California recall election. For the same reason, The L.A. Times below-the-belt late hit is likely to be the big nothing it deserves to be. You know, the one in which various unnamed women claim Arnie groped them in the '70's. (Note: the LA Times web site, true to form, requires even more annoying than usual registration-- annual income a required field? Who are these people?) Similarly, the rumored 'Arnold is a Nazi' ads supposedly coming this weekend, if they come, will do nothing. It will just be fodder for Monday morning talk radio, with the theme being, Davis can beat anybody at political limbo dancing (how low can you go?). The story is, Davis operatives have been going around trying to find a Jewish leader willing to express anxiety over the fact that Arnie's father was a Nazi. But no dice, apparently, as Arnie has been a major donor (millions) and supporter of Jewish causes in California over the years.

Speaking of talk radio, I'm another trapped in my car on the freeway, So Cal talk radio listener, and pretty jaded. But the Mark Larsen bit this morning on KCBQ, with our beloved Bustamante talking about how people come to California from "planets all over the world," with the deliciously corny theme from the first year of Star Trek playing in the background, was one of the funniest (if cruel) things I've heard on the radio in a long time. Play it again, Mark!
posted by thomas at 10/02/2003 09:10:00 AM

 
Questions about Karl Rove
By Michael Rappaport

The Joseph Wilson story continues. If it turns out that a CIA undercover agent’s name was illegally leaked, then this seems problematic, even though illegal leaks appear to be standard practice in Washington. Yet, there is more to this story than the possibility that a crime was committed. A Wall Street Journal editorial stated today: “The real intelligence scandal is how an open opponent of the U.S. war on terror such as Mr. Wilson was allowed to become one of that policy’s investigators.” One can take this argument a step further. If the Bush Administration allowed an important part of the investigation to be conducted by an opponent of the war, this hardly supports the picture painted in the media of an Administration hell-bent on war and doing all it could to manufacture or overstate the evidence at every turn. How does the New York Times explain how the all-powerful and all-knowing Karl Rove permitted Joseph Wilson to become involved in the investigation?
posted by Michael at 10/01/2003 10:01:00 PM