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Thoughts from San Diego on Law, Politics, and Culture
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February 29, 2004
Abortion Politics By Gail Heriot As usual, I'm a bit baffled by the hard-core abortion lobby. It's not enough to have the courts declare that a pregnant woman has a constitutional right to choose abortion. They also apparently want the courts to declare that thugs have a constitutional right to choose abortion for her. (See Weekly Standard.) This issue has been around for a while. I remember a case before the Illinois Supreme Court back in 1980 on the subject (People v. Greer, 79 Ill. 2d 103 (1980)). The issue has reared its head in connection with the lurid Scott Peterson murder trial. Peterson stands accused of double murder: his wife Laci and their unborn child Conner. Unlike Illinois law back in 1980, California law explicitly defines murder to include both. The abortion lobby evidently regards this as a travesty. In view of the pro-abortionists (and yes, in this context I think it would be inappropriate to call them pro-choice), any act of the state that suggests that a fetus might have some value is inconsistent with the right to abortion. But there is no inconsistency. Both pro- and anti-abortionists ought to be able to agree to treat the intentional killing of an unborn child by someone other than the mother and without the mother’s consent as the serious crime it is. Would anyone seriously dispute that a thug who punches Laci Peterson in the abdomen with the avowed intent of causing her to miscarry is guilty of a wrong that is considerably more diabolical than a simple battery against the mother? Why shouldn’t the California Legislature protect the child and his mother (who was exercised her constitutional right to choose by choosing life for her child) with the strongest of penalties? Shouldn't the California Legislature have the authority to punish any number of serious crimes with penalties as serious as those for murder? There was a time, of course, when all felonies were punished with equal ferocity–the death penalty. I wonder what the abortion lobby would have to say if the courts were to declare that we all have a constitutional right to suicide? Would that mean that the murder laws would have to go? If that’s a non-sequitur, isn’t the argument as applied to fetuses a non-sequitur too? Coming to a high school near you By Tom Smith High school just isn't what it used to be. (via realclearpolitics.com) Yet more Passion passion By Tom Smith Having looked at the criteria in the NCCB guidelines concerning depictions of the Passion and thinking about the Gibson movie, for what it is worth, I'm not sure the movie would get a passing grade. For example, the guidelines suggest or instruct that historical depictions should capture the fact (assuming it was a fact) that the secrecy of Jesus's trial was motivated precisely because of Jesus's popularity in Jerusalem, which hardly comes over in the film. Also, a point I had not thought about, the Nicene Creed explicitly assigns legal responsibility or something like it for the crucifixion to Pilate. It does not say "suffered under the Jews." The movie, as many have noted, goes rather easy on Pilate. It would have been easy enough to make these changes by making the Jewish mob smaller, emphasizing the secrecy of the trial, showing more popular outrage at the result of the trial, and so on. There would have been other reasons for religious Jews to object to this, but it would have made the movie closer to the Catholic version of events. But Mel Gibson is not the usual Catholic, but a member of a schismatic, ultra-traditionalist sect. Non-Catholics need to realize that given that the Church has room for Jesuits on the left and Opus Dei on the right, to feel you have to in effect leave the Church because it is not traditionalist for you, does make you pretty darn extreme. A Better Way to Judge the Passion By Mike Rappaport Extremely interesting post assessing The Passion based on previously established guidelines by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and Anti-Defamation League for avoiding anti-Jewish interpretations of the passion story. (Hat tip: Curmudgeonly Clerk) This seems like a powerful way to avoid the controversy of the moment and to fairly assess the movie. Bottom line: "All in all, the movie meets many of the established criteria for responsible depictions of the passion, but it does not have a perfect score. While the movie is not overtly a work of anti-Jewish propaganda, it could reasonably be interpreted as such anyone predisposed to view it that way." February 28, 2004
BAMN BAMN: The Kookie Left Attacks the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative in the Courts. By Gail Heriot One lawsuit against the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative was apparently not enough. Now there are two. Both are pretty silly, but the newer one is special, because it’s brought by BAMN--an organization with a long track record of really, really silly attacks on efforts to curtail race- and gender-based admissions policies in higher education. It promises to be entertaining if nothing else. BAMN is the acronym used by an organization that once called itself the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action By Any Means Necessary. It has now lengthened its name to the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action and Integration and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary. If there’s one thing you can say for the loony left, it’s this: They aren’t stingy with words. BAMN was available for comic relief during the 1996 campaign for California’s Proposition 209. During that period, its members proved over and over again that the organization had been misnamed. They were not in fact willing to defend affirmative action by any means necessary; they were quite unwilling to use one method that might have won them some converts: rational argument. Instead, BAMN activists staged militant sixties’ style rallies, some small and some rather large, including one that one that shut down a freeway. They did things like stand outside a high school with a bull horn and demand that the students walk out of class in protest of 209. (A few did and were promptly cited for truancy; most just stared out the window in disbelief.) By the end of the campaign, even committed supporters of racial & gender preferences at UC-Berkeley were getting tired of BAMN’s neo-Marxist harangues and fondness for blocking traffic. I have to admit I loved them. I figured for every television camera that followed them around, Proposition 209 picked up another five to ten thousand votes. The most extreme BAMN antic occurred at Cal State Northridge where they staged a mini-riot to protest KKK Poobah David Duke’s appearance there advocating Proposition 209. The only problem was that Duke had been invited by opponents of the initiative in cooperation with BAMN. The whole thing was staged to embarrass the Yes on Proposition 209 campaign. The plan backfired only because a letter detailing the plan was accidently (well, as far as I know it was accidently) sent to the 209 campaign. By then, even the liberal media figured out what clowns these guys were. Since 209, BAMN has taken its act all over the country, mostly in the form of shouting down campus speakers who speak out against race-based admissions policies. And they have made a special (if futile) project of demanding that Ward Connerly be fired from the UC Board of Regents. The current lawsuit is called BAMN v. Board of Canvassers. It seeks to compel the board to reverse its previously issued opinion allowing signature gathering to get underway for the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (which is modeled after 209). According to BAMN and the other plaintiff organizations with which it has formed a coalition, including the Michigan Black Legislative Caucus, MCRI is misleading because it calls itself a civil rights initiative, but is in fact an anti-civil rights initiative. Apparently the definition of a “civil right” is “a right supported by BAMN.” Gay marriage politics By Tom Smith Weekly Standard has this take. Read the whole thing. The last couple paragraphs are correct I think. The Dems can muddy the waters enough that it will be hard for Bush to take much advantage of the issue. More on The Passion By Tom Smith The annoying thing about this review in Slate is that it makes a number of good points about the movie. Regarding Pilate, for example, who gets tender treatment in the film. This review by Christopher Hitchens is grotesquely unfair, an exercise in character assassination, pure and simple. But you almost have to admire it for its brutal efficiency. The logic is entirely baffling, but Hitchens, or "Hitch" I guess, to his pals, manages to cover that up pretty well. It goes like this. Hitchens heard from some unidentified guy that Mel Gibson one time made a lot of crude jokes about anal sex (as opposed to the delicate kind I suppose). It therefore follows he is a "queer basher." The term, notice, implies that Gibson has or supports physically assaulting homosexuals. Quite a leap from telling bad jokes, but that's one of the techniques in character assassination, a certain slipperiness of logic. Then the movie also proves, I infer, that Gibson is a repressed sado-masochistic homosexual himself, as were so many Nazis, as Gibson "probably" is also. I wonder if Gibson could sue Hitchens in the UK for this column? I think he could in the US, but for NY Times v. Sullivan. It's been a while since I looked at libel law, but Hitchens is at least skirting close to a number of libels per se, I would guess. At a minimum, I think a nice, well-crafted letter from Gibson's lawyers might be in order. But perhaps not. Maybe the libel law has gotten to the state that you can call someone a Nazi and a repressed sado-masochistic homosexual and be just peachy. It wouldn't surprise me. How do we know that Gibson is a Nazi and a repressed sado-masochistic homosexual? The argument goes like this. Gibson's father is a well-known holocaust denier. Asked about the holocaust in a Reader's Digest interview, Gibson replied in language, which Hitchens does not quote but paraphrases for his own purposes, that was ambiguous as to whether he thought there had been a holocaust for the Jews or not. The next bit of "evidence" is that Gibson also allegedly said, in some context or other--we are not told what-- that his father "never told him a lie." Since it is safe to assume, Hitchens says, that Gibson's father sometime or other told him his theories about the Jews, it follows that Gibson himself must regard his father's crackpot anti-Semitic theories as true. Utter, complete rubbish as an argument, of course, but undeniably slick. I think this might be what the law calls "a cooly crafted libel." Both Hitchens and the Slate reviewer assert that the Passion is an exercise in sado-masochism. I think, however, that the claim that the Passion is an exercise in sexual sado-masochism is unfair in a number of ways. First, it is a bit hypocritical. I thought in our brave new world there was nothing wrong with being a homosexual into S&M. Are you saying there's something wrong with that? I thought it was, different folks, different strokes. I think it is entirely likely, unfortunately, that word will go out among S&M types that the Passion is a movie not to be missed. I had my doubts about the guy in line in front of me, a black clad biker with whom I had a nice chat about his awesome chopper. But the fact that some, to use a value laden term, sickbirds will go to the movie for that one hopes are idiosyncratic reasons, does not mean the movie is sado-masochistic in intent. Indeed, by Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan's logic, where disapproval of something means that secretly one is drawn to it, they are the ones to be suspected for tendencies to dark sexual practices. I will leave it to readers to decide whom they would rather have babysitting their children. Personally, I would go will Mel. It is true that a lot of sadism is depicted in the movie. The soldiers torturing Jesus are clearly enjoying themselves. But in my limited experience, perverse depictions of sadism and masochism glamorize them, make them seem appealing one way or another, and that can hardly be said of the Passion. The soldiers are shown to be horribly evil, drunk with their own wickedness in fact. Sullivan and Hitchens just seem to be indulging themselves, casting slanders at Gibson and his movie in the hope some of it will stick. It's irresponsible and both of them should know better. Hitchens I would guess has no love for Christianity or Catholicism in any event, and who knows what passions are raging in Sullivan's divided mind. The Passion can be legitimately criticized for all kinds of reasons, but stooping to what is morally at least slander, even if it is not technically actionable, and I'm not even sure about that, is far beneath the standard Sullivan should hold himself to and the standard Hitchens should at least aspire to. Crown Prince Renault By Mike Rappaport The Saudis are shocked, shocked that Jews are being denied visas. February 27, 2004
New Fallout from Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Decisions: Are Racial Preferences Now Required? By Gail Heriot Eight months ago, the Supreme Court's historic decisions on affirmative action in higher education appeared to end in a tie score. While the Court upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s racial preference scheme in Grutter v. Bollinger, it condemned as unconstitutional UM’s undergraduate policy in the companion case of Gratz v. Bollinger. But appearances can be deceiving. In fact, the decisions were an overwhelming defeat for those (like me) who believe that public universities have no business giving one applicant an advantage over another based on his or her skin color--no matter which skin color happens to be in fashion at the time. Writing for the majority in Grutter, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor declared that racial diversity is a “compelling purpose” sufficient to justify extremely strong racial discrimination The bone thrown to racial preference opponents in the form of the Gratz decision had no meat on it, since it was decided on essentially technical grounds. With just a few changes, UM’s undergraduate affirmative action policy was up and running again with every bit as much racial discrimination as before. When the decisions came down, a “naive” law student asked me whether this meant that state universities would be required to racially discriminate on the basis of race. “No,” I told him, trying to suppress a look of impatience, “the Court is simply taking the position that a State may racially discriminate if it chooses to. A State is free to decline to do so, just as California did with the passage of Proposition 209.” In fact, I assisted Ward Connerly of the American Civil Rights Institute in drafting language for a Michigan popular initiative, which, if passed by voters, will do the same–decline the Supreme Court’s invitation to take race into account at Michigan public universities. But Orwell is apparently resides in Michigan. Recently, a complaint was filed in the case of Henry v. Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, now pending before the Wayne County Circuit Court. The gist of the complaint is that the proposed Michigan Civil Rights Initiative is in conflict with the Grutter decision and that the court should therefore enjoin its proponents from collecting the signatures necessary to put it on the ballot.. According to the argument, Justice O’Connor held the goal of racial diversity on campus to be “compelling” and hence Michigan is required to pursue it. You have to admit that there is a certain perverse logic to this argument. Presumably, a “compelling” purpose was originally supposed to mean not simply a good and worthy purpose, but one whose logic is inescapable. That’s why in the past, courts declined to find a compelling purpose in any case where to logic wasn’t downright unavoidable–as in the need to separate prisoners by race during a prison race riot. These days, however, it appears that a “compelling purpose” means whatever policy a majority of Justices endorses. Oh well. We'll just have to stay tuned. A hearing is scheduled for March 19, 2004. Why is Dowd not funny? By Tom Smith Talk about a bad gig. Having to read Maureen Dowd, whether you feel like it or not. Lady Tee-Hee is pretty good, though. MD had a funny column years ago on the Supreme Court arguments in Bush v. Gore, the theme of which was in part how transparently partisan were all the justices. I think I am still capable of laughing at jokes made at conservatives' expense, if they are any good. They should retire her and let David Brooks try to be funny. He comes across as nice Uncle Puffy, but he is actually a pretty mean guy in lots of ways: Just look at Bobos in Paradise. He thinks the worst of lots of different kinds of people. Funny, but wrong. But still funny. But what do I know. I find Shakespeare's comedies unbearably tedious, even though I know that makes me a Phillistine. Mistaken identity, who will marry whom, word play. I just don't care. Killing yourself so as to avoid sitting through Love's Labours Lost should not be considered a sin. Give me a tragedy any day. Miss Bradshaw Appears to Be Engaged By Mike Rappaport So Sex in the City went out with a bang and a whimper. Carrie Bradshaw unsurprisingly chose Mr. Big – make that John – over the Russian, who turned out to be a self-absorbed, status-hungry European. Big was down to earth. Paris is OK for vacations, but surely the show could no more end with Carry abandoning the City than with her giving up sex. My overall evaluation of the final episode is that it was fine as a final episode, but not as good as the show’s regular episodes. It is hard to do a meaningful final episode, especially for a comedy – remember Seinfeld. Mary Tyler Moore did a good job. Sex in the City was pretty good, but not as good as Mary. What was most interesting to me about the final episode is what it said about the show’s vision of modern women. Despite the show’s effort to portray its main characters as modern and free from the limits of the past, it is striking how much of the traditional patterns still remained. Most importantly, Carrie must choose between two alpha males – both rich and interesting. Indeed, their wealth matters a good deal, since Carrie is portrayed as pretty darn flighty, having spent what should have been a down payment on her apartment on 100 pairs of $400 shoes. Of course, the writers don’t allow her to get the money from Mr. Big; instead she receives it from her friend Charlotte. Charlotte, however, is hardly an independent women. Charlotte got the money for the down payment, as well as her Fifth Avenue apartment, the old fashioned way, through a divorce settlement. She finds her new, rich husband in much the same way, marrying her divorce lawyer. Carrie’s other two friends are bit less traditional. Miranda is a successful lawyer who is willing to marry a man who is “beneath her” socioeconomically. But even Miranda only begins to find real happiness through the sacrifices she makes for her baby and her family. Samantha, the sex pot of the group (and that’s saying something), even finds love in the end. Of course, she finds it with a male model/actor, who is 20 years her junior. At first, I thought this was unrealistic, but upon reflection, I remembered that the first two of Clark Gable’s five wives were significantly older than he was. Still, as the Gable example suggests, I wouldn’t count on Samantha’s romance lasting very long. Surely not into his 30s and her 50s. In the end, then, what can you say about the women of Sex in the City? All in all, they are smart, interesting women, but their sentiments, and the sentiments to which the writers appeal in their audience, have much in common with traditional women. In watching the final episode in which Carrie and her friends all find love and happiness at the same time, I was reminded of a Jane Austen novel, like Pride and Prejudice, where the book ends with the two smart sisters marrying rich and worthy husbands. The main difference is that Jane Austen’s heroines were virgins and Carrie and her friends are, er, not. The Virginia Conference on Brown By Mike Rappaport Pallavi Guniganti blogs from the Virginia Conference on Brown v. Board of Education. (Hat tip: Larry Solum) This question and answer, at the very end of the third day, only confirms what many of us suspected: John Harrison just about knows everything. Update: Can it really be that Pallavi Guniganti has been blogging since 1/5/00? Does anyone know the first blog or even the approximate time when they started? Update II: Pallavi Guniganti says he has been blogging since 2002, but says blogging goes back to 1997. For links, see his post. February 26, 2004
Naomi Wolf By Mike Rappaport Interesting piece on the Naomi Wolf accusation. Apparently, Wolf wrote about the incident 7 years ago, but presented a different version. Oops. The passion of watching the Passion By Tom Smith I wanted to see Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, so I stood in line at the Edwards multiplex nearest my house, something of a cultural center for my part of the county. Obviously the theatre was going to be packed, so I took my seat early and spent most of a hour fiddling with my Clie and cell phone, trying to make to do lists, return my-little-life phone calls, and so forth. The crowd seemed to consist largely of hard-core born-again sorts, with a sprinkling of Catholics such as myself. I saw quite a number of Ash Wednesday ashes on people's foreheads, which I think is just a Catholic thing. I had wiped mine off, as I always do, because I don't want to be fed to lions or otherwise made fun of. If it's more than one hour on a Stairmaster, I would have let the world go to hell. Good thing I'm not God. Though I would take the job rather than let it go to Frank Rich. I hardly know what to say about the movie. Oddly, I find myself agreeing with much of what both the movie's supporters and critics say, except for Frank Rich, with whom I refuse ever to agree with about anything. If you are any sort of Christian, it's hard to see how you could not find the movie a moving experience, the way a punch in the stomach is moving. To call the movie violent is a ridiculous understatement. It should have been rated NC-17, not R. Yet, I think there is something legitimate in depicting sadistic violence as being as evil as it is, even apart from any religious significance. Another reaction I had to the movie is difficult to explain. I felt at once there was something good and something wrong about the exposure of Christ's suffering as explicitly and graphically as was done in the movie. Old Japanese Christians, I have read, used to carry their crucifixes around in little boxes, which were covered with curtains. They would not expose the figure of the suffering Christ to prying eyes. I do not think, as some have said, that Gibson is exploiting the Passion for money. (I do think, however, he ought to consider giving every penny in profits from the movie to some charities dedicated to the alleviation of suffering, and there are a lot to choose from. For example, I bet it takes millions just to care for people who have had limbs blown off by suicide bombers. Just a thought.) Nonetheless, there is a sense in which the crucifixion is meant to be contemplated in private, not shown on a screen, or so it seems to me. I felt a little violated by the movie. One could say, well, how do you think it felt to be scourged or nailed to a cross? True enough, but I felt there was something questionable at least about the display of things that partook uncomfortably of the evil of the original act. If it was wrong to strip off Jesus's cloak and beat him, how is OK for us to watch? If you were there, would you not have covered your face for shame and grief? So why now watch it, in horribly intimate detail, on a movie screen? This may seem ridiculously pious to non-Christians, but I felt somewhat the way I feel when looking at pornography (not that I do that a lot) which is, these are things not meant to be looked at in this way. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the movie tells the story of Christ's passion powerfully from a traditionalist Catholic point of view. There are lots of little touches I wont get into that suggest Gibson has thought deeply about the event. As there are scenes of unbearable cruelty in the film, there are also some moments of great beauty and tenderness, for example those between Jesus and his Mother. Much controversy, of course, has surrounded the question of whether the movie is anti-Semitic. To say that it is would be too simple, I think. The movie does not imply that Jews suffer from bad racial or ethnic traits. To the contrary, Jesus, his disciples and family are portrayed as very Jewish. The one overtly anti-Semitic remark in put into the mouth of a sadistic Roman soldier, implying that this is the sort of beast who uses "Jew" as an epithet. On the other hand, Ciaphas is portrayed as a devious, bloodthirsty, dishonest, manipulative and self-righteous thug who forces the Pilate's hand, coercing him into crucifying Jesus to avoid a rebellion. Ciaphas is portrayed as having the saducees well in line, except for a few dissenters who are hounded quickly out of the Temple. On the other hand, the Jewish mob is portrayed as having been rounded up by Ciaphas for the show trial, rather than as some spontaneous outburst of widespread anti-Jesus sentiment. Once the march to Calvary leaves the Temple precincts, the ordinary Jews encountered seem a more mixed lot, some horrified by the spectacle and begging for mercy, some courageously, for Jesus, others getting in on the fun. That being said, I think any religious Jew and probably most non-religious Jews would have to find the movie both offensive and difficult to sit through. It would perhaps be like my sitting through a movie which depicted in horrifying detail the persecution of some Protestant sect (and there would be many persecutions from which to choose) by Catholic authorities, complete with the wheel, the rack and the pyre. It would be hard not to view such a movie as anti-Catholic, as I watched bishops handing over obviously sincere Christians to flames, and as little Catholic boys and girls made an outing of it. Jews very legitimately fear the inflammatory nature of the story of the Passion. They don't share the belief in its all-important religious significance. To them, it is yet another reason to hate the Jews. Six million dead in the holocaust and 900 from suicide bombings gives you the right to be paranoid, if paranoia it is, and I'm not sure it is. I would like to have a bottom line on my reaction to the movie, but I don't have one, at least not yet. I think for the vast majority of Christians, it will be a deeply provocative experience, not like seeing a film as much as an unexpected, even invasive religious encounter. For some self-proclaimed Christians, it will be fuel for their crack-pot ideas about the Jews. For Jews, it will be an unwelcome intrusion of a fierce kind of Christian piety into their lives. I have no doubt that this movie will be around for years to come, shown in church halls and the living rooms of fervent Christians. Whether that it is good thing, I do not know. UPDATE: Interesting take on the movie at Crumudgeonly Clerk. I still think, however, that The Passion was more violent than, say, Saving Private Ryan because of the length, detail and realism with which extended sessions of torture were depicted. The scourging scene, with little bits of flesh flying everywhere, was unlike anything I had seen before. There were scenes in SPR that depicted bodies been blown apart, but those were shocking and brief. The scourging went on and on and on. This is perhaps a silly detail, but I don't see how anyone could possibly have carried a 100 lbs + cross (how much did it weigh, I wonder) up 300 or so feet in elevation, after having been effectively flayed. Indeed, though I am no physician (and my wife who has seen plenty of real, horrible injuries, doesn't want to see the movie), I think the scourging depicted would have left any man in deep shock and shortly thereafter dead. Last night I read the scourging scene in Sister Emmerich's Dolorous Passion, and it seems that was where Gibson got the account of the scourging he followed, though she doesn't say anything about Satan lurking about, carrying a grotesque infant, a touch I found quite medieval and horrifying, which may have been the intent. An argument with evidence? Get those people out of the blogosphere! By Tom Smith My first response to Brian's response to my response to, etc. etc., concerning international comparisons of poverty, is that it is refreshing to be engaging with someone who obviously cares about the facts and wants to argue about what the big external reality out there tells us about, in this case, which country has relatively more poor people. While I confess I regard Brian as a deluded hard-lefty (and he no doubt considers me equally misled), at least we can agree on where it is useful to disagree. Probably it is prejudice, but I find the hard left frequently easier to take than the soft left, perhaps because the hard left thinks they are working with facts, economic laws (in my view fictional, but at least they're trying) and groups exercising power in the world, rather than feelings, sensitivities, nicenesses, fairnesses and all that other stuff that makes me feel like I'm trapped in a cheap restaurant where the food smells bad and they've used too much air freshener. But to counter nit-pick, having examined the Kenworthy piece Brian links to for all of five minutes, it's not clear to me how it is a measure of absolute poverty levels, even though Kenworthy says it is. On page 1125 of the article (which I am too stupid to figure out how to link to but try this) K explains that he is still measuring poverty with reference to where one is in the distribution of income in one's country (at least I think that is what he's saying) but that these correlate highly among countries, so that's OK. Well, I am nervous about that since that is how this argument started. I liked the Blackburn piece in part because it tried to measure poverty really absolutely, in terms of absolute incomes. I completely agree, however, that subsidies from the state should be considered in income, so if you get free medical care or fish or whatever in Norway, that should count in your income. (I can forsee that that would be hard to do, however, since just because the government spends $X delivering something to you, doesn't mean you get something worth $X. Just look at public education in California, which spends $17,000 a year per kid teaching them not to read -- I exagerate slightly but you see what I mean.) Also, there is the point I heard Eric Rasmussen made, though I haven't seen it, which is, the appropriate comparison would be between the US and some comparably sized group of social democratic countries, such as perhaps some large chunk of the the EU. And no leaving out basket cases, or else the US should get to drop out Mississippi and so forth. If you pick out Sweden, then I should be able to pick out Washington, Oregon and Northern California. Maybe there is a law review article in this somewhere. If so, maybe I could get a research assistance to help! Pot calls kettle black By Tom Smith John Holbo (via Volokh) complains of lack of style in the blogosphere. Having found myself unable to get through an entire post of his even though it was about me, I know what he means. Rule of style number one: Just because you find it fascinating to write something, doesn't mean it's going to be fascinating to read. There are other rules, but that one is a good start. OK, one more. Shorter is better than longer, which in turn is not as good as shorter, that being the one which is better than longer, which I think I mentioned, like Plato, I agree is worse. Longer that is. February 25, 2004
Dear Sports Illustrated: Cancel My Vacation By Gail Heriot Yes, yes, I know that Belpre Middle School in Ohio badly overreached when it suspended sixth grader Justin Reyes for bringing Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue to school. The folks at Belpre must have beach sand for brains. But young Mr. Reyes has incredibly poor timing if he is looking to get sympathy from me. When I told my colleague Mike Kelly that I was going to the local shopping center this evening to buy a bathing suit (something I hadn't done for about a decade), he let me look at his copy of the offending magazine, presumably for inspiration. Now Professor Kelly is not a vicious man; he was genuinely trying to be helpful. But rather than derive inspiration, I was sent into a deep funk from which neither I nor the store clerks at Nordstrom's and Macy's have yet recovered. It seems like I tried on 500 tiny pieces of Lycra, and every one of them revealed some horrible flaw in my body of which I had not previously been aware. I was lucky to get out of there without bursting into tears. Right now, I am not sure whether mere suspension is a strong enough punishment for Mr. Reyes (or more appropriately for each and every person who had anything to do with the production of that rotten little magazine). How about a good old-fashioned execution? Oh well, maybe I will feel better in the morning ... 60 Percent Dixie -- Ridiculous By Mike Rappaport I took the word usage quiz, and it turned out I am 60 percent Dixie. Sorry, that is absurd. I spent 26 years in the New York area, then lived 5 years around DC, and have spent the last 13 in California. Now, my father did go to college in Alabama (travelling there from his home on the Lower East Side), but you would have never known it, except when college football was on. February 24, 2004
Economics and Sports By Mike Rappaport An interesting article on the work of one of the young stars of economics, Steve Levitt. His use of sports to test behavioral predictions is extremely interesting. Hat tip: Marginal Revolution. Gay marriage politics By Tom Smith John Fund weighs in. My gut feeling is, he's wrong. I think rights asserted usually do better, and the politics of people standing up for themselves is often counter-intuitive, but who knows. Gay marriage is an issue that makes me uncomfortable. I think that bottom line, I am for whatever would strengthen families, of the mom, dad and kids sort. Gay marriage might undermine that. Or, gay marriage might strengthen families. Married gay couples, especially if they had kids, might become more supportive of families than otherwise. Maybe gay couples would set a good example of fidelity. I am skeptical, but who knows. Or maybe they would do just the opposite. Maybe gay marriage would erode the already imperiled institution of marriage. Maybe gays getting married would just be a passing fad, like disco. Or maybe it would be the beginning of the end, with polygamy and who knows what else around the corner. I have no idea, and I don't see how anyone else could, either. You never see any facts cited in the debates. It's just Human Rights! Tradition! Human Rights! etc. etc. Maybe we should try it in Oregon first and see how it goes. Should conservatives be allowed to marry? By Tom Smith I mean, should they be allowed to marry each other? I am a tolerant sort, but think of them actually having sex? Eeeeeeeeewwww. Being a conservative is, after all, a choice. Nobody is born a conservative. What a funny idea. Mommy, mommy, I want to watch Crossfire! What people think in the privacy of their home is their business, but I just don't want to hear about it. It should certainly not be taught in our schools to our children. o dear o dear By Tom Smith Kerry ahead in yet another poll. Nader to the rescue? Look at these not so great numbers. And these. And these. Last time I saw such numbers, Bush ended up winning, but I don't want to go through that again. Nice little story from Iran By Tom Smith Maybe Michael Jackson better cancel his appearance in Tehran. Oh dear, 77 percent Dixie By Tom Smith I'm 77 percent Dixie on this quiz. I find that a little troubling. It's probably unscientific, anyway. As you may know if you watch a lot of Westerns, lots of folks such as John Wayne went west after the War of Northern Aggression (just kidding!) and settled in the various Rocky Mountain states. There is some family legend to the effect that on my father's side people came ultimately from South Carolina, but as with lots of people who came west to farm, on that side of the family our origins are pretty obscure. On the other side too: they were Irish who came out to die in mines, provide security assistance to settlers whose relations with the indigenous peoples were complex, and fail miserably at farming, though respecting Idaho and potatoes, perhaps they were just ahead of their time. Good thing we discovered the law. UPDATE: OK, such as The Searchers, the best Western ever? And others. On a slightly related note, The Missing is now out on DVD. February 23, 2004
Diversity and the Welfare State By Mike Rappaport Andrew Sullivan provides this quote from an article by British intellectual David Goodhart. The claim that people are unlikely to pay taxes for the benefit of people who pursue fundamentally different values than they do strikes me as quite plausible:
More on The Ninth Amendment: Rights versus Powers By Mike Rappaport Larry Solum has written an excellent post challenging in part the federalism interpretation of the Ninth Amendment. Larry argues that the federalism interpretation is not really consistent with the text of the Ninth Amendment. As usual, Larry’s argument is careful, powerful, and helpful. His argument gets to the nub of the issue. Yet, in this case, I believe that the federalism interpretation has an answer. Larry argues that the federalism interpretation reads the text as if it said:
Now, if you are unfamiliar with the history of the Ninth Amendment, you should be skeptical of my claim. But still you must admit that it is possible that the Framers’ generation might have understood the terms in this way. To persuade you of my claim, though, I would have to show you that the Framers’ generation used the terms in such a way that “the denial of rights retained by the people” is the equivalent of “the enlargement of the legislative powers of Congress.” Imagine then that I could prove to you the following: First, the Framers generation viewed government powers and the rights of the people as mutually exclusive: Whatever was a government power was not a right of the people. By contrast, whatever was a right of the people could not be a government power. (In our world, the government can have a power at the same time that the people have a right, and in that situation, the right ordinarily trumps the power. But not in their world, at least when they talked about the Ninth Amendment.) Consequently, for the Framers’ generation, the relationship between government power and rights of the people is like a border between two countries. By moving the border between Canada and the US northward, you necessarily shrink Canada and enlarge the US. Similarly, by expanding government power, you shrink the retained rights of the people. Second, the Framers’ generation did not always think of the government having power and the people having rights. Sometimes they thought of the people having power and the government having rights. This interchangeability of rights and powers fits in with the idea that an expansion of government powers/rights contracts the peoples’ powers/rights, and visa versa. If you are with me so far, then you would, of course, want to know what my evidence is. Well, a post is not the place for anything comprehensive. So let me just give you some excerpts from classic discussions from the Framers’ generation of the Ninth Amendment. Consider first the speech by James Wilson in the Philadelphia Ratifying Convention explaining why a Constitution with enumerated powers did not need a federal bill of rights. Wilson says: "A bill of rights annexed to a constitution is an enumeration of the powers reserved.” So, for Wilson, there are powers conferred and powers reserved. Next consider Madison’s speech introducing his proposed bill of rights. Madison says:
Finally, Madison makes explicit the claim that rights end where powers begin: In a letter to George Washington explaining the Ninth Amendment, Madison writes: “if a line can be drawn between the power granted and the rights retained, it would seem to be the same thing, whether the latter be secured by declaring that they shall not be abridged, or that the former shall not be extended.” I think this evidence shows that the Framers generation sometimes used the language as I have suggested, especially in the context of the Ninth Amendment. Moreover, it also may explain why the House changed the version of the Ninth Amendment that Madison proposed into our Ninth Amendment. Madison had proposed an amendment that spoke of not construing the enumeration of rights either (1) to diminish the other rights retained by the people or (2) to enlarge the powers delegated by the constitution to the federal government. Under this theory, Madison’s statement was redundant and the House may have eliminated the enlargement of powers language because it was essentially duplicative of the diminishing the other rights retained by the people language. Of course, this change made the Ninth Amendment harder to understand. Although Madison claimed that the new language was the equivalent of the old, people like Edmund Randolph did not think the new language was clear enough. Yet, in the end, Randolph’s arguments to the Virginia Legislature that the language was insufficiently clear did not prevail and that legislature ratified the Ninth Amendment. Update: For Larry Solum's response to this post, see here; For my first post on the Ninth Amendment, see here. February 22, 2004
Rain in San Diego By Tom Smith It's raining again today. Really raining. Native San Diegans love this sort of weather. My kids love it, and profess to want to move when they grow up to some place where it rains a lot. I tell them, there are plenty of those. When it rains, natives immediately build fires, rent movies, curl up and go on about how cozy it all is. On the very rare occasions it snows in the hills around here, they simply go insane. My feeling, and that of many transplants is, been there, done way too much of that. One hour of rain and I'm, OK, enough of that, let's see some sun. Every gorgeous February day is making up for lost time, as far as I'm concerned. Between Ithaca, New Haven, England and DC, I put in some 16 years in the land of long, grey winters and short stifling summers. If I want culture, I read a book. It's February. Let a thousand flowers bloom. On the upside, my TiVO has spontaneously repaired itself. I had diagnosed a hard drive failure. But apparently it was only some software corruption which the DVR recognized and actually fixed, just as the error message said it might. But who believes those things-- "Don't touch this and maybe it will fix itself, and maybe pigs will fly out of your butt, too." I prefer to see this welcome event as divine intervention. God heard my wails of despair and nudged a few electrons here and there and it's all back. He is merciful. I say He because I have a hard time believing a female deity would care that much about my television viewing, remote controls and related phenomena, I am given to understand, being more of a guy thing, and no other female of my acquaintance viewing my television habits as any more than tolerable. Thank you, Big Guy. This Bud's for You. Mad about you By Tom Smith I think it's safe to conclude from this post that the folks over at the examined life blog at mad at me. They call me only "Mr. Smith" when I should have thought "Professor Smith" would have been more courteous, but why stand on ceremony? I have to admit I find all the advice from those on the left about how conservatives should properly complain about being discriminated against rather confusing. It has to be done, apparently, very intelligently, very carefully, with all due deference to proper standards and one should be very careful never to get angry about it. I have actually given some thought to the question "What are those on the right to do about their marginalized place in the academy?" and I not only don't see any easy answers; I don't see any answers at all. I think all there is to do really is try to build alternative institutions and take advantage of those. Places such as AEI, Heritage, Hoover (is Stanford still trying to get rid of it?) provide homes where people with verbotten ideas can still speak freely. And I suppose Catholic universities such as the one I am a tenured professor at, oddly enough, provide freedom to those who happen to agree with much of what the Church espouses. I have found a warm, dry, cosy and even very scenic bridge under which to sleep. (And just so you don't feel too sorry for me, I have turned down what many would see as more prestigious gigs because I like my little spot in the sun.) Be that as it may, in my rants about left and liberal academics not getting it about discrimination against conservatives, I am not trying to be especially clever, and no doubt succeeding in not being so. I think the justice of my position speaks for itself. It is wrong, and especially wrong for people and institutions that are supposed to committed to the truth, to take advantage of their positions to keep out their ideological competitors. Predictable, of course. But still wrong. Efforts to make it so much more complicated than that just distract from the issue. I am struck by the parallels between the sorts of justifications those on the left come up with for the plight of conservatives, with the arguments one used to hear about blacks and Jews. When I see what looks to me as somebody posing as reasonable by saying he doesn't personally believe conservatives are stupid, it reminds me of someone at an all-white club holding forth oh-so-liberally that he does not think blacks are actually stupid. If I was overly sensitive in getting that impression from the post I reacted to at the examined life blog, I'm sorry. But I am sensitive about it. I am just one of many conservative libertarian sorts who have been excluded from consideration for academic jobs I was well qualified for because of my politics. For example, more than fifteen years ago, the distinguished legal scholar Charles Allen Wright of the University of Texas called my note editor at Yale, Penny Rostow (neice of the distinguished late former dean of Yale Law School) to ask about me and whether I was, as rumored, a conservative. As Penny told me, she "didn't feel she could deny it." Professor Wright said that was unfortunate, as in that event my candidacy could go no further. It was just that simple, and I got the feeling Wright genuinely regretted this, but that was just the way it was. I think this is just like their finding out that that some otherwise qualified canditdate was a Jew, although he could "pass," back in the bad old days at White & Case or one of the other white-shoe Wall Street firms, where they worried about "the cut of a man's jib." (Don't get that reference? A jib is the foremost sail on yacht, shaped roughly like a nose. Its cut is its shape. Not liking the shape of a person's nose is slang for saying you don't like him because he's a Jew. Nice, huh? And the answers to this discrimination have names like Skadden, Arps and Paul, Weiss, which rank well above White & Case in every recent survey of law firms I have seen.) Whether it does much good, and even though I doubt that it will, I think discrimination against conservatives should be seen as just as ugly as it is, as belonging in the same category as discrimination against blacks, Jews, Catholics or gays. Liberals pride themselves on being especially fair-minded and moral, so it is especially appropriate to point this out to them. I am not sure conservatives have a lot to gain by not being prickly about it. There is that field versus house conservative debate. But to all my liberal friends who feel insulted by my rants, I would say, first, imagine an insult that actually has a big impact on your life prospects and how that feels, and then second, I would use one of the arguments used against conservatives: In the scheme of things, to feel insulted by conservatives who are mad about being discrimated against is really pretty trivial in the scheme of things, isn't it? College Football By Tom Smith I have a soft spot for UC-Boulder, but it surely looks like things have gotten completely out of hand there, and probably in college football generally. And pro football has some big issues of its own . . . But that's another story. Here's a modest proposal. Let's let the NFL draft kids who just want to play football right out of high school. They don't belong in college anyway. Let's set up some kind of monitoring system that assures the behavior of athletes has to be better than that of the average college student, not worse than that of the average goon. February 21, 2004
A strange day By Tom Smith I thought it was going to be a nice sort of day. It began rainy, which meant that my youngest's soccer game was cancelled. Not to be a spoilsport, but, oh bliss, not to have to herd the children to the minivan, drive to the school, herd them back, drive home, etc. etc., but just to sit in the blissful quiet on the couch and watch the raindrops fall. But this of course, was a complete illusion. Soon the television was on, stupid Saturday morning cartoons in full blare. Actually, I like lots of cartoons, Grim and Evil, Invader ZIM, Spaceghost, not to mention real treasures such as vintage (and extremely un-PC) Johnny Quest, but this was none of that. It was just some utterly forgettable nonsense. And this, after letting the male brood (Jeanne was at a Mom's meeting) watch Matrix Reloaded on the TV last night (we fast forwarded through the R-rated bits). I'm sorry, Matrix lovers, but what a lame movie. The martial arts bits were cool, if silly. But I digress. Then shortly after the cartoons were off, my new 140 hour TiVO suffered a hard drive failure. It is, I am pretty sure, dead. Hours of BBC murder mysteries, countless animal shows, numerous Westerns all gone, gone. In the meantime, my twelve year old used a completely forbidden word, was ratted out by my ten year old, and sentenced to a 30 minute time-out. In a completely unrelated event, he later poked his brother in the stomach with his bokken, a wooden samurai sword. (Our house is very well equipped with wooden swords, staffs and other martial arts paraphenalia.) Another time out, shortened when I learn this was in response to middle child's throwing lemons at older child. I forgot to mention during this whole period I am managing our 4 month year old, an outstanding little guy, if remarkably fat, which I gather is healthy. In this time he went through his whole repetoire of behaviors, which is to say, he slept, ate, smiled and laughed goofily, cried and pooped enormously. Then the phone rang. It was about 9:30 but felt like 5:30. It turned out my ten year old had conspired with two of his friends for them to come over to our house that day. The first would be arriving in about an hour, followed shortly by another. Mom (who was at work, seeing patients) said it was OK. They were then going to go over to another boy's house for a slumber party, but that boy turned out to be out of town. Our house became the default slumber party location. So now we are having a slumber party. Fine. I was going to cook a special dinner for my wife's birthday tonight, but OK, what is a few more boys. Chaos is chaos. I think we will be watching The Lion King 1 1/2, but I will mostly be trying to read Lawrence Lessig's acclaimed book Code. Granted, I am not in the best of moods, though I am resigned and accepting of all this, but why is it law professors can't just write like everybody else, or perhaps even a little better? I am now on about page 20, and it's getting better, but the first few pages of this book set some kind of record for pomposity and condescension. (I hear crying, so this post will have to end shortly.) It is this style of writing: "We are not convinced by reasons, but by stories. Narratives. Narratives which are stories. Stories of people. Of things. And so I will tell you a story. A story that may seem strange. At first. The story of a man and a woman. The woman grew flowers, beautiful flowers, flowers that bloomed in the spring and blah blah blah." It ends up sounding like the lead in to an episode of the Twilight Zone. And then there are all the self references. "I first had this idea when I was at Yale blah blah blah." These bits should be printed in a different font so they would be easier to skip. And the analogy of enthusiasm about free markets for post-Soviet Russia and for free markets in cyberspace, as being equally misguided, is just overblown and silly, not to mention probably wrong. Especially I suppose to libertarians types such as myself, it is really annoying to have people point to market failures in Russia and say, see! see! markets can't do without us so easily can they, can they? Yes, seven decades of war, genocide, terror, propaganda, miseducation, and general economic disaster has a way of making it difficult for a free market democracy to spring up on schedule. How very puzzling. In a better world every law professor would spend a year laboring under an old time editor with newspaper ink in his veins, a green eyeshade, and a disposition like a constipated cat. He would tell us not to say "I" unless we had to, and use sentences with subjects and verbs. Both. And not to write in fragments. Ever. "You're not f#$%ing Hemingway, you know," he would say. But I am sure it will turn out to be a swell book. (The crying has stopped. However, we may have to revise the weapons policy around here.) Wilkinson on Ideal Libertarian Theory By Mike Rappaport An interesting post on ideal libertarian theory by Will Wilkinson:
No one should be convinced that anything approximating a Nozickian or Randian minimal state, much less, Rothbardian anarchocapitalism, is worth taking seriously unless it can be shown that these theories are compatible with what we know about history and social psychology. Debating whether voluntary mechanisms can or cannot solve all the important collective action problems, or whether there could be a positive net benefit to empowering the state to provide for public goods, given public choice assumptions, is not totally unlike arguing about whether it is possible for the People's Revolution to draw its energy directly from an agricultural rather than an industrial underclass.
February 20, 2004
The End of Sex By Mike Rappaport On Sunday, HBO runs the final episode of Sex in the City. This is a big event in my house, especially with my wife. (Of course, it does not take much to get me to watch a well-written show about sex, even if does have a feminine perspective -- a chick flick for TV). Apparently, the producers filmed three endings. The question is whether Carrie, the main character, will choose the Russian artist or the American businessman; it is not entirely clear what the third ending is. But as between the first two endings, I will go out on a limb and confidently predict that Carrie will choose "Big," the American businessman. Stay tuned for more discussion following the final episode. International Comparison of Poverty By Tom Smith This appears to be data comparing poverty in absolute terms across the North American and European countries. (Go to the unofficial Right Coast typepad support site linked above and click on the link under "international comparisions of poverty." BTW, does anybody like my typepad banner? I thought it was really cool, but everyone I've showed it to so far hates it.) The US comes out having the lowest absolute poverty rate except for Canada. IMHO Canada would not be doing nearly so well if they couldn't free ride off of us and if need be resort to all those cold lakes teeming with fish. At any rate, this data, while somewhat dated, suggests European countries are much poorer than the US in absolute terms. Maybe I'm missing something. It happens. But I think this answers Brian's challenge. The data is from Blackburn, International Comparisons of Poverty in the 1995 AER. You can download it from JSTOR, but you have to be coming from a qualified URL. What people really care about By Tom Smith I have gotten more email about my SUV posts than any other posts I have written. They have been mostly pro SUV, but there have been some notable anti-SUV messages as well. We Americans care about our vehicles. A little clarification may be in order as to the sentiments I meant to express. I am not saying that overall, from a societal point of view, big SUVs are safer or as safe as cars. I know they do more damage to those they hit than do small cars. In that sense (though not necessarily in the sense of who is at fault) SUVs cause more deaths than do at least some smaller cars. I am also aware, even impressed, by how much mayhem is caused by large pickups, which are off the charts almost in the number of deaths which accidents they are involved in cause, relative to small cars. I also can see that it is plausible that people who drive SUVs and pickups may be worse drivers on average than people who drive, say, minivans, and that this may well be part of the explanation for the high fatalities of the former (and low fatalities in the latter). But all of this misses my main point. I am a very safe driver. I haven't had a moving violation in 20 years or more, I've never been in a serious accident or any kind of accident since high school, and my attitude on the road goes beyond driving defensively to driving in the grip of paranoia. If you saw how people drive in San Diego, you would see why. My point is that it is safest for me to be in a big SUV. And I am not one of those beer swilling, Yahoo shouting idiots in a huge pickup truck. As with guns, it is not a justification to take away from a responsible citizen some useful and beneficial tool, such as an SUV or a gun, that some bad or careless people misuse those same tools. It is fine with me if big SUV drivers have to prove they have never applied lipstick while merging lanes, are capable of getting through a week without consuming a case of beer, and can spell their own names. That would eliminate many pickup and SUV drivers in my part of the county and that would be fine with me. But just because lots of drivers are careless idiots is no reason to burden the use of the thing among people who drive (or shoot) carefully. In the case of SUVs, that would be putting my family at risk in order to control behavior that should be addressed more directly, for example, by better enforcement of speeding and traffic laws generally, which are widely ignored as far as I can see in San Diego and probably in many places, or even by requiring a higher grade of license to drive a really big SUV or pickup. Wanting to just force manufacturers and consumers to make and buy smaller vehicles is similar in a way to insurance regulation that has the effect of not allowing insurers to charge lower premiums to lower risk insureds. People ought to be able to take advantage of their good behavior, for example by driving a truck, such as a big SUV, which is safer for them if they know how to drive it, and does not pose an unacceptable risk to others, again, if driven properly. The analogy to guns is close. If you know how to store it and use it properly, of course having a gun makes your home more secure. The fact that some idiots leave their guns about so their kids can take them to school, is part of the case against being an idiot, not against guns. It is a serious offense to leave a gun somewhere where a child can get to it in California, and I have no big problem with that law. At least it is better than a paternalism that does not distinguish between those who need it and those who don't, which deprives the latter of ability to benefit from their own skills and good habits. So, by all means take big trucks away from people who can't drive them, ban cell phone use and make up application while driving, put more CHiPs on the roads, throw the book at drunk drivers, allow insurance companies to charge risk adjusted premiums and generally make life miserable for careless, fast, and stupid drivers. That leaves me with my great big SUV and fewer of them on the road in the wrong hands that I need to worry about, and I am happy. UPDATE: My brother informs me it is "chippies" not "CHiPs." I actually have heard California Highway Patrol officers referred to as Chips, and I live in California, but my brother knows far more about law enforcement stuff than I do, so I will defer to his opinion. The Ninth Amendment By Mike Rappaport There has been an interesting debate on the Ninth Amendment, both at Southern Appeal and throughout the Blogosphere. For Southern Appeal, start here and read up. For some other posts, look here. Coincidentally, I am covering the Ninth Amendment in my Advanced Constitutional Law Class, which focuses on constitutional history. While I have not completely made up my mind on the question, I lean strongly in favor of the traditional federalism interpretation. Under that interpretation, the Ninth Amendment was intended to address the possibility that the inclusion of a Bill of Rights would lead to an unjustified widening of the federal government’s enumerated powers. In Federalist 84, Alexander Hamilton argued that a bill of rights generally, and a provision protecting Freedom of the Press specifically, would be dangerous, because it might lead to a mistaken broadening of Congress’s enumerated powers. Hamilton writes:
Thus, under the Federalism interpretation, the “rights retained by the people” include those rights that the people enjoy against the federal government because they lie outside of the federal government’s enumerated powers. Accordingly, the Ninth Amendment would protect against the federal government’s regulation of abortion, not because there is a natural right to abortion, but because there is no enumerated power allowing the federal government to regulate it in the states. (However, Congress would have an enumerated power to regulate abortion in the District of Columbia.) One difficulty that people have with this interpretation is that it assumes that powers not conferred on the federal government are rights of the people. To our ears, that seems problematic, or as John Hart Ely put it, “a category mistaken.” But the Federalists used this formulation all of the time, saying that the enumerated powers protected people’s rights because those powers were limited. For example, as Madison stated to George Washington in a letter explaining the Ninth Amendment: “if a line can be drawn between the power granted and the rights retained, it would seem to be the same thing, whether the latter be secured by declaring that they shall not be abridged, or that the former shall not be extended. If no line can be drawn, a declaration in either form would amount to nothing.” Another criticism of the federalism interpretation is that it renders the Ninth Amendment redundant of the Tenth Amendment, but this is clearly mistaken. The Tenth Amendment guards against the mistaken claim that there are unenumerated powers; the Ninth Amendment guards against the mistaken inference that the enumerated powers are broader than they would otherwise seem, because only such a broad interpretation would be consistent with the adoption of the bill of rights. One further point about the federalism interpretation. It does not necessarily deny that some of the rights retained by the people are natural rights. After all, under the original meaning of the enumerated powers, many natural rights might exist in areas beyond the federal government’s enumerated powers. In contrast to the federalism interpretation, others have argued that the Ninth Amendment protects unenumerated, individual, natural rights that apply against the federal government even when it is exercising its enumerated powers. While there may be some support for this view, at present I am more convinced of the federalism interpretation. Without assessing the unenumerated rights position, let me just mention some of the complications of that view. Significantly, even if one does believe that the Ninth Amendment refers to unenumerated natural rights, it is not clear that this would allow judicial review to protect individual rights, whether they be marital privacy or the right to contract. First, it is not clear that the federal courts are supposed to enforce those natural rights. It is quite possible that the Framers would have thought that these natural rights should be protected through political action, such as the type of action by state legislatures that Madison and Jefferson tried to promote against the Sedition Act, or though revolutionary action, such as the Revolutionary War, which justified itself based on natural rights. Second, some of these natural rights might be group rights. For example, Madison tried to include in the Bill of Rights the following provision: “That the people have an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform or change their government, whenever it be found adverse or inadequate to the purposes of its institution.” Such a right was included in the great majority of state bills of rights, and Akhil Amar makes a strong case for showing that the Framers believed that this was a natural right (even though he does not persuade me that that right should override Article V of the Constitution). February 19, 2004
Thank God for the electoral college By Tom Smith Kerry still faces a tough road to the White House, a new Zogby poll suggests. Glenn Reynolds at home By Tom Smith The really appalling thing about this picture of Glenn Reynolds is how tidy his home appears to be. Is he a naturally tidy person? It is all very depressing. Both my wife and I tend to be a bit messy, but I think she is a much messier person than I am really, though she gets angry whenever I say this. All my piles tend to be of the same sort of thing. E.g. books, papers, clothes, etc., all in separate piles. My wife's piles actually sometimes mix species of things, which is an entirely higher order of messiness: clothes, then some papers, a kitchen implement, some photos, magazines, more clothes, and so on. The horrible thing is, I admire tidiness. I aspire to it. Really well organized things fill me with longing. We are, however, very clean. Messy is not the same as dirty. Then there are the four boys and two large dogs. I don't think my house has ever looked as tidy as Glenn's. My office is a mess too. Sigh. But, we here at the Right Coast also have aspirations to switch to Typepad. You can, as Glenn shows, upload photos very easily, which would open to me a whole new dimension of the sort of vulgar humor I have been told law professors should be above. I agree with that sentiment; it is just that I suffer from frequent collapses of will power. I resolve to try to keep everything on this blog on a high plane, except when I just cannot help myself. When you're all alone By Tom Smith This kid should try being a conservative at an AALS function. Via instapundit. (Don't worry. I don't feel sorry for myself. I spent four years in a big D.C. law firm and a year playing football for a coach named Mush, whose idea of fun was to make us beg for water after hot August practices. I know how lucky I am.) Your Core By Tom Smith The big fitness thing now is strengthening the "core", the muscles around your abdomen and pelvis that stabilize you as you do anything else. There seems to be a lot to it, especially if you are someone who has any kind of back problems. Here are some good core exercises, from the Mayo Clinic. Oddly, the guy doing them looks a lot like me after I buzz my head (cheaper than Supercuts) except his skin is a few tones darker. Kudos to the Mayo Clinic for using a real guy instead of some model with an 8 pack. Good explanation from those famous doctors in the snowy north. More on the core later. In the meantime, don't do what I did and buy a $1500 home gym. You're much better off with an exercise ball (scroll down to "fitness ball . . . "), a bench and some dumbbells. Save your money and buy one of these, the Holy Grail of any gym's torture devices. Oh yeah, and about diets. Worthwhile Canadian Scandal By Maimon Schwarzschild Corruption scandals are engulfing the new Prime Minister of Canada, Paul Martin, and the Liberal Party which he heads. The Liberal Party has dominated Canadian politics for decades, and comes close to monopolizing it: there is really no other national party in the country. The scandals couldn't happen to a nicer group. The Liberals have a sniffy Euro-leftish view of the United States, and Liberal dignitaries keep calling George W. Bush a "moron" even when the microphone turns out to be embarrassingly open. Corruption and self-righteousness: who could imagine that those would go together? For a fascinating and hilarious account of the scandalous goings-on, read Andrew Coyne's new blog. (Coyne is hilarious in an understated Canadian sort of way, of course. Coyne's day job is as a journo on Canada's National Post.) (If the ins and outs of Coyne's story seem complicated at first, keep scrolling down. It soon starts to make sense. And it gets funnier, too, the more you read.) To appreciate the in-grown quality of what is going on with the Liberals, it may help to know that Paul Martin, the new Liberal Prime Minister, is the son of Paul Martin (senior), a Liberal cabinet minister in the 1950s and 60s who perennially and unsuccessfully fought for the Liberal leadership, finally losing out in 1968 to Pierre Elliott Trudeau. One of Trudeau's proteges was a tough Quebecer named Jean Chretien, who went on to become Prime Minister in 1993 and has now just yielded the job, very ungraciously, to Martin (junior). By all accounts, Chretien and Martin hate each other. While in office, Chretien -- ably assisted by various Liberal and Quebec cronies -- apparently kept themselves busy diverting hundreds of millions of dollars of public money to themselves, to their relatives, and to pork barrel projects in a handful of Quebec parliamentary districts, especially Chretien's. (Chretien's district, or "riding" as parliamentary districts are called in Canada, was the town of Shawinigan, Que: so inevitably we have the "Shawinigan shenanigans".) (Or as Mark Steyn says, "A Shawinigan win-again".) No one accuses Paul Martin of having been directly involved in the Shawinigan shenanigans. But since Martin was Minister of Finance in Chretien's government, and since Martin's Leader and his party were evidently and exuberantly corrupt, questions like What did he know? When did he know it? and Why didn't he do anything about it? are rearing their ugly head(s). Goodness how sad, as Evelyn Waugh would say. Still, what can you expect of a country whose political leaders, in so many cases, turn out to be the sons of prominent politicians themselves? Don't Let McGovern be McGovern By Mike Rappaport The New York Times published a letter by George McGovern that is one of the most ridiculous I have ever read. Given all the discussion of the stupidity of conservatives, I am hesitant to call the letter stupid, but what the hell -- it is. McGovern is a parody of himself. (Hat tip: Opinion Journal) February 18, 2004
Speaking of SUVs By Tom Smith A loyal reader has pointed out to me this utterly tendentious and misinformative article about SUVs in a recent New Yorker. Besides its stupid attacks on women who wear hiking boots at the mall--maybe because they're comfortable and at under $100 relatively inexpensive and look cool-- Mr. Gladwell completely misrepresents the facts about SUV safety. And if Gladwell knew anything about women he would know they almost always have a good reason for wearing what they are wearing on their feet. Here's the bad news. The safest vehicle on the road is the largest SUV you can get your hands on. Gladwell has two academics who have put together numbers showing SUVs are much more dangerous. I think I'll rely instead on the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety, which is funded by the industry that makes more money the fewer claims they have to pay. Just a little quote for you: Vehicle size and weight are important characteristics that influence crashworthiness. The laws of physics dictate that, all else being equal, larger and heavier vehicles are safer than smaller and lighter ones. In relation to their numbers on the road, small cars have more than twice as many occupant deaths each year as large cars. Size and weight are closely related. Large vehicles typically are heavy, and small ones are light. But these two characteristics don't influence crashworthiness the same way. Vehicle size can protect you in both single- and two-vehicle collisions because larger vehicles usually have longer crush zones, which help prevent damage to the safety cage and lower the crash forces inside it. All else being equal, you're safer traveling in a passenger vehicle that's larger and heavier than in one that's smaller and lighter. Vehicle weight protects you principally in two-vehicle crashes. In a head-on crash, for example, the heavier vehicle drives the lighter one backwards, which decreases forces inside the heavy vehicle and increases forces in the lighter one. All heavy vehicles, even poorly designed ones, offer this advantage in two-vehicle collisions but may not offer good protection in single-vehicle crashes. Look at the bar graph and see how well large SUVs do compared to even the largest cars, let alone small cars. Then take a look at Gladwell's implication that you're safer in a small, well designed car like the Porsche Boxster. Utter rubbish. Here's what small cars look like after hit by big cars. Here's a brochure produced by the manufacturers on SUV safety, but it looks pretty well documented, and it has pretty graphs. And yes, I concede pickups are dangerous to themselves and others. My dream of a gigantic crew cab with a camper on back for remote desert camping trips may have to go unrealized. Suburban with a trailier maybe. I'll keep you posted. What a relief! By Tom Smith I can only say I am greatly relieved that this non-conservative academic is not very troubled about discrimination against conservatives in the academy. What with 9/11 and all that, there is all together too much anxiety in this world. It is a relief, a truly soothing realization, that liberals and others on the left are not racked with guilt, anxiety or that urge to do something, however awful the consequences, that so often arises in them when they see an injustice. As someone on the right, I am relieved personally, because if liberals thought something should be done about hiring more conservatives, they would come up with some policy that would discredit us and undermine us, all the more so because they were trying to help us. Furthermore, I think we should be grateful that some liberals are so broad minded, so, well, liberal as to understand our pain, our frustration at being excluded from their wonderful little world. It is good to know that conservatives are not discriminated against, but rather take themselves out of the running for academic jobs, thus absolving those who would discriminate against them if they had the chance of having to do the dirty work of actually discriminating against them. It's nice when the gentlepersons' agreement is self-enforcing like that. Sort of like the Invisible Hand. And the point that someday conservatives will dominate the world anyway, so liberals should make hay while the sun shines, so to speak, shows an ethical sensitivity that just shouts "PhD in philosophy." I have to admit, not being professionally trained in ethics and the like, that that one had not occurred to me. I know I have made this point before, but let me just suggest a little method to philosophers and others in fields intellectually superior to us mere lawyers. A thought experiment. Try substituting "blacks" or "Jews" into your propositions about conservatives and just see how it sounds. "I personally don't subscribe to the view that blacks are stupider than other people . . ." Oh, you don't! Somebody call the NAACP! This man has an award coming! Or, "Jews are going to take over the world, so a little discrimination against them now won't do that much harm . . ." Careful with that one. Maybe you shouldn't cede ground to the Jews so easily. Give them an inch and they take a mile, you know. So far the left's position in this little internet kerfuffle over conservatives in the academy could be summed up almost fairly as, conservatives are wicked, and conservatives are stupid, and in any event, we don't discriminate against them, they just mysteriously choose not apply for jobs. (Mysteriously, having sat through classes about how America started the cold war, committed genocide against various groups, or has a bad culture, or economic system, or that art that mocks it is just swell, etc. etc. We went to college, you know.) I just have one question for you: Would you like ice in that mint julip, Massa? In Defense of SUVs By Tom Smith So now Steve Bainbridge wants to attack SUVs, apparently because they slow down his BMW convertible or Porsche Boxster or whatever he's driving these days. Enough is enough. As to social responsibility: who cares about social responsibility? People who don't like big vehicles usually live in bigger houses which use up more electricity, oil, gas and so on. Nobody is asking them to live in smaller houses. Oh, no, it's all, your slate master bathroom is just so fabulous, Amanda!, and where did you get that counter material?! People who can't afford real estate need a way to puff themselves up too, you know. As to safety. This argument really bothers me. I'm supposed to drive my precious children around in a small car so some idiot can kill them because he's talking to his broker on his cell phone, all so two hundred years from now you won't be able to grow palm trees in Minneapolis? Well here's the news. I don't care. I would be happy with a law that said people who can't spell SUV (and there are plenty in my neighborhood) can't drive them, but responsible people like me should be able to get a Ford F-350 crew cab with all-terrain tires and the optional V-10 if they want to. And I want to. In the meantime, as the bumper sticker says, go ahead and honk again, I'm reloading. Oh, OK, I wouldn't really shoot you. But don't be too sure. You know what kind of people drive those things. Did I mention this interview I heard with Royal Robbins or some other ultra-rich founder of a climbing gear company? He was all about, oh, those nasty people who drive SUV's. They don't care about the earth. What was he doing in a few days? Flying his private jet down to Patagonia to climb and commune with nature. One trip like that in a jet burns up more fuel than hundreds of SUVs in a year. When every rich Hollywood liberal gives up their jet, I'll give up the SUV I am going to get someday. The real reason SUV haters hate SUV's is they can't stand the symbolism of it. 5000 pound Mercedes are fine. Have you ever heard anyone say, oh, those movie stars' cars are so long. Nope, limousines are fine. But if it's boxy or you can actually haul something in it, oh, dear, the masses are getting above themselves. Too many children. Why can't they just have one or two like Nigel and I. And those big dogs! What's wrong with a Bichon? If I can't have my suburban then every LA entertainment industry flea shouldn't be able to have his or her Lexus either. It should be about mass, not style. Michael Moore is traveling around promoting his book, a terrible waste of trees, with an entourage in SUVs. No doubt his bodyguards are armed as well. When he writes, "Dude, who took my SUVs and guns" I'll give up my vehicular ambitions. I've rented an Excursion. They're great. They drive surprisingly nicely. You put on your left turn signal and you see people start to slow down two blocks away. They call it "road presence." I like that. This is America. If we start to run out of air, we can make the French ride bicycles. They look cute that way. Israeli Arabs Like Freedom in the Zionist Entity By Mike Rappaport Israeli Arabs are upset that Prime Minister is considering ceding their community to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. While the rhetoric of Israel’s critics throughout the world would appear to suggest these Arabs would prefer being ruled by their fellow Arabs, they don’t, according to this story:
The idea of ceding some of these population centers appeals to many Jewish Israelis, who fear that the Arabs, with their higher birthrate, eventually will outnumber the Jews in Israel. In 50 years, the Israeli-Arab population has increased from 160,000 to 1.2 million; there are 5 million Jews in Israel. "Mr. Sharon seems to want us to join an unknown state that doesn't have a parliament, or a democracy, or even decent universities," said Mr. Allo, who studied law and social anthropology at predominantly Jewish colleges in Haifa and Netanya. February 17, 2004
Kerry squeeze update By Tom Smith We are not too proud to keep you posted on this sort of thing. Admit it. You want to know. Well, maybe not. But I do. Spend all day doing little math puzzles By Tom Smith It's good for you. Really. UPDATE: Here's a famous one some of you may recognize. Consider "triangular numbers." They go, 1, 3, 6, 10, 15 . . . Note that the pattern is 1, 1+2, 1+2+3, 1+2+3+4, and so on. They're triangular because they are the number of dots that can be put in a triangular, bowling pin type pattern. The sum of all triangular numbers is obviously infinite. But what is the sum of the reciprocals of these numbers, i.e., 1/1 + 1/3 + 1/6 + 1/10 . . . Huygens gave this problem to Leibnitz to solve, and he came up with a very clever solution (he was a genius, after all). Supposedly contemplating it and similar problems led him to discover calculus. I showed it to my middle boy, Patrick, and the solution and said "isn't it weird and beautiful?" He said, "more weird than beautiful." If you can make it there By Tom Smith Why can't we have judges like this in San Diego? Have they done a Law and Order episode on Her Honor yet? How media bias works By Tom Smith Kerry is now the official candidate of the media. Here's how ABC covers Dean. Via instapundit. Where would you rather be born? By Tom Smith Brian Leiter has responded to my earlier posts that it was far from clear one would be better off being born into a Western European social democracy than into the good ol' USA. While it would be fun for this to deteriorate into a regular mud wrestling contest, I suspect that the issues involved are more subtle and interesting than that. I promise my readers more scurrilous attacks on the left in future postings, just not this one. First, I would be very surprised if both the median and mean income of Americans in real terms (say, 2004 Euros, just to be multilateral about it) were not higher than all but a very few countries. I think Switzerland is higher and perhaps some small oil producing states. If this is the case, then a risk-neutral person, having just been yanked out of the well of souls, would tell the angel of destiny (or whatever s/he is called) to please, pull his name-to-be out of the urn marked USA, rather than say France or Germany. As our annoying law casebooks say, do you see why? The expected annual income in real terms would have to be higher for someone to be born randomly into the country with the higher mean income. But, second, it is fair to object that risk neutrality does not really reflect our true psychological attitudes towards risk, nor perhaps our intuitions about justice. Rawls certainly did not think so. I would be willing to bet that France and Germany have a somewhat lower mean income, but also a lower variance among incomes. Their income bell curves, like their figures, tend to be smaller in the waist. While the latter is unambiguously a good thing, the former should be more controversial. If you were risk averse enough, you would by definition choose to be in the country in which you expected to be less rich, but at least could worry less about being poor. Perhaps it follows from this that justice (or something like it) requires universal social insurance. I doubt it, but this is a big issue, and not one I want to get into now. Personally, I would choose to be a tenured professor at a French university, have my kids' university, health care, retirement, vacations and God knows what else paid for by the state, with access to great book stores, museums, coffee, wine, food and the Alps, and with the streets crowded with beautiful women who like to dress well. Having been born French, I am assuming, bien sur, that all the annoying characteristics of the French would not bother me. Every devil loves the marsh where he was born! However, I think it would be hard to construct a theory of justice out of these preferences, indeed, vices. Finally, you have to do something with the important fact that less socialist countries such as our own are much more dynamic in the sense that who is poor tends to be constantly changing. People are constantly moving up out of (and down into) poverty. It is really unjust when the great grandson of an industrial titan ends up poor because he is a disgusting slacker? Conversely, if you knew, for example, that you had an IQ of 140, you would be crazy to choose any but the USA urn. Presumably some credit must be given to modes of political economy that allow people to realize their talents more fully. Here I think the winner pretty clearly has to be more economically (and socially) open societies such as that in the US. Except conservative academics, of course. We're discriminated against. John Edwards: Man of the People By Mike Rappaport Two stories about the trial lawyer who would be President. First, he regularly gives a speech about a girl who cannot afford a coat to keep her warm, even though such coats are available in thrift shops for $5 (and his protectionist policies would increase the price of such coats). Second, he lives in a 14 room Georgetown house worth $3.8 million (just a block away from John Kerry's $4.3 million house.) The second story also has an interesting discussion about John Kerry. Although neither Edwards nor Kerry are much involved with their neighbors, their "neighbors reject the idea that Kerry or Edwards might be detached from the realities of ordinary American life. 'We see John on Nantucket, and he's one of the guys, one of us,' [a neighbor] said of Kerry. 'We've never felt him to be patrician.' Yes, he is a regular guy. Plays squash with me at the club every week. Often gives me a ride in his limo. February 16, 2004
Missing Proletarians By Maimon Schwarzschild Fascinating Washington Post piece by Nick Eberstadt (registration required) on the shrinking population in Russia, and the trouble it portends for that country. The original Latin meaning of "proletarians", of course, was "people who produce children for the state". It wasn't -- or shouldn't have been -- entirely a sneer. Or, as Abraham Lincoln might have said, "God loves the proletarians; He made so many of them; and there would be serious demographic trouble if He stopped doing so". My Favorite Statistics Joke By Gail Heriot Justice Antonin Scalia is visiting the University of San Diego School of Law today. Some of my fellow Right Coasters and I just came back from the faculty luncheon in his honor. His visit reminded me of one of my favorite statistics jokes, which he told in connection with who-knows-what back when I was a student of his at the University of Chicago Law School. Since then I've repeated it with appropriate attirbution every time I get the chance (and you'd be surprised at how often this joke comes in handy to help flatten a flawed statisitcal argument). Nino: "You know, I really beat the odds, I really did. I'm told that one out of four children born in the world today is Chinese. But I've got eight children and not one of them is Chinese." February 15, 2004
More on Crooked Timber By Mike Rappaport My post about Crooked Timber appears to have been a bit misunderstood. Kieran mistakenly, although understandably, says that I do not like Crooked Timber. Not true; I enjoy Crooked Timber and placed it on our blogroll myself some months ago. [If this is how you speak about blogs you like, how do you speak about blogs you don’t?--ed.] Others have viewed my post as some sort of attack piece attempting to show that various Crooked Timber posts were mistaken. Also not true: even dumb right wing academics can find better substantive criticisms than, for example, that someone happens to know a lot about far left history. My main point, which I stated in the first and last paragraphs of the post, is that Crooked Timber is the blog which is most representative of the academy. And like academia, Crooked Timber is consistently left, which to those on the right can become tiresome. My comments on the various Crooked Timber posts were intended to emphasize the varying ways that leftism works its way into Crooked Timber posts: a post using an unfair insult to conservatives as the jumping off point to criticize them, a post that defended the superiority of the European Welfare States, a post that assumed a context of hostility towards Donald Rumsfeld, and a post acknowledging a special interest in the history of the far left. None of the posts was necessarily mistaken; all of them were consistently leftist. Of course, there is nothing wrong with Crooked Timber being leftist or any blog having a political perspective. Fortunately, the blogosphere is politically diverse. Rather, it is the consistent leftism of the academy that is the problem. But if those outside of the academy want to see what it is like, I stand by my observation: the best place in the blogosphere to find out is Crooked Timber. February 13, 2004
Drudge By Mike Rappaport Now, this is really impressive: According to Andrew Sullivan, Drudge gets about 7.5 million hits a day. Lies By Mike Rappaport A couple of interesting posts on lying at Marginal Revolution. See here and here. Straight Talk about Crooked Timber By Mike Rappaport Of all the blogs that I have visited, the one that appears most representative of academia these days is Crooked Timber. (For other sites that may feel slighted by this comment, don’t be: it is not necessarily a compliment.) As with academia, the site is filled with liberals or leftists. The other day I was reading through the site and came across these posts: Kieran: A discussion growing out of the comments by Duke Philosophy Professor Robert Brandon, who claimed the lack of intelligence of conservatives explains their underepresentation in the academy. The post starts: “I’ve never found the argument that conservatives are discriminated against in academia terribly compelling.” (That’s a shock.) He then criticizes conservatives for only recognizing institutional bias when it affects them. So a prejudicial remark is made about conservatives and this writer sees it as an opportunity to attack conservatives. Just precious. Chris: A discussion of whether one is better off in a European Welfare States or the US. Chris responds to a quick line at Volokh rather than to the more substantive criticism of the statistics he relies on by our own Tom Smith. For example, the statistics purport to measure poverty but actually measure distribution. As a result, even if the poor in the US are richer than the middle class of country X, there may be more poverty in the US. A common tactic in the academy. Hopefully, Chris just didn’t see Tom’s criticism. John: A discussion of Donald Rumseld’s masterful rhetoric on “known knowns” and “known unknowns.” Although he criticizes Rumseld’s rhetoric, John actually defends Rumsfeld’s substantive point. John is reacting to what he terms a “general derision” of Rumsfeld’s claim. I hadn’t noticed any general derision, only admiration for its cleverness, but perhaps Fox News chose not to report the criticism of Rumsfeld's remarks. Harry: Harry writes that a “student wants to know what books an educated person should have read, that have been published since 1970. I am just about the worst person for him to come to, since unlike all my CT colleagues I am narrowly read and utterly lacking in erudition in subjects other than cricket, children’s TV, the history of the far left, and my professional interests.” Another surprise. I could go on, but you get the idea. If you are not an academic, this is the place to go to see what most of it is like. Update: More on Crooked Timber above. February 12, 2004
I want my SUV By Tom Smith This is why I want an SUV (either a Suburban or an Excursion). We currently drive a Volvo wagon (I know) and a Ford Windstar (I know). Via Boots and Sabres. A smart comment By Tom Smith As a conservative academic, I am too stupid to figure out how to link to a comment on another web page so just go here and scroll down to Dean Howard's post. For what it's worth, I think he's right. I didn't know about Jane Galt before this little link fest, which I guess proves how out of touch I am. Check out her site; it's full of webby goodness. Reasons for Bush Optimism By Mike Rappaport Here are 21 reasons why Bush will win the election. Many of the arguments make a lot of sense. Not Again! By Tom Smith You may have seen this already, but here's the link to Drudge, who is reporting intern problems with Senator Kerry. As St. Boniface is sometimes credited with saying, "the higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of its butt." Maybe it sounded more delicate in Latin. If this is true, and I hope it isn't, all I can say is, Jeez, how stupid can one guy be? Well, maybe it's not true. Or maybe it is true, but not as important as Ken Starr's violation of our privacy rights. Or threatened violation. Or the appearance of a threatened violation. It's so hard to keep it all straight. Here's an interesting bit on the would be First Lady: Heinz Kerry has been talking up a storm lately, with a frankness that has her husband's campaign staffers up in arms. She told the Washington Post that she's lucky not to be throttled in the middle of the night when Kerry has Vietnam flashbacks. She described her prenuptial agreement and Botox treatments to Elle, and made a gunshot sound when asked what she'd do if Kerry were unfaithful. She never really suspected either of her husbands of cheating, she added. "What I expect of them, they have a right to expect of me," she said. "Maybe I'm into 18-year-olds." She told the Boston Globe of her shock and pleasure at seeing blacks in South Africa, where she was sent to boarding school from her home in Mozambique at age 13. "Our guys weren't so black and so big," she said. This month, Vanity Fair is scheduled to weigh in with that profile for which Heinz Kerry was posing in Georgetown. February 11, 2004
The Fifth Column in the FBI By Mike Rappaport Here is the first paragraph from the story: "When linguist Sibel Dinez Edmonds showed up for her first day of work at the FBI, a week after the 9-11 attacks, she expected to find a somber atmosphere. Instead, she was offered cookies filled with dates from party bowls set out in the room where other Middle Eastern linguists with top-secret security clearance translate terror-related communications." There are several charges of improper behavior and crimes in the remainder of the story. I really hope these allegations are not true, but there seems to be a fair bit of evidence in the story to support them. Why are we finding out about this only now? Eat the Rich Part 2 By Tom Smith You may have missed this little tidbit in the New York Times and if you did, lucky you. If there was some way to take half of Mr. Koch's obscene collection of stuff and use the money to, say, pay for decent educations for a few thousand poor kids, who could be against it? I guess that makes me some sort of consequentialist. The problem is, if the State of California took the money for use on education, they would use it to pay for workshops for teachers on how to teach workshops to teachers on the principles of workshops, held at Palm Springs. Or if Gray Davis were still governor, he would probably just give it his friends. Then there is the whole trickle down thing. The luxury tax on yachts of some years back succeeded in putting a lot of honest carpenters and other true craftsmen out of work. While I don't make a fetish out of equality as do, in my opinion, many on the left, I fully recognize the evil in some having way too much while others have not nearly enough. The devil is in the alternatives. Our wonderful public school system here in San Diego county manages to spend $17,000 per student, as much or more as the most exclusive private schools in town, and still do an impressively awful job. I have run various thought experiments by myself -- what if there were some secret SWAT team that would swoop down on the Koch's of the world and steal a few millions of baubles for feeding and clothing the poor? Would that be a good thing? You could not do it more than a few times before the rich would invest more in security, keep more money in vaults, and then there is still the unemployed yacht carpenter problem. It's easy to see that to control for this behavior, you would have to start regulating behavior more, and pretty soon you're living in a place with far too little liberty, not even counting the danger your do-gooders will go bad. I don't see what would be wrong, however, with not glorifying the rich, unless it's for good works. The New York Times and other cultural institutions just undermine social solidarity by valorizing some creep who has to buy everything in sight. More on conservatives in academia By Tom Smith No discrimination against conservatives at Duke. (via andrewsullivan.com). It's just that we conservatives happen to be stupider. Unfortunately, I have not noticed this goes along with any increased sense of rhythm, fondness for music, long lazy days in the sun, loose shoes or irresponsible sex. Or any too great aggressiveness, over-fondness for money, or tendency to want to split hairs in argument. Or an over-fondness for strong drink, sentimental music and poetry, having too many children and not washing them often enough. Or, for that matter, having hair that is too oily, being given to outbursts of temper, and so on and so on and so on. I guess to be able to tell what stereotypes are really true, and which are based on self-serving, narrow minded, glib, naive and foolish prejudice, you have to have the natural intellectual superiority of a person of the left. It's a good thing they don't believe in eugenics or we'd really be in trouble. Ooops. Sorry. I forgot about Planned Parenthood. Bush's National Guard Service By Mike Rappaport Good post by Stephen Bainbridge on the irrelevance of George Bush's national guard service. (By contrast, the photo of John Kerry with Jane Fonda, mentioned below, is arguably relevant since Kerry has made his behavior concerning the Vietnam War an issue in the campaign.) Interview with Abigail Thernstrom By Mike Rappaport I recently watched on my Tivo an extremely interesting booknotes interview with Abigail Thernstrom, discussing her new book No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning. You can watch it here. Thernstrom comes across as soft spoken, intelligent and committed to improving education for minorities. She is a pretty good spokesperson for a position with which I strongly sympathize. Although I don't usually read books on education policy, I may decide to purchase it. One aspect of the interview struck me, though. She stated:
February 10, 2004
Kerry and Fonda By Mike Rappaport The Washington Times has this 1970 photo of John Kerry and Jane Fonda at an antiwar rally. Chun makes irresponsible accusation; dog barks By Tom Smith Chun the Unavoidable is accusing me of making up the story that Nixon appointed a black ambassador to Sweden to get even with them for opposing the Vietnam war. I am not making this up. I will look up the guy's name, but his son was in my class at Cornell and one of the few memorable players on the otherwise pathetic Cornell football team. The story was told to me by famous cold war revisionist historian Walter LaFeber at a dinner party at his house at which said young man son of the ambassador was a guest, as was I. Oh those giddy days. I was feeling kind of guilty that I had won a Rhodes Scholarship being neither black nor a football player (I was a liberal in those days, and a good thing too, or I would have had a heck of a time winning a Rhodes), then said young man told me about his private school in Switzerland, and other aspects of his amazingly privileged life. My guilt went away. But, Chun my dear chap, I will look up the name for you. Other loyal readers may rest assured their reporter remains unscathed. UPDATE: Here's the guy. I see Dr. Holland himself went to Cornell, and played football, so son was following in father's footsteps. As to his reception in that chilly socialist paradise to our far Northeast, I suppose that's a job for the NYT archives. February 09, 2004
The city on the hill By Tom Smith I should have known better than to have started an argument with Professor Leiter about how to rank things, let alone about ranking the relative luckiness of someone born into the US compared to someone born into Norway, the Netherlands or Germany. Brian points to statistics that suggest poverty, infant mortality, and various other measures make the US worse off. The measures are notoriously tricky, and I do need to get on with my own little life. But just to suggest how much salt must be taken with these numbers, take a look at the table that is supposed to be about poverty (and are from the site Brian directs us to). The numbers come from the Luxembourg Income Study, which of course makes me immediately skeptical, but nevertheless.: Scanning down the columns we do indeed get to about 17% poverty in the US, while Sweden has only about 6.5%. Oh dear! Are we really that bad? But wait a second. In 1992 the poverty rate in the Slovak Republic was only 2.1%? In Russia, where misery is an art form, only 18% in 2000? I don't think so! What are these numbers, anyway? Looking to the top of the chart we find the "poverty line" is defined as a percent of the median income. If you are below 50 percent of the median income, that's it, you're poor. Shut up and go back to watching your color TV. In other words, if you come from a poor country, such as Slovenia or Russia, you have a much better chance of not being poor. Geez. I hope the angel that guards the veil of ignorance explains this to people, or does s/he say, "No, really, you have a better chance of not being "poor" in Slovenia!" I think we need a measure of the poverty of poor people in the US that does penalize us for being so rich. As to infant mortality, we don't look so bad on this UN chart from the site Brian links to. We are a 7 compared to UK's 5, whatever that means. The Central African Republic is about 100, which I take it is very, very bad. More to the point, I'm not sure how one should compare US infant mortalities with countries that seem to be getting out of the baby-making business as fast as they can. Europe is going through a birth rate collapse, a singularly odd and disquieting thing, I should think. We know from long experience with the French that they know how to make babies. So why don't they? Maybe humans are like other organisms that don't reproduce well in captivity. (Oh, OK, just kidding. Mostly.) I would also want to hold out for some better numbers on actual wealth (not just distribution), such as some based on consumption (we ought to have an edge there!). Also, I think numbers on self-reported happiness would not be irrelevant. And there are some other things to bear in mind. If you were a poor Hispanic family looking for a place to live, you would have better luck getting to Mars than getting into Sweden. They have this thing about people with dark skin. To get even with them for opposing the Vietnam war, Richard Nixon, who had nothing if not a wicked sense of humor, appointed an African-American ambassador to Sweden. They were furious. The new ambassador was greeted at the airport by Swedes brandishing signs bearing the N word. Those darn Swedes. How about some numbers on alcoholism and suicide? Would those be relevant? My work is not done. But I need to read for my contracts class tomorrow, since in the morning I must testify against the miscreant who has been hanging phony checks around San Diego with my name on them. I am trying to get him a deal where the state will pay all of his expenses. Organ Preferences By Mike Rappaport A post that should be shocking but in our day and age is not -- on how a new affirmative action system for organ donations will result in more deaths in order to increase the number of minority recipients of organs. Zakaria on Frum and Perle By Mike Rappaport Fareed Zakaria has an extremely interesting review of Frum and Perle's, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror (a book which I have not yet read). Although I consider myself to be somewhat of a neocon in foreign policy, Zakaria makes a strong argument that Frum and Perle's policies are unrealistic because they ignore the fact that policies will not succeed without the support of other nations and their citizens. While Zakaria pushes the criticism a bit too far for my tastes -- at times he seems like a multilateralist democrat -- in the main he has a good point. While it is sometimes necessary to take unpopular actions against terror, it is also important at other times to defer to world opinion. Compromises need to be made and Zakaria suggests that Frum and Perle are not willing to make enough of them. February 08, 2004
The last respectable prejudice By Tom Smith It's still socially acceptable apparently to discriminate against Catholics. Ask yourself whether the professor in question could have been sacked for similar statements about being a devout Muslim, Jew, feminist, socialist or whatever. I realized a long time ago that I at least probably have more intellectual freedom at my little Catholic university in the sunshine than I would have most places. When I was interviewing at the University of Oregon years ago I was shocked by one professor's remarks along the lines of "Catholics are a bunch of money grubbers," a prejudice I had not heard before. And I have had a similiar fear of no-God put into me at other distinguished academic institutions. Here at USD, I could probably go off on some rant about abortion or family values, offend the heck out of at least some of my students, and probably get nothing but support from my administration. That's nice, I think. (And thanks to instapundit for the pointer. Is it still necessary to hat tip sites that get a gazillion visitors a day?) Tivo-ing Janet Jackson By Michael Rappaport Eugene Volokh reports that Tivo "said the exposure of Jackson's breast during her halftime performance was the most-watched moment to date on its device." I have a DVR, which is similar to a Tivo but provided by my cable company. I had taped the entire Superbowl, having watched the first and fourth quarters live. I had not even heard of the incident until the next day, and so went back to the tape to see what all the fuss was about. But I didn't do it out of prurient interest. There was a great deal of controversy about the incident and public policy issues were significant. Really. (And, of course, I would read the articles in Playboy, except I don't get the magazine.) February 07, 2004
SFGate on boobgate By Tom Smith The writer of this piece in SFGate on Ms. Jackson's escapade is overwrought but amusing. Thanks to Brian Leiter for the link. Personally, I found the most deeply disturbing thing about the whole performance watching Justin Timberlake or whatever his name is try to dance. The only white guy on the stage who could dance was wearing a leather corset and looked like he could bench 400 pounds. For all I know he may be drafted next time around. He looked like tight end material. Ooops. Ahhh. No pun intended. All I know is that it was, shockingly enough, a pretty good game. Like Professor Rappaport, I Tivo'ed it and had to go back to watch the infamous mammiary pop on replay. The whole show was unbelievably tacky, as were a lot of the ads. But football has always been too good for most of its fans. Just look at the Raiders. Bainbridge on Bias at the LA Times By Michael Rappaport Great post by Stephen Bainbridge criticizing the critics of Bush's WMD commission. Here are a couple of nuggets: "The Democrats are criticizing the composition of President Bush's WMD panel. Or, more precisely, the Democrats' surrogates in the media are criticizing it." After quoting the LA Times "The selections puzzled many in Washington. Some questioned why the administration picked so many members with seemingly limited experience in intelligence matters," Bainbridge states: "Note that though "many" are puzzled and "some" are questioning, Times reporter Greg Miller managed to find only one to quote. Reporter Miller also fails to tell us that [the one quote was from] CIA general counsel during the Clinton administration." Bainbridge certainly knows how the game is played. Read the whole post. What if it's not the '80's anymore? Part 1: Music By Tom Smith Not to dis the all-powerful Glen Reynolds, but what if you're ready to move on music-wise, from the '80's? What if you said no to Yes? The other night here in San Diego, a local radio show called the Lounge did a show the only slightly hidden premise of which was that the popular music of the '70's and '80's would never be equaled. Then they played a tape of The Who live on the Smothers Brothers show singing "Talkin' 'Bout My Generation." I was struck by how little musical talent seemed to be in evidence. Talk about a band that sounds better not live. So what to listen to if you're not ready to start ranting "kids these days! . . . where the hell are my dentures! Goddammit turn that thing down!"? You can start with Linkin Park, a rockrap band that actually has some talent. It sounds grating at first (and also after your 100th listen) but the rawness of some of their tunes, or whatever they call them, are pretty authentically raw. Such as "I want to run away." As to rap, I was surprised to find I sorta liked Limp Bizcut, but that's probably just me. Evanescence is sort of goth girl ballads, but pretty musical. It doesn't hurt to have someone who can sing. All American Rejects is a fun band. If you don't like "Swing, Swing" you don't like ice cream. Not deep singer-songwriter Pete Yorn is a painless listen. Oh yeah. There's Wilco. Still deciding about them. Well that's it for now. Time to take the boys to Tae Kwon Do, which I think we are about to quit for more authentic and less expensive instruction in Japanese martial arts, starting with swords on Monday night. If we are attacked by Ninjas, we'll be prepared. If anyone has any better ideas for good, recent music, let me know. The above is just the result of my own hapless searches, not to mention many CD's become drink coasters. Good Brooks column By Tom Smith I am happy to admit the Brooks column on Kerry is good work. And this is what Brooks can and should do. BTW Brook's Bobos in Paradise is also frequently quite funny. Not as funny as Bill Bryson say, but funny. You read Bobos, and you realize Brooks spends a lot of time, way too much time probably, thinking uncharitable thoughts about people's social ambitions. You don't need to be a deep psychologist to realize Brooks is a driven social climber, and perhaps somewhat conflicted about it. He despises all the climbers around him, and determined to beat them to the top. And he probably will. Because he seems so nice and is not. Still, everyone has to make their way in the world, and at least he's not a dangerous nutball like Paul Krugman. Hand picked Bush panel presents new challenges to conspiracy theorists By Tom Smith Cover up! Whitewash! The four democrats on Bush's panel to investigate pre-Iraq war intelligence do make one wonder what the next Krugmanesque conspiracy theory move will be. Patricia Wald-- secret Republican? secretly a man? A member of Skull and Bones? Krugman, you may have noticed, is shaking loose a screw or two. He needs to slow down, get the oil changed and all the fluids checked. If you can follow the logic of the latest screed, you are doing better than I. Laurie Mylroie, a friend of Paul Wolfowitz, published a book in which she accused the State Department and CIA of underestimating Iraq's WMD threat. Dun dun dunnnn! And yet (the serious voiceover voice continues) now the White House is claiming they had no choice but to go to war based on the CIA's estimates. Well, two little problems here. First, Laurie is not the White House. She doesn't work for the administration. Yes, she's one of those neo-con, pro-Israel sorts. And she's also Jewish. But you can't automatically attribute her views to all neo-cons, or all Jews. And besides, even if you could, she's probably right. The State department is probably still in denial over 9/11. Are we sure that really happened? Krugman's other devastating point is that Brian Jones, British WMD expert, says his views were not adequately deferred to. Well, then, obviously everybody else must be wrong. Am I getting that right Paul? I guess Brian Jones is sort of the Paul Krugman of the UK. Anybody who disagrees with him is automatically wrong. Krugman is getting to the point where he is insulting to one's intelligence. People who have never dealt with economists or scientists tend to naively believe that just because they can do advanced math they must be really smart about everything. Not so. Indeed, it is often the case that geniuses have downright nutty views on matters outside their fields. Newton believed in alchemy and all sorts of bizarre non-sense. Einstein's views on world politics were goofy. Leibnitz thought he could reduce everyday decision making to a kind of mathematics (and invented symbolic logic in the process, but still a nutty idea). Here's the news sportsfans. Krugman is a brilliant mathematical economist. On matters of politics, he is quickly coming to resemble that gent from Planter's with the cane and top hat. Brooks on Kerry By Michael Rappaport Well, at least one member of this blog likes David Brooks. His most recent column is a sarcastic attack on John Kerry's hypocritical criticism of special interests, when he has been one of the Senators who is most supportive of special interests. February 06, 2004
"BLIAR" By Maimon Schwarzschild Mark Steyn has it right on Iraq in the (London) Daily Telegraph today. (I won't seriously apologise for my frequent Steyn-endorsements, not that he exactly needs my endorsements. Read the whole thing, as we say.) What Steyn alludes to in the piece is that Tony Blair has in fact had a very bad couple of weeks in Britain, despite, or rather because of, Blair's complete vindication in the Hutton report. (Hutton is a Law Lord -- roughly a Supreme Court Justice -- who chaired an investigation of BBC "reporting" against Blair on Iraq, and on the suicide of a Defence Department scientist who was publicised, and as it turns out misrepresented, by the BBC.) Predictably perhaps, the British Left is expressing more, not less, loathing for Blair having been disappointed that Hutton did not plump for the Left's view of things. (For one small example of the climate on today's British left, have a look at any recent print edition of the London Review of Books, if you have the stomach for it, which carries a regular full-colour ad for "BLIAR" tee-shirts.) But it's not just the enraged Left in Britain. There also seem to be a lot of Conservatives (and conservatives) who loathe Blair enough -- he heads a Labour government after all, however mutinous his troops -- to attack him to the Leftist lyrics of "lying" about Iraq and being a stooge for that warmongering moron in the White House. Have a look (more stomach will be required) at last week's edition of the Spectator (click "Back Issues": 31 January 04). The Spectator is generally said to be one of the best-written weeklies in Britain. It is High Tory, always deeply suspicious of European federalism. It often has an old-Tory condescension towards America, and its articles sometimes veer towards anti-semitism: attitudes common to parts of the Right and the Left in Britain. This issue of the Spectator is thick with articles denouncing Blair, America, and the Iraq war. It may be a kind of English parochialism at work: Blair is close at hand and we know we despise him; and we have always sneered at America. Why think too hard about whether Iraq has been rescued from a grotesque tyranny, and whether Saddam Hussein's fall might not be draining at least some lunacy from the Arab and Moslem worlds, for example in Libya? These are countries and quarrels far away, of whom we know nothing. Such parochialism, paradoxically, links up with a spreading climate in Britain that may now be more European (in the Chirac-Schroeder anti-American sense) than many Americans realise. Meanwhile, there is a broader question of whether being proved wrong in politics makes people less, or rather more, uncritically devoted to their cause. The Hutton vindication is just one example: it didn't diminsh, it increased, the baying for Tony Blair's head. Far less parochially: there is a serious case that the fall of Soviet Communism has led to a bigger, shriller, more uncritical, cruder, and more know-nothing Left in Europe, in the United States, and around the world. This is where the village atheist might point out that Christianity did not collapse -- on the contrary, it found new strength -- when the prompt Second Coming, which had been imminently expected by the first Christians, failed to take place. Then again, the early Church Fathers had something a bit more sophisticated to offer than "BLIAR". Heroes of Liberty or License? By Michael Rappaport Reason magazine lists 35 people who it deems “heroes of freedom.” The list is interesting, both for the obvious selections, such as Milton Friedman, and the funny ones, such as Richard Nixon, who is said to have promoted liberty by making people suspicious of the government. What is odd about the list is the inclusion of people like Dennis Rodman and Madonna, who are included because, in the case of Madonna, “they helped broaden the palette of acceptable cultural identities and destroy whatever vestiges of repressive mainstream sensibilities still remained.” In other words, they changed peoples views about what was appropriate behavior and decreased the degree of criticism for certain types of unconventional behavior. My question is whether such people really promoted liberty. While they may or may not have produced a more varied and interesting world, which liberty can also produce, did they really promote liberty? There is an old debate about what constitutes a limitation on liberty. John Stuart Mill believed that when A criticizes or refuses to interact with B because A disapproves of B’s behavior, A infringes on B’s liberty. By contrast, Nozickian libertarians believe that such criticisms and refusals to interact are merely the exercise of A’s liberty and does not infringe on B’s rights. After all, there is no violence or fraud. Significantly, there is much more of an overlap between libertarians and conservatives under Nozick’s definition of liberty. People can voluntarily choose to follow “conservative norms” and libertarians should defend them. But both conservatives and libertarians are often unwilling to accept this principled position. Some conservatives believe allowing legal freedom to act will lead people to behave in licentious ways. They view American freedom as leading to an MTV world of trash and therefore embrace legal restrictions on people’s behavior. While libertarians rightly criticize this view, they also are often unwilling to live with the principled position: they adopt the Millian view, embrace people who depart from traditional ways, and condemn those who criticize or refuse to interact with the unconventional. By proclaiming Madonna and Rodman heroes of freedom, Reason appears to be adopting this view. But Reason is mistaken. Most libertarians recognize that it is the right, for example, of a landlord not to rent to Dennis Rodman because he disapproves of Rodman’s lifestyle. Why would Reason then believe that Rodman’s behavior is more worthy of praise as promoting freedom than that of a Christian conservative who pursues a more traditional lifestyle? Lifestyle choices that do not coerce others do not influence freedom. They may make the world better and more interesting, but that is different than freedom. If Reason believes that the unconventional is intrinsically connected with legal freedom, then they have only themselves to blame when the Weekly Standard views legal freedom as leading to license. February 04, 2004
Political Balance: Books or Blogs By Michael Rappaport Very interesting post at Marginal Revolution showing how people either buy liberal books or conservative books, but not both. We all knew this, but still the diagram (based on data from Amazon.com) is especially compelling. Upon reading the post, I wondered about my own buying habits. Of the books displayed, I had only read one -- Treason by Ann Coulter, which I greatly enjoyed (shrieks from the crowd) -- so little can be said, based on this sample, about my reading habits. When I went over in my mind the books that I have bought, I must admit that they tend to bunch up on the right. Not all, of course, but the great majority. (Evidence of my unbalanced reading: I remember thinking that Guns Germs and Steel, which was superb, was one of the most PC books I had read.) Interestingly, I read a lot more liberal and left writing on the internet (not even counting the New York Times). So much for Cass Sunstein's idea that the internet will promote less balanced reading. A Spending Supermajority Rule By Michael Rappaport Today in the Wall Street Journal, John McGinnis and I have published an op ed piece arguing in favor of a constitutional amendment that would require a supermajority to pass spending laws. For those interested in reading the op ed, I think this link should work for the next week. Otherwise, here is a taste of the longer piece:
Our proposed amendment would avoid two kinds of criticisms that have been made in the context of balanced budget amendments. First, some critics might fear that a supermajority rule would perversely provide additional leverage to a minority favoring higher spending because that minority can threaten to shut down the government unless additional spending is enacted. As we learned during the Clinton era, citizens understandably fear government shut downs because the government’s core functions sustain the social order. Our amendment would deprive holdouts of additional leverage because it would allow a mere majority to pass spending laws so long as total spending remained less than ninety percent of the previous year’s total. A congressional majority could therefore prevent a government shut down, but there would still be pressure eventually to pass spending under the supermajority rule because Congress will almost always wants to spend at levels higher than ninety percent. Aquinas By Tom Smith Five minutes with Peter Singer in my head and I am so ready for Aquinas. This book by Anthony Kenny looks interesting. Am I sick? By Tom Smith Fully expecting yet another celebration of the culture of death, I was surprised to find the "plastinated" corpses of the recent controversial exhibit rather beautiful. Not as beautiful as the real human body of course, but still an apparently sincere attempt to expose people to the wonders that lay beneath the surface. Steve Bainbridge disagrees. Curmudgeonly Clerk apparently approves of Steve's disapproval. Maybe I would feel differently if I went to the exhibit and sensed it was really prurient or morbid, but from the photos, they don't look that way to me. But otherwise I agree with Clerk that repugnance is a useful guide to the immoral. That, and anything accepted in Sweden. (Thanks to Clerk for the link, I think). But then there's this well-known outburst by distinguished philosopher Peter Singer, who joins the long list of people I would not let take care of my beloved dogs, and the much shorter list of people to whom I would not entrust my intense-weariness-inducing, emotionally needy, diabetic guinea pig. NRO's comment on this old controversy here. February 03, 2004
Junk Food or Junk Science? By Michael Rappaport Although critics of low carb diets often accuse them of not being supported by scientific studies (which is simply not true), it appears that the pot has been calling the kettle black. Take a look at this description of the junk science supporting high carb diets. Why I will vote Democratic By Tom Smith I have been thinking deep thoughts, pondering the words of geniuses such as Paul Krugman, and have reached a surprising conclusion. It is time to vote for the Democrats. My reasoning is straightforward. First, Bush is spending way too much money. Just throwing money at powerful interest groups for transparently political reasons. Look at the prescription drug benefit. Half a trillion bucks, and it will be more when Grandpa says, Yo! Free Viagra?! Beats the heck out of Canadian Elk Antler Powder! Poor Grandma. We need people in there who will not spend profligately on domestic programs. People who will show some restraint on things like public housing, highways, giveaways to unionized teachers, miscellaneous pork projects . . . On national security, the Democrats can be trusted, can't they? I mean, they wouldn't just throw open the cages at Gitmo and say "we're not sure you are terrorists, so . . . Have a nice day!" would they? No. And they could be trusted to beef up the CIA as needed to protect us against smallpox, dirty bombs, ricin, suicide bombers etc. etc. (What is the record on Democrats and the CIA, anyway?) They wouldn't sacrifice national security just to please loud but small groups like the ACLU and various nutballs in Moveon.org, would they? No. They are not that stupid or cynical. I mean, there's politics and there's war. The democrats would not play politics on something like that, if it actually put millions of lives at risk. As to social issues, well, I may not agree with the Democrats, but surely they can be trusted to extend to me and mine the same tolerance I am willing to extend to them. It is not that they are actually hostile to "family values." They don't actually have anything against families. How could they? Everybody likes families, right? I mean, how else are you supposed to raise kids?! Nah, they wouldn't do much harm on that front. So, the time has come to vote Democratic. Wait! What is that on the horizon? They're pink! They have curly tails! They're squealing! It's the pigs! They're flying! CLARIFICATION AND LIT CRIT INTERPRETATION: The final lines in the above post is meant to convey that I will vote Democratic when pigs fly. I acknowledge that it is a logical possibility that pigs might fly. Genetic engineering etc. But, this was my attempt at humorously stating that it is very, very unlikely that I will vote Democratic. I hate to disappoint any Democratic readers we may have. I do not hate W. I do have reservations about him. I am glad he believes in prayer and suggest it is not too early for him to begin praying regarding any debate he may have with Kerry or Edwards. Regarding Viagra, I do not think male erectile dysfunction is a joking matter, but a great human tragedy. Ho ho. My wife estimates maybe 30 percent of her Viagra prescriptions get covered by insurance. I bet this will go up once seniors figure out how to work the system. I just love the idea of working families with hardly any time for sex subsidizing rich old guys who can well afford their own jollies. You don't have to be a Marxist to see this as a big ripoff in favor of drug companies and a powerful voting block (and I don't just mean Viagra here, but all prescription drugs.) No wonder they hate W By Tom Smith No wait! When we said there must be an independent commission to investigate intelligence failures about Iraq, we did not expect you to actually do it! We just meant to pummel you over the head with it and suggest a vast right-wing conspiracy to sneak us into war with Iraq! We have no idea whether there was such a conspiracy. In fact, we doubt it. We're not crazy, you know. Just cynical. It did not occur to us that by actually appointing a commission, and spending time selecting a blue ribbon panel, it would divert the whole issue into an inside the Beltway swamp, to emerge if ever only well after November, 2004. Kissinger on the commission?! Cover up! Cover up! Whitewash! Who should be on it? Don't ask us! Our job is to shout Cover up, Cover up! Whose bright idea was it to demand an independent commission anyway? No, I mean whose bright idea was it to tell us it was a bright idea to demand a commission? Oh, hell. What a fake budget! It will hurt the poor! Benefit the rich! Cover up! David Brooks is a cute, fuzzy idiot, or, I know! Instead of a CIA let's have a blog! By Tom Smith I have gone from resenting David Brooks for being a big softie pretending to be a conservative to feeling sorry for him. Well, maybe not quite sorry for him. More like resenting him. In this oddly ridiculous screed, Brooks argues that instead of the hard work of trying to figure out what the heck is going on behind the closed doors of our enemies' hideouts, we should just kind of make things up based on our instincts and intuitions. David, David, not everything works the way the newspaper business does. Use this as a rule of thumb. If the CIA just makes something up, that's bad. They should shoot for, not interesting, provocative, likely not to make liberals to mad at you, cute, fuzzy, thoughtful, or quotable, but rather, are you ready?, true. I know. It's a tough business. Is hiring David Brooks just the New York Times's cruel joke on people like me? Books versus Blogs By Michael Rappaport Stuart Buck quotes Stumbling Tongue's attack on the internet: "My rediscovery: Ephemeral reading is intellectual junk food. It feeds the habit, not the hunger. My god, genuine books are just so much better. Why are you even reading this now? Why? Why? Why? " Plleeeaase. The internet is not junk food, it is fast food. We read the internet for the same reason that we sometimes prefer a McDonald's quarterpounder to a steak. Because it is cheaper (in terms of money and time) and because sometimes it is more enjoyable. While a serious book may have deeper or more sustained arguments, a good blog has a more new information and new arguments per word than the best books. Both have their places. February 02, 2004
Hellie shoots back, hits foot By Tom Smith Benj Hellie has replied to his numerous critics of his argument that right wing pundits are to be doubted more than left-wing pundits. (Here via Brian Leiter's site). The problem with the young professor's argument is pretty apparent. It rests squarely on a big, fat empirical claim that he seems not to think is an empirical claim, or is so obvious as to be beyond contention. Namely, that there exists some obvious alternative to standard mainstream American political and economic ideas -- economic freedom, political and religious freedom, relatively small government, etc. etc., which would, first, be better for the vast majority of American humans and second, would be supported by the majority, at least if they were not caught fast in the grip of false consciousness. Well, maybe I'm missing something here, but it is hardly obvious that this empirical claim is true. It certainly is not obvious that you would be better off being born randomly (assuming you could avoid getting aborted of course; 25% of fetal American get the chop before they make it through the veil of ignorance) into some European social democracy than into the heart of American darkness. The whole of Hellie's argument depends on the path of truth shining brilliantly to the left, so that only liars could claim the rightward path is superior. Even ruling out all of the really nasty left-wing regimes, it just isn't at all clear that this is so. At a minimum, the record of more or less free market economies stand up favorably to various more and sometimes much less democratic socialisms. If that is true (and notice I'm flagging it as an empirical proposition) then Hellie's argument goes nowhere. The reason why there are so many smart, articulate, well educated and influential people to Hellie's right is that they've looked around, studied lots of things, some even served in government or worked on actual problems elsewhere and concluded that socialism is a bad idea and freedom works better than anything else, even with its high (but lower than the alternatives) human cost. (On a different but related point, I would like to know what economic system we are supposed to admire instead of Amerikan Kapitalism. Presumably not the old Soviet or Red Chinese regimes. Norway? Ghana? The people's republic of African despair? The Netherlands? Denmark? I think France might be a swell place to be a middle class intellectual. Your kids can go to school, university, hell, stay in school for the rest of their lives, all at government expense. How long before the whole pyramid scheme collapses is another question, of course. The point is, picking a real model gives you idea of the tradeoffs, which always turn out to be substantial. Back when I worked for the Gipper, pundits thought we should imitate Japan. We actually looked at Japan carefully in the Council of Economic Advisers, and thought, golly, they are going to be in a fine mess when all this state directed investment turns into [insert rude word]. Don't hear much about the wonders of the Rising Sun lately. Fear about the Japanese taking over the US economy look pretty silly now. Obvious alternative was not so obvious, obviously.) Indeed, I think it would be much easier to make the case that Hellie must be the insincere one trying to mislead the masses. The argument would go just like his, except that the premise would be that it is perfectly obvious that an alternative that is better for the mass of people exists, and it's not redistributivism or socialism or whatever the grand left path is supposed to be these days. Give Hellie time. He may wise up. Things change. Did you know Students for a Democratic Society used to have a song praising the regime in North Korea? It went to the tune of "Maria" in West Side Story. You know "Koreeeea; Koreea, Koreea, KoreeeAH!" No kidding. I am not making this up. They were pretty smug too. Can’t these guys get anything right? By Michael Rappaport I came across something interesting in Martin Gilbert’s A History of Israel (p 498-499). People today recognize that the 1981 Israeli bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirik was a wise and brilliantly executed maneuver. Otherwise, Saddam Hussein would have gotten nuclear weapons. At the time, though, the world, including the United States, harshly condemned Israel. What I had not known, though, is that the bombing was criticized within Israel by the two leaders of the Labor Party, Shimon Peres and Yitzak Rabin. It was only Likud, led by Menachem Begin, that had the courage and forsight to take the action. Of course, Shimon Peres and Yitzak Rabin are the Israeli architects of Oslo, an unbelievable disaster for Israel and for the prospect of peace in the area. And so the question is, Can’t these guys get anything right? February 01, 2004
Drezner on Bush: Should We Support the President? By Michael Rappaport Dan Drezner explains why he is ambivalent about Bush:
But the key question, if we are to avoid the Nirvana fallacy, is the alternative. For me, any Democrat would attempt to grow government even bigger than Bush is and would be far worse in fighting the war on terror. This even includes Joe Lieberman, who might want to pursue better policies but would be constrained by the fact that he must govern as a Democrat with Democrats in charge. Of course, if there were a Democratic President and a Republican Congress, that would probably lead to less spending, but it would be far worse as to the war on terror and the appointment of judges. All in all, then, I feel compelled to support Bush, especially since I believe the war on terror is the most important issue these days. But as I have suggested before, it is such a shame that Bush has pursued this mediocre course, since he could have been so much better. |
