Ecumenicalism and Parochialism

It is certainly true that the Catholic Church has never claimed that it is not in fact the One True Church. It is also true that the belief is generally shared by the othter churches with which they cooperate on ecumenical issues. There is nothing at all inconsistent with ranking those with whom you disagree based on your level of disgreement. It is a clear and common aspect of making decisions and having opinions on issues.
That being said the Catholic decision to withdraw use of the word "Church" from descriptions of other Christian communities is unlikely to promote Christian unity.

FIFTH QUESTION

Why do the texts of the Council and those of the Magisterium since the Council not use the title of “Church” with regard to those Christian Communities born out of the Reformation of the sixteenth century?

RESPONSE

According to Catholic doctrine, these Communities do not enjoy apostolic succession in the sacrament of Orders, and are, therefore, deprived of a constitutive element of the Church. These ecclesial Communities which, specifically because of the absence of the sacramental priesthood, have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery[19] cannot, according to Catholic doctrine, be called “Churches” in the proper sense[20].

The Supreme Pontiff Benedict XVI, at the Audience granted to the undersigned Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, ratified and confirmed these Responses, adopted in the Plenary Session of the Congregation, and ordered their publication.

Rome, from the Offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, June 29, 2007, the Solemnity of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul.

I guess there are reasons of internally consistent theology for applying this definition, but it does seem undiplomatic. It is true that this will stop the unpleasant allegations of acatholicism against liberal Catholic politicians from being taken quite so seriously and may even contribute to people being more discreet on the subject of religion instead of bellowing about Christ everywhere. On the other hand, I generally think the losses to ecumenicalism, and to its spirit of cooperation, is a worse loss.

Mostly, I would just like to quibble with Mark Kleiman on minutia in his post "Pope Benedict and the Christianist Alliance."

For any liberal of my vintage, regardless of denomination, Pope John XXIII is one of the great heroes of the '60s.

First of all, I agree with Kleiman that John XXIII was a hero of the last century.

The fear and hatred that divided the Evangelical right from the Catholic right was, it turned out, among the bulwarks of American liberty. The identification of the anti-abortion cause with Catholicism greatly slowed its adoption by right-wing Protestants, especially in the South. But after Pope John made the Catholic bogey-man less scary, it became easier for Jerry Falwell to play on the same political team with Cardinal Law, once John Paul II had moved the Church back to he right politically while more or less maintaining its outreach to Protestants.

Second of all, the reason it took until the time of John Paul II for conservative Protestants and conservative Catholics to team up was not because of a right-ward shift in the focus of the Catholic Church under that Pope, but largely because it took a while for conservative Protestantism to move beyond (or at least code) its issues of racial politics. It is true that ecumenicalism, and the general destruction of the distinctiveness, the pseudo-un-Americanness, of Catholicism brought about by Vatican II did contribute to this. It is also true that the personability of John Paul II and his anti-communist credentials also popularized ecumenical Christianism.

Thirdly, I would like to backtrack on my comment about race. The greatest threat to American liberty, the Civil War, featured a rebellion by "right-wing Protestants, especially in the South," met by along with anti-government and anti-black violence in Catholic communities in Northern cities, along with a letter from Pius IX imloring Lincoln and Davis to seek peace.

The Jewish element of the lunatic right is much more secularized, but the systematic abandonment of the anti-Semitic elements that had marred Catholic doctrine and liturgy probably made the AIPAC/Commentary crowd less nervous than it otherwise would have been about lining up with the Christianists.

Fourthly, while the Commentary crowd is secularized, there is an ultra-orthodox community in the United States.

[after quoting an Anglican hostile to this new proclamation] Anglicanism is an interesting case, of course, since England was Christian before it was Catholic.

Fifthly, what? Is he talking about British Christianity that dated from the Roman Empire and survived its downfall? While it is true that that existed, the Anglo-Saxons, who might be said to constitute England, were among the first ethnic groups the conversion of whom was organized and inspired by the Bishop of Rome, with Gregory I sponsoring Augustine to proselytize Aethelred's Kingdom of Kent. "England" may in fact be identified as one of the few Old World nations that was not Christian before it was Catholic. It is especially unclear how this Arthurian Christianity (or Irish Christianity collaterally related to it) relates to the Anglican Church, especially since the spiritual leader of that "Christian community" is the Archbishop of Canterbury, a post that was founded by the Roman mission to Kent. I guess you could say that England was Christian before it was Catholic as may be currently understood, but if this is blogo-snark about how the same could be said of any European country, I admit that it went over my head.
God bless.

Gilded

Only twice before over the past century has 5 percent of the national income gone to families in the upper one-one-hundredth of a percent of the income distribution - currently, the almost 15,000 families with incomes of $9.5 million or more a year, according to an analysis of tax returns by the economists Emmanuel Saez at the University of California, Berkeley and Thomas Piketty at the Paris School of Economics.
Such concentration at the very top occurred in 1915 and 1916, as the Gilded Age was ending, and again briefly in the late 1920s, before the stock market crash.

Of course these individuals think they are wonderful.

"People can look at the last 25 years and say this is an incredibly unique period of time," Weill said. "We didn't rely on somebody else to build what we built, and we shouldn't rely on somebody else to provide all the services our society needs."

Even if we were to pretend that Weill is in fact the Marlboro Man and made his hundreds of millions of dollars appear out of thin air or something, it is unclear to me what justification the second phrase of his sentence has in the first phrase.
Phrase one: I made money without help.
Phrase two: I don’t like shared responsibility conducted outside of the market.
It sure seems to me one could be totally in favor of people making loads of money through the market and still believe in government intervention in the economy to contribute to certain entitlements that are necessary for a full and meaningful life in society.

Other very wealthy men in the new Gilded Age talk of themselves as having a flair for business not unlike Derek Jeter's "unique talent" for baseball, as Leo Hindery Jr. put it. "I think there are people, including myself at certain times in my career," Hindery said, "who because of their uniqueness warrant whatever the market will bear."

Derek Jeter’s unique talent is for being a non-threatening multiracial pretty boy. Anyway Paul Volker says these guys are full of garbage.

A handful of critics among the new elite, or close to it, are scornful of such self-appraisal. "I don't see a relationship between the extremes of income now and the performance of the economy," Paul Volcker, a former Federal Reserve Board chairman, said during an interview, challenging the contentions of the very rich that they are, more than others, the driving force of a robust economy.
…
The market did not go up because businessmen got so much smarter," he said, adding that the 1950s and 1960s, which the new tycoons denigrate as bureaucratic and uninspiring, "were very good economic times and no one was making what they are making now."

Robert Crandall of American Airlines has his own perspective.

The nation's corporate chiefs would be living far less affluent lives, Crandall said, if fate had put them in, say, Uzbekistan instead of the United States, "where they are the beneficiaries of a market system that rewards a few people in extraordinary ways and leaves others behind."

While this is clearly exaggerated, it is more or less true. There seems to be a very strange belief that economic equality is a sign of inhibits economic production. I will have the contemporary data available later, but as far as I can tell Japan and the West are richer than everywhere else because in their societies, where centralized governments shared power with traditional class-structures limiting the amount of money that could accumulate to the very top, while there was fair renumeration, beyond the possibility of social mobility into the ranks of the extremely wealthy, for work that required their expertise. There would be no modern economy without the skilled artisans of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, whose relevant prestige had developed from the prerogatives secured by guilds over the centuries.
I unironically salute many of my economic superiors! Congratulations on your success!

North Korea and Iran

The North Korean government claims to have shut down the Yongbyon nuclear reactor in exchange for a deal with the USA that is suspiciously similar to the 1994 deal negotiated by the Clinton administration, from which the United States withdrew after accusations that North Korea was not following its terms of the agreement. It is certainly possible that this is in fact the best possible scenario. North Korea may have been cheating and only needed a few years without oil from the United States to realize that nuclear weapons were not that useful. That being said, the Bush administration probably could have been less aggressive towards North Korea than they were. That aggression may have convinced North Korean officials that nuclear weapons were in fact necessary for protection against an American-led attempt at régime change on the Korean peninsula.

Meanwhile, Iran has said that the IAEA will be allowed to inspect the nuclear facility at Arak to ascertain whether or not activities relevant to the development of nuclear weapons will be taking place there.

Iraq and Journalism

Here we have the story of NYT reporter Khalid Hassan, murdered in Baghdad last Friday at the age of 23. He was working to support his mother and four young sisters. His family’s home was wrecked by a bomb. One of his uncles was shot and killed. I have no problem with journalists grandstanding off of this man’s tragedy. Anything to hammer home that the problems in Iraq are not being particularly helped by the Surge and that journalists in Iraq are in fact in more dangerous situations than bloggers who contribute only noise and impatience.

The Professional Terrorist

Here is an interesting article on the prevalence of extremism among Muslims with professional training. Those ranks include not just those involved in the attacks in Britain but Zawahiri, who was trained as a doctor, and Arafat (sort of) and bin Laden, who were trained as engineers.
First of all, while the scientific achievements of the Islamic world were once great, the fact is that so much of the knowledge that is taught is external to Muslim civilization, so when this material is taught it is not in the context of the Western materialism with which the discoveries were made.
Related to this, the Koran is so metaphorical that it can be interpreted as reasonably accurate scientific text on a popular level. The article mentions Zaghloul el-Nagar, a personality on Egyptian television who provides commentaries on science based on the Koran.
There is also the role played by the university in the Islamic world. Islamic dissent against governments of Muslim countries is popular at universities, through which doctors and engineers must study.
Finally, there are tactics, whereby terrorist organizers realize that doctors will not be suspected as terrorists in the West and that they will often be accepted for their skills.

Anticipating Terrorism

Former Senator Rick Santorum has predicted further dramatic terrorism which will lead to renewed support for the broad outline of his and Bush's policies with respect to the middle East (get those who do not like us before they can get us and don't worry about who or what gets in your way in case you haven't been paying attention). Matthew Yglesias ponders the issue and decides that this is more or less an electoral consideration.
I think there is not just hawkish hackisness at play here.

It is an aspect of the self-pitying victimization of the elect of American conservatism. While people of all view-points like to imagine themselves an emboldened minority against a dangeously misguided consensus at certain times, Santorum and this guy and Pat Robertson and some random bloggers and crank emailers seem fascinated by terrorism not only to be able to say "See we were right" but also to be able to think to themselves "You had it coming through your own decadence and ignorance." Not only is there the desire to be a minority with imagined persecution that becomes vindicated (at least in its own estimation) by events, but there is also the belief in the transformative power of violence that is basic to hawkishness and the fact that the primary victims of terrorism would probably have disproportionately few Bush and Santorum supporters as it would likely once again happen in a major urban area. A sort of contempt for the decadence of those who disagree with you.

Live Earth

Yes this is old news, but I feel as if I should provide my talking points on the subject. It is perfectly alright to have a big concert that uses lots of energy against global warming. The alternative to heavy-enrgy use and global warming is not exclusively no energy use; it is more fairly described as smart energy-use, which is perfectly justifiable with having big concerts or having a high standard of living.

News of the Weird

Omar bin Laden, 27 year old son of Osama, has married a 51 year old British woman who works as a parish councilor whom he met in Egypt. It is her sixth marriage.
Let me say it would be inappropriate and uncivilized to treat Omar harshly in order to apply pressure on Osama who probably would not care anyway. That seems to be an important aspect of treating individuals with respect.

Ethics and Morals and Carnal Forebearance

Sen. David Vitter seems to have frequented the DC Madam's prositutes in his younger days, presumably as a member of the House of Representatives. I assumed that scandal had sort of blown over. Turns out the madam is quite the showman.

Medicine, Immigration and Terrorism II

An Indian suspect of the bombings in Glasgow worked in aeronautics. This biographical information about Kafeel Ahmed is interesting only in that it allows me to revisit my earlier post on the subject. The threat of terrorism does not come from immigration per se, where the United States outranks the United Kingdom by far, but by a situation where a particular profession is in such need that there are not very extensive immigration regulations for people with those professional qualifications. That being said, these attacks were failures and there is no reason for British government and society not to be able to reevaluate its procedures for crediting medical personnel. Even if doctors were to be welcomed to Britain at a greater rate than the less skilled, and if there are more extremists among the doctors, there are still so very few terrorist doctors that Britain still would come out ahead of the game on the subject of immigration.

Ranking the Colleges II

More importantly than whether or not the U.S. News college rankings are useful is the fact that it is enjoyable and useful to have measurements which act as quick descriptors. Here’s someone who has created rankings based on results for google searches. Although there are problems, it is certainly interesting with the University of Washington as the best college in the United States. The Shanghai rankings mostly look at faculty awards and publications with Harvard as the world’s best university. The Times Higher Educational Supplement mostly looks at reputations among experts for its rankings, with Harvard once again in the first place and the top 13 being either American or British.

How would I rank colleges, focusing on the United States, you ask? Well, selectivity and spending per student are the most important readily available statistics. Average those two together, give extra weight to spending per student. The service academies almost certainly come out far ahead, which is frankly where they belong. Of course, they serve such a special purpose as institutions that most students will realize that they are not for them. This general approach, however, has the weakness of not having much to do with the results of the education itself. While it would be intriguing to measure the median incomes of alumni (yes you could do it if you really put in a lot of effort) or setting up standardized tests of general knowledge and thought-skills along with subject tests of a student’s knowledge in his or her majors (again, this requires a lot of effort), but to make these measurements value-added, as opposed to measuring indirectly the institution’s selectivity, would require ridiculous amounts of work. That being said, there is nothing wrong with measuring an institution based on its indirect selectivity. The ostensible goal of a university is not to pick a few students and throw money at them. The point should be to provide credentials to the educated (those who do well on the test) and the successful (those with high incomes). The value-added might as well be the value-added by the peer group.

Ranking the Colleges

The rankings of American colleges in U.S. News and World Report are often criticized for a number of reasons. It is alleged that college rankings and the fixation on where a student will go to school are symptomatic of bourgeois status anxieties. The included statistics are said to be too easily gamed by the ranked colleges. These college rankings are fairly arbitrary and obscure the fact that different things appeal to different potential students. While there are clearly superior ranking systems, they still communicate important things on the subject of colleges.
As far as the emphasis on what college one attends, whether or not there is significant value-added to one’s standards of livings for certain colleges over others (or even for going to college as opposed to not going to college), the experience of college itself takes around four years, and there is every reason for prospective students to take seriously the choice of where to study and even allowing status issues (including the post-educational opportunities to which a high status education may allow one) to play a role in the decision-making process. The sense of community, often dismissed as boosterism, that comes from being involved in a well-regarded venture can be something that is important for people.
I will acknowledge that running a college is not like running a race. The best way to run a race is to finish first, unless you’re trying to make some sort of point I guess. Colleges obviously have a wide array of objectives and advantages. Students should take their own objectives into consideration when choosing where to study (but not go nuts, and I acknowledge that a number of people do), but rankings are generally useful in evaluating general aspects of the education offered by various colleges. The most renowned rankings, those of U.S. News, seem to get people the most excited because of the vagueness of their statistics and their popularity. These statistics, however, are important.

Peer assessment: This would seem to be important, but how much do the administrators of an institution really know about the internal quality of another college. Would they not know more about the administration than about the education or standard of living?

Retention: A school that is largely abandoned by students is not likely to be very good. This statistic would seem to be a good way of calculating the preferences of students. Indirectly this statistic can also track affordability, which is certainly an important aspect of college education; if a student leaves because a college is too expensive, it counts against them.

Faculty Resources: You probably want small classes, although median class size might be a better way of measuring this than percentage of classes with high and low enrollments, considering that colleges could schedule a number of classes with 19 students so they can say there are fewer than 20 students and with 40 students so they can say there are fewer than 50 students. Student-to-faculty ratio is also a suspicious statistic considering how much colleges can fudge the definition of faculty.

Student Selectivity: Let it be assumed that rankings affect popularity among applicants; this statistic is then, by measuring the popularity of a school among applicants, measuring in part external reputation, which is what the rankings are trying to provide. In spite of
this, a motivated student body, as measured by standardized test scores (more on that later) and high school performance, is important.

Financial Resources: Please do not try to tell me that the amount of money available for the college to spend on students is irrelevant to education. It is true that the spending can be on all sorts of stupid things and that creative accounting can inflate this total, but money is an important aspect of education.

Alumni Giving: This not only measures the enthusiasm of alumni for their alma mater, but it also measures their affluence (more on this later).

Aghanistan

Please read this about the challenges of running a school in rural Afghanistan. While the terrorism against the school is awful, and while an orderly educational system in Afghanistan would work against extremism and its attendant violence, setting up educational systems abroad should not involve the indefinite period of violent occupation under an external force. The NATO occupation should support the goal of education and should cooperate with the government in expanding its realm of influence to make a peaceful Afghanistan, one in which there is very little political violence. This should continue in Afghanistan as opposed to the American presence in Iraq because it is not clear that the presence of Americans and British in Iraq is helping very much, whereas it is clear that the Taliban and its sympathizers have less power now in Afghanistan than they did in September 2001. Restricting the range and influence of the Taliban is important to isolating the leadership of al Qaeda.

Gaza

When I wrote earlier that West Bank Arabs seem to have more justification for being anti-Israeli than Gaza Arabs, I did not mean to imply that West Bank living standards are much lower than those of Gaza. Gaza is a dump, and much of that has to do with quarantines posed on it by the Israeli government on commerce, with heavy-handed (but probably necessary) border monitoring and the destruction of the airport, before the Hamas uprising and even before the Hamas electoral victory, in addition to Gaza’s high population density of descendants of refugees. I am not blaming Israel for the popularity of Hamas in Gaza (although Israel has played roles in supporting Hamas to work against the PLO) but claiming that Israeli policies have played a role in the problems of Gaza.

Executive Privilege and Executive MalfeasanceExecutive Privilege and Executive Malfeasance

George Bush has said that former aids will not be permitted to testify on the uncustomary firings of U.S. Attorneys. This presidential intransigence, which may be found by courts to be illegitimate, is a reason why continuing the Plame investigation by subpoenaing Libby and offering him immunity (making him unable to dodge the questions using the 5th Amendment) is not the best idea.

Parade Magazine’s Two Worst Dictators!

Here is criticism of Hillary Clinton for being too bellicose on the subject of Darfur, suggesting that here threats of military strikes against the Sudanese government would only embolden it, encouraging intransigence in Darfur where the situation is improving. Likewise here is something about how North Korea is not particularly pleasant. You knew that already, but I must include the conventional piety of “Stalinism is bad” to maintain credibility. It’s about this one guy who lived in a prison-camp from his birth in 1982 until his escape in 2005, forced to watch the executions of his mother and brother, now living in South Korea and having a rough time adjusting.

Law Enforcement: Who Benefits?

I think Mark Kleiman is a little too quick to suggest that it people in bad neighborhoods who benefitted from Giuliani's crime policy as mayor of New York. I mostly agree with him; lawlessness is not romantic and law enforcement benefits the poor who bear the brunt of lawlessness. I also approve of the fact that he acknowledges all the liberal standard of living arguments about criminality. What I think he misses is that while some clueless limousine liberals do complain about law enforcement as boojification, much of the complaining has in fact come from poor city-dwellers who perceive law enforcement as being bigoted against them.
WASP cops beat up Irish. Irish cops beat up Italians and Slavs. Italian ans Slavic cops beat up blacks. Black cops beat up Hispanics. A lot of law enforcement is also based on America's currrent drug policy, which many of those whose family-members are affected by it consider misguided and harmful.

Clinton and the War

It seems that a year Bill Clinton was saying bad as the civilian casualties have been in Iraq, they would have been far worse had the U.S. military not been there. [Clinton] went on to extrapolate, from death rates in the Balkans, that hundreds of thousands more Iraqi civilians might have died in the absence of U.S. troops than actually have done so with Americans there.
It is fair to claim that he and his wife remain more or less hawkish. While Clinton might have more or less the same phased withdrawal with residual force Iraq policy as Obama and Edwards and have the same all options are on the table Iran policy (which seems like more of a gamesmanship issue than anything else), Clinton is the most likely to endorse further war there.

Folsky Non-Answers and Kerning Analysis

From Mark Kleiman:

Fred Thompson is backing away from his campaign's flat denial that he lobbied for an abortion-rights group. But he's not making a frank avowal, either. He's ducking, just he way he ducked the question of his use of illegally imported Cuban cigars.

Thompson gave an oblique response when asked about the matter, first reported by the Los Angeles Times.
"I'd just say the flies get bigger in the summertime. I guess the flies are buzzing," said Thompson, who is considering running for president as a social conservative. He refused comment on whether he recalled doing the work.

Kleiman also posts correspondence from a rightist reader who is skeptical of the claim that F. Thompson lobbied for Planned Parenthood in spite of the documents because the document could have been forged (all it takes is one instant for paranoia to have been vindicated, not that it doesn't seem as if Bush was not AWOL for much of the period in AL and not that he wasn't excused from his duty early). I am willing to trust Planned Parenthood on this one, and it seems like a lot of effort to forge such a document for something with probably little pay-off, even assuming that Planned Parenthood has an interest in weakening Thompson's campaign for President in July 2007.

Cheney Is Not Jewish, but...

... Waaaah! Anti-Semitism!!!11!one!!

Awww!

This from balloon-juice.com
I would not have strapped a dog to the roof of the car in a cage, but I would not vote against Romney for that reason, which is just a trivial issue. I just think this is a silly little amusing thing.

Fighting Extremism with Conservatism

A couple of British academics named Blond and Pabst (I could not think of two more Western surnames) have decided that traditional Islam poses the best antidote to Islamic extremism.

So far, the government has refrained from introducing more Draconian legislation. Instead, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his ministerial colleagues have promised to reinforce the government's campaign "to win the hearts and minds of the Muslim community."
…
In practice, this sort of approach marginalizes traditional Islam in favor of an ersatz "progressive" version that robs it of all its distinctive character and vision. The litmus test for integration is whether Muslims are willing to be like "us." Unsurprisingly, many young Muslims are increasingly alienated by an aggressively secular culture that enforces liberal transgression of moral norms and taboos.
…
The Koran contains clear and lethal injunctions against apostates, idolaters and those who challenge Muslim territorial ascendancy. While the sacred texts do sanctify violence - they also codify it, limiting its range and application.
Thus, there is no legitimation in classical Islam for suicide bombing or the wanton slaughter of innocents. That said, warfare and a consequent defense and extension of Islam was both a religious duty and a scriptural requirement, albeit one framed by chivalry and relative restraint.

I mostly agree with this analysis. The general practice of traditional Islam is not extremist and terroristic although there is a good deal of violence and intolerance. I also endorse the insight that religious violence is actually religious, although it is also true that a lot of terrorism is linked to specific political acts by nations, such as the invasion of Iraq or the presence of American soldiers in Saudi Arabia. That being said, it is not clear to me that this means that

Given that we are losing the battle of hearts and minds, we would be well advised to chart a different path. By encouraging an Islamic renaissance and reviving traditions that the fundamentalists have so violently suppressed, Muslim youth might be diverted from their present course.

I disagree with this conclusion. If East London were to become 1907 Gaza, instead of 2007 London with some people who have an attitude of 2007 Gaza, the ignorance and bigotry of traditionalist Islam would have a special home in Britain. It is one thing for the British government to allow this ignorance and bigotry (with British consumer culture and state education serving as a counterweight), but it is a much more unsatisfying thing to encourage this in the hope that young British Muslims (who do not seem to have been behind these latest failed attacks anyway) will not become terrorists. Although fewer young people may endorse terrorism, the normalization of the ignorance and bigotry in Muslim communities may very well become extended to non-Muslim communities by non-terroristic methods. Beating up people in the neighborhood who do not respect sharia. Muslim Brotherhood members of parliament (excuse me, I mean RESPECT members of parliament).
There is also the aspect of Balkanization. Even if this traditionalism could be contained, the Muslim and white populations would likely become extrememly alienated from each other, with the non-Muslim non-white populations in an even more awkward position than they are already.

Bush and Conservatism

Mark Kleiman has an interesting post that touches on the folly of criticizing Bush an not being a true conservative, a claim frequenty heard in anti-Bush circles but recently made by Hillary Clinton in Iowa. Kleiman says this is stupid because Fred Thompson and Willard Romney do not claim to be George Bush; they claim to be conservative.
I would like to add that neither I nor many others who make this claim against Bush have any specific sympathy with what is alleged to be true conservatism as opposed to Bush conservatism. On the right there are some figures who may have preffered Kerry to Bush, at least in retrospect, but still would have preferred Hoover to Roosevelt. I am not one of those figures and neither are, I imagine, many of those who make the un-conservative Bush claim.
There is not really a very large group of people who voted for Dole but have voted against GW Bush at least once for insufficient conservatism. I understand leftist who say Bush is not conservative are not saying that they totally would have voted for Dole, but, like Kleiman says, it plays into a myth of a pure conservatism which is the best political option.

Redeeming Bureaucracy

From Ezra Klein, on the subject of the failures of bureaucracy with respect to 9/11:

Additionally, the INS wasn't particularly gamed. The terrorists were here legally, though some had overstayed their visas. That's not some clever bureaucratic evasion, or an abuse that private companies would prove capable of quashing. And they took private flight lessons, and rented real estate from private owners, and bought groceries from private enterprises, and picked up box cutters from private suppliers, and generally proved just as adept at navigating the private sector as the public -- something Cavuto doesn't mention.

Indeed, nothing about this discourse on bureaucracies makes sense. "You become invisible." Really? To whom? More invisible than you are working at Dell, or GM? If so, why? And given that the process by which oddities stand out in the workplace is that their immediate peers notice, how would this change in a federal system? Because it's "diluted," I guess. Might as well say it's "mustard." This is just blather, words untethered from their meanings, arguments that long ago gave up on logic.

I have nothing in particular to add. I just though it was a well-done criticism of knee-jerk anti-bureaucratic arguments. A rightist might say, but bureaucracy is impersonal and slow-moving so Klain is just debating minutia, to which the resopnse should be that Klein is arguing against the culpability of certain bureaucracies in 9/11 (the military and to a lesser extent the CIA seem to have gotten a pass, but of course that is because those are tasks which are more or less recognized as integral to the role of the state).

Russian Extremism

The Dumas has passed an anti-extremism law which applies the penalities for extremism from violence inspired by racial, nationalistic, or religious motives to include public disturbance, expands the motives of extremism to include political, ideological or social hatred, allows for phone-tapping of suspected extremists. Media organizations will also face penalities for promoting material defined as extremist, and suspected extremists will be barred from running for office.

Hate crimes laws are important, whether or not they are effective. Group disdain as an internal ideology is fine, but when it becomes hatred and is involved in violence, it is clearly not fine. The attitude that motivates these crimes should be punished to work against that attitude.

That being said, I do not support the reported aspects of this law that restrain speech on extremism, and the provisions against suspected extremists in public life seem unfair.

West Bank Settlements

90% of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which in my view are already an inappropriate encroachment on Palestinian autonomy, extend beyond their official jurisdictions. This underscores the fact that West Bank Arabs would seem to have more legitimate grievances against Israel than Gaza Strip Arabs, while the latter seem to be angrier than the former in that Hamas makes more trouble than the al-Aksa Martyrs. The reason for this seems to do with the series of historical developments which made Hamas powerful in the West Bank, such as tribal loyalties and Arafat's misgovernment having been more geared towards the West Bank than the Gaza Strip as far as I know.

Medicine, Immigration and Terrorism

It has been reported that two accused conspirators in the British terrorist plots, Mohammed Haneef and Mohammed Jamil Asha, an Indian and a Jordanian with medical training, have been discovered to have researched opportunities for work in the USA.

This seems like a good opportunity to confront the rightist argument that the universalized health care regime in Britain underpays doctors, leading to a reliance on immigrant doctors, a handful of whom may be incompetent terrorists.

In Britain, there is a similar reliance on foreign doctors, particularly in the government-run National Health Service. Of the nearly 239,000 doctors registered with Britain's General Medical Council, some 90,000 qualified outside its borders.

That comes to about 40%. But how different is that from the United States?

Foreign citizens or American graduates from foreign medical schools accounted for more than 228,665 of the 902,053 practicing physicians in the United States in 2005 — just over 25 percent, according to the American Medical Association. The Congressional Research Service said their presence "in many rural communities of the United States has allowed states to ensure the availability of medical care to their residents."

Ignoring the issue of immigration, the issue of medical compensation and the associated shortages under non-market situations is an important one, but the fact remains that these shortages are less of a problem than denial of care, along with the other problems associated with the American health care system.

Mea Culpa

It is clear that the C&L post to which I was referring in this post was linking Putin to Bush, much like I did in my own post. My reading comprehension skills need some work. This would also be a good occasion to go into the subject of the "assorted misogyny" tag. I have no problem with women; I have only included that tag when my post includes criticism of a woman as a joke on the challenges faced by women from those who will want to judge them based on their sex as opposed to their accomplishments.

More on Scooter

It is true that eliminating the threat of jail time for Libby (along with potentially eliminating his parole), Bush has removed an incentive for Libby to cooperate with the authorities in investigating the states of mind of him and Rove when talking to the press about Plame. That being said, I am just not sure that there would have been that much gained from having it further demonstrated that the Bush administration is ful of jerks.

Gold Star for C&L

Hey look! Nicole Bell is smart enough to pick up on the deliberate allusions in the article on Nashi. Anyway, the American left is just interested in smearing Bush, so they like to jeer at Putin and his good soul. Not that the Putin government is the greatest in the world, but bloggers are generally idiots.

Fred Thompson and Watergate

I would not oppose Fred Thompson because he spied on the Watergate Committee for Nixon alone. It does, however, reveal important things about Thompson's character, with its apparent love of reactionary authority and contempt for the rule of law. PLease remember Thompson's role as a Libby defender.

Good Grief

Justin Raimondo:

On the narrower question of recruiting fresh bodies for our overseas military operations by offering citizenship – did you ever read The Camp of the Saints?

Nashi

Putin Youth, OMG!!!111!! Of course the Nashi (That totally sounds like Nazi, OMGZ!!!11!one!!!), are not actually called Putin Youth, but the point remains. There is a youth group loyal to Putin and his party that is supported by the government. This of course is totally different from the Color Revolution youth who put up their own incompetent anti-Russian governments in Russia’s Near Abroad with the support of the American government. It is also completely different from the Brooks Brothers Rioters of November 2000 and assorted Young Americas for Freedom who would make idiots of themselves outside the French Embassy. It is true that the Nashi movement does seem to be a little more closely allied with the government and capable of violence, but the fact is that the article goes to a man named Sergei Markov, a Kremlin advisor, suggesting that Russia is not in fact a totalitarian state where government officials are forbidden from criticizing government policy. They are criticized for overuse of the word fascists. Goodness knows, no American figure has ever done that.

The youth are described as

There is something deeply contemptible about propagandizing and poisoning the minds of the young, even more so when they are carelessly used as government shock troops to intimidate and bully critics. The government is now eating the seed corn of young minds for some cheap political advantage, a tactic of all dictatorships, which try to ensure their permanence by instilling robotic loyalty in the young, and Russia will pay for it for many years. The Putin Youth get to be punks, terrorizing foreigners and "traitors" with near complete impunity (a few $20 fines for attacking an ambassador), and receive training, free college and professional connections that can give them high-powered careers - a win-win situation, from their point of view.

and the article’s author, Michael Hammerschlag, leaves us with this, presumably without any self-awareness at all…

Another deeply disturbing government initiative is labeling critics "extremists" and criminals, another tactic of all serious totalitarian states. When you can criminalize criticism of the government, there is nothing you can't get away with, and all remaining freedoms are hanging by a thread.

That being said, I too am concerned about the authoritarianism of the Russian government.

Eastern European Labor

Many skilled workers are leaving Eastern Europe for Western Europe. This should not be very surprising. Wages are higher in Western Europe than in Eastern Europe. One may be surprised however, if one is a fool and thinks that the rate of increase of the gross domestic product per capita, in which the Eastern EU outperforms the Western EU, is the most important statistic for standards of living. If one thinks that Eastern Europe is a shining capitalist paradise when compared to Western Europe, and that this beacon of production will be attractive to workers deciding where to live, one is not very smart.

Jousting with this straw-man has established that from the perspective of standards of living, economies should be evaluated based on product per capita and not its growth. I would also say product per capita can be a better measure of a nation’s economic performance than economic growth in pure economic terms, a better way of evaluating the long-term economic health of a nation. As far as panel data sets, data from one time, go it may make more sense to evaluate a national economy by its product than by its growth. Gross national product is the value of goods in a country produced per year, so it is already a statistic based on time. Real growth statistics can also be exaggerated with adjustments for inflation in some cases. France has lower economic growth than Latvia, but it has higher product per capita. France is doing better than Latvia because there are things in France that encourage doing business there. That being said, growth is still an important fact of national economics, and when comparing performance across time, especially within one country, it is the most important statistic. This is because the general advantages or disadvantages of the country stay the same, and the changes in output, the rates of growth, become what differentiates the different time periods in the time-series data set. If this seems to you like a clumsy attempt to give Western Europe credit over Eastern Europe while still giving Bill Clinton credit over George Bush, them you’re right.

The City of Peace

I would like to comment on the violence in Islamabad. I approve of the attempts of the Musharraf government to stop the extra-legal influence of the Red Mosque. The Taliban-style government Maulana Abdul Aziz tried to impose is bad for the freedom of the people of Islamabad and the defiance of state authority they have illustrated, is unhelpful for establishing the rule of law in Pakistan. It is true that there is absolutely nothing wrong with individuals taking the law into their own hands when they find the state to be too lax, but in this particular case, the Red Mosque seems to have used this as a pretext to supplant the state in many aspects of Islamabad. It may even be said that the non-enforcement of certain laws constitutes meaningful state policy and that when individuals go around enforcing these laws, they harm the standards of living of the people nominally subject to the laws, both by enforcing laws which may be stupid, and by messing with people’s expectations of law-enforcement. That is not to say that people should not follow laws. Rules is rules, and I am sure that Islamabad, along with many third world cities, does suffer seriously from a lack of policing for all sorts of crimes.
Likewise, I approve of the attempts of the Pakistani government to make it seem as if they are going about it in a civilized manner as opposed to bombing them to smithereens. Moralizing busybody nutcases should be dealt with fiercely, but they should not be martyred.
As far as the effects of this crackdown on Musharraf’s continued government itself go, if he is too hard on them, he may alienate powerful extremists who will move to overthrow him. If he is too weak, he may alienate more secular supporters, leading them to overthrow his government. This latter group may have some clout with the U.S. government. I would however emphasize that extremists within the government may be part of coalition junta, even one supported by the United States, so if Musharraf were to lose his power, he might be replaced with somebody on the whole less pleasant.

Hamid the Mute

Do the new accusations of Iranian coordination of anti-American violence within Iraq make sense? The military does not seem to have produced transcripts of the testimony from the two Iraqis and one Lebanese (who for weeks pretended to be unable to hear or speak. Interesting) or documents they are alleged to have possessed indicating Iranian involvement in the Shiite anti-American violence. The allegations, however, seem both specific and realistic enough to be believable. The reason that details do not seem to have been provided is for probably because of specific security. Even if it is true that elements of the Iranian military is providing assistance to Iraqi rebels instead of influencing and benefiting from them, it would seem to me that the expansion of violence into Iran would not be particularly useful now.

The Middle East

Fatah and Israel both arrest Hamas figures, while the Fatah associated Al-Aksa Martyrs’ Brigade gets into a fight with the Israeli military and Hamas has arrested officials from the tribal group called the Army of Islam that has arrested a BBC journalist. The saga of Moshe Katsav and his legal problems continues while Mordecai Vanunu, the Israeku scientist who revealed Israeli possession of nuclear weapons, has been sentenced to six months in jail for speaking to foreign journalists, a violation of his parole. What can be learned from these situations? First of all, Palestine is a mess. While it might be said that there is a hierarchy of pro-Western-ness within Palesine (Fatah, then Hamas, then Army of Islam), the key facet is that as long as there is no real hierarchy of power, things in Palestine will not be particularly peaceful. Second of all, Israel is a thoroughly modern country in that there is internal respect for the rule of law, in addition to its obviously nationalistic laws. You, of course, knew this already.

Class and Extremism

Previous failed terrorists have been lumpenproletarian clowns, like Jose Padilla, the Ft. Dix six, the Seas of David in Miami. The individuals arrested in conjunction with the attempted terrorism in Britain have been doctors who do not seem to have had recorded histories of extremism. In all likelihood they just grew to be deeply upset with Britain and especially with Britain’s role in the war in Iraq. The money thrown at them by Westerners was not enough to overcome their cultural resentments.

Bush and Libby

My perspective on the Libby case is basically that of the liberal consensus. That being said, I do not believe that much would have been gained by Lewis Libby spending 30 months in jail. Bush’s decision to commute his sentence is the right thing to do. Libby remains convicted of a felony and faces a $250,000 fine, but the personal cost of jail-time, even at one of the less unpleasant federal prisons, has been averted. I do not know whether there are restrictions on using gifts, in this case politically motivated contributions, to pay off federal fines, but I do not imagine Libby will have a particularly hard time paying off that fine. There may very well be a deterrent aspect to that jail-time, but I am of the opinion that although the right-wing noise machine will find their own victims wherever they want to find them, finding them should be as difficult as possible. It is true that weeping over the sentence of a convicted felon is somewhat ridiculous, but it is even more ridiculous to weep over that sentence when it does not involve jail-time.

Evolution and the Soul

Evolutionary psychologists are skeptical of the idea that the soul is immortal and special to the human species; basically they are skeptical of the idea of the soul as anything other than a poetically anachronistic term for consciousness. It seems clear to me as well that sophisticated human consciousness has emerged from non-sophisticated animal consciousnesses, and that there does not seem to be compelling evidence of a metaphysical soul. A species’ presence of mind, as shown by its intellectual achievements, seems to be correlated with the sophistication of its nervous system. The sophistication of the nervous system of homo sapiens, along with our opposable thumbs, allows us to have a greater presence of mind than the other species. The human species is thus undifferentiated from other animal species at first glace. On further reflection, however, a person of faith could easily decide that the presence of mind found within homo sapiens is superior enough to that of other beasts that God extends to it certain metaphysical privileges, that is linking consciousness to an immortal soul, making humanity special. This is of course is not based on scientific belief but on faith. At one point there was a hominid who was different from the others; he was able to form certain abstractions that those before him had not, abstractions like a metaphysics, and he was Adam (or she was Eve).

Pew Global Attitudes! Now with Black People!

The Pew Global Attitudes Survey for 2007 is here. Yay! With questions on what different countries perceive as the biggest problem. Africans say infectious disease by overwhelming majorities, with Tanzania giving it the highest marks. The highest ratings for the “spread of nuclear weapons” are from Japan and the highest for the “growing gap between rich and poor” are from South Korea although both those countries say pollution is the biggest problem, South Korea having the highest ratings for the surveyed countries. Lebanese don’t like ethnic and religious hatred and neither do Americans, Europeans or many other Middle Easterners. Ivorians, Kenyans and Ghanians like America better than Americans do. Palestinians hate America. Ivorians and Kenyans also like Americans more than Americans do. Palestinians hate America. The biggest “don’t like America, like Americans differences” are in Europe (Germany 33%, Lebanon 22%) and the Middle East (except for Israel which likes Americans less than it likes America). Palestinians hate Americans more than anybody else does. More importantly there is very attitudinal difference between Old Europe and New Europe on the subject of America (Poland 61% Ukraine 54% Italy 53% Bulgaria 51% Britain 51% Sweden 46% Czech Republic 45% Slovakia 41% Russia 41% France 39% Spain 34% Germany 30%).


The Chinese like China (93%) but so do the Ivorians(92%) and Malians(92%). The Japanese don’t. Basically nobody likes Iran except for non-Middle Eastern Muslims (77% Bangladesh) or Middle Easterners with little to lose (55% Palestine). If you couldn’t guess that Israel is the least pro-Iranian country (93% disapproval), you’re stupid. The case of Russia is a situation where there is a European divide. 89% of Russians like Russia along with 81% of Ukrainians. Bulgaria and Slovakia also have pro-Russian majorities, while the Czech Republic and Poland join Western Europe in disapproval, although it is Japan with its 69%, that leads the anti-Russian group.
With whom do you sympathize, the Israelis or the Palestinians, as this question was not asked to Israelis or Palestinians the only more pro-Israeli country than the USA(49%) was the Ivory Coast (61%). None of the other African countries is higher than 39% for Israel; presumably this has to do with the methodology which the report explains excluded the northern part of the country because of civil war, a northern part of an African country seeming like a place where one would expect a disproportionate share of an African country’s 35%-40% of Muslims to live, although the report only lists a 4% margin of error for this country.Egypt is 93% for the Palestinians. Everybody except some middle-Easterners likes the UN, with 66% disapproval in Israel being topped only by 69% disapproval in the Palestinian Territories. The wretched of the Earth are wild about the UN (88% approval in Kenya, 81% in Indonesia).

Everybody wants the U.S. out of Iraq except for Israel (58%) and Kenya (59%). 93% of Palestinians want us out. The situation with NATO in Afghanistan is somewhat more popular. A full 59% of Israelis and 60% of Kenyans say stay, while 93% of Palestinians say get out. As far as the countries with troops in question the breakdowns for Iraq and Afghanistan are USA (37, 50), Canada (29, 43), Britain (38, 45), France (21, 48), Germany (23 ,44) Italy (25, 32) Spain (18, 22) Sweden (27, 34).

The most interesting question was about confidence in Osama bin Laden. This question was not asked in the United States. He gets 99% disapproval in France but only 88% in Britain, both of which have significant Muslim minorities, suggesting that those Muslims who are alienated from the French population are not in fact interested in terrorism. A majority claims to have little or no confidence in him everywhere except Morocco, Pakistan and Malaysia, which had 48%, 32% and 32% (the three largest such values) respectively refuse to answer the question, and of course the Palestinian Territories, where a majority had confidence in him. Pakistan was the only other country in which a plurality supported bin Laden.

Jonah Goldberg Is a Clown (Waaah! Anti-Semitism!!) II

Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from Hegel to Whole Foods.
1) I have obviously not read the book.
2) This is not just about how it is “fascist” to have moral or gastrointestinal preferences that run contrary to Jonah Goldberg. Presumably it will have some discussion of how the Nazis were in fact influenced by environmentalism through anti-modern German romanticism and that Hitler Youth were encouraged to go camping blah blah blah.
3) That being said, the fact that Hitler liked something does not mean that any significant percentage of vegetarians are motivated by fascism. It is just silly guilt by association.

Glenn Greenwald

There is a lot of internet buzz on Glenn Greenwald’s new book. Basically it scolds George Bush for using the words “good” and “evil” in describing terrorism. This is the height of ostentatiously mature liberalism. Mohammed Atta was clearly up to no good. Osama bin Laden remains up to no good. I do not think it is outlandish to refer to them as evil, but figures like Greenwald need to claim that everyone who does not think like them is cowardly or stupid, blinded to the subtleties of terrorism. It may be true that this rhetoric does confuse people as to how the terror of terrorism can be stopped, but the mere fact of describing an evil act as evil should be embraced. I do not mean to suggest that there is a demon suggesting activity to bin Laden and his supporters, although for all I know there very well might be. I only mean to suggest that many of his actions have results that are so contrary to any sense of decency that they qualify as evil.
I would further say that the Manichean sensibility that is so disdained by figures on the cultural left, is superior to the tribalist sensibility that it can be said to have replaced.

Iran and Totalitarianism III

"This man, Ahmadinejad, has damaged all things. The timing of the rationing is just one case," said Reza Khorrami, a 27-year-old teacher who was among those lining up at one Tehran gas station before midnight on Tuesday.

Three things come to mind. First of all the rationing of subsidized gasoline has made some Iranians so mad that they are willing to give personal information while criticizing the government, although it may very well be misinformation, while others set gas stations on fire. Second of all, the bid bad Iranian government is more or less liberalizing the market for gasoline, although slowly, with the desire of people to fill up on cheap gasoline at the last minute causing long lines if it is the case, as far as I can tell from the government’s stated goal of raising gasoline prices by 10% every year is concerned and the unclear reporting of the story, people will still be able to buy gasoline whenever they want, just not at these special low prices (38 cents per gallon) after ther run out of rationing. If the case is that gas stations cannot charge any higher prices, but private drivers can only buy 26 gallons of gasoline per month (one tank of a Ford Expedition), then gasoline stations have a smaller customer base at the same low prices, so they will not be in a position where they can make much money, so they will have less gas available less often, so whenever they do they will be swamped with customers and long lines. The third point concerns the emphasis of the Iranian government on developing oil resources. Increasing revenue for the state oil company means it can invest to increase its capacity and sell more oil abroad to make big bucks, which would also be true if Iran were to be able to get much of its energy from nuclear technology as opposed to fossil fuels.

Tony Blair

So it seems that I was mistaken in thinking that Blair would ignore the requests that he become Special Middle East Envoy. I would assume that after years of being associated with the unpopular decisions of George Bush and before that having generally been perceived as a wishy-washy Clintonian, he really wants to be remembered positively and is thus willing to spend time in an improbable task to try to secure himself a place in history. If his actions as Envoy can lead to the peaceful and dignified release of British reporter Alan Johnston, held by a radical group called the Army of Islam that thinks Hamas is insufficiently extreme, then he may find himself quite popular among the British. As far as Blair’s rumored embrace of Catholicism is concerned, it is important to remember that Blair, like most politicians, is an individual with his own needs that are unlinked to global politics or public perceptions.

Iraqi Kurdistan

"It's relatively secure," said Layton, an American who has worked for many years in Kurdistan. "It's not perfect, but I'd much rather walk down the streets of Erbil than walk down the streets of Detroit, New York, Washington and Chicago."
Still, he is not taking any chances. As he spoke, bodyguards were posted outside his office. And behind his desk chair, next to an umbrella, a Kalashnikov leaned against the wall.

It is nice that Kurdistan is more peaceful and prosperous than the rest of Iraq. While Kurdistan received international protection from Saddam Hussein’s government through No Fly Zones and other means, it is also true that this new situation has further emboldened Iraqi Kurds. Without the threat of the centralized Saddamist government to threaten them, there is less that may keep away foreign investment and expatriate Kurds. I continue to maintain that this lack of non-Kurdish authority within the region has contributed to increasing Kurdish violence against Turkey and that the risk of the expansion of the violence through a Turk-Kurd war in real.

Obama and Religion

I do not entirely approve of Obama’s attempts to talk so much about the roles that faith can play in political life. Figures like Martin Luther King were able to use religion as a source of strength and rhetoric, but I am concerned that Obama is too much of an intellectual, to much of a law instructor at the University of Chicago, to be able to do this appropriately. There is a risk that he would be too public in justifying his political beliefs on personal religion. I am opposed to this because religious beliefs are so personal they cannot and should not be used to persuade others how the government should tell others to live. While the same could be said of all belief systems, religious persuasion on political issues also implies religious conversion on internal beliefs. Proselytization is perfectly acceptable, but it is out of place for politicians to do so. Obama should be careful to say less of this (religion as policy plan):

But I'm hopeful because I think there's an awakening taking place in America. People are coming together around a simple truth - that we are all connected, that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper. And that it's not enough to just believe this - we have to do our part to make it a reality. My faith teaches me that I can sit in church and pray all I want, but I won't be fulfilling God's will unless I go out and do the Lord's work.

And instead more of this (religion as rhetoric):

So doing the Lord's work is a thread that's run through our politics since the very beginning. And it puts the lie to the notion that the separation of church and state in America means faith should have no role in public life. Imagine Lincoln's Second Inaugural without its reference to "the judgments of the Lord." Or King's "I Have a Dream" speech without its reference to "all of God's children." Or President Kennedy's Inaugural without the words, "here on Earth, God's work must truly be our own." At each of these junctures, by summoning a higher truth and embracing a universal faith, our leaders inspired ordinary people to achieve extraordinary things.

And this (religion as personal inspiration):

Yet what we also understand is that our values should express themselves not just through our churches or synagogues, temples or mosques; they should express themselves through our government. Because whether it's poverty or racism, the uninsured or the unemployed, war or peace, the challenges we face today are not simply technical problems in search of the perfect ten-point plan. They are moral problems, rooted in both societal indifference and individual callousness - in the imperfections of man.

Jonah Goldberg Is a Clown (Waaah! Anti-Semitism!)

[Hat-tip ezraklein.typepad.com]

He claims that Michael Bloomberg is a baddy because he vaguely endorses the New Politics, like … Mussolini and Hitler. It is true that consensus is not necessary for a constitutional, democratic government, but it is also true that consensus does not undermine such a government and can actually result in an improved pace of needed political reform. If Bloomberg were to endorse undermining constitutional democracy to achieve consensus, that would be bad. He has, however, done no such thing with his praise of his own managerial competence.
If this article were by somebody else I would not consider this to be nothing more than a more or less reasonable insight. In the case of Goldberg, however, it becomes slightly more sinister. His book Liberal Fascism will attempt to identify the totalitarian temptation in liberalism with all the usual faux-Burkean brow-furrowing I am sure, and it is important to articulate that vague similarities between anyone who is to the left of Goldberg with Hitler do not constitute any meaningful sharing of practices, goals, or inspiration in ideology.

The Vice-Presidency and Constitutional Government

The Vice President is an executive official with legislative responsibilities (like the President who sings and vetoes bills and shall from time to time talk about how Baby Einstein is the best thing ever) and is thus answerable to the legislative oversight of the executive branch. Since the enactment of the Twelfth Amendment he has been elected with the President. He is an executive official in so far as he has duties that are delegated him for the executive branch by the President. Article II of the Constitution describes the election method for the President in the same sentence as it does that of the Vice President. That same article also uses one sentence to describe the process of Impeachment and Conviction of the President and Vice President, although it also includes all “civil officers” which I understand to include judges. I would just like to share some of my own thoughts on this subject. While it is the job of lawyers to put forward arguments that favor their client, this seems to me to be a particularly silly argument. Of course I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Chemical Ali

Ali Hassan al-Majid has been sentenced to death. His death will not bring peace to Iraq, but his crimes were great. In a state of war, those of the condemned who are aligned with a warring faction should face the penalty of death. I generally find it distasteful that the state would reserve that right for itself, but in a situation, such as that in contemporary Iraq, where political violence is everywhere, execution becomes legitimate in that although it will not create peace, it will eliminate those who may, while living, inspire, join, or even coordinate further terrorist activity.

Iran and Totalitarianism II

The most important government agency in terms of starting wars is the military. It does not matter whether or not the President of Iran can get Parliament to endorse his pick for Energy Minister, what matters, in terms of war and peace, is whether the military would be willing to attack Israel. When Iran is concerned, the focus, however is on refuting claims of Iranian totalitarianism because the hawks always focus on statements by the President as if he has the power to dictate, to decide, government policy.
The recent capture and release of those British Marines by showed that there are factions of the Iranian military that are aggressive and reckless but that are to an extent politically sensitive to the results of their actions.

Iran and Totalitarianism I

This crackdown on dissent in Iran shows once again that the government of that country is not particularly pleasant. The government does not particularly care about human rights, but this crackdown has not emerged just because Ahmadinejad and Khameini decided that there should be no free expression and that no dissent would be tolerated. Their wills are less limited by those of the governed than in most other countries, but there is still an independent civil society that has not been broken and may resist any doomed efforts to war that extremists within the Iranian government might support.

Talk Radio

I find it hard to get excited about the dominance of the right in American talk-radio. It may be true that those who decide radio programming have such strong preferences for the right that they give certain figures even bigger audiences than ratings would suggest a rational market would give them, but this does not seem important. It may even be true that these large audiences expand the influence of these figures, but I just do not consider what remedies would help things. Further government regulation of the content of political media would not be productive. It would anger broadcasters and would require very detailed regulations on what constitutes an acceptable balance that I am not sure could be enforced with any fairness or consistency. Trying to set up liberal radio hosts may work, but it should probably be done with the cooperation of existing media companies whose alleged primary goal is making money as opposed to spreading a particular gospel, which may make bad decisions. The other option is complaining, which occasionally get results.. This last approach is irritating on free speech grounds. It is true that it does not use the state to enforce its preferred speech, but it still does not recognize the central aspect of freedom. If it does not harm people, then let it be. I do not believe that the dominance of a small part of the market media by one part of the political spectrum is worth so much trouble.

Persia Panic

Read Justin Raimondo. I think he is a little too harsh on Clinton, Edwards and Obama, but the motivating sentiments of this piece are on the money. Iran is not totalitarian. Opposition to the existence of a country (whether on a map or on the page of history) does not constitute the elimination of its inhabitants or even incitement to that, just as it does not constitute an actual invasion of Israel. The Iranian opposition is a serious movement but will not in all likelihood endorse the Commentary agenda. This administration should have been more willing to deal with the Iraqis earlier when the moderate Iranian government gave them a chance to do so.

North and South

I imagine rightists are complaining about this article describing the life of North Korean defector Lee Chan in South Korea. They will claim that it seeks to apologize for the communist North Korean government using the anecdotes of one malcontent. I claim that this one man’s experiences do give us a window into the general experiences of North Koreans in South Korea. They worked hard to get there. They work hard to sustain themselves while there and they may or may not be overwhelmed by the differences between the countries.

Money Managers

Congress moves toward considering the shares of investment profits made by certain classes of money managers to be wages instead of capital gains. On a certain level these figures are paid for their services in terms of capital gains, that is to say they are paid out of investments. On the other hand these profits are earned as a service, possibly contractually, so there is a logical justification for this change in how the income is considered. In terms of the effects of this change, the government will in all likelihood receive more money from each individual working as a money manager, while there is also the possibility that those who are most skilled in this field will work for themselves and earn income that will be considered capital gains by the government. The fact that a money manager has loads of money which people give to him or her to invest, while an individual is not in such a situation and may lose big investing with his or her own funds, will continue the popularity of this occupation and protect the funds generated by it for those who wants their money expertly invested and by the IRS.

Gitmo

The administration is considering closing down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, where a military lawyer has complained that the standards to which the evidence that is used against those detainees who are charged with crimes is unacceptably low. It is true that detention outside of the main legal system is a role historically accepted by constitutional governments, but that detention should not rise to no level of proof and should not be of indefinite duration. In this conflict military tribunals should take seriously their role in evaluating the accused on the grounds that, unlike in previous conflicts involving state actors, those who have been captured are less likely to have been conspicuous to those who captured them because of uniforms, age, language or some combination of a number of factors. This of course ignores the possibility of inhumane treatment.

Obnoxiousness

“Look at how smarmy I am! Pay no attention to the fact that blogs coarsen society by promoting impatience and noise and that blog-readers are in fact terribly mis-informed. I’m a revolutionary, that’s right. I’m a hero.” Stupid shut-in idiots.

Rudy!

His South Carolina campaign’s finance director has been indicted for possession of enormous quantities of cocaine. No matter how much the left may try to spin that, that is not such a prominent position that Giuliani and his people should be criticized for having failed to do thorough background checks. That kind of thing seems like it could just as easily have happened to other candidates. The fact that the accused was also State Treasurer of South Carolina is in fact more troubling.
The revelations that Giuliani preferred making millions of dollars in platitudes to participation in the Iraq Study Group is, on first glance, in the past. The fact is, however, that it does reveal his priorities. Giuliani is not concerned about politics as opposed to being concerned about Rudolph Giuliani. His primary appeal is as the militant nationalist hero of 9/11, but his interest in foreign affairs seems low. It could be said that he will be efficient from the law enforcement side, considering what he did with law enforcement in New York City, but not only were there problems with the NYC response itself to 9/11, such as the lack of shared communications systems between first responders, something about which their unions had complained (it should not be surprising that public employee unions want more spending, but still), but the Republican Party downplays the importance of domestic law enforcement as far as terrorism to the extent that endless war seems to be its prescription.

China and the Environment

The Grand Canal is cleaner than it used to be and is being spruced up to become a World Heritage Site while retaining much of its industrial function. It has also been announced that China is now the world’s #1 imports carbon dioxide emitter, ahead of the United States, according to the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. Interpret that however you will.

The European Charter

"The consequences are dire," said Charles Grant, director of the Center for European Reform in London. "The EU would become introspective and obsessed with how to overcome blockages to a new deal.

I see no problem with a politically multipolar Europe cooperating under the existing framework of the EU as seems possible with the continued difficulties to establish a European Charter. Although a more unified EU would be influential on paper due to its wealth and population, it would still take so much for it to act in any unified way that the most concrete accomplishments would be diminishment of national sovereignty, the diminishment of national identity, and bureaucratic multiplication. All of the wrangling that has gone into trying to create this unique supranational organization has not succeeded thus far, and continuing them is only likely to distract from the other issues facing Europe.

Blair and Palestine

The American government wants Tony Blair to carry the water for the USA, EU, UN, and Russia in negotiations to establish a more viable and peaceful Palestine. It makes sense to get a non-American, but I would be very wary if I were Blair. It would be a very difficult job and if he were to appear to have been unsuccessful he would be taking the fall for Bush once again. Blair himself, although not as clearly associated with Israel as an American figure would be, is already clearly associated with Bush and his policies in the Middle East. This might also lead to his job being more difficult than it would be if he were, say Jacques Chirac.
Meanwhile, nine rockets from Gaza into Israel have wounded one Israeli with Islamic Jihad and the Fatah affiliated al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade claiming responsibility, with six Palestinian militants reported killed by the Israeli military. It is not unexpected that Fatah associated groups would take advantage of Hamas rule in Gaza to attack Israel. It is important to remember that both parties are heavily influenced by violent radicalism and both consider Israel to be extremely deficient in its behavior.

Why Didn't I Think of That?

Giving money to the Palestinian Authority under its new Abbas government may in fact keep the West Bank from degenerating into civil war and may convince some Palestinians that Hamas' isolationism is not a proper approach, but Matthes Yglesias points out that having Bush and Olmert praise Abbas may very well be counter-productive. Another strike against ecah of those leaders.

A Failure of Neoconservatism

Justin Raimondo writes that many neocons embrace the breakdown of order in the Middle East because it is their ultimate goal as a way of projecting American power and as a way of supporting Israeli hawks. This may even be true, but I still say they would probably be happier if thigns had gone a bit smoother, making their program less unpopular than it is among the Americans. Others have written that neocon can become the "tax-and-spend liberal" slur for the left to use, and I think there is something to that. In spite of prominent Democratic figures suggesting phased withdrawals from and residual forces in Iraq and "keeping all options on the table" with respect to Iran, hawkism is not very widespread among the Democratic leadership, which does not in fact seem eager to become involved in new wars. This administration bit off more than it could chew and has now jeopardized the neoconservative program.

Bloomberg

Michael Bloomberg is leaving the GOP, possibly moving closer to a campaign for President as an independent. It is unlikely that he will rejoin the Democratic Party of which he was a member before running for Mayor of New York in 2001 because he has made this decision to leave the Republican Parrty after rhetorically championing himself as a non-partisam seeker and finder of solutions. It would be interesting to see what his campaign would do with the unprecedented amounts of personal finance it would have, although it would probably do more harm to the Democratic candidate than the Republican candidate on account of Bloomberg's criticisms of the September 12 mentrality that decides terrorism is the great enemy and all ofrce must be used to destroy it entirely, his neoliberal welfare statism, and his cultural liberalism (not that he minded speaking at the Republican Convention in 2004). If Bloomberg ends up as President I would be very surprised. It is possible he will continue to make hints about running for PResident until one party kisses up to him, promises to make him Treasury Secretary or something and give him total control over economic policy in which case he will withdraw himself from consideration.

Fouad Ajami...

... who has been unable to tell the difference between a wounded soldier and a convicted felon has an op-ed in which, genius that he is, he reveals to the world that there are serious problems with Palestinian violence. Any solutions or even predictions? Of course not. It's mostly Arafat's fault (he certainly didn't help things, although there were problems with the settlement offered at Camp David along with that of the Arab governments that were unwilling to accept the huge refugee populations that entered their countries or to accept further refugees in the name of Jewish rule of Judea and Samaria. Israeli "romantics" of course are belittled by the great rationalist. It would seem to me that acknowledging the human rights of a stateless people would be less nationalistic than assassinating the head of government of one's own country in order to protect a vision of a nation-state that emerges from nineteenth century central European nationalism (nope, no romanticism here) coupled with ultra-Judaism.

Voting

Those who rae mentally incompetent, either slow or crazy, should not be allowed to vote. This should not be too controversial. People with these backgrounds can in fact overcome these disabilities in order to participate in greater society. Still there is a significant probability that they have not overcome their disabilities and should not be trusted to make these decisions when there is little they may be able to add.

The franchise should ideally be kept from people with mental disabilities, those under punishment for felony, and those under some more or less arbitrary age above which it is decided young people can be trusted to make many of their own decisions. Your average voter may not have a very clear idea on a number of issues, but he or she still has important knowledge and valuable perspectives that make for a choice that can provide for a wise collective choice, although democracy should not be assumed as always giving the right answer. Similarly, orderly elections eliminate the need for a violent bloodbath by often giving the majority, fickle and misinformed as it may be at times, what it wants.

Google Earth and Civilization

Google Earth is contributing its technology to help pinpoint environmental degradation in Darfur and the Brazilian Amazon. I am not opposed to all cultural change. Brazilian Indians who decide they do not enjoy poverty and illiteray and leave their villages to live and work on the edges of Latin Brazilian society should have that right. I do not believe that Brazilian Indians should have their traditional lands destroyed in order to integrate forcibly into mainstream Brazilian civilization. The standards of living for the descendants of the natives of the Americas have by and large been higher since 1900 than they would have been had Europeans staye away, but from 1500 to 1800 they were much lower when one realizes that the wheel does not make up for the social and environmental destruction, geographic displacement, epidemnics, and occasional conscious genocide that the Indians suffered during that period.

This Google Earth cooperation is distasteful because the intermediate stages of economic development, those of the Brazilian lumberjack, rancher and farmer are subjugated by an invincible Friedmanite army of computer programmers in order to skip the positive aspects of human development and lead the way into their being fed a mushy diet of impatience, personal alienation and cultural assimilation, although certainly not to a very large extent.

Youtube and the Countries of the World

The process of cultural globalization as achieved through twenty-first century communications technology is no good. It does however encourage me to see that youtube is introducing nationally specific versions, as many popular websites. The extension of national clustering into cyberspace is a more effective stop on the dillution of culture than the ways in which people decide than is the self-conscious embrace of culture by certain people who want to celebrate their old cultures in a world of diversity, that is a world of uniculture.

Pakistani Stability and Islamism

I stand by what I wrote earlier on the subject of Pakistan. What is worrying is not that a democratically elected government in akistan may be more gonzo extremist that Musharraf's government in which the Minister of Religious Affairs tell us that...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Pakistan on Monday condemned Britain's award of a knighthood to author Salman Rushdie as an affront to Muslim sentiments, and a Cabinet minister said the honor provided a justification for suicide attacks.
"This is an occasion for the (world's) 1.5 billion Muslims to look at the seriousness of this decision," Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq, religious affairs minister, said in parliament.

"The West is accusing Muslims of extremism and terrorism. If someone exploded a bomb on his body he would be right to do so unless the British government apologizes and withdraws the 'sir' title," ul-Haq said.

What is important is that it would very well be difficult to get a democratic, constitutional government up and running without the support of the current government.
Not only is the Islamic extremists' violent disdain for Rushdie troubling, but it is stupid. The Satanic Verses is slyly atheistic (as opposed to militantly so like his post-Satanic Verses work) but not particularly anti-Muslim. Mahound, the character inspired by Mohammed, appears in the dream sequences of an insane character and is not even portrayed as a villain. The novel in part constitutes the defense of the Muslim presence in Britain.

Elaborating on Afghanistan

More violence in Afghanistan. If those inspired by the Taliban make significant gains, then bin Laden and his supporters will have further freedom of movement. An American and British withdrawal from Iraq would give extremists more freedom to run around there too, but there are important differences. First of all, there is value in killing bin Laden himself and the rest of the al Qaeda leadership as opposed to some thugs in Iraq as a sign to those who would harbor similar designs upon world peace. Second of all, a collapse of the current government in Afghanistan would lead to a division between tribal warlordism and Talibanism; the Taliban would have to share the country with the warlords, some of whom could be recruited to the Taliban cause. In the case of Iraq, withdrawal would see more of the communal violence that is currently seen in that country (perhaps on a larger scale, perhaps not). The hard-core bin Ladenists would have to fight with neo-Baathists and Kurdish nationalists and Shiite extremsits. There would be less freedom of movement for those in Iraq who might be interested in inter-continental terrorism than compared to Afghanistan.

I would like to say that I amm not making any judgments about what the situation is now in Afghanistan as opposed to what might happen if things wre to get really bad.

Liberal New Media

You know how the bold, wonkish left doesn't focus on minutia like presentation as opposed to substance. Huffington does! I await atrios' indignance.

Food As Culture

I embrace the expansion of American cuisine through immigration to an extent. This expanded cuisine, however, should remain an unimportant diversion to domestic cuisine. It should not have a regular place in the diets of native-born Americans, especially in those places that are not associated with immigration and are more culturally stable.
I do not embrace the expansion of American cuisine through dirty yuppies regularly eating food with which they do not have a personal connection, food that did not develop out of the food eaten by their ancestors or the ancestors of those in their communities.

Immigration and Language

Ezra Klein brings out the data and anecdotes showing that Hispanics in the United States do in fact learn English at respectable rates against complaints that languages other than English are spoken in public and that automate recordings ask to press 1 for English, things which I have never found offensive at all. I would like to focus on the broader issue of immigration and liguistic assimilation.

There is a very strange idea floating around on the American right that people moved to the United States because they loved American English and the original intent of the Constitution. People have long spoken their own languages to each other in the United States. Foreign-language press had a strong presence in this country early in the last century and late in the century before that. Issues about language become significant when it is expected that people will have to learn Spanish (or whatever the language in question may be) to communicate efectively in the United States, but data show that this is not a likely scenario. There is also the aspect that the use of the English language in public is an integral aspect of American culture. This again is not historically accurate. People have been able to speak whatever language they want in public to each other in this country. Language is a less integral aspect of American culture than the social values associated with culture.

Bloggin

Matthew Yglesias has made many friends through blogging, so the internet isn't really alienating blah blah blah. Yes it is. People join a society of impatience, a culture of universal swill, and don't even need to waste time to come up with hobbies that are little more than yahoo newsbar dilletantism.

Air Force and Iraq

Matthew Yglesias and Justin Raimondo are complaining about the Air Force's plans to become more involved in Iraq. For Yglesias it shows that the Bush strategy is broken. For Raimondo this shows that the military is a law to itself. I would like to unpack the Air Force's alleged interested in influence as an interest in money and valor. "Money" comes from the fact that there does not logically seem to be too much that the Air Force can productively do against Third World guerilla movements, and now it wants to show what it can do. "Valor" comes from a desire to be productive and useful. This is especially true as the Airmen are conceptually the New Knights, out in the Wild Blue Yonder with their highly developed skills. It would be unfortunate to have finished near the top of one's class at the Air Force Academy to fly a fighter plane only to learn that you will be denied participation in the war in Iraq, the chance for heroism.

Hey, Progress! (Cautious Optimism)

It has been reported that North Korea will shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor in July as North Korean-American rapprochement continues following the trasfer of North Korean funds from Banco Delta Asia in Macao. North Korean integration in exchange for monitored disarmament should be worth the price.

Pakistani Democracy

Does the American political class support democracy in Pakistan? This article suggests no. I would suggest that American politicians would welcome a transition to democracy that was internal and supported by Musharaff. The concern for me at least is less, "Can a country with a large extremist presence govern itself democratically?" than "Can such a country govern itself if the government is overthrown by somebody less entrenched than the national army" as has been discovered in Iraq.

North Korean Nukes

The US should take the deal offered by the North Koreans, although it should insist on verification of de-nuclearization. I hereby assert that loathsome as the North Korean government is, it has been around for almost 60 years and might as well be recognized in exchange for lifting a bit of nuclear menace from a peninsula that is already armed to the teeth. Please remember that this rapid development of nuclear technology in North Korea came from the bellicosity of Bush in his first term, that the agreements with respect to North Korean nuclear power were being more or less respected.

Poor McCain

He's been hostile to a number of constituencies, and now he can't raise any money. If elected President he would be the oldest ever. He has been mocked for gaffes like the "Bomb Iran" ditty. His main 2000 constituency, moderate Republicans, seems more willing to support Giuliani, unless there are enough of them who find super-duper enhanced interrogation techniques more distasteful than they do pro-lifery in which case they may support McCain. I, however, think McCain does have a constituency in Teddy Rooseveltian nationalists. McCain's inspirational biography, his patriotic lineage, his hawkishness, and his alienation from the conservative movement itself (Nothing above the nation! Except the special interests opposed by McCain and his followers are expansive enough to include those demonized by both right and left) all appeal to them. It will be interesting to see how well he does in the selection process for GOP nominee, how large his constituency is and where it is strongest. The Pew Center for People and the Press has a bs typology of American politics which includes something called Pro-Government Conservatives, but they are an extremely religious group, and there is very little consistency to the groups themselves or agreement within the groups themselves on many issues. We'll see how McCain fares.

North of Israel...

... three missiles were fired from Lebanon. Two landed in Israel. Hezbollah says they didn't do it, and Hassan Nasrallah seems to enjoy taking credit for stuff. Olmert, who was in New York thanking the UN for its peace-keeping in post-invasion Lebanon which has led to peace (more than if Israel and the United States had decided to use military force to destroy the Party of Allah entirely or add parts of Lebanon to the Occupied Territories), said it was probably extremist Palestinians inspired by al Qaeda. The missiles do not seem to have killed anybody, so that's good.

The Future for Palestine? III

Abbas has created his own eergency government dominated by technocrats. Fatah loyalists are fleeing Gaza for the West Bank but are being held by the Israeli government at the border before they are let go. Gaza will continue to be a toilet and de facto partition will continue until there's some sort of deal, which in all likelihood would only give a legal basis for de facto partition.
Hey wait! What if Gaza tried to conquer the WEst Bank and the West Bank tried to conquer Gaza. THe Hamas and Fatah security forces could fight a big battle in the middle of Israel. Or they could lob missiles at each other, except their missiles are only strong enough to rain down on Israel. Obviously these are unlikely scenarios, but it would be irresponsible not to speculate.

Indonesia

In large part the arrests are the work of an elite counterterrorism unit, Densus 88, that was established in 2003 with U.S. and Australian assistance.
The Indonesian government is fighting the terroristic violence of Muslim extremists with the help of Australia and the US. Financial aid and possibly even aid in terms of equipment is acceptable, but it should not turn into the form of military advisors. The streets of Fallujah are bad, but the jungles of Indonesia would in all probability be worse. The extremism would only be exacerbated by a presence of American soldiers, who would convince many Indonesians that America is in fact interested in violent occupation as the extremists claim. It is important to support a moderate Indonesia against its minority of violent extremists, but it is not an American struggle to the extent that the replacement of the Taliban was in 2001.

The Other War

There are reports that a bomb on a bus in Afghanistan has killed many. Security in Afghanistan must not break down or else bin Laden will be more able to roam etc.

Cis-Jordan

A plan to integrate the West Bank into Jordan is supported by 30% according to a poll something in Ramalah called the Near East Counseling Institution. The only thing that West Bank Palestinian Arabs lose from this is the possibility of an independent Palestian state. The Jordanians who are descended from Palestinians would gain in population and social infuence in Jordan. In the 1970s, however, the Jordanian government grew concerned about the influence of Palestinians and cracked down on Palestinian Jordanians in what is called Black September, leading a number of them to go into exile in Lebanon, which contributed to the demographic confusion there that caused the Lebanese Civil War and the Israeli-Lebanese War or the early 1980s. This time, however, the Palestinian Jordanians would have their own assembly and other Jordanians would have their political perogatives protected from Palestinian influence. Jordan wins.
Gaza Palestians are in an ambiguous situation. Gaza is currently a toilet, but it has pretensions to being the Western wing of an eventual independent country. With the West Bank gone, what does Gaza become? As I mentioned earlier Gaza is a toilet, so Egypt will not want it and will not want to monitor it. Will it remain in stateless Hamastan limbo? Will Gaza become independent as the Republic of Palestine? I believe the word Palestine, and especially the Arabic term filisi, is related to the Biblical Philistines who were not on the West Bank but were in Gaza. If Gaza independence, in conjunction with West Bank integration with Jordan, were to happen, then maybe there would be less Arab-Israeli violence, but Gaza would be totally impoverished. It would subsist largely on international aid.
Israeli doves might win, but Israeli hawks lose and lose hard. Unless there were to be separate legal systems in the West Bank for citizens of Israel and Jordan and a multinational justice system between these two groups, you would have to disengage all the West Bank settlements. It got pretty rough with Gaza, which is a toilet that had been Biblical Philistia. There are in fact meaningful Jewish Holy Sites (the Tomb of the Patriarchs is of course holy to all Abrahamists, and Bethlehem;s holiness as city of David is more than matched by its other famous resident.) on the West Bank. You would see all sorts of lunatic ultra-Zionist terrorism (Not only ultra-Jewish but also possibly ultra-Christian), possibly mutinies. You would hear stupid rhetorical questions about "Why is it OK to ocupy Israeli territory when it wasn't OK to occupy Jordanian territory from 1967-2007? Double standard huh huh huh!" Of course the reason is that the Palestinians would be achieving meaningful citizenship and integration by this reversion to old borders while the Israelis were already citizens of Israel. The doves would have to convince the hawks that not only would this solve West bank terrorism (which is less of a problem than it used to be) but would also solve Gaza terrorism and then hope that the ultra-hawks and their American backers keep themselves from making too much trouble.

Matt Taibbi v. Liberalism

Matt Taibbi has a tirade against strawman liberals which raises some interesting points. His basic complaint is that too many liberals are from bourgeois backgrounds and are thus alienated from the working-class whose interests they purport to represent, perceive themselves as victims of non-existent oppression, focus on trivia, and are more interested in exhibitionism than governance. For these reasons he prefers to be a progressive. As far as the first point goes, fair enough. I have known my fair share of this sort of liberal, but Taibbi ignores a species of liberal I find even more annoying. This is the ostentatiously mature liberal. Taibbi's strawman is a bizarre mix of finger-wagging schoolmarm and hippy. With the ostentatiously mature liberal, there is little hippy left, except for a reflexive preference for the exotic and atheistic. The ostentatiously mature liberal enjoys touting his or her own sophistication as a result of blog-reading and is disdainful of all creativity or enthusiasm in approaches to politics that may at times be found on the right. Rightist deviations from the thought that is accepted in the liberal echo-chamber does not need to be met with argument, but the liberal is the adult and it would silly to argue with the petulant conservative. Similarly, wild insecurities are asserted for the right which are then made into sport by the ostentatiously mature liberal's accepted jester, doing a humming laugh through closed teeth at "the life of the dinner-party," except those too are unacceptably bourgeois to this species of scold, which must only work, whines about the right, and assorted hobbies. I've known fewer of these than Taibbi's liberals and I find them much more irritating. Graah! Nyyeaaahh! Faarghhh! The right of course is worse.

My second complaint with Taibbi is his embrace of the term "progressive" as opposed to liberal. To me "progressive" reeks of focus-groups. Liberalism on the other hand is tied up with the historic quest for freedom, for the individual's dignity, and the rich diversity of freedom and dignity's different meanings at different times and in different places. Our civilization is basically liberal (but don't worry, multiculturalism is too) and liberals should embrace this and use it to our advantage.

Lieberman Is Slime II

Isidore is totally cool with the Weekly Standard.

Iran

JOhn Bolton and Norman Podhoretz (He is described as a neoconservative. Of course Norman Podhoretz and many others associated with Commentary were called neoconservatives long before 9/11 but still. Waaaaaaahhh! Anti-semitism!) want war to prevent Iran from continuing to develop technologies that in from 3 to 8 years could be used to make WMD. You already knew that. ElBaradei of the IAEA is insistent that Iran has not violated the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
What are the alternatives? American sanctions alone are not working. Ideally, with more countries endorsing these sanctions, the Iranian government will abandon its plans. An alternative is to approach that government with recognition and an end to sanctions and the fundind of dissident groups by the United States in exchange for monitoring of its nuclear program. It would seem to me that the Iranian government, as unpleasant as it is (although certainly not as unpleasant as Saddam Hussein's in Iraq or even Abdullah's in Saudi Arabia) the proliferation of nuclear weapons is worse. If this does not work. If the Iranian government is unwilling to agree to give up its nuclear program in an adequate way in exchange for this, if they really want control of their own nuclear technology, then keep up with the sanctions but let them develop the technology, withdraw from the IAEA when they feel like it, and build their bomb.
But what then? Would they use it? Ahmadinejad may have strange religious and historical views and hostile views on Israel's right to exist, but that does not make him eager to start nuclear war, even if he and his supporters had the power to do so. Mao and Stalin had some seriously strange ideas as well and in each of their cases the countries to which they posed the chief threat (continental Western Europe, Taiwan) did not themselves have nuclear weapons and were only supported by the US, as opposed to Israel which does have the matches with which to light Iranian oil. There will be a lot of yelling between the two powers on the subject of the occupied terrirories. The problem is that Israel's conventional military is superior to that of Iran, so Iran really only would be able to use its nuclear weapons if things got bad, but that would invite a nuclear response from Israel leading to millions of deaths. I consider nuclear war unlikely. Israel still might be more cautious in dealing with Hamas and Hezbollah (ignoring the possibility that Israel accept the Absullah peace-plan or some close variant), leading to some increased deaths. There might be a non-nuclear air war between Israel and Iran which would lead to tens of thousands of deaths and the disruption of oil flows. The losses would probably be less than those that would result if this war were done now, considering in three years there will almost certainly be fewer US troops in Iraq than there are now. The fact that Iran would have nuclear weapons in the future would lead to Israeli restraint in this future scenario that would be absent in a war in the nearer future in which tactical nuclear weapons might be used by the governments of Israel or even the United States leading to all sorts of wild terrorism and oil and natural gas embargoes.

The Future for Palestine? II

Muhammad Tawfiq, a Preventive Security officer from Nablus and the head of a Fatah militia there, said that Hamas had treated fellow Palestinians "the way that Hitler dealt with the Jews."

A few blocks away, dozens of armed and uniformed members of the various security forces loyal to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, gathered in the city's central Manara Square in an obvious show of force.

Do not read into the fact that only "dozens" of armed figures rallied to support Fatah the significance that Fatah is weak compared to Hamas and has no serious Palestinian constituency. There are reports of some factional violence on the West Bank going against Hamas. The significance of "dozens" is that Fatah and those loyal to it are unable to set up a stable state.

Scooter

What kind of lefty blogger would not talk about Scooter Libby?
It would seem to my legally untrained mind that his sentence may as well be delayed considering the non-violence of his offenses. I also imagine that his convictions will stick and he will end up in jail anyway.
Left: Perjury and obstruction are serious crimes. It is right for Libby to be convicted.
Right: Well, what about Clinton?
L: We aren't talking about Clinton. We're talking about Libby.
R: There was no underlying crime.
L: It's true that it would be too difficult to prove the crime that Libby knowingly revealed the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson, but he did speak to journalists about her.
R: But Richard Armitage was the source of the leak to Novak.
L: That's true. But Fitzgerald investigated all of the improper although possibly legal discussion of her between government officials and journalists because this atmosphere of disdain for her work through the number of leaks ensured that at least one of the leaks would result in her identity being revealed in the press.
R: But she drove to work at the CIA.
L: That doesn't mean she wasn't covert. She was covert. She was said to work for "Brewster-Jennings."
R: But she was in Who's Who.
L: Who's Who didn't identify her as working for the CIA.
R: But she has been in magazines, identified with her line of work.
L: Only since the Novak article.
R: But she contributed to sending her unqualified husband to Niger. You should not send someone who is friendly with the government of a country to investigate allegations against it.
L: There is a difference between being "friendly" with someone and being "friends" with someone. Wilson was in the former category, making it easier to ivestigate them. THe choice to send Joseph Wilson was endorsed by the CIA; it was not the exclusice decision of Valerie Plame Wilson. Furthermore, Wilson's allegations are basically true. There were no serious attempts by Iraq to purchase uranium. Even if Iraq had recently sought to purchase uranium, that does not mean he had bought it. And even if he had bought it, that does not mean he would habe built weapons of mass destruction.
R: You just want somebody to go to jail because you disagree with the war.
L: I want Libby's convictions to stand because perjury and obstruction are crimes.
R: It was inappropriate for Judge Walton to make fun of the legal scholars who filed a brief in favor of Libby. THey can file for whomever they want.
L: It would have been inappropriate if he had created a legal obligation for them to file these briefs for a number of the accused. It was just a joke.
R: His job is not joke.
L: People do a lot of things that are not their job. Even when on their job.

The Future for Palestine?

Not a stable parliamentary autonomous area. It would seem that the best thing that could happen in the short-run is de facto partition, Fatah rule in the West Bank rump, Hamas rule in Gaza, with an international force that would try to halt the flow of weaponry into Gaza, so that Hamas cannot lob missiles into Israel that can do too much harm.

Missiles in Europe

The senior American official said that not a single NATO member objected Thursday to the United States moving ahead with plans to base missile defense components in Poland and the Czech Republic. All three nations are alliance members, although the negotiations on missile defense bases are being carried out in bilateral talks outside of the NATO framework.

Isn't that nice? America is not, in fact, alone. There is no reason for such extreme self-pity in which hawks like to engage, at least in this particular issue. The Azerbaijan plan, whereby Putin offered that instead of Poland and the Czech Republic, Azerbaijan be used a base for missile defense activities in order to protect from the alleged Iranian menace, is not dismissed, but the shield from Poland and the Czech Republic remains. Now missile defense systems have mixed records, but it might as well be worth it to expand the American military presence in Eastern Europe just in case Europe, and the world economy) are threatened by missile attacks.

European Constitution

Poland wants a Connecticut Compromise for the European Constitution. It is also worth noting that the Polish government, low-taxing, ultra-Catholic heroes to the American right also want guarantees that nothing will happen to the big, fat development checks the EU is constrained to write them. Britain has won concessions that would dilute the symbolic "national" aspects of the new constitutional Europe and is also moving to fight the loss of national sovereignty by calling for national vetoes and opposition to allowing the EU to sign treaties and to outline the rights of its citizens. All of these issues, in addition to the multiplication of bureaucracies, which is an aspect the loss of national sovereignty, all lead me to question the use of the European Constitution as opposed to its current state, which is already highly integrated in terms of economics and political coordination. Let's hope Angela Merkel fails in this bid.

Ivory!!

So South Africa, Bostwana, Namibia and Zimbabwe will sell their stocks of ivory amid complaints that this will embolden further poaching. The poachers already know that they can get an illegal return. These countries might as well try to get some money off of this ivory they own. Anyway, some people will try to tell you that people should have the right to kill elephants on their own property and cite the fact that cows thrive (I have no problem with people having the right to kill elephants that threaten damage to person or property). Of course according to this the populations of endangered species are supposed to decline only with the introduction of protections.(Oh, aren't you such a smarmy contrarian! And your work has a veneer of first semester calculus? I am impressed enough to believe everything you say!) I, however, would claim that the average person on to whose property an elephant may appear has no use for a live elephant. He or she will have the elephant killed and sell it for its ivory. A family farmer in Namibia does not have the means to raise a herd of elephants, show them off to tourists and then sell their ivory when they die. Presumably a bunch of wealthy investors will buy out the small property-owners and open an elephant ranch, but in addition to having to spend amounts of money that may very well be prohibitively high, there is the fact that the preservation of wildlife in its natural state as opposed to hyper-endangerment (Let's kill 90% of African elephants for ivory, then there will be such a low supply of elephant tourism that we can make enough money that the costs of feeding, you know, an elephant aren't as big.). The issues surrounding elephants are only multiplied with respect to carnivorous beasts, whose hides are less important than ivory, whose milk would be drunk by no human, who are expensive to feed, and who above all are very dangerous.

Gay Mass.

The Massachusetts Legislature has defeated a proposal to allow for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Although I am not writing this sentence in Massachusetts, I do live in that state. I have not noticed a particularly degraded society there as some of the opponents of gay marriage might claim (although our ideas of degraded society almost certainly diverge); however, I am opposed to gay marriage. Civil unions are a more appropriate way of giving homosexuals the legal status that comes with marriage. Homosexuals should be extended dignity as opposed to normalization. This normalization might contribute to a further alienation from and disdain for the heterosexual creation of children, which is economically, militarily and culturally desirable in the appropriate amounts. The symbolic inequality of a separate legal track for homosexual families would communicate the superiority of heterosexual methods of creating children.
Economically and militarily, homosexual child-rearing through adoption should be allowed and is just fine (although I doubt very many children raised by homosexual couples join the military) as there is a future generation to make money and join the military. Culturally, homosexual child-rearing is more complicated. A child raised by homosexuals will in all likelihood be exceptionally alienated from child-rearing in addition to having to put up with all sorts of baggage from bigots who have a problem with gays (as opposed to gay marriage). Child-rearing through artificial insemination of lesbians (or heterosexual women) possibly through the artificial insemination of the artifical wombs of homosexual (or heterosexual) men in the future is more problematic. Certainly people have long been raised by people who neither contributed seed nor egg through the act of sex, although anyone who tries to tell you that because the nuclear family hasn't had that long of a run that the connection between sex and child-rearing is Victorian this or Eisenhower-era that is full of garbage. Children should be made through sex as a symbol of human integration with nature, and homosexual full marriage, by discouraging the heterosexual creation of childrern, tips the balance in favor of artifical insemmination with what I'm assuming to be its disproportionate popularity among homosexuals, and the decision not to have children.

Non-Insights on Iraq II

1. The new attacks on the Golden Dome of Samarra are bad. It's not as if the Shiite community has been incredibly cooperative, but this might heighten their hostility to the US plan of giving weapons to Sunnis not affiliated with the Iraqi government in order to fight terrorists.
2.

The war between the PKK and the Turkish state started in 1984; some soldiers killed in the latest attacks were not even born then. More than a quarter of a century and nearly 40,000 deaths after the first shots were fired, the fighting is still going on.
It is not as intense as it was in the 1990s, when victims' funerals first became commonplace in towns all over Turkey. But it is heating up again after a lull following the capture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan by Turkish agents in 1999.

I know somebody who got a job teaching in Turkey. She was sort of concerned on the subject of the political situation there. I said it wasn't such a big deal as a reassureance, and Turkey is not in fact that bad. If there is an invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan, however, things will get worse there. It is not unreasonable to assume that the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has been enboldened by the chaos in non-Kurdish Iraq. Under Kurdish autonomy under Saddam Hussein, there was the possibility that international protections of the Kurds would be jeopardized by anti-Turkish terrorism and that if those protections were to be lifted Saddam Hussein would violently reintegrate them into the rest of Iraq. Now that the rest of Iraq is a messy comma, there are likely to be few internal Iraqi consequences of this and Turkey has additional NATO pressures against a large-scale invasion of Iraq.
3. It is also important to appreciate the role played by Turkish domestic politics. The JUstice and Development Party (AK) of Turkish PM Recip Tayyep Erdogan is unpopular with the military and its supports who want to demagogue the issue of Iraqi Kurdish connections to Kurdish anti-Turkish terrorism and embarass Erdogan;s government.

Hamastan

The Gaza Strip is coming under the rule of militia-men loyal to Hamas. What to do? International peacekeepers to protect the Palestinian Authority. Sure, it will still be corrupt and deadlocked, but there will not be a vacuum of force in the area.

Jousting with Strawmen

Look! The Indonesian military has apprehended suspected terrorist-leader Abu Dujana. That means not all Muslims are bin Ladenist terrorists.

Fruit Juice and Friedmanite Platitudes

Dannone is involved in a dispute with its Chinese beverage-making venture Wahaha over allegations that the Chinese executives ran off with some of Wahaha's money and started new businesses to sell identical products. Corporate disputes are not exceptional or even special to poor countries, but this is worth mentioning only to make the point that there are challenges to working in countries with weakly defined rules on property and investment. Of course you already knew this.

Goldberg and Education

Jonah Goldberg is a fool, but you knew that already. I do not want to be a nit-picker about every stupid thing he wrote in this column. That single-payer (which of course is different from single-provider, but don't expect him to go into that) health systems work well in other countries, that his one sentence temper tantrum against political correctness in the schools is absurd. Now it is important to realize that as far as the column in question goes he is opposed to public schools as opposed to what may be described as public education. Under public education every family could get some big, fat school stamp from the Department of Education which they could use to spend on whatever school they see fit, while none of the schools themselves would be run by the government. Public schools do two important things that would be missing if they were abolished. The commonality of public education is culturally important. You don't want too much hyper-affluent choice separating people from each other. Second of all, centralizing education gives us a situation in which although many costs may not be competitive (when private schools in Goldberg's HyperHouston start taking special ed. students in large numbers then we'll see what happens to their cost advantages), there are lower information costs. There would need to be too much effort spent shopping around by too many people to find an appropriate school.
Additionally, there are factual concerns about the superiority of charter schools v. public schools and questions about the value-added of private schools v. public schools as opposed to their respective raw results.
UPDATE: Edited for reasons of terminology.