May 19, 2004
Hugh Hewitt Show
After a couple weeks of absence, I'll be back on the Hugh Hewitt show tonight at 8:20 PM EST.
UPDATE: Bad show for the left -- Hugh's line of questioning about the sarin tended to reveal that I was never much of an Iraq dove in principle.
Fiat
Just a word on Eugene Volokh's ongoing dispute re: Brown v. Board of Education with Paul Craig Roberts. Regarding the subject, Roberts invokes some classic tropes of "judicial activism":
Thurgood Marshall was one of them when, in the climax of the NAACP's campaign to end segregation by judicial flat, he stepped up to the Supreme Court's podium at 3:15 P.M. on December 9, 1952. It was strange that the great moral issue of the day was being debated in the Supreme Court instead of across First Street in the U.S. Congress or in state legislatures.Now normally the point of this sort of complaining is that judicial action runs contrary to majoritarian democracy. Given the reality of the Jim Crow South, however, majoritarian democracy could hardly have been said to be in play. We're talking a time before the Voting Rights Act when African-Americans couldn't participate in the political process and when many poor whites were also disenfranchised. Meanwhile, we're also talking about a time before Baker v. Carr when legislative districts were often wildly unrepresentative. The South was operating under conditions that more closely resembled one-party dictatorship than majoritarian democracy.
Congressional action on Civil Rights was, moreover, at the time regularly obstructed by the use of the (countermajoritarian) filibuster rule in the (countermajoritarian) Senate, at a time when it was possible for much smaller minorities to deploy the filibuster than it is today. The filibustering Senators themselves, moreover, had been elected by all-white electorates, due to the aforementioned disenfranchisement of southern African-Americans. So charges of "judicial activism" are, in this context, even more of a red herring than usual. Majoritarian decision-making simply wasn't on the table given the institutions of the era.
USINPAC
If you want to look at something that I think could turn out to be a really insidious influence on the body politics, check out USINPAC. The basic idea is to add a BJP element to the burgeoning Likud-fundamentalist alliance.
UPDATE: Sebastian Holsclow comments:
This would be a bad advocacy group giving bad money to influence the political system as opposed to a good advocacy group set up by Soros giving good money to influence the political system right?It's number one. People who give money to advance policies that will make the world a better place are excellent people, doing the lord's work. People who give money to advance policies that will make the world a worse place are bad people, impeding the advance of goodness. I don't see anything especially hypocritical -- or even surprising -- about my view that it's only good to try and influence the political process when you intend to use your influence for good. This is why, say, Americans for Tax Reform (always wrong) is awful, while the AFL-CIO (more right than wrong) is okay. Find me a group I agree with 100 percent of the time and I'll praise their spending habits to anyone who'll listen.Or is it that Indians are bad?
I'm confused.
More Christian Zionism
Rick Perlstein writes in to correct my characterization of his Israel policy article:
Note that I only said that Abrams was "assuaging" these folks concerns. Bad enough. He's on the record with ministers controlling a large flock that the administration WILL resist any Mideast solution that DOES implicate areas of "Significan Biblical influence." The people who believe this political promise doesn't put an unacceptable constraint on American diplomacy have the burden here.That seems about right to me. On the other hand, it's hardly as if it's impossible for the president to break a campaign promise, especially an under-the-table campaign promise, were he so inclined.The article is being hyped beyond its immediate claims. The immediate claims are damning enough.
Hitch
One of the striking things about the right's embrace of the incoherent Christopher Hitchens is that when he was on the left, he was really the worst sort of lefty and, indeed, continues to manifest many of the least-admirable elements of my "side" of the ideological divide. Daniel Davies has more. The wrongheadedness of the Vietnam War has little (possibly nothing) to do with the merits of the North Vietnamese polity and everything to do with the unfeasibility of creating a stable, morally-worthy regime in South Vietnam.
Excuses and Explanations
I considered trying to make merry with David Brooks' foray into the free will debate, but bona fide philosopher Brian Leiter does it well -- just the task for a man with his penchant for disdain.
At any rate, I think where Brooks really went astray was by making the common mistake (at least it's a mistake according to me) of thinking that questions of responsibility hinge in some important way on the free will topic. The reason you want people like the Columbine killers to be held responsible for their actions is that even if in some sense earlier bullying was the cause of their massacring, it's obvious that not every victim of bullying turns to massacre, and much as we want to minimize the quantity of bullying in our schools, we also want to minimize the amount of bullying-related spree-killing. One achieves this by (among other things) not accepting a history of mistreatment at the hands of your fellow students as an excuse for spree-killing. Brooks is one of those (they pop up pretty often on the right) who seem to think that every explanation of behavior is, ipso facto, an excuse and therefore insist that to inquire into the causal origins of bad behavior (spree killing, terrorism, petty robbery) must be forbidden. The result, of course, is that bad behavior is not well-understood, and therefore hard to prevent.
It's interesting, though, that the leading candidate for a good conservative policy solution to anything in the recent past -- the "broken windows" theory of crime -- was, fundamentally, a "root causes" approach. According to "broken windows" it's just that liberals had the wrong root cause (i.e., poverty) and that the focus should, instead, be on generalized disorder. The anti-explanation school of conservatism would imply that you reduce the murder rate by just handing out really, really, really, really harsh penalties to murderers, which doesn't actually work very well.
Matt In Books
Some have complained about the self-aggrandizing blog posts around these parts but, hey, why start an eponymous website if not to self-aggrandize. So in that spirit, I see today that I get mentioned briefly in David Brock's new book which, obviously, is a must-read (also "must-reads" in same sense: The Book on Bush and Paris: Capital of the World) , though I've only read three pages of it.
Aging And Gay Rights
Additional data on the subject from Peter Levine seems to indicate that my speculations about this are right. Younger cohorts are more pro-gay than older cohorts and cohorts grow more tolerant over time.
Christian Zionism
I think many people -- including the author of the story -- may be slightly misreading Rick Perlstein's scoop in The Village Voice (lots of important memos getting leaked to the Voice, lately, or so it seems to me). Is the point here really that Christian Zionists control Bush Mideast policy? It reads to me like Elliot Abrams was bullshitting his Christian guests, because the administration depends on their support but doesn't want to embrace their vision of Israel policy.
Palestinians aren't going to find these sorts of fine distinctions very impressive, but there's a non-trivial difference between Sharon's vision (which Bush seems to share) of a tiny Palestinian state broken up into several bits, and the "one state solution" vision which is plainly exterminationist in its implications.
For The Kids Again!
Amanda's had enough. I think the "all suburbanites are racists" line she's taking is a bit harsh -- wanting more square feet per dollar than you can get in the city is a perfectly reasonable desire, and explains why more and more non-white folks are living in suburbs nowadays. I'd just say one more word about suburbia versus cities for childrearing, a point stolen from Philip Longman's book, The Empty Cradle, which I really should read and where you'll have to go to look up a proper citation. No one wants their kids to grow up someplace dangerous, someplace where they're likely to be killed, someplace like Washington, DC with the high murder rate, or Jerusalem with the suicide bombers. Nevertheless, the main killer of young people in the developed world is not murder (or terrorism) but automobiles. When you combine the murder rate with the car-related death rate, it turns out that American suburbs are more dangerous to children and teens than even the highest-crime cities.
May 18, 2004
For The Kids
Erika at Apartment 401 says, among other things:
Although they like the city, I do sense from her blog that the kid-friendly culture of the suburbs has some appeal. Most of us grew up playing in muddy creeks and going to community barbecues and riding our bikes down empty streets and we want our kids to have some of that.Having grown up in New York City, this kind of talk always pisses me off. What, exactly, is so "kid-friendly" about the suburbs? It seems to me that it often just comes down to this -- "most of us grew up playing in muddy creeks . . . and we want our kids to have some of that." I didn't grow up doing any of that stuff, and I think I turned out fine. Conversely, the people I knew who grew up in the suburbs wound up not doing things that I did all the time and they turned out fine, too.
Two things about the whole "kids = suburbs" thing make perfect sense. Primarily, if there's more people in your family, it's desirable to have more space, and space is cheaper in the suburbs. Secondarily, depending on circumstances, it may be cheaper to obtain access to a decent school. If the financial circumstances apply, those are great reasons to move to the suburbs. Similarly, if it so happens that you really want to own a big yard, or you realize that you've reached a point in your life where the sights and sounds of the big city are no longer all-that-appealing then, obviously, you should move to the suburbs.
But please, please, please don't "do it for the kids." If you'd rather live in the city and you can afford a place you like, do that. Kids grow up fine in the city.
Ed School
Eduwonk and Daniel Drezner comment on the poor state of America's schools of education. This is not a subject I know a great deal about but, anecdotally, the Ed School always seemed to be considered the most intellectually lax of Harvard's professional programs and when I was in high school there was a notable difference between the quality of the teachers with degrees in education and those who'd simply received academic training in the field they taught.
UPDATE: Also from Eduwonk why do conservatives think the government should tell parents how to spend their money? In re: a remarkably stingy $500 voucher proposal:
Eduwonk is all for helping parents. Why instead not propose giving every low and middle income parent a $500 (or for the sake of nostalgia $1,000) refundable increase in the child tax credit? Then parents can do with that money what they choose...what a downright Republican idea!Well, as they say, there wouldn't be much political grandstanding value in that idea.
"Negro Side"
Via Lawrence Solum, The New York Times's original coverage of the Brown decision:
The Supreme Court adopted two of the major premises advanced by the Negroes in briefs and arguments presented in support of their cases.Now, obviously, no contemporary newspaper would refer to the "Negro side" of a legal decision. So when did the Times switch? Were there wrenching battles throughout American newsrooms all throughout the 1950s and 60s as one paper and television station after another had to abandon the "Negro" locution, or did they more-or-less all switch at once?Their main thesis was that segregation, of itself, was unconstitutional. The Fourteenth Amendment, which was adopted July 28, 1868, was intended to wipe out the last vestige of inequality between the races, the Negro side argued.
"Negro Side"
Via Lawrence Solum, The New York Times's original coverage of the Brown decision:
The Supreme Court adopted two of the major premises advanced by the Negroes in briefs and arguments presented in support of their cases.Now, obviously, no contemporary newspaper would refer to the "Negro side" of a legal decision. So when did the Times switch? Were there wrenching battles throughout American newsrooms all throughout the 1950s and 60s as one paper and television station after another had to abandon the "Negro" locution, or did they more-or-less all switch at once?Their main thesis was that segregation, of itself, was unconstitutional. The Fourteenth Amendment, which was adopted July 28, 1868, was intended to wipe out the last vestige of inequality between the races, the Negro side argued.
The Kids Are All Right
Via Andrew Sullivan, the Crimson reports on, among other things, the presence of Harvard conservative group leaders at a pro-gay marriage thingy down in Massachusetts. Some social conservative types have speculated to me that the overwhelming pro-gay sentiment among young people can be counteracted by the natural conservatizing effects of aging. Folks who think that are, I think, seriously underestimating the extent of the young-old disjoint on this topic.
The other thing to say, of course, is that support for gay marriage does not look -- at least from the perspective of the pro-gay side -- like a particularly radical libertine point-of-view. The upshot is that gays and lesbians should be allowed to settle down, get married, and have families much like everyone else. It's just the sort of status-quo, vaguely conservative sentiment that people tend to adopt as they age, not a wild-and-crazy youthful kind of thing.
More On Odds
Evidently, the Mr. T Experience was on the case a ways back:
I still haven't found a girlfriend though I've tried a lot so can you help me please it's tougher than I thought. The odds are pretty good but the goods are pretty odd still at this point I'd take anything you've got. You see this all the time nice girls in love with jerks what could they be thinking tell me how it works. If I've got some problems well I wouldn't be the first but the ones I have in mind are even worse and even Hitler had a girlfriend who he could always call who'd always be there for him in spite of all his faults. He was the worst guy ever reviled and despised even Hitler had a girlfriend so why can't I?Interesting stuff.
New Column
By me up at TAP Online, trying to correct some of the weird complacency I've started picking up from liberals around town. Sometime between when I wrote this and when it got published I started noticing that outside-the-beltway liberals seemed less complacent, so maybe there's no point, but still, damnit, you can't pass up a chance to mention Karl Popper. Meanwhile Laura Rozen writes about your friend and mine, Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for screwing shit up.
UPDATE: Code was messed up. Should make sense now.
Other Investigations
...one thing worth keeping in mind about this whole Abu Ghraib business is that the people and institutions being targeted -- roughly, the Office of the Secretary of Defense's efforts to displace the Intelligence Community -- are more-or-less the same as the people and institutions targeted by investigations into the "use of intelligence" issue and the Valerie Plame issue. For whatever reason, Abu Ghraib seems to have attracted more interest on the part of congressional Republicans than these earlier topics, meaning that this inquest is likely to proceed faster and more successfully than the earlier ones. But they're all -- potentially, at least -- linked up.
Goods/Odds
Will Baude reports via email that this witticism is also current around the University of Chicago and that he had previously believed it was limited to that context. We both agree that if one hears it in Hyde Park and Cambridge, it probably circulates beyond those two venues as well.
