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Wednesday, September 22, 2004
The Times' Reaction The New York Times seems to have expected President Bush to go to the U.N. yesterday and beg forgiveness for his sins against realism and relativism. One can disagree with Bush on both policy and principle, but there is not even an attempt in this piece to address Bush's arguments. Hardly anything betrays the intellectual bankruptcy of the "paper of record" as much as this editorial. Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Bringing Neo-Natural Right to the U.N. It is difficult to doubt the thesis of the Ceaser/DiSalvo piece we cited over the weekend after reading Bush's speech at the U.N. today. The neo-natural right argument was on full display in New York. Bush began with first principles, including the Declaration of Independence. "The United Nations and my country share the deepest commitments. Both the American Declaration of Independence and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaim the equal value and dignity of every human life. That dignity is honored by the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, protection of private property, free speech, equal justice and religious tolerance. That dignity is dishonored by oppression, corruption, tyranny, bigotry, terrorism and all violence against the innocent. And both of our founding documents affirm that this bright line between justice and injustice, between right and wrong, is the same in every age and every culture and every nation." Clearly choosing an updated Reagan Doctrine over detente, Bush also said, "Our security is not merely found in spheres of influence or some balance of power, the security of our world is found in the advancing rights of mankind." Similarly, Bush remarked, "For too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. The oppression became common, but the stability never arrived." Bush repeatedly cited the belief in "human dignity" as the basis for fighting AIDS and poverty, relieving the crushing debt of some nations, banning human cloning, and fostering liberal democracy, the realization and practice of which no human being or culture is incapable. "When it comes to the desire for liberty and justice, there is no clash of civilizations. People everywhere are capable of freedom and worthy of freedom." Finally, in proposing a democracy fund, Bush has pushed the U.N. to abandon its pseudo-sophisticated value-neutral stance regarding forms of government. His speech amounted to a lecture in some ways, but it was a lecture that the U.N. has needed to hear for a long time. Who knows if the U.N. will ever stand for the neo-natural right doctrine that Bush espouses; perhaps it will be forced to contemplate its purpose a little bit harder after today. One thing is certain: Bush really is an idealist; trying to change the U.N.'s thinking is probably more difficult than bringing democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq. Saturday, September 18, 2004
What November Means If you only read one article about the parties and the November election, the lead piece in the new Public Interest should be it. Providing some of the smartest and wittiest commentary on the parties (especially the GOP) and the upcoming election, James Ceaser and Daniel DiSalvo show what is at stake in November. Despite arguments that suggest each party echoes the other, the election is a choice between two distinct parties with different ideas. The upcoming election will indicate whether Republicans are able to consolidate their resurgence since 1980 or whether, having peaked, their influence begins to ebb. Electoral analysts studying voter groups and demographic trends are missing the point which is that President Bush has identified the GOP with a distinct foreign policy grounded in a version of the theory of natural right. Bush has justified his policy with recourse to certain fixed and universal principles -- that "liberty is the design of nature" and that "freedom is the right and the capacity of all mankind." Ceaser and DiSalvo contend that not since Abraham Lincoln has the head of the GOP grounded its principles in natural right to this extent; and defeat in November means not only the curtailing of Bush's foreign policy but also likely an end to his understanding of the GOP. Moving to a discussion of today's Republicans, Ceaser and DiSalvo take as their point of departure the crude caricature of today's GOP as consisting of white racists, religious fanatics, the rich, and a handful of Jewish intellectuals. The authors argue that, far from a replacement of the old Southern Democrats, the "GOP has become the South's dominant party in the least racist phase of the region's history. Republicans appeal to the same entrepreneurial, socially conservative, and patriotic voters in the South that they do in other parts of the country, with the only difference being that there are more of these voters in the South than elsewhere." Regarding the recent anthropological accounts of "Red" and "Blue" America, Ceaser and DiSalvo assure us that we are not "undergoing a domestic version of the 'clash of civilizations.'" Still, cultural issues matter, and it is interesting that most recently it is partisan commentators who want to dismiss the Red-Blue distinction. Seeing no evidence of an outright culture war, analysts attribute the relative calm to the sagacity of the American voter who can separate the 'real issues' of jobs and healthcare. Red-Blue investigations overlap with religion which is a more certain predictor of party affiliation. Speaking of jobs and healthcare, it's not so easy anymore to argue that the GOP attracts the greedy rich, with their numbers populating the ranks of the Democrats in roughly equal proportion. Education is generally a precursor to wealth, and no demographic group is more staunchly Democrat than college professors. Finally, we come to the charge that the Bush Administration's foreign policy has been hijacked by a cadre of neoconservative intellectuals, influenced by the philosopher Leo Strauss. To accept this thesis, Ceaser and DiSalvo argue, one must believe that a foreign policy criticized for excessive democratic idealism has resulted from an "anti-democratic coup d'etat." So, Ceaser and DiSalvo conclude, Republicans are just like everyone else; they live, work, and pray in suburbia, and they don't really know who Leo Strauss was. What matters ultimately in attracting voters is the parties' stands on domestic and foreign affairs. Domestically, it is not completely Reagan's GOP anymore. Social issues are playing a more prominent role than in the past, prompting some acceptance of an increased role for government. The GOP has defended "traditional values," while learning not to sound shrill; and the Democrats have turned to their "de facto" legislative branch (the judiciary) to defend libertinism. The Great Society programs remain discredited, however, and the GOP is still generally for tax cuts. Republicans went rather far with the anti-government theme in the early 1990's, prompting Bush to take a different approach than aggressive antistatism. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" combines cultural conservatism such as banning partial-birth abortion and opposing gay marriage with libertarian-friendly tax cuts. Nevertheless and to the dismay of libertarians, Bush has initiated new programs in education and welfare, fostering a more nationalist kind of conservatism whose fate will depend upon victory in November. In foreign policy, Bush is more clearly Reagan's successor. Reagan's anti-communism continues to make the GOP the more trustworthy party in defending the national interest. Nevertheless, the argument that the war in Iraq was defensive has evaporated without WMD, and most Democrats and many independents "either no longer accept the rationale for the war or have concluded that it was poorly managed." A Bush defeat, argue Ceaser and DiSalvo, will be attributed to the Iraq war. Concluding with "party foundations," Ceaser and DiSalvo argue that Bush has justified his foreign policy on a kind of "neo-natural right" -- "that there is a structure or order to human beings and their affairs, and standards that can be both known and used to guide political action." This is where references to Leo Strauss are not irrelevant. Strauss sought to reopen the question of natural right at a time when American intellectuals were under the spell of historicism, which Ceaser and DiSalvo characterize as "the idea that human thought is nothing but the accidental product of its time, and that all conceptions of right are equally arbitrary." Strauss by no means addressed himself simply to conservatives, and it was more likely that the idea of natural right would find its home in the Democratic party which was much less suspicious of universalism. Slowly and especially after Vietnam and the rise of Reagan, the GOP became the home of natural right and the critique of the realism and relativism of Kissinger and Nixon and their policy of detente. Traditionalists kept their affection for Edmund Burke and his distrust of natural right in check, and libertarians accepted some "grand politics and strategy" no matter how much they resembled "versions of social planning." And although Democrats often approve of versions of universalism and lofty appeals to human rights and dignity, they tend to frown upon the "foundationalism" that often goes with universalism. Democrats do not like their universalism to come from any stated foundation; instead they prefer it to emerge from some "evolving consensus or a narrative of progress." The GOP is now "the 'radical' or 'revolutionary' party, with a political project grounded on a clear foundation; the Democrats, by contrast, are the new conservatives without a grand idea as their foundation, seeking to "return to normalcy." This is the choice we face this November. (For our more philosophically-oriented readers, it is important to note that Ceaser and DiSalvo are talking more about modern natural right. Leo Strauss seems to have stood ultimately for the recovery of the classical natural right teaching which perhaps may not be accurately called "foundationalist." Neither, however, is it relativist. The best book discussing the question of the foundationalism of the classical teaching is Devin Stauffer's study of book 1 of Plato's Republic.) Tuesday, September 14, 2004
The return I've been off blogging for most of the summer, but I plan to return tomorrow with a piece on Canada and health care. It's a case study in how to fiddle while the Canada Health Act burns. Monday, September 06, 2004
Who Needs Pennsylvania? (Kerry) According to an old joke, Pennsylvania consists of Philadelphia at one end, Pittsburgh at the other, and Alabama in the middle. George Will puts it more politely without deviating from that joke's substance in this piece, where he remarks that, strangely enough, Bush is likely to win the state only if he doesn't need to. Overall, Will is pessimistic that Bush will take the state, because it has a large amount of undecided voters, who, unenthusiastic about the incumbent, typically break for the challenger on election day. But Will also thinks that Bush does not need to win the state to win the election, while Kerry does. Sunday, August 29, 2004
Making Every Vote Count So the New York Times favors abolishing the electoral college. Perhaps anticipating another Bush victory in the college but a loss in raw popular vote, the Times has come down on the side of constitutional change. (Apparently, changing the Constitution is warranted here, but amending it is not when it comes to gay marriage, even as a measure to restrain hyper-active courts.) According to the Times, the electoral college fails to "make every vote count." Luckily, Claudia Winkler of the Weekly Standard pre-empted the Times by nearly a week with a piece on a book of essays on the electoral college. Winkler does not go through all the arguments and essays in the book, and I will not do so here; but she ends where the book ends -- with Martin Diamond's classic defense of the electoral college. According to Diamond, "In fact, presidential elections are already just about as democratic as they can be. We already have one man, one vote--but in the states. Elections are as freely and democratically contested as elections can be -- but in the states. Victory always goes democratically to the winner of the raw popular vote -- but in the states. The label given to the proposed reform--"direct popular election"--is a misnomer: the elections have already become as directly popular as they can be -- but in the states. Despite all their democratic rhetoric, the reformers do not propose to make our presidential elections more directly democratic; they only propose to make them more directly national, by entirely removing the states from the electoral process. Democracy thus is not the question regarding the electoral college; federalism is. Should our presidential elections remain in part federally democratic, or should we make them completely nationally democratic? "Whatever we decide, then, democracy itself is not at stake in our decision, only the prudential question of how to channel and organize the popular will." If there are reasons for abolishing the electoral college, making our system more democratic is not one of them. Nobody can enter this debate responsibly without this book as a reference. Friday, August 27, 2004
American Sweep After receiving a sustained heckling from Greek fans, the three American entrants in the 200 meter Olympic finals proceeded to take all three medals. The classless (not to mention paranoid) Greek fans were left with egg on their faces with the American sweep.  Greek fans have been trying to blame the U.S. for two of their sprinters (including one who was a favorite to medal in the 200 meters) failing to show up for drug tests and subsequently being disqualified. It's dispiriting for an American of Greek descent to witness such classless behavior by Greek fans and to observe the extent to which they dislike America.Ditto the Iraqi soccer team, living out one of the Cinderella stories of these games as they prepare to play Italy for the bronze medal. I haven't heard one Iraqi player say anything good about the U.S., despite the fact that Iraqi athletes were routinely tortured under Saddam for coming up short in international competition. I suppose the best thing we can do is what the three American runners did -- don't let it bother us and sweep the race. Sunday, August 22, 2004
A University Problem David Brooks is often at his best talking about "resume-building" and the professionalization of childhood. He has his finger on the pulse of today's upper middle-class achievement-oriented kids -- and the parents who drive them. Brooks doesn't discuss liberal education in this piece. But it occurs to me that these little achievement machines populate our better universities; and, as Allan Bloom once wrote about pre-law students, they are merely tourists in the liberal arts. Their eros crippled, they are incapable of deep, life-altering attachments to books; and, despite their off-the-charts S.A.T. scores, they basically just take up space in the dorms for four years. They know a little of this and a little of that -- or enough of this and that to score well on their exams and impress their flattering elders who also have no deep attachments to books. Of course, parents (even and especially good parents) have not typically wanted their kids to study philosophy or literature, or make these things their life's work. Anyone who has read Aristophanes knows that. So it's somewhat pointless to blame them, as Brooks might. The university itself is much more blameworthy because it has lost its way and doesn't know what it stands for anymore. Of course the university will always be responsible for producing doctors, lawyers, and investment bankers, but this is not its essence. This is only what makes it attractive to the rest of society that doesn't understand or doesn't agree with its real purpose. Traditionally, the university performed some of the functions of parents as indicated by the phrase in loco parentis, but it also existed in some serious tension with the typical projects parents have for their children. Now the parents' projects are everyone's projects; the university is not distinctive anymore. As a result, students have no other vision of how to lead their lives than the professions their parents have in mind for them. So David Brooks indeed writes beautifully about the professionalization of childhood. But in some form or another, this has always been the case; parents always have projects for their kids. And if Brooks thinks this situation has intensified recently, this is a somewhat "normal" or predictable response of parents in an age of meritocracy, where it isn't the case anymore that a few wealthy families control politics and commerce. (In his Bobos book, Brooks also writes brilliantly about how American society has become more meritocratic in the last half century.) This is why the real issue is whether the university can continue to maintain its purpose of liberal education, of standing for something distinct and separate from the typical professions that parents want for their kids. More than ever, the university is the only chance for "culture" (for lack of a better word) or for a serious relationship to books and thinking as a way of life to get to kids; and it is failing in its purpose. Friday, August 20, 2004
Julia Child, Conservative Our friend, Steve Teles, discusses the conservatism of Julia child, here and here. According to Teles, she was characterized by both patriotism and domesticity along with an attachment to a certain kind of traditionalism. For my part, I'm disappointed that she didn't like Italian food, though I can certainly forgive her lack of enthusiasm for Mexican food. I happen to be an inveterate watcher of cooking shows, and I've always thought you could tell something about America or a certain decline of American popular culture by marking the differences between Julia Child's shows and Emeril Lagasse's. Now, there are aspects of Lagasse that I like. But he uses bad grammar ("Where I get my fill-in-the-blank, it don't come seasoned."), he's a little bit shmaltzy (and I don't mean he uses too much chicken fat), and he yells a lot. Of course, I understand that that's all part of his act. But there's a sense of aspiration, an understanding that we're learning how to be a little sophisticated, refined, and civilized, an incentive to put the kids to bed, have a cocktail, and sit down to a really fine meal that existed with Julia Child and that is lacking with Lagasse. Oh well, at least Emeril had her on as a special guest a couple of times before she died; it says something good about him that he admires her. Sunday, August 15, 2004
Star Investors Hold Cash Jim Gipson, Bob Rodriguez, Mason Hawkins, and David Winters are not exactly household names. For investment and/or mutual fund junkies, however, they are recognized for their superior, market-pounding long-term performance. These investors are thorns in the side of efficient-market hypothesis defenders. Academics (of all people) who cannot account for intellectual virtue (at least as it relates to investing), and think that markets are mostly fairly-priced at all times consider these anomalous investors "statistical outliers," inexplicable deviators from the mean or average; and, right now, these academic curiosities are holding tons of cash. Add to this group the most famous outlier of them all, Warren Buffett, and you have lots of cash sitting on the sidelines. It is difficult to know when the market will be cheap enough for these stars to put that cash to work; and when we find out that they have, it's likely that the opportunity will have already passed. In fact, the play they are getting in the NYTimes may be an indication that we're close to the time when prices are getting cheap enough for them to pounce. In any case, the stock market has been getting cheaper, and may continue to do so as oil prices rise. The declines that cause fear in most people tend to cause these strange birds to salivate. So their intellectual abilities to evaluate companies are coupled with a kind of self-reliance, confidence, or ability to move counter to the crowd (and consequently capitalize on its mistakes). Besides the fact that they can make you money, these characters are simply fun to observe. It bespeaks the perversity of academic finance (or most academic finance) that they are considered statistical outliers. Friday, August 13, 2004
Do-Gooders Do Bad Call me perverse, but I love it when morally indignant reformers have their noses rubbed in the bad effects of their "reforms." I suspect that taking pleasure in this sort of thing, as much as anything else, predisposes someone to being a conservative. Anyway, this is precisely what Charles Krauthammer has done in laying the latest "Swift Boat" ads at the doorstep of the McCain-Feingold "reforms." By taking money out of the hands of the parties, McCain-Feingold forces independent organizations and wealthy individuals to create ads on their own. The result is the new Swift Boat controversy, calling into question John Kerry's heroism but also focusing attention on that part of his life that he would like the electorate to consider most. McCain-Feingold prevents Bush or the GOP from doing anything about the ads, so that they have to work extra-hard to re-focus attention on the thirty years after John Kerry left Vietnam and established his weak record on foreign policy and national security. As Krauthammer puts it: "You wanted campaign finance reform. You got campaign finance reform. McCain-Feingold promised to take the money out of politics. If you believed that, you deserve what you got." Thursday, August 12, 2004
Release the Reserves? Have you felt the pinch at the pump recently, and have you seen your 401(k) decline again? Today's markets continued a disturbing recent trend with stocks falling, bond prices rising, and oil reaching new highs. Larry Kudlow has called for President Bush to stop stocking the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPRo) and perhaps even release some of it in an effort to create more supply and lower the price of oil. The fear, of course, is that skyrocketing oil prices will derail the economic recovery underway. Oil prices themselves have risen due to a "fear-factor risk premium" (the idea that terrorism in the Middle East will disrupt steady supply) of around $10-$15/barrel by Kudlow's estimation. Kudlow cites the instance of Papa Bush releasing reserves during the Gulf War with the result of crashing prices. Sure, releasing reserves would crash prices. But it is difficult to know how this would play politically. Kudlow is convinced that the rising stock market would contribute to a Bush victory, but he doesn't consider how the means to pumping the market up would play. Democrats would likely be all over Bush for behaving like a short-term oil futures trader, out for himself and possibly compromising national security by decreasing reserves. Now it's likely the case that what Kudlow suggests would have no detrimental effect on national security. And releasing reserves may be necessary to save the economic recovery at some point in the near future. But it's unclear that it would play so well leading up to the election. Irwin Stelzer agrees that rising oil prices and a falling stock market are not a good recipe for reelection. He is less sanguine than Kudlow, however, that Bush can do much to change the course of economic events at this point. Perhaps Bush can persuade the Saudi royal family to start pumping more crude. Certainly now is the time to exploit those connections. Releasing the reserves should probably be on the table for consideration, mostly because the economy may really need it. But if it appears to be done in naked self-interest, it may not have the effect that Kudlow desires. Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Room for Prudence One would have expected Francis Fukuyama, heir to Hegel and Kojeve, chronicler and (uneasy) proponent of the end of history, to have favored the U.S.'s attempt to liberalize Iraq. After all, why shouldn't the Middle East arrive at the end of history too? And what's wrong with giving it a little shove in that direction? However, citing the prudence of Aristotle over the hieroglyphics of history as interpreted by Hegel, Fukuyama expressed doubts about the Bush administration's Iraqi expedition from the outset. What's more, Fukuyama considers himself a "neoconservative," despite (or perhaps because of) his more careful approach, leading one to wonder about that term's use in the popular press. All of this, of course, also assumes the questionable premise that going into Iraq was imprudent. This piece begins to spell out Fukuyama's position. Obama-Keyes Polysigh, for which our friend, Steve Teles, currently writes, has been all over the Illinois senate race. (Scroll down when you get there.) Monday, August 02, 2004
If you watched Kerry's speech with the Innocents Abroad checklist (stolen, of course, from William Kristol and William Safire), you were sorely disappointed. The speech was rather short on substance. As far as trying to prove their patriotism, the Democrats showed that they have to play by the terms set by the Republicans. It's possible that Kerry will win, but it seems to be less and less likely with each passing day. The speech certainly didn't help him. It's hard to imagine why Hugh Hewitt rates such insincere hawkishness a "solid single." Even David Brooks thought the speech was good initially before coming to his senses. Perhaps more conservative pundits were initially flattered by Kerry's professed patriotism. |
