Regions of Mind |
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Self-assured but self-questioning.
History, U.S. regionalism, foreign policy, politics, life. Geitner Simmons is an editorial writer with the Omaha World-Herald. This weblog expresses his personal views only. He is also a Midwesterner, a Southerner, a husband, a father, a son. And always a student.
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Tuesday, September 3
Southern-born liberal journalists; depopulation on the Great Plains Those are two topics to be addressed in posts here tomorrow. The first topic relates to an Andrew Sullivan post today titled "Southern Hyper-Libs"; the second topic, to a Nicholas Kristof column today. On another matter: My thanks to Andrew Sullivan for his generous remarks today in regard to this site. NEA view NEA President Bob Chase has a letter to the editor in today's Omaha World-Herald responding to the George Will column. Here is the text of the letter:
Hey, there's nothing wrong with tolerance I've gotten some mail arguing that my comments against the NEA must mean I want Muslims and Arabs in this country to be stigmatized simply because of their background. Not so. In the first place, as I argued at length just last week, each citizen in this country, regardless of background, should be regarded as fully equal to his or her fellow Americans. In the second place, there is nothing incompatible in arguing that Americans should be wide-awake to the morally repugnant nature of madrasa radicalism, and the threat such radicalism presents to this country, even as Muslim- and Arab-Americans are accorded the full respect they deserve. The Omaha World-Herald addressed that point in an editorial it ran on June 8 of this year (the text is no longer available online):
An appreciation for American principles of egalitarianism can go hand-in-hand with a recognition of the security threat posed to this country by radical Islam. The problem I have with the rhetoric used to defend the NEA's approach is that all the emphasis is placed on the former while downplaying the latter. Monday, September 2
More on the NEA A school superintendent in St. Louis had an op-ed in the Post-Dispatch recently in which he heatedly responded to the George Will column on the NEA lesson plans for Sept. 11. A pretty well-conceived piece. The writer, unlike the curriculum developers quoted in the NYT piece I recently blogged about, had the good sense to offer calm arguments likely to seem credible to the general public. The people quoted in the Times article, in contrast, made the mistake of stooping to mere demagoguery. In fact, it occurred to me over the weekend that the NEA member who accused critics of racism did something particularly interesting: He failed to appreciate that he was sharing with a reporter the kind of nasty ad hominem accusation normally bandied about only in private among like-minded political believers. His statement, in other words, was a liberal counterpoint to Dick Armey’s infamous “Barney Fag” reference to Barney Frank -- it was an example of political dirty joking normally kept out of public view. As for the op-ed in the Post-Dispatch, it still skirted the central issues rightly raised by Will:
It sidesteps them, of course, because to do otherwise would be to risk admitting that in international relations, evil does exist, security interests do have relevance, and the exercise of U.S. military power can indeed be wielded, even in the 21st century, on a massive scale for a legitimate cause. Activists in this country and elsewhere are devoting great energy to trying to deflect the public's understanding away from such truths. That is the larger context in which the NEA lesson plans ought to be considered, precisely as George Will said. A first for this blog My thanks to Glenn Reynolds, Bill Quick and Andrea Harris, whose links to my NEA posts over the weekend helped put this site on the Blogdex index, to my knowledge, for the first time. Sunday, September 1
9/11 and America's classrooms I: The NEA cries racism George Will drew blood the other day with a classic column in which he exposed the softheadedness underlying much of the National Education Association's lesson plans on Sept. 11. The strength of Will’s arguments was demonstrated by the petulant response from Bob Chase, the NEA president, who chose not to rebut any of Will’s specific points but merely stomped his feet rhetorically. A New York Times article talked about the controversy and noted that the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Foundation has posted its own recommendations to teachers, with contributions from William Bennett and Victor Davis Hanson, among others. In the Fordham Foundation report, author and education consultant Mary Beth Klee cogently addresses some central points:
Klee is right, of course. But it's no surprise the national teaching establishment is balking. The course she recommends would require it to jettison certain dearly held assumptions. The assumption, for example, that appreciating the arts of war is anachronistic and morally questionable. Or that focusing on something as supposedly crass as U.S. national security interests (as opposed to the dreamy embrace of redistributionism and multilateralism) might actually be justified. The New York Times article revealed a remarkably shabby tactic that Jerald Newberry, an NEA member involved in the project, used in responding to the lesson plans’ critics:
So, critics of the NEA plan are racists. It’s revealing how quickly the NEA’s supposed passion for tolerance can evaporate. Newberry’s response was petty and demagogic, but that from another curriculum developer, Rona Novick, was dispiriting in another way: It was grounded in pure nonsense. Here is the quote from the NYT:
Remarkable. Teachers, she claims, can’t talk about the Islamic hatred and evil that fueled the 9/11 attacks because hatred and evil once manifested themselves, undeniably, in this country through the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow. On the contrary, this situation presents teachers with an opportunity to make vital distinctions. American society, students should be told, now openly acknowledges the injustices and horrors of slavery and Jim Crow. Indeed, powerful legal mechanisms, embedded in the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent, have been put in place to prevent their reappearance. America, in other words, has striven mightily, after a civil war in the 19th century and social tumult in the 20th, to move beyond the moral blindness of the past. What a contrast with the madrasa culture of radical Islam. Followers of that mindset readily embrace prejudice and hatred. They casually endorse violence against innocents in the name of their absolutist religious creed. They even cynically attempt to link their own “cause” to a legitimate one (ensuring peace between the Palestinians and Israelis). These are the real nuances that teachers ought to sharing with their students. How revealing that the NEA and like-minded thinkers want to pre-empt such needed discussions in the nation’s classrooms. Saturday, August 31
The Mexican economy: safe from South America's economic turmoil (so far) Succinct, useful piece in The Economist about the successes and challenges of the Mexican economy. (It's a single article, not an entire multi-article special section on Mexico.) An excerpt:
Due to NAFTA, no less than 89 percent of Mexico's exports now head north, to the United States, the article says. Mexico's economy faces structural problems including ill-considered government encouragement of monopolies and a worrisome reliance on oil revenues (providing 35 percent of revenues for the country's federal government). Still, Mexico has made significant strides since the country's dramatic economic slide of the mid-1990s, in terms of economic reform as well as greater political openness. At a time of economic wobbliness in Brazil and outright meltdown in Argentina, Mexico's stability (at least for the moment) provides welcome reassurance. Friday, August 30
Democracy and American history II: Hypocrisy in the slaveholding South I recently posted about how a central component of American democracy, confirmed in the aftermath of the Revolution, was the overturning of hierarchical thinking and the embrace of egalitarianism, at least as an ideal. That change opened the way, among other things, to a burst of commercial and entrepreneurial activity that the colonial system had blocked. Matt Welch was kind enough to link to the post, and a reader comment at his site raised an interesting point: Maybe my thesis was correct, but what about the slavery system in the antebellum South -- didn’t its existence undermine my claim that America was stepping forward toward recognition of individual freedom? It’s a great question. Antebellum South history is a particular interest of mine, and it is absolutely true that America did not advance uniformly toward the recognition of individual liberty. In fact, the apologists for Southern slavery tied themselves into rhetorical and philosophical knots trying to portray slaveholding as compatible with egalitarianism. The slave system stood as one of the great obstacles to the advancement of freedom in this country. Removing it, through war, proved necessary not only to allow racial justice (realized only in the 1960s and afterward) but also to encourage the South’s belated embrace of entrepreneurship and industrialization (an attitudinal change that became widely noticeable in the 1890s). William Freehling explored the contradictions of Southern slaverholders' political rhetoric in his classic historical study, “The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854.” Freehling vividly described the hypocrisy and nonsense that lay behind the rationalizations slaveholders deployed to depict slavery as a morally uplifting institution compatible with democracy. Some slaveholders, however, did not even bother with voicing support for poor whites. The slaveholding elite in coastal South Carolina and eastern Virginia, Freehling notes, tended to be fiercely anti-democratic. (Many states ended onerous property restrictions against officeholding during the early 1800s, for example, but the aristocratic elite in South Carolina insisted on the retention of such measures right into the 1850s.) Freehling described the political thinking of such men this way:
Another useful passage:
In 1830, about 36 percent of Southern whites owned slaves. By 1860, the number was 26 percent. Nathaniel Beverly Tucker, a hot-tempered instructor at the College of William and Mary, stood as one of the leading pro-slavery intellectuals of the antebellum era. His praise for slavery was matched by his contempt for democracy, which he derided as an ill-considered “tyranny of numbers.” In 1836, U.S. Rep. James Henry Hammond of South Carolina delivered a speech on the House floor in which he praised the slave system for producing what he claimed was “the highest toned, the purest, best organization of society that has ever existed on the face of the Earth.” He strangely tried to sway Northern lawmakers by arguing that abolition of slavery would trigger class war within the white race in all sections of the country, with white aristocrats being targeted by “sans-culottes” proclaiming “equality to all mankind.” Hammond, incidentally, is one of the most curious Southern figures of the era. His life provides a look into many facets of the slave system. To cite only one example: His wife left Hammond (one of the South’s most bombastic apologists for slavery) after she discovered that he had been having sexual liaisons with a female slave as well as her daughter. Once Southern thinkers started down the path of concocting high-flown justifications for slavery and aristocratic elitism, they sometimes found themselves in peculiar intellectual territory indeed. George Fitzhugh, a Virginian, provides a good example. Declaring that “the doctrine of Human Equality is practically impossible,” he went on to estimate that 19 out of every 20 individuals, regardless of race, lacked the ability to care for themselves and therefore “have a natural and inalienable right to be slaves.” His peroration concluded, “Liberty for the few -- slavery, in every form, for the mass.” Along the same lines, Thomas Dew, another instructor at William and Mary, actually claimed that because slavery was so demonstrably superior to wage labor, “at this very moment, in every densely populated country, hundreds would be willing to sell themselves” into bondage “if the laws would permit.” The intellectual rationales behind Southern slavery involved a long line of hypocrisies and self-deceptions. Among the greatest of those was the outrageous claim that a system founded on radical inequality could simultaneously champion individual liberty. That lie fortunately perished in 1865, along with the Confederacy, both gone with the wind. UPDATE: Gary Haubold sent me a thoughtful, well-argued e-mail this morning pointing out that the founders generally were not enthusiastic about encouraging mass democracy and that the North was also guilty of egregious racial injustice. He's absolutely right on both counts. The push toward greater democracy and egalitarianism after the Revolution that I described was mainly spurred by popular demand. The general public, in other words, seized the opening provided by the founders and used it to enlarge the political opportunities available to themselves. The North's racial history during the 19th and early 20th century, examined by such historians as C. Vann Woodward and Leon Litwack, is a topic I intend to post on here sometime. It's fascinating. Thursday, August 29
Singin' and bombin' Humorist Mad Kane is at it again. She's crafted another song parody suitable for the times. Her latest, to be sung to the tune of "New York, New York" from the movie "On The Town," includes these lyrics:
The complete Mad Kane version is here. As I told her today, the first time I read her lyrics, I kept imagining George W. singing them in a sailor suit: weird! (If you haven't seen the movie and wonder about the sailor reference, you can look here.) Misleading claim about the Electoral College In a commentary piece for FindLaw, law professors/brothers Akhil Reed Amar and Vikram David Amar argue in favor of term limits for U.S. Supreme Court justices. At one point during the back-and-forth between the two brothers, Vikram Amar writes:
Not so fast! As I pointed out at this site on Aug. 1:
And of how American law professors should be wary of overstating their case. UPDATE: Germans, in particular, should beware of criticizing the principles behind the Electoral College, John Tuttle e-mails me. The representative weight allocated to the individual states in Germany's Bundesrat varies, but it doesn't necessarily reflect actual demographic differentials, he notes. And the Bundesrat's 69 members, who represent the interests of the individual states, are not even elected. "This of course is similar to the original plan of the US Constitution," he notes, "where the States named their Senators to represent the States' interests in their Federal Government." ANOTHER UPDATE: Rand Simberg offers cogent thoughts on the Electoral College topic. Another kind of Euro-American divergence The Economist's cover story this week is available only to subscribers, but Slate's summary of its thesis, already familiar to students of European affairs, is worth pondering:
I'm having to restrain, once again, my sense of American triumphalism. Rad and ready to defend America Observations from a recent column by the always-thoughtful James Pinkerton about, of all things, the movie "XXX":
His point ties in with the surge of patriotic music, in everything from Springsteen tunes to country music to even, in some cases, rap -- in the wake of 9/11. Lyndon Johnson, opportunist I initially planned for this post to start out something like this: "It is interesting that the U.S. ambassador post to the United Nations hasn't enjoyed a high public profile in this country for two decades. There was a time, in the mid-1960s, when the post was regarded as so important that the president of the United States actually asked a Supreme Court justice, Arthur Goldberg, to resign from the court to accept the ambassador's post." In reading a bit more in detail, however, I found out that Johnson had asked Goldberg to resign -- actually, Johnson pressured him to do so -- not because the ambassador position was so important but because Johnson wanted to give a Supreme Court seat to his old buddy Abe Fortas. Goldberg, who had great reservations about the war in Vietnam, resigned from the ambassador position in 1968. In 1970, he made an ignominious run for governor of New York, losing to Nelson Rockefeller. Goldberg privately lamented that he'd yielded to Johnson's pressure to step down from the high court. Add one more item to the long list of incidents that reveal the depths of LBJ's opportunism and ruthlessness. Southerners and stereotypes I winced today when I saw a report in the Washington Post that CBS plans a reincarnation of the "Beverly Hillbillies" using an Osbournes-like approach: putting real poor-white Southerners into a millionaire mansion in Beverly Hills. So they can be laughed at, of course. I winced because -- well, a Southerner working in Hollywood and quoted anonymously in the Post said it well:
Such a show will signal that there is something uniquely unsophisticated and ignorant about the Southern character. In other words, it would seek to re-enforce a stereotype that a large segment of the American population rightly regards as offensive and elitist. After all, there are millions of people from all corners of the country who would be be culturally disoriented if relocated to a millionaire mansion. I know I would be. Do I come off sounding like just one more ethnocentric whiner, in the fashion of Hispanic activists who grow hysterical at the prospect of televising Speedy Gonzalez? Maybe so, but I can't help how I feel. As I indicated in a recent post, a key American ideal is that we are each equally worthy of respect, regardless of our background. Plans for the show don't make me angry. But they do leave me chagrined. UPDATE: A good friend from North Carolina -- a fellow student of Southern culture and history -- notes something ironic:
He's right about the reaction. The cancellations, as I recall, also included the Red Skelton show. They were part of a CBS strategy to sweep aside a number of long-running shows and lay a new foundation of programming for the '70s. ANOTHER UPDATE: Patrick Carver posts today at The Ole Miss Conservative that Fox is reportedly dreaming up a cockeyed show of its own -- a new, "reality" version of "Green Acres." YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Patrick Carver alerts me to the impassioned essay that Louisiana-born Rod Dreher has in today's NRO about this topic. Wednesday, August 28
Will closer economic ties mean closer diplomatic relations? Japan's trade relationship with China continues to deepen, according to the Nautilus Institute, a foreign policy research group:
U.S.-Japanese relations do seem to be strong these days. Still, another item from the Nautilus Institute isn't very reassuring:
Of course, if anyone could be expected to use impassioned rhetoric, understandably, against nuclear weapons, it would be the mayor of Nagasaki. Excellent author, excellent topic I just read that Edmund S. Morgan, one of the great authorities on early American history, has a new book out on Benjamin Franklin. I know that Morgan has caught flak, justifiably, from conservatives for his anti-individual-rights arguments on Second Amendment issues. But that doesn't erase the fact that Morgan has amply demonstrated his abilities as a gifted historian over the past four decades. I have no doubt that one could gain much from his new book. Term limits for Supreme Court justices? That's the interesting topic of a post at Howard Bashman's ever-interesting legal-issues blog, How Appealing. I haven't had time to check out the opinion essays he cites on the topic, but I intend to. Iran and al Qaida I posted last week on a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty report that Iran has provided refuge to al Qaida members. An article in today's Washington Post says the same thing. The first three grafs:
Such actions by Iran are a direct provocation to this country. Sooner or later, they are bound to result in consequences. Sorry, by the way, to use two different spellings ("al Qaida"and "al Qaeda") in the same post. But I use "al Qaida," after the style adopted by my newspaper, while the Post uses "al Qaeda." Tuesday, August 27
A worthy journalistic project Congratulations to The Daily Telegraph: It's starting a series about the erosion of individual freedom in Britain. From the introduction to the series:
It will be fascinating to see where the series leads. A worthy cause, indeed. Monday, August 26
Lileks' achievement First, let’s savor some of the recent language from James Lileks, then I’ll offer an observation about one of the reasons why he’s such a devastatingly effective writer. He writes:
As some of you probably know, Lileks’ writing career predates his blogging career. He’s been writing a syndicated column for a good while now; I used to run it in the ’90s, when I was editorial page editor of a North Carolina newspaper. Lileks was a delight to read back in the Clinton years. He skated merrily from one political episode to another. Wonderful stuff. I thought of Lileks recently in researching the debate over American Western art (a subject about which I’ll post here sometime soon). I read a quote from anthropologist Renato Rosaldo, who said one way to refute a line of argument is “to evoke it and thereby make it more and more fully present until it gradually collapses under the weight of its own inconsistencies.” Yes -- that’s precisely what Lileks does so well. He focuses on an ill-conceived political argument (say, the U.S.=Nazis thesis) and then uses wit to point out the many inane ramifications that would flow from it. In that way, he makes the idea he’s ridiculing “more and more fully present” until its wrongheadedness and absurdity are revealed so completely as to be undeniable. Nobody does it better. And we are all blessed by what he accomplishes. Foreign policy and sin Very interesting letter to the editor in the Omaha World-Herald today. It reads:
There is an enormous amount that could be said in response to that line of argument. Let me make only one observation, about international relations. The basis for a sound foreign policy is a sober understanding of the world as it is, with all its moral limitations and dangers, rather than overwrought Wilsonian idealism and dreamy imagingings about how easily the world can be transformed. Start of the week People who haven't visited the site since Friday might be interested in particular in two weekend posts: one about troubling U.S. indifference toward a particular treaty obligation, and another about a new book on the Nazis' Einsatzgruppen. Appreciating the full length of history A history-related column I wrote last March might be of interest. The text is below. Elliott West, whose ideas I discuss here, is, in my opinion, the most skilled writer in the historical profession today. His writing is intellectually engaging, stylistically playful. It doesn’t get any better than that. West talked about the need to conceive of history (in this case, Great Plains history) along its full length, rather than through what he termed a “false divide.” He also pointed out that people driving across soporifically flat plains rarely notice the actual complexity of the landscapes. They could learn much, he says, if they would park and take a serious look at the land before them. The column:
Benefits of blogging David Hogberg recently posted worthwhile observations about how joining the blogging community has helped him in various ways. (He was responding to a provocative post from Eric Olsen of Tres Producers about the “dark side of blogging.”) By the way, Dave has been away from blogging for the past few days -- and I think I know why. Party on, you crazy Iowan. The tourism numbers One little-noticed effect of 9/11: Because of the abrupt drop in tourism to the United States, the U.S. lost its traditional position as the world’s No. 2 travel destination, measured in arrivals. (France holds the No. 1 spot.) Last year, Spain, the long-running No. 3, moved past the U.S. to second place. In terms of tourist revenues received, however, the United States remained No. 1, by far. It earned $72 billion from international tourism last year, a 12 percent drop from 2000 but still way ahead of No. 2 Spain, at $32 billion. From January to August of 2001, international tourist arrivals worldwide were up nearly 3 percent over the same period a year earlier. During the September-to-December period last year, arrivals fell by more than 9 percent compared to the same period in 2000. Here are the rest of top 15 travel destinations, by country, for 2001:
I’d never given much thought to which countries might rank highly in tourist interest, but I was surprised that Russia placed that high; the same in regard to Poland. Notice that the top 15 didn’t include Brazil, Japan or Australia. Incidentally, I read that the World Tourism Organization, which compiled this data, is releasing a report this week at the U.N. poverty conference in Johannesburg. The organization calls for a new emphasis on promoting tourism as a way to boost the economies of poor countries. My initial reaction was to snicker at the suggestion, especially since the organization refers to the idea as “eliminating poverty through sustainable tourism.” But on second thought, the idea seems worth pursuing, not as a panacea but as one more tool in trying to help LDCs -- well, at least those with genuine tourist potential. Cuba, for example, is poor, but it would be poorer still were it not for the country's tourist sector. UPDATE: Statistics on international tourism have little value, a sensible e-mail from reader CK pointed out this morning. It's no wonder that Europeans vacation more in foreign countries compared to Americans, given the basic facts of geography, he notes:
Indeed. I should have given consideration to such points, since in July I had noted similar observations by my friend Craig Brelsford, a Pennsylvania native now living in the Netherlands:
Sunday, August 25
Lester Polfus, one of my heroes He's actually better known by another name; you've probably heard of him. Here are a few of his accomplishments, from an item at Blogcritics:
All right, I'm talking about an American original: Les Paul. Here's the Blogcritics piece; pretty good. (I'm not a guitarist; I'm an (amateur) arranger. In fact, if I ever get an electronic keyboard again, expect to see my blog time suffer a big drop.) On this issue, the EU is right: The U.S. is a hypocrite The farm bill passed by Congress and signed by President Bush last May was justifiably criticized on a number of scores. (The Omaha World-Herald, where I work, joined editorially in several of those criticisms.) One badly flawed aspect of the measure didn’t receive as much public attention domestically, but it did overseas. The issue: By passing the bill, the United States thumbed its nose at this country’s international treaty commitments on farm subsidies. In the 1990s, the U.S. government expended great diplomatic energy to convince foreign governments to impose restrictions, through the World Trade Organization, on the specific ways in which farm subsidies are provided. Under that agreement, the WTO places a ceiling on how much individual countries can spend on countercyclical programs, by which farmers receive additional money when prices drop. The current limit for the United States is around $18 billion. It is precisely that type of assistance, through market loan assistance and crop insurance, that Congress deliberately boosted, in defiance of the spirit -- and probably the letter -- of the WTO agreement. Two farm policy analysts at Iowa State University had pointed out in a report in 2001 that new farm support proposals being touted by Congress would violate WTO requirements. But ag-policy leaders in Congress ignored the warnings. Rep. Larry Combest, R-Texas, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, in particular has made no secret that he is more than willing to boost subsidy levels regardless of WTO stipulations. U.S. trade and agricultural officials defend the farm bill, but Franz Fischler, the EU commissioner for agricultural policy, had the facts on his side when he blasted the measure last spring. Here is part of what he said:
This isn’t to say that the Europeans and Japanese don’t engage in enormous subsidy efforts of their own. The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy has long been notorious for its excess. Japan, of course, goes to great lengths to aid its rice farming sector. The EU has been especially clever on the subsidy issue, reconfiguring a growing percentage of its aid payments into certain programs (“green box” programs, in trade jargon) permitted under the WTO requirements. The U.S., meanwhile, has displayed no such forethought. Instead, it has remained bullheaded and upped its spending on “amber box” subsidy programs frowned on by WTO rules -- rules the United States itself had pushed for only a few years ago. This is one more example of how domestic politics can short-circuit American foreign policy. And in the process make the U.S. out to be a hypocrite, to boot. Saturday, August 24
Heart of darkness I have time for a quick item: I just saw that Richard Rhodes has a new book on the Einsatzgruppen -- the infamous squads the Nazis used to target and obliterate Jews in Poland and the Soviet Union. Rhodes, of course, has demonstrated his skill in tackling big historical topics. "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" won a Pulitzer. From an online description of the book:
A reviewer in the Boston Globe points out:
Rhodes has drawn on new material, using interviews, eyewitness accounts and records from the Nuremburg tribunals. The topic is too harrowing for me to want to read about in detail, but if someone of Rhodes' intellectual caliber thought it worth writing about, I can only imagine the book makes for a powerful reading experience. Friday, August 23
More to come (but not immediately) I intend to post this weekend, though only at night. Right now, the prospects for tonight seem iffy. Topics in the pipeline for sometime soon: the International Criminal Court; critiquing a set of online journal articles that made some accusations linking George W., Israel and Southern history; an aspect of American democracy; and how a debate over American Western art relates to a broader debate over the history of the American West. Unfocused and unpromising In grad school a bit over 20 years ago, I began to better appreciate the enormity of global poverty while studying development issues at Georgetown under an instructor from the World Bank. The problems seemed intractable then; I'm afraid they still do, even though the moral imperative to try to tackle them still remains. The Johannesburg conference, for example, seems destined to be one more multilateral boondoggle in that effort. A piece in the Toronto Globe and Mail today points out some of the problems:
This morning I ran across something I was completely unaware of: At the G-8 summit in 2000, the leaders of the major industrialized countries pledged to cut the number of people worldwide living in extreme poverty in half by 2015. As an abstract goal, of course. I also learned that the death rate from malaria is on the rise in sub-Saharan Africa after a period of decline. It's an example of how progress in some areas of development in LDCs (improvements such as lower infant mortality and higher average span) is undercut by setbacks in other areas. Self-definition Great little item at Nick Denton's blog today about the difference in how Americans and Britons define themselves: "So the difference between the US and the UK boils down to this. American workers think of themselves as middle class; and the English middle class think of themselves as workers." An unequal world Which source should be believed? A statistics-laden, super-wonkish article in The Economist, which argues that global economic inequality is increasing and that the trend needs remedying? Or a new report from the Cato Institute, which says not to worry -- the inequalities have been shrinking quite nicely in recent decades? The analyses are especially relevant right now, since press attention is turning to the World Summit on Sustainable Development the U.N. will hold in Johannesburg next week. I lack the expertise to say which report is correct about the income gap trend. But one thing seems clear: Free markets will always produce a significant income gap between rich and the poor. I well remember an Economist article about 20 years ago which pointed out that fact. It noted that very soon after China began free-market reforms of its agricultural sector in 1979, the first social effect was quite striking: A big income gap appeared within the farm population as the marketplace helped some families to acquire considerable wealth. The goal, then, should not be to fixate on income gaps but to strive to alleviate outright poverty as much as possible. The Economist article, however, directly rejects my thesis:
I’ll grant his point that the well-being of rich countries can be harmed by economic instability in less developed countries. And economic wobbliness in a place like Pakistan could affect U.S. security interests quite directly. But, on his central point, I have to say: If the author believes it is so important to awaken people to the importance of alleviating the income gap, he should have written a genuinely cogent and compelling piece that offered convincing arguments, rather than what he in fact presented: an interminably long lump of jargon and methodological minutiae. Thursday, August 22
The usefulness of compromise A new Time magazine article takes environmental groups to task, rightly, for their hostility to compromise, the strains they needlessly place on their relations with business allies and their refusal to consider market-based remedies. Two excerpts:
The piece also points out how the environmental movement undercuts its effectiveness by hyping exaggerations about ecological damage, with help from a sympathetic national press. Such needless hyperbole opened the door for a sharp-minded critic, Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, to write a book that knocked down the overwrought claims. Environmentalists have considerable public support, and in individual cases the scientific arguments, to achieve sensible protections for society. But they will continue to meet frustration as long as they remain knee-jerk critics of capitalism and continue peddling scare stories that ultimately heighten public cynicism about their motives. Counterfactual history: Britain foregoes the postwar welfare state for early Thatcherism Since Glenn Reynolds has been kind enough to trigger an instavalanche at this blog, I'll plug this recent post of mine that might interest some first-time readers. It's a response to some counterfactual speculation about what the ramifications for Britain might have been had it chosen a radically different economic course at the end of World War II. Dissent and patriotism My post this week about Susan Sontag reminded me of something impressive I discovered recently about William Jennings Bryan, the one-time editor of the newspaper where I work and a three-time loser in presidential contests. During the Spanish-American War, Bryan demonstrated something quite important: that it is possible to oppose the foreign policy of one’s government while still expressing a fervent love of country. He spoke out strongly against the U.S. acquisition of territory in the Caribbean and Pacific as a result of the war with Spain. But at the same time, he stressed that his views were grounded in respect for what he called “American tradition, American history and American interests.” Bryan ended one dissenting speech by proclaiming, “To American civilization, all hail!” What a contrast to characters like Sontag and Chomsky, whose sour rhetoric seethes with contempt for their country and many of its popular ideals. Michael Walzer, co-editor of Dissent, summed things up well when he wrote not long after 9/11: “Many left intellectuals live in America like internal aliens, refusing to identify with their fellow citizens, regarding any hint of patriotic feeling as politically incorrect. That's why they had such difficulty responding emotionally to the attacks of September 11 or joining in the expressions of solidarity that followed.” Philosopher Richard Rorty addressed the same point when he observed that many holding a left-liberal mindset err by acting as if “you have to be loyal to a dream country rather than to the one in which you wake up every morning.” For me, the most effective antidote to such elitism and alienation can be found in the mindset of a particular group of artists: the Yiddish writers of the late 19th century. These novelists and short story writers were fully awake to the flaws and idiosyncracies of their people -- the Jews of the Pale of Settlement and Russia proper, living under the pressures of constant oppression. These writers didn’t hesitate to point out the foibles and shortcomings of their fellow Jews. Yet, these artists were by no means alienated from them. On the contrary, they grounded their works in an unwavering love for the Jewish people -- even as they criticized and satirized them. The historian Howard Sachar described the sentiment well in his examination of Sholom Abramovich, the “grandfather” of modern Yiddish literature, who went by the pen name of Mendele Mocher Sforim:
Another example was the intellectual Yiddish writer Isaac Loeb Peretz. Sachar writes:
In short, such writers displayed moral seriousness. They had a keen sense of moral discernment, yet they had the maturity to temper their egoism with openness and generosity toward their fellow citizens for whom the life of the mind had little relevance. Regrettably, such an acknowledgement of complexity, such an instinct for generosity, seem beyond the ability of many in the liberal-left camp to appreciate, let alone embrace, given their political temperament. For them, alienation from the mainstream is a source of pride. More than a century ago, William Jennings Bryan earned respect by combining sincere dissent with sincere patriotism. Yiddish writers earned public affection by infusing their social criticisms with heartfelt expressions of social solidarity. Present-day dissidents can similarly add credibility to their arguments by grounding them in something more substantial than a reflexive contempt for America. They can begin by appreciating that there should be more to life than alienation from one’s fellow citizens. The ideal of "one nation, indivisible" is something to be strived for, rather than sneered at. Saudis, missiles, nukes I posted not long about the Saudi government and a report of its possible interest in nuclear weapons, citing an article in a State Department journal as well as a Pakistani newspaper report. As an addendum, here is a useful link to info, last updated in June 2000, at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. The center provides a chart showing specific ballistic and cruise missile technologies in Saudi possession. The center also provides an overview on Saudi Arabia's capabilities in regard to weapons of mass destruction. Footnotes accompanying the chart say that allegations are so far unsubstantiated about a Saudi scientist’s claim that Saudi Arabia gave $5 billion to Iraq's nuclear program during the 1980s in exchange for a nuclear weapon, and that Saudi Arabia had two undeclared nuclear research reactors. Also in the footnotes (these items are direct quotes):
Online links are provided by the center for many of the footnoted items. It might be a good time for some fresh investigative reporting on this matter, given the gravity of recent developments on the terrorism front and in Israel. Wednesday, August 21
Pentagon leaks and the military culture Donald Sensing, who served three years as a public affairs officer at the Pentagon (and who consistently demonstrates sound judgment at his weblog), offers some fascinating thoughts today about leaks and the military establishment. As I tell him not infrequently in e-mails, I continue to learn from his blog. Sontag, again Susan Sontag fired a barb at the Bush administration during a recent appearance at Lincoln Center after the performance of several Iranian plays, according to this piece from City Journal, published by the Manhattan Institute. (I ran across that info this morning, but a Google search shows that the blog Media Minded actually posted on this on Aug. 13.) City Journal reports:
I thought I'd read some comments from Sontag last fall that she had backtracked a smidgen from her initial anti-American snarkiness in the wake of the attacks. At any rate, her comments indicate that the antiwar left has regained its confidence, a point I elaborated on in a recent post. UPDATE: Michael Tinkler, of Cranky Professor blogger fame, passes on these useful observations:
A great vacation, Martin? I’ve been tardy in welcoming back Martin Devon from his vacation in the Caribbean. You know him -- he’s the blogger Patio Pundit, for pete sake! He's also been an important source of encouragement for me in regard to this weblog. Looks he picked a wonderful place to spend some time. (Scroll down just a bit to see the picture of the bay.) I also learned from Martin's site that, as he said, the “great character actor” Jeff Corey has died. (I well remember the episode of "Babylon 5" Martin mentions.) Lost ideals I looked back in a recent post at the Atlee government’s creation of Britain’s modern welfare state in the late 1940s. Here are a few points from a recent critique of Britain’s National Health Service in an essay done for Civitas, a British think tank:
The writer argues that several countries in continental Europe have come far closer to achieving the NHS ideals. (No mention of the U.S., though.) Nothing sacred I just saw that Scott Rubush posted some good points in regard to my recent reference to the musical selections for the Voyager probes. Scott mentions, among other things, Cuban music. That prompts me to heap praise on a particular Cuban group -- the marvelous big band Irakere. At one point just over a decade ago, the band included especially impressive members such as trumpeter Arturo Sandoval and saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera, both of whom subsequently left for the United States. I have to disagree with the Irakere discographer I’ve linked to as far as his claim that D’Rivera’s soprano sax solo in “Misa Negra” (Black Mass) is “forced.” On the contrary, I’ve always found that solo to be nothing short of remarkable. It’s exuberant, masterful and merrily glides right across the musical palette, in a few short minutes, from Mozart to blues to Charlie Parker-style handsprings. I will never forget my reaction when I first heard it. A continuing inspiration. Tuesday, August 20
Another problem for international trade: meddlesome state attorneys general I did some poking around Tech Central Station’s European Web site today and ran across several items of interest. One was a short but pungent essay by Richard Miniter, formerly of the Wall Street Journal Europe and now a senior fellow at the Centre for the New Europe, a Brussels-based think tank. He writes:
This reminds me of a well-done Cato Institute study that examined the legal excesses by state attorneys general. (In fact, I've had a copy of the report in my materials here at home for a while now, in order to quote a few items at this blog sometime.) The report mentions several strategies for reining in attorneys general. One such strategy, however, deserves continued opposition: a bill introduced by Sen. Mitch McConnell that would use federal power to restrict the parameters for attorneys general. Sorry, senator, but that kind of casual encroachment on state prerogatives ought to be opposed by anyone with a healthy respect for federalism, even if the legislation is for an ultimately worthy cause. Protest language I just ran across an interesting NYT piece from last Saturday about how African immigrants are using linguistic contortions, in the form of slang known as Verlan, as a way to express their alienation from mainstream French society. In the same way that rap crossed cultural and racial boundaries in this country, Verlan had done the same in France:
As noted in the post below about the historical use of mendacity as a defensive tool, people who feel weighed down by injustice will often search for creative ways to register their protest. A counterfactual Britain: A road not taken -- the adoption of Thatcherism in the 1940s Could Britain have maintained international clout and domestic economic vigor after World War II had it pursued a rigorous free-market approach? Specifically, had the country refrained from adopting the extravagant Labor Party agenda of the late 1940s (far-ranging industrial nationalizations; broad, stepped-up government interventionism; socialized medicine), could Britain have found a viable alternative path? Ignore the historical reality (Clement Atlee's resounding political victory for the Laborites in 1945) and imagine that the Conservatives had won instead and then demonstrated imagination and resolution on the economic front. By laying a different postwar foundation, could they have set Britain on a different long-term course? In such an alternate universe, could Britain have avoided the painful “sick man of Europe” experience that brought it to a bleak precipice in the winter of 1979, when economic stagnation, labor turmoil and political mismanagement combined to reveal the country as enfeebled and rudderless? Martin Hutchinson, business and economics editor for United Press International, offers two counterfactual essays (Part 1 is here and Part 2, here) in which a hypothetical Britain indeed embraced a free-market path -- and reaped wondrous benefits as a result. Hutchinson sets up a fascinating set of imagined events -- not just in economics but also in foreign policy and domestic politics. Among the economic highlights of this alternate Britain:
There’s much more -- imaginative scenarios involving India (actually, there is no India in this alternate universe), postwar Poland, the Jewish-Palestinian matter, Iran and South Africa. After my first reading of Hutchinson’s columns, I reacted churlishly. He resolved so many knotty diplomatic and economic problems so neatly -- and with perfect hindsight. Preposterous! On reflection, I was more charitable. If you’re going to dream up counterfactual history, you may as well make it fun and provocative. You know -- the whole, parallel-universe, evil bearded Spock kind of thing. Even with such allowances, however, Hutchinson’s key point -- that Britons could have summoned the political will to embrace Thatcherism four decades early -- defies the actual historical circumstances in the extreme. The chances that Britain would have embraced a free-market revolution in the 1940s, at the very time government interventionism and planning were enjoying tremendous support in Britain and much of the Western world, were so remote the scenario really can’t be taken seriously. Churchill indeed campaigned hard in 1945 against interventionist policies and welfarism. He used hard-edged rhetoric in radio appearances to link Labor-style socialism with Hitlerian totalitarianism. He made the choice clear. The British people listened and made up their minds -- and rejected Churchill’s domestic vision in spectacular fashion. The Conservatives came out of that election with 189 seats in Parliament. The Liberals were down to 12. The total number of Labor-controlled seats: 393. Even the votes of British troops, exasperated over various grievances, went heavily against the Conservatives that year, scholars say. Popular support for heavy government involvement in the private economy had been gathering momentum in Britain since the late 1930s, when even the young Conservative Harold MacMillan was writing essays in favor of partial nationalization. (In the 1980s -- the actual 1980s -- the aged MacMillan would grump in the House of Lords about Thatcher’s economic policies, wearily chastising the government’s privatization efforts as ill-considered -- “selling the silverware,” he called it. Hutchinson’s inside-out version of history opens up a startlingly different political course for MacMillan, by the way.) It was little wonder the British people became amenable to government activism. The government itself, going back into the ’30s, had repeatedly signaled that it was willing to tolerate interventionism. The government had encouraged a domestic steel cartel and a semi-monopoly in the road hauling business, nationalized coal royalties and brought the currency policy of the Bank of England under government control. A key encapsulation of interventionist thought came to public attention in December 1940, with the publication of the Beveridge Report. It made a forceful call for social insurance. The document received great applause not just from the usual left-leaning intellectuals but also from the mainstream press and the general public. The Times of London said that the report’s “central proposals must surely be accepted as the basis of government action.” The Economist called the report “one of the most remarkable state documents ever drafted” and said its propositions could help “set right what is so plainly wrong.” (When Churchill’s coalition government succeeded in blocking approval of the Beveridge Report in February 1943, The Economist fulminated that the government had precipitated nothing less than “a crisis of free government and democracy.”) The leaders of the Anglican Church consistently pushed the ideals of the social insurance mentality throughout the 1940s. The unprecedented wartime experience, of course, only acclimated the British public further to values of social leveling and government activism. Tax rates on upper-income Britons were sky-high. One historian understandably concluded that “most Englishmen took it for granted that this war would bring fundamental social and economic change.” Churchill’s own government itself (a coalition entity, to be sure) routinely indicated that its adherence to free-market thinking was quite malleable. The last Address from the Throne before the 1945 election came in November 1944. Among its (albeit vague) recommendations: a comprehensive health service, an enlarged system of social insurance, compensation for industrial injuries, family allowances, government intervention on housing policy, and “maintenance of employment.” The bottom line: Hutchinson’s musings rest on correct conclusions about Britain’s wide-ranging failures in judgment on the economic front. Yes, the elite failed the country. But the failure of vision was hardly confined to the narrow circle of politicians, government mandarins, public policy intellectuals and journalists. The failure extended to the assumptions of the British people themselves -- understandable assumptions given the circumstances of the 1940s, but in many cases unrealistic and unworkable ones over the long haul. Hutchinson’s creation of an Ur-Thatcherite economic order in the era before television is a marvelous pipe dream. But it is only that and nothing more. Monday, August 19
Mendacity as a weapon The use of deceit as a tool against foes and oppressors is a theme that crops up throughout history. Last May, I put together a column on that topic for my newspaper, the Omaha World-Herald, stringing together examples from various times and places. The text isn't online any longer, but I thought I would post it here. The column mentions two of my favorite historians: journalist Michael Barone and the academician William Freehling, who is a brilliant writer on top of being one of the foremost scholars of the factors leading to the American Civil War. The column:
Iran and al-Qaeda From the latest Iran report by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (I was unable to link directly to the report, but here is the main URL for RFE/RL):
Iran's religious obscurantists and Revolutionary Guard firebrands are playing a dangerous game. They're not only strangling economic opportunities for their countrymen but are foolishly alienating the U.S. government, with the potential for dire consequences. AN IMPORTANT LITTLE WAR: Students of military history who are arriving here today via InstaPundit might be interested in this bit of historical analysis I posted here on July 4. I talked about a military conflict that seems a mere footnote to most Americans today but which actually had great long-term importance for the United States in a variety of ways. Mighty Ireland I believe I'm mentioned before that the Democratic Leadership Council (actually, a DLC affiliate called the Progressive Policy Institute) issues a consistently useful and often provocative item called its Trade Fact of the Week. A recent example: U.S. manufacturers have invested more in Ireland than they have in China and Hong Kong combined. Some details and analysis. Problems with Kyoto I ran out of time last night working up an analysis reacting to some counterfactual ruminations about British history I'd recently read. I'll complete and post my thoughts tonight. At any rate, here are some familiar but still useful points about the Kyoto accord, raised by Martin Walker in an analysis for UPI:
He also conveys a good sense of the magnitude of harm from the forest fires in Indonesia as well as the "Asian brown cloud." A legitimate, complicated issue. Unfortunately, NGOs and other do-gooders are trying to use honest concerns over pollution as a way to trample roughshod over national economic sovereignty -- though only that of the major industrialized nations, not that of LDCs or the in-betweens such as China and India. Saturday, August 17
Coming soon to a blog near you ... I intend to resume blogging late tonight. Among the topics I aim to address in coming days:
UPDATE: My resumption of blogging will have to wait till sometime Sunday. Real life can be a difficult obstacle to move when trying to free up time for a hobby like blogging. Thursday, August 15
Pressing the pause button No blogging for the time being (meaning till Friday night or the weekend). Juggling too much right now. Thanks, by the way, to David Hogberg for his link today. Wednesday, August 14
Music of the spheres It had been a while since I had seen the list of the musical selections on the two Voyager spacecraft. Here is it. My favorites: a piece by Louis Armstrong and the Hot Seven (what glorious music the young Armstrong created!) and a Glenn Gould rendition of some Bach. I suppose it sounds grumpy and chauvinist, but I can't help thinking that if the music selections were being decided today, several of the dead white males (Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Stravinsky) wouldn't have made the cut in order to make more room for the world music stuff. (Not I have a problem with a well-tempered panpipe, mind you.) Saddam's monuments I posted on Tuesday about the Millennium Challenge 2002 exercise. A military analysis in National Review Online mentions the concept behind the exercise in talking about the many complications of urban warfare in Iraq: ... this assumes that the Allies will just walk right into the cities and commence house-to-house fighting. Lessons learned from the urban scraps of the 1990s would argue against such a direct and unimaginative game plan. Army Major General (Ret.) Robert Scales, former Commandant of the Army War College, has described an alternative approach in which forces attacking cities would "use the inherent instability of the urban structure as a means for it to defeat itself." The writer, James S. Robbins, notes the disdain that Patton expressed for reliance on fixed fortifications, which he called "monuments to man's stupidity." Putting it to a vote An editorial in National Review makes sound points: In considering whether to overthrow the Iraqi regime, it is important to remember that a campaign to do so would not be a move from peace to war. It would be a ratcheting up of our existing conflict. American fighter pilots fly daily over Iraq. Americans have already liberated much of northern Iraq. Recognition of this context makes nonsense of many of the arguments against regime change, such as the arguments based on the inviolability of Iraqi "sovereignty." Right. I saw a recent letter to the editor that argued that Iraq today, like Kuwait in 1990, is a sovereign country that as a result should be shielded by international law from pre-emptive attack. But, as the editorial says, Iraq's sovereignty is severely limited as a result of the decade-old United Nations requirements, and U.S. military forces already assert great control over Iraq through legitimate exercise of U.N. authority. As for congressional approval, Bush would be wise to seek it not just for the reasons the NR editors cite but also because a full-scale campaign to topple Saddam would well expose large numbers of American service personnel to chemical and biological attack. It would be healthy for the United States to have formal congressional support behind the president's action should such a dire circumstance arise. Curious place for a U.S. military exercise, eh? This report says 4,000 American troops are headed to Jordan for a two-week training exercise in the southern part of that country. Race and reasonableness Just about every time I look at a newspaper op-ed page and see that someone has written a column on race, I wince. Columnists who comment on racial questions usually seem so angry. So self-righteous. So polarizing. The main exception is a wonderful columnist with the Miami Herald, Leonard Pitts Jr. He’s black, he’s articulate, he’s thoughtful. (Pitts was one of the first people I placed in my links section when I was putting together this blog.) An excerpt from one of his recent columns, about black self-identify:
If you want to see common sense given eloquent expression, Pitts’ columns deliver consistently. Tuesday, August 13
The big war gaming news The U.S. armed forces just completed their largest-ever joint war games, called Millennium Challenge 2002, at a cost of $250 million. Military analyst William Arkin stresses the importance of the exercises, as does this piece in the Boston Globe. From the Globe article:
Interesting side note: Arkin says the unidentified Middle Eastern country involved in the exercise was Iraq. The Globe article says it wasn’t. Surfin' in a weblog wonderland My links section titled “Wits” includes a link to material by a humor writer named Madeleine Begun Kane, or simply Mad Kane. (As for her politics, well, she's not exactly a member of the Dick Armey Fan Club. Come to think of it, neither am I. Anyway, funny's funny.) She’s recently composed a ditty, titled “Weblog Wonderland,” to honor the noble endeavor of blogging. It’s to be sung to the tune of “Winter Wonderland.” All together now:
More is available here. Thanks, Mad. The blogosphere could use more laughs. Blowback in Haiti Jean-Bertrand Aristide's cynical deployment of political thugs has come back to haunt him. Vigilantes tied to Aristide's political movement are now turning against the Haitian government. (That isn't the latest news article available on the topic, but it has the crucial info I wanted to pass along.) Such a turn of events is a well-deserved comeuppance for Aristide and his inner circle. The larger issue, though, is the horrendous humanitarian catastrophe facing the island. At the movies A few thoughts about movies after seeing "Lord of the Rings" on video (if you haven't seen the movie, these little observations might still be of interest -- if they're not, I hear there's interesting stuff about copyright law at some other blogs): UPDATE: Here is a fun Tolkien-related item at Tonecluster. ANOTHER UPDATE: Here is an observation I meant to include my list of bulleted items above: It was interesting to see how the director placed the actors in interior scenes at Bilbo Baggins' house, in order to present the illusion that the actors playing Hobbits were much smaller than Gandalf (McKellen). (Ian Holm, who played Bilbo, is a short guy, but he's far from Hobbit-size.) I was also struck that Christopher Lee -- good old Hammer Studio, B-movie Christopher Lee -- is on a roll. He's not only in "Lord of the Rings" but in the new Star Wars movie too. Monday, August 12
Winter war in Iraq? Donald Sensing, responding to a query from an earlier post of mine, provides impressive analysis in pondering the possibilities of winter war in Iraq. He also has useful observations on a range of related tangents, especially issues relating to the use of chemical weapons by the Iraqis in combat situations. First-rate stuff. Activists target U.S. nuclear strategy The Washington Post reported in June that DOD has shared computer software with a Heritage Foundation analyst who has used it to put together detailed computer simulations of nuclear attacks -- on Pakistan, on Washington, D.C., on Norfolk, Va. Less attention has been devoted to how arms control activists are using similar techniques to promote their policy agenda. The Berkeley, Calif.-based Nautilus Institute, for example, has put a range of declassified government documents online relating to nuclear strategy. In one project, the organization used the federal Freedom of Information Act to obtain declassified versions of six StratCom/SAC reports from the 1990s. The activists then placed the material on the Internet along with detailed criticism of the strategic command's actions. A member of the Nautilus staff recently appeared on a radio program and, according to the organization’s Web site, “argued for the need to integrate the demand for global abolition of nuclear weapons within larger social movements for peace and social justice.” Another activist group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, has been busy in similar fashion. The group has used advanced computer software and commercial satellite data to produce its own detailed approximation of the SIOP, the secret government plan for using nuclear weapons in wartime. The pseudo-SIOP, released last summer to applause from arms control activists, can be run on home computers. Here is the language the activist group uses to describe the SIOP project, under a headline, “Exposing the U.S. Nuclear War Plan”:
The mock SIOP, involving an attack on Russian nuclear forces and another on Russian cities, merely covers long-familiar intellectual territory. The essential message stressed on the CD is that nuclear war would bring horrific destruction and death. In other words, it states what has been obvious for a half-century, going back to the 1951 Rand Corporation finding that detonating 55 H-bombs in the then-Soviet Union would wipe out an estimated 35 million people. The NRDC claims that the U.S. strategic nuclear posture is little-changed from the Cold War era. But Admiral Richard Mies, then-commander of the Strategic Command, last year cited various ways in which U.S. nuclear forces have ratcheted down their activity: the end of continuous airborne alert operations by strategic command and control aircraft; a reduction of more than 50 percent in personnel involved in strategic forces; placing four Trident submarines on track to be removed from strategic service; and a Pentagon proposal to remove the entire Peacekeeper "MX" strategic missile force too. Activists’ complaints are similarly overwrought in regard to the common-sense emphasis that StratCom places on ensuring survival of the U.S. nuclear infrastructure as well as on a "counterforce" strategy that sensibly targets Russia's nuclear forces, political leadership and military communications network. The latter, it’s claimed, amounts to endorsing nuclear “warfighting.” (“Warfighting,” incidentally, is one of the woefully cliched terms one encounters in arms control literature, along with other items of abomination such as “Cold War lite” and “nuclear priesthood.”) Yes, legitimate argument is possible about what the appropriate total of strategic nuclear weapons should be. Sure, nuclear nonproliferation ought to be the focus of great attention from the government. But the never-ending caterwauling from the arms control establishment about the allegedly frozen-in-place nature of the U.S. nuclear posture comes of as hysterical in the face of the changes described by Mies and, above all, the Bush-Putin agreement toward strategic nuclear reductions. Gotta respect their integrity, though I disagree with the Nautilus Institute’s approach on certain foreign policy matters, but I give the organization credit for integrity. When an Omaha World-Herald editorial criticized the institute last year on a nuclear strategy matter, the group’s Web site summed up the editorial’s arguments in detail and in an entirely objective fashion, without any petty sniping at our paper. On a related matter, I mentioned above that the Heritage Foundation has been doing computer simulations of nuclear exchanges between India and Pakistan. The Natural Resources Defense Council has been doing the same thing. Sunday, August 11
Colors and cultures (and canyons) The favorite color for most Americans and Europeans is blue. Yet, to the ancient Greeks, blue was a shade to be disdained as ugly and barbaric. When blue began to be associated with the Virgin Mary in the Middle Ages, some members of the church hierarchy put up a fierce rearguard action to block the incorporation of the hue into church iconography. They failed. The changing attitudes toward the color blue are the subject of a much-praised new book by French historian Michel Pastoureau. (I haven’t read the book; just seen some glowing reviews.) One of the oddest experiences I’ve had as far as color and meaning came at the 1988 Democratic national convention. I was covering the convention for a North Carolina newspaper. At one point, someone in the rear stands held up a peculiar picture of Ronald Reagan -- a pen-and-ink drawing of his head on a screaming yellow background. The yellow was strikingly out of place in the convention’s color scheme, which emphasized red, white and blue (actually, a noticeably light blue). When I saw the yellow sign, the immediate association I made was with American political radicalism -- the Pacifica Radio, green-black-and-yellow Africanism, down with Amerika kind of sensibility. I never found out what the origin of the yellow sign actually was. When I read that the ancient Greeks by no means shared modern Americans’ positive feeling toward blue, I was reminded of a passage in David Weber’s terrific book “The Spanish Frontier in North America.” When the Spaniards first encountered the Grand Canyon, Weber noted, they were completely unimpressed. By the cultural standards of 16th century Spain, canyons weren’t considered visually interesting at all. Numbskullism Let me expound a bit more on a point I raise in my post immedately below, in which I criticize a peace activist for accusing the Bush administration of "wag the dog" tactics. (I was originally going to tag this onto the post below as an addendum, but I wrote at such length I decided to make my new text a separate post.) The way in which the op-ed writer eagerly raises that accusation illustrates how people stoop so frequently to project the most base motives onto their political opponents’ actions. As I indicated in my post, it’s as if people are interested less in having a legitimate argument than in merely hurling cheap shots at their ideological foes. Such an easy resort to character assassination is, for me, one of the most grating aspects of political argument these days, whether in the blogosphere, talk radio, cable TV or college newspaper opinion columns. It’s numbskullism run rampant. I put particular blame on talk radio, particularly right-wing radio. (The two are more or less synonymous, anyway.) By their daily resort to juvenile rhetoric against those on the left, ranting conservatives have signaled to many people on the right that it’s fine to routinely attribute liberals’ actions to cynical or immoral motives rather than their political beliefs. The nadir, of course, came during the Clinton years, when that administration could do nothing without having the most cynical, if not sinister, motives attributed to it. I remember the howl on the right when the Clinton administration extended diplomatic recognition to Vietnam. On a local talk show in Charlotte, N.C., that I was listening to, a caller berated John McCain (by no means a favorite politician of mine, incidentally) for publicly supporting the administration’s move. McCain simply had to have an ulterior motive -- maybe he was going to benefit financially somehow from the policy change, the caller said. To that McCain-hater, it simply wasn’t within reason that McCain would have a legitimate reason for supporting the policy. As I said -- numbskullism. And it goes unchallenged all the time. I see the shallow invocation of the “wag the dog” argument by the peace activist op-ed writer as being in the very same category. Friday, August 9
Exchange of fire I slammed Mike Golby. He fires back. Fair enough. I wrote in my earlier post, "It's hard to give credence to someone when he resorts so eagerly to rants rather than honest analysis." Check out his new post and see if you think my characterization is accurate. The power to persuade Eugene Volokh deserves admiration not just for his intellect but for his temperament. In a post today about the letter from American academics who have sounded a note of good sense on the terrorism question, Eugene observes:
Yes. I've found his point applicable all the time in preparing newspaper editorials. Sure, there are plenty of occasions in which impassioned rhetoric is appropriate. But Eugene is right with his broader point: Stridency alone is no indicator of intellectual heft. And mobilizing the broad mass of people toward one's policy position is more easily accomplished through a tone of reasonableness than bile. Get the plaintiff attorneys out of U.S. foreign policy A U.S. appeals court said earlier this year that the parents of an American teen-ager killed by members of a Palestinian militant group in the West Bank can sue U.S. Islamic charities accused of contributing to the organization. Many Americans will no doubt find that a positive development, since it seems to provide one more tool for hurting terrorists. Congress opened the door to such litigation when it relaxed restrictions on terrorism-related lawsuits in the 1990s. Allowing private citizens to sue over such matters, however, is likely to produce unintended consequences that will undermine U.S. foreign policy. A long-term goal for the United States should be to safeguard its sovereignty over its foreign policy, especially given how anti-American critics and Wilsonian idealists agitate constantly to boost the clout of the "international community" and nongovernmental organizations as a counterweight to U.S. power. (The World Trade Organization, I’ll gladly grant, is a sensible exception when it comes to sharing control over foreign policy.) Given that context, allowing federal courts to pronounce on foreign policy questions is a poor idea. Opportunistic NGOs would be sure to exploit every legal advantage that presented itself. And permitting plaintiffs attorneys to start mucking around in the foreign policy arena is just asking for trouble over the long term. Plus, giving a green light to such private lawsuits here will invite lawsuits in foreign courts against the U.S. government. In short, the entanglement of private litigation with U.S. foreign policy concerns will give critics and enemies of the United States new tools to hamstring this country from safeguarding its interests. David Rivkin and Lee Casey, two specialists in international law, discussed these concerns in a seminal article in The National Interest in 2000. They wrote:
That excerpt expresses sound principles. It is lamentable that Congress and U.S. courts seem determined to reject them. Thursday, August 8
Two for war, one against Let’s look at three voices of note in regard to a U.S. invasion of Iraq. I’ll quote some of their arguments, then rate them on overall strength.
Democrats, Beinert says, should support a strategy that supports military action followed by resolute nation-building abroad. TNR is especially interesting to watch post-9/11 as it tries to navigate its way on foreign policy without severing connections with the Democratic Party. (Gore is mentioned in Beinert’s essay.)
I was a bit surprised that The Economist took that stand. I imagined that the magazine would join the rest of the British media elite in expressing skepticism about Bush. I was also struck by the pedestrian writing style of the Economist editorial -- where was the stylistic verve I used to see and enjoy routinely in that magazine when I was a regular subscriber to it in the ’80s and early ’90s?
Of these pieces, the strongest -- or at least the most creative and energetic -- is Beinert’s. The weakest, in terms of zest and forcefulness, was The Economist’s. The de Borchgrave piece deserves points for passion, but his arguments seemed to rest more on pointed rhetoric than on a skillful marshalling of facts. After the stock market bubble comes ... ... the housing market bubble. So says columnist James Pinkerton, who has one of the most imaginative approaches of anyone writing in the big-market op-ed universe. Observes Pinkerton (whose Newsday columns are included in my links section at left):
One reason I like Pinkerton, who pushed outside-the-box thinking in the first George Bush administration, is that he routinely looks beyond the familiar partisan and public policy wars to ponder offbeat subjects. Or else he looks at conventional issues from unexpected angles, leavened by an appreciation of history. Such an approach is the ideal I hope to pursue here. Learning from the Democrats Republicans have studied Al Gore’s 2000 campaign and find much to admire in his get-out-the-vote tactics, according to U.S. News & World Report. The RNC says it intends to copy some of the techniques in 2004. For example:
The smartest campaign, strategically and tactically, I’ve seen up close was during my North Carolina days. It was John Edwards’ 1998 run for the Senate, in which he defeated then-incumbent Sen. Lauch Faircloth. The Edwards campaign demonstrated great savvy and energy, not least in getting voters to the polls. I'll have more to say about Edwards in future posts. Wednesday, August 7
The Saudis and nuclear weapons The much-discussed Washington Post article about a U.S. briefing that described the Saudis in hostile terms made no mention about nuclear weapons. But a recent journal article by Anthony Cordesman published by the U.S. State Department said that Saudi Arabia has talked to Pakistan about nuclear weapons matters:
The Cordesman article was the subject of an article last week in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, which stated:
The Dawn article also said that the Pakistani and Saudi governments deny any communication between the two countries in regard to nuclear weapons. In the past, the Saudi government has called for the Middle East to be a “nuclear-free zone.” Still, the Federation of American Scientists (whose defense info is usually reliable, despite the organization’s decidedly leftward tilt) reports that acquisition of nuclear weapons may indeed be a goal of the Saudi government:
Similarly, in November 1994, the Federation of American Scientists reported:
As bloggers ponder the Saudi problem, they also need to give thought to the nuclear dimension. UPDATE: Many thanks to Glenn Reynolds and Matt Welch for their links to this post. Meanwhile, Donald Sensing considers against whom a Saudi nuclear attack might be directed. Joe Katzman's analysis of the Saudi-nukes topic focuses on a Cato the Elder-style theme. Economics, morality and the new abolitionists A listener phone-in to the Canadian news-interview program “As It Happens” on Monday helped me understand something about the mindset of anti-globalization ultras. In my disdain for the super-greens’ knee-jerk animus toward capitalism, I had given little consideration to how they approach issues with a zealotry and sense of moral imperative quite reminiscent of the antebellum abolitionists. (This well-researched biography of William Lloyd Garrison captures the abolitionist movement’s spirit of defiance and resolution quite well.) The listener phone-in concerned a ballot initiative in Berkeley, Calif., to ban the sale of politically incorrect coffee in coffee shops. Only coffee grown with strict protections for workers and the environment would be allowed. What struck me was the way a caller from Toronto framed his arguments. Working conditions for coffee harvesters in the Third World are little better than slavery, he argued. Just as Western society had a moral responsibility in the 19th century to abolish slavery, so it has a moral obligation in the 21st to improve the lot of workers in “slave-wage” industries in developing countries. Third World working conditions is a complicated subject. The anti-globalists sometimes raise legitimate concerns in individual cases. At other times their analysis is wildly simplistic. The hyper-greens' policy approach is part of a broader mindset in which economic issues are uniformly couched in moral terms. Such an overly moralized worldview makes it easier to rationalize ideas that seem morally comforting but in the real world are economically unworkable. For these supposed intellectual inheritors of Garrison, the ends justify the means, regardless of the economic impracticalities. The plutocrat and the populist Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson consistently deserves high marks for his truth-telling in regard to economics and public policy. His latest column provides a fascinating historical look at J.P. Morgan:
At the same time, I've done a bit of reading of late about Nebraska populist William Jennings Bryan (the one-time editor of the newspaper where I work). Bryan no doubt looked on men such as Morgan as his bete noire. Indeed, in the 1896 presidential election that pitted Bryan against William McKinley, the campaign contributions that Morgan and Standard Oil alone gave to McKinley’s campaign surpassed the entire contributions made that year to Bryan and the Democrats. Two other points about Bryan: The familiar description of Bryan as an elderly benighted fundamentalist is a mere caricature. (I say this, incidentally, as someone who has warred editorially with creationists.) The actual historical figure espoused positions that were nuanced and, in some regards, thoughtful. Right or wrong, Bryan deserves more respect than he’s been given. Winter war It would make sense, for a particular reason, to carry out an attack against Iraq during the winter months, according to this article. I'll defer to the serious students of military affairs, like Don Sensing and Joe Katzman, to analyze that claim. Tuesday, August 6
Oh, about 774 and 400 I can understand how a few weapons or laptops might be stolen or misplaced over the course of a year from federal agents or departments. But the magnitude of the losses according to this Inspector General report is incredible. Which only gives new credence to Glenn Reynold’s ongoing complaint that the only way to get the feds’ attention in such matters is through some well-selected firings. Come on, he isn't that awful, is he? Speaking of Glenn Reynolds (whose e-mail encouragement, by the way, led me to finally launch this little site not long ago), InstaPundit of course takes some rhetorical flak from the anti-war left. In researching something else at Daypop today, I ran across a particularly rabid tirade (titled "The Dark Underbelly of the American Right") against the weblog wizard of Knoxville. To wit (although I hesitate to use the word "wit" in this instance):
The same blogger, Mike Golby, also accused George W. Bush, Cynthia McKinney-style, of knowing about plans for the 9/11 attacks in advance:
It's hard to give credence to someone when he resorts so eagerly to rants rather than honest analysis. Resuming normal operations I'm back, but I won't be able to post anything substantive until tonight. |