South Dakota Politics

Inkheart: A Review

There is a small genre of films that entail stories that come to life.  Jumanji, Neverending Story, Spiderwood Chronicles and recently Adam Sandler's Bedtime Stories are films one immediately thinks of along these lines.  One might also be familiar with Steven King's short story "Word Processor of the Gods," in which whatever a man writes on his word processor comes true.  That story reveals some of the dark side to the notion that stories might actually break through the barrier between fiction and reality, crossing a divide which might be better left in the imagination. 

Now we have Inkheart.  In this telling, Brendan Fraser plays Mo Folchart, a "silver tongue," one for whom everything he reads out loud actually comes to life.  The twist is that by calling characters from the story into our world, someone must go into the book.  This has dire consequences when Mo reads the story Inkheart, bringing nefarious characters from this fantasy book to our world and sending Mo's wife, Resa, into the story.  Also coming from the novel is Dustfinger, a man who can bring fire from his hands.  All he wants is to go back into the story to his family.  As written, he is a conflicted character who has a sense of right but whose courage often fails him in pursuit of right.  The plot of the film largely follows the efforts of Mo and his daughter Meggie to get Resa back, thwart the evil intentions of the baddies who have escaped the novel, and get Dustfinger back where he belongs. 

I am sorry to say that the film largely fails as a fantasy/adventure film geared toward young adults.  It is somewhat like Spiderwood Chronicles in that it attempts to create a world of wonder (imagine if characters such as the Minotaur or Toto from Wizard of Oz actually roamed the earth), but instead the world of the film is depressingly gray, uninteresting, and fails to capture the imagination.  I do think Inkheart is superior to Spiderwood Chronicles, but as Spiderwood is one of the worst films in recent memory, that is faint praise. 

Inkheart is full of undeveloped characters.  Helen Mirren is disappointing as the great-aunt who serves virtually no purpose in the story, existing only to act the grumpy old woman.  She re-appears at the climax of the film for absolutely no reason other than to have all the characters there at the end.  As she works her way back to the bad guys' castle she expresses doubt as to why she is doing this or what she can do to help her family.  The audience has a similar reaction. 

The plot is largely formulaic and maddeningly predictable.  Think of all the great characters in the history of fiction.  The story could include any number of them with thrilling results, yet all we get are some supernatural creatures in cages who do nothing until the end.  Even then they do not figure prominently in the action.  I mean, the bad guys have the crocodilele from Peter Pan, ticking clock and all.  Isn't that cool?  Shouldn't that crocodilele do something other than been seen through bars a couple times?  The actual script is wooden, with characters saying nothing interesting or thought provoking.  They themselves seem to lack any sense of wonder regarding the magic in their presence.  An exception is Jim Broadbent who has a winning turn as the author of the book Inkheart.  He is inappropriately amused at how his characters-come-to-life so mirror his intentions for them.  He is even gleeful that the bad guys are just as he planned them.  Paul Bettany is also fine as Dustfinger, but he has it easier than other actors as his character is actually somewhat complex.  I am afraid the rest of the cast cannot overcome a weak script. 

It's sad to have to pan this film, as it actually is a great premise.  But the actual execution does not have anything near the imagination of the basic story.  In a story about imagination come to life, that's a pretty serious failing. 

More on Daschle's Tax Fraud

Tigerhawk:  "There is no ambiguity in the law, or no theory that he did not know that he owed the money. It is obviously an in-kind payment for services. Of course he knew he owed the taxes. Finally, there is no tedious extra bureaucratic obstacle to paying this tax. You just drop a number right on to the 1040. You know, that document that you signed under penalty of perjury.”  More thoughts from Paul Caron.

Daugaard Raises Big Bucks

Kevin Woster has the goods at the Rapid City Journal.  The piece includes many quotes from my favorite political scientist, me. 

Dennis Daugaard is certainly the front runner for the Republican nomination for governor.  A lot would have to go wrong for him to fail in that first step to the Governor's mansion.  The closest thing he has to a credible challenger is Dave Knudson, who is associated with moderate Republicanism.  This is not the kind of Republicanism that wins primaries.  If someone is going to challenge Daugaard it must be someone who can be a credible conservative critic of the Rounds administration.  Lee Schoenbeck could play this role, but like Calvin Coolidge and Jerry Seinfeld, he chose not to run.

Daugaard faces the same problem sitting vice-presidents face, namely separating yourself from your boss and becoming your "own man."  The potential problem for Daugaard is that people see him as simply a third Rounds term and it turns out they are sick of Mike Rounds. 

Military to Take Oath to Obama? Not!

A colleague of mine sent me this story, and asked whether it could possibly be true.  Here is the meat of the "story" circulating on the net:

A spokesman for General James Cartwright, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, states that the Obama Administration wants to have soldiers and officers pledge a loyalty oath directly to the office of the President, and no longer to the Constitution.

I replied that I was sure this was false.  Well, I was right.  It's an internet lie.  It certainly didn't pass the smell test.  Even if you believe that Barack Obama has designs on our liberties, you'd have to wonder whether such a ham-handed device would advance them. 

We have live through sixteen years of President hatred: right wingers spinning conspiracy theories against Bill Clinton, and lefties comparing George W. to Hitler.  Can't we take a break?  Barack Obama may be a good President or not.  He ain't Big Brother. 

Unserious Congress

We are either in a really serious economic crisis or we are not. If we aren't, then the most important thing is not to do something that will put us in one. The current recession seems really bad, and it is world-wide in extent, but it is still about as severe as the 1981 recession. The latter seemed pretty grim at the time, but we emerged from it with a very strong economy, the steam of which lasted for most of Ronald Reagan's eight years in office.

If we are in a real crisis, defined as an economic slump likely to last for several years or more, then radical measures might be justified if, and that's a big if, you can figure out measures might actually do some good. That was the argument for the bank bailout: a collapse of the financial institutions is precisely the thing that might bring about a depression. The same argument is now made for the "stimulus bill" that just passed the House of Representatives. It is astoundingly expensive, but it might be worth the money if it does stimulate us out of a potentially debilitating slump.

There is a saying in Zen Buddhist tradition: "practice like your hair is on fire." That means to take every moment of spiritual practice as seriously as you would a fire on your own head. If your head is on fire, you don't worry about anything other than putting it out. You don't think about the future and you don't worry about gaining any advantage. You think only about dousing the flames.

If you really believe that the national economy is aflame, and that the stimulus bill is what we need to put the fire out, fear and pain would focus your mind. You would concentrate only on such measures as are likely to have immediate effect. The Democratic majority in Congress, and President Obama, achieved no such concentration of mind. Only about a quarter of the stimulus bill would even be spent this year. The rest of it is long term spending and lots and lots of pork. This is the kind of thing you produce precisely when you aren't being serious, when you haven't been shaken out of your comfortable agendas.

Here's David Brooks in the New York Times:

In a fateful decision, Democratic leaders merged the temporary stimulus measure with their permanent domestic agenda — including big increases for Pell Grants, alternative energy subsidies and health and entitlement spending. The resulting package is part temporary and part permanent, part timely and part untimely, part targeted and part untargeted.

It's easy to see why Democrats decided to do this. They could rush through permanent policies they believe in. Plus, they could pay for them with borrowed money. By putting a little of everything in the stimulus package, they avoid the pay-as-you-go rules that might otherwise apply to recurring costs.

But they've created a sprawling, undisciplined smorgasbord, which has spun off a series of unintended consequences. First, by trying to do everything all it once, the bill does nothing well.

These are the actions of a fundamentally unserious bunch of people. President Obama has missed his first great chance at leadership.

Of course, there remains the possibility that we are not yet facing anything like another depression. So what could put us into one? Well, a near trillion dollars spent on stuff that won't show any return for a decade, and that we can ill-afford, might do it. More likely to turn the trick, though, would be a turn to protectionist policies guaranteed to dry up international trade. The Obama administration is clearly flirting with such policies. From the London Times:

At the behest of the most protectionist Congress in memory, Mr Obama may be about to repeat, at the dawn of his presidency, the same historic error that the much derided Herbert Hoover made just before quitting the White House in 1933. In the depths of the Great Depression, he signed into law the innocent-sounding Buy America Act. It required the US Government to use American suppliers in all public contracts. Less notorious than the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, "Buy America" did huge damage. It proved a disaster for US manufacturing exports and the global economy. Other governments followed suit, and it took decades to begin to reverse the closure of markets.

Be certain: if we protect our domestic industries against foreign competition, other countries will do the same. That's the kind of thing you would want to get started if you really want another great depression. Being unserious in the face of a crisis is one thing. Dousing your own head with gasoline and fumbling with the lighter is another.

Daschle Facing Tax Questions

ABC News:  Bumps in the Road: Obama's HHS Secretary Nominee Faces Tax Questions Over Car and Driver

UPDATE:  WSJ: Daschle Paid Back Taxes After Vetting

Unserious Gore

Al Gore has made Global Warming his life's mission, after his previous life's mission of becoming President was not renewed for another season. This is nothing to be sneered at. Though I disagree with Gore on a lot of the global warming issues, this looks like a good use of his talents. He is a caring and thoughtful man. His eight years as the Executive branch spare tire has left him with a reserve of political capital. He has invested in something he thinks will show returns both for himself and for the world. Good enough. Here is the opening of his testimony before Congress.

We are here today to talk about how we as Americans and how the United States of America as part of the global community should address the dangerous and growing threat of the climate crisis.

We have arrived at a moment of decision. Our home - Earth - is in grave danger. What is at risk of being destroyed is not the planet itself, of course, but the conditions that have made it hospitable for human beings.

Moreover, we must face up to this urgent and unprecedented threat to the existence of our civilization at a time when our country must simultaneously solve two other worsening crises. Our economy is in its deepest recession since the 1930s. And our national security is endangered by a vicious terrorist network and the complex challenge of ending the war in Iraq honorably while winning the military and political struggle in Afghanistan.

That's actually pretty good, as it takes back a lot of Gore's past excessive rhetoric. It isn't earth that's in the balance, or even life on earth. If the worst predictions of the IPCC come true, the earth will do just fine, and life will adjust as it has throughout its history on the former. What is at stake is human security and comfort. But that might, conceivably, be at stake in a big way.

But if Gore asks all of us to take this threat seriously, seriously enough to change the way we live as a people, might he not do the same himself? If human civilization is at stake, as he says, and he wishes to be the prophet pointing the way to salvation, might he not first put his own house in order? Maybe a good way to begin is by not buying a 100 foot house boat. Powerline has the scoop:

Gore assures us that his 100-foot houseboat is so "green" that it "will create 40-50% less carbon emission and use half the fuel of other similar houseboats." Let's take that claim at face value. I haven't been able to find data on carbon emissions by "similar houseboats"--there aren't many 100-foot houseboats around--but I located this information about a much smaller (60 foot) houseboat:

Generally speaking, they burn just on 10 gals an hour at full cruising speed. (10 mph) This includes the Westebeak generator's 1.5 gal an hour to look after electricity. Whilst anchored, depending on how cold the air conditioning is and other power outlets running, the generator will burn just over 1 gal an hour 24/7.

If we assume that a boat spends six hours cruising (60 gallons) and 18 hours at anchor (18 gallons), that boat--one-half the size of Gore's--will consume 78 gallons of fuel for every 24 hours of use. Let's take Gore at his word and assume that his much larger boat will emit just half as much carbon into the atmosphere as this benchmark. That would be 39 gallons per 24 hours. If you get 25 miles per gallon in your car, you would have to drive 975 miles--farther than from Chicago to New York--to emit an equal amount of carbon. And that doesn't count the jetski on the back of Gore's elephantine boat, which, you can be sure, takes real gasoline

Now I don't blame Al for living the highlife that his movie, books, and carbon-belching jet set speaker schedule have earned him. It's just that a 100 foot houseboat is not the kind of thing one would buy if one were really serious about global warming. I have a friend who rides his bicycle pretty much everywhere he goes, and won't eat imported lettuce. That's how you behave if you are serious about this issue. Al Gore is not a serious person. Global warming scare mongering is his day job. It's his act.

Fiscal Responsibility, Not!

Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin voted for the $825 billion spending bill.  This from the woman to portrays herself as the fiscally responsible Blue Dog Democrat.  There are several things to note about this bill.  First, this is supplemental bill, meaning this is spending over and above the over $3 trillion a year we were all ready planning on spending.  Second, most of the spending is backloaded, so its immediate economic impact will be virtually nil.  As Jim Manzi points out, most of the spending in this bill will occur too late for economic growth but just in time to add inflationary pressure.  Third, does anyone doubt that Democrats will make this spending the "baseline"?  That means this is not one time spending, but will be included in the regular budget forecast.  This is permanent spending.  Finally, as this ad signed by dozens of economists, including SDSU's George Langelett, argues, correctly in my opinion, this bill will do little to nothing to actually stimulate the economy.  In short, this bill, paid for by massive borrowing and printing of money, heeps further debt on future generation and devalues our currency while doing virtually nothing to improve economic conditions.  Indeed, it is not incorrect to say that this is not a stimulus bill, but simply a spending bill.  All in all, Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin may have just made the first mistake of the 2010 campaign.  Or perhaps she will win our votes the old fashioned way, namely buying them with our posterity's money. 

Update: I orignally linked to the wrong roll call.  The link has been corrected. 

DC v Heller: the 2nd Amendment Means What It Says

I had the pleasure, this week, of carefully reading the Supreme Court's opinions in District of Columbia v. Heller for my course in Constitutional Law. In that decision, the High Court declared for the first time that the Second Amendment to the Constitution protects the right of citizens to possess firearms, including handguns, and to have them ready at least for the defense of their own homes.

Antonin Scalia's opinion is characteristically thorough, brilliant, and devastating. He examines the historical record and the logical meaning of each part of the Amendment. Here is the text of the Second Amendment, from ePublius!:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Scalia properly distinguishes the Prefatory Clause (A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State) from the Operative Clause (the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed). The first explains the reasons for the amendment, but does not change the operation of the second clause. If I say in my will: "Jon is a handsome man, so I leave him my fortune," Jon gets the fortune. If you object that Jon is butt ugly, you might have a point. But he still gets the money.

Scalia lays out the question:

The two sides in this case have set out very different interpretations of the Amendment.

Petitioners and today's dissenting Justices believe that it protects only the right to possess and carry a firearm in connection with militia service.

Respondent argues that it protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

One side wants to interpret the 2^nd Amendment in such a way as to completely negate any effect. They want it to go away. The five judge majority interprets it to mean something enforceable in court. Here is some of the meat of Scalia's opinion:

The first salient feature of the operative clause is that it codifies a "right of the people." The unamended Constitution and the Bill of Rights use the phrase "right of the people" two other times, in the First Amendment 's Assembly-and-Petition Clause and in the Fourth Amendment 's Search-and-Seizure Clause. The Ninth Amendment uses very similar terminology ("The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people"). All three of these instances unambiguously refer to individual rights, not "collective" rights, or rights that may be exercised only through participation in some corporate body. Nowhere else in the Constitution does a "right" attributed to "the people" refer to anything other than an individual right.

The Constitution does not recognize any "corporate rights," except those belonging to the American people as a whole and some belonging to the people of the various states. But when it says "the right of the people," it always means the right of individual persons, as in

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures…

Scalia goes on to show that "the right to bear and keep arms" was understood by the framers as a pre-existing right belonging to individual persons. It was one of those rights that the founders preserved from the English political tradition. English kings who wished to become tyrants had tried to disarm Englishmen who were not loyal to them. Protecting the rights of every citizen to keep and bear arms was thus a bulwark against tyranny. Hence the prefatory clause. Scalia shows that this interpretation was well-grounded in the various state constitutions.

To see that Scalia was right, and the minority wrong, one has only to notice how weak and disturbingly stupid Steven's dissent is. Consider this:

The Court overlooks the significance of the way the Framers used the phrase "the people" in these constitutional provisions. In the First Amendment , no words define the class of individuals entitled to speak, to publish, or to worship; in that Amendment it is only the right peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances, that is described as a right of "the people." These rights contemplate collective action. While the right peaceably to assemble protects the individual rights of those persons participating in the assembly, its concern is with action engaged in by members of a group, rather than any single individual. Likewise, although the act of petitioning the Government is a right that can be exercised by individuals, it is primarily collective in nature. For if they are to be effective, petitions must involve groups of individuals acting in concert.

Stevens is arguing that the "right of the people peaceably to assemble," in the First Amendment, is a "collective right." He needs to, to establish the existence of collective rights under the Constitution. But this is so stupid an argument as to embarrass a moron. The right to peaceably assemble doesn't belong to the Sierra Club or the National Rifle Association. It belongs to any individual who wants to join one or the other. When you make this stupid an argument, you are either dumb as a post (Stevens is not), or you are trying to save a bad proposition.

But it gets worse. Stevens says:

The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia. It was a response to concerns raised during the ratification of the Constitution that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several States.

Stevens is saying that the purpose of the 2^nd Amendment was to protect the right of each state to arm itself against the Federal Government. Now I have relatives in Arkansas who would welcome that interpretation. They have confederate flag decals in the back windows of their pickup trucks. In order to save gun control, Stevens has joined Alexander Stevens and become a confederate!

Steven's dissent is self-refuting. The Second Amendment clearly protects the right of each citizen to keep and bear arms. It does so because the founders thought that this right was necessary to the security of a free people. It is careful to preserve the power of the states and Congress to regulate the militias. But if the Constitution means what it says, it means that individual citizens have a right to "cling" to their guns.

 

Stimulating Thoughts On The Stimulus

Are you wondering what to think about the so-called "stimulus package"?  There are many resources online to help.  You can actually read the stimulus package here.  Timothy Carney gives an excellent summary to the content and theory behind the stimulus.  He is very clear and concise.  Bruce Bartlett gives a nice introduction to the Keynesian theory behind the proposal and the criticisms of that theory.  And finally, here you can read Yuval Levin suggesting the real motivation behind this bill is to spend a lot of money on Democrat priorities, not to stimulate the economy.  How else to explain Nancy Pelosi's lame (and somewhat disturbing) defense of the inclusion of expansive funding for birth control in the bill?  How does that stimulate the economy?  That's probably why Democrats hastily dropped such spending from the bill.  But the point is made.  This is just one example of loading the bill with Democrat wish list items that wouldn't otherwise get funded but are now justified as "economic stimulus."

Stop the Whining

Here is my latest from the American News:

Conservatives querulously note the domination by the political left of cultural institutions such as the academy, the national news media and the entertainment world. Conservatives take perverse pleasure from the conspiratorial notion that a left-wing cabal plots to exclude political dissent from the establishment culture.

But it is more the modern nature of these institutions that produces the left-leaning dominance. Each of these cultural pillars, generally speaking, sees as its goal the progressive transformation of society, thus causing institutional biases in favor of big government and against traditional lifestyles.

It was once considered the task of universities to pass on to each generation the inherited culture. The classic liberal arts education was meant to instruct in the history, literature, philosophy and other foundations of the culture. This was essentially a conservative task, namely conservation of a civilization.

But contemporary universities are interested in creating new knowledge, not passing on old knowledge. Our biggest and most influential universities are called “research institutions.” At these universities one sees the production of transformative knowledge taking precedent over conserving a civilization. Indeed, on these campuses one will experience an outright contempt for undergraduate education from the faculty, as teaching of undergraduates is a distraction from their real job of publishing articles in obscure journals.

If one has a conservative disposition, a disposition that wants to preserve the best of who we are, then the university is antagonistic toward you.

The same is true in the news media. As journalism evolved in the 20th century, it became the goal of the national journalist to investigate societal injustice, no matter how small.

Think of all the news stories about how this or that business or product is harmful and how we must have greater government oversight to protect the powerless consumer. If one is ill-disposed toward government interventionism or if one simply does not see the world as one large injustice waiting to be corrected, the news media is not for you.

Finally, consider the entertainment world. In the movie industry, for example, since at least the 1960s the goal has been the creation of “provocative” films that challenge convention. Classic Hollywood performed this task as well, but was also capable of defending cultural institutions. Think of the sympathetic portrayal of priests in such films as "Angels With Dirty Faces," "Boys Town," and "Going My Way." Now hardly a year goes by without another batch of films depicting Christianity as narrow minded, bigoted and, in the case of the Catholic Church, part of a historical conspiracy of oppression.

Contemporary Hollywood's “courageous” take on social issues is consistently in one direction. It is also usually more agitprop than provocative as any progressive audience member will find his prejudices confirmed rather than his thoughts provoked. The same is true in music where rock 'n' roll “rebels” trot out progressive tropes about liberation and fighting authority, all the while making millions of dollars working for multi-national corporations. Again, if one wants to preserve a culture rather than transform it, the entertainment world is not for you.

For those who do have a conservative disposition, technology has helped. Access to our civilization's heritage is a keyboard away. Simply opting out of a culture dominated by progressivism has never been easier. So perhaps it is time for conservatives to stop complaining.

What the American Left has to Offer on Terrorist Detention

It's too early, to be sure, to judge the Obama Administration's policies. We know that he is "reversing" Bush Administration policies on Gitmo, but we have no clue as to what direction that car is now heading. The announcement that Gitmo will close is part of the made for TV package. Change we cannot be at all clear about.

Obama is playing to the New York Times and the LA Times here. These organs of enlightened if financially insolvent opinion are quite clear that Bush's military tribunals are kangaroo courts. Presumably they want all the Guantanamo detainees turned over to civilian courts. Okay. But doesn't that mean that a lot of these detainees, captured by the military, will be released? And what does that mean? Well, we have an idea. The New York Times delivers it:

The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda's Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.

The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen's capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen.

His status was announced in an Internet statement by the militant group and was confirmed by an American counterterrorism official.

So in this case, those terrible, constitutionally corrosive Bushies were too nice. They released al-Shihri to the Yemenis, who apparently put him in a terrorist twelve-step program. He relapsed. Now you can chalk this up to Bush incompetence, but doesn't his release indicate that we didn't have enough on him to be certain that he was the real bad guy that he obviously was?

So what about those recovering terrorists whom we are pretty sure aren't recovering? Aren't some of these folks going to be released by American courts, if the Courts get a hold of them? Courts aren't really designed to safeguard national security. And what if the next great terrorist attack on the mainland is accomplished by someone who got out with a writ of habeas corpus? What is that going to do to our concern for civil liberties?

You might suppose that the NY and LA Times would be thinking about this. If so, they are keeping their thoughts to themselves. I am guessing that Obama is thinking about it. The last thing he wants is to be responsible for the release of the next bin Laden. I am guessing that he will figure out a way to keep the really bad eggs from shipping out. But he is going to have to do it on his own. The Left has nothing.

One Comment On The Budget Situation

As the blogging bug has hit me, let me comment on the most important South Dakota news of the week, our budget problems.  Let me first say as a state employee that I think freezing salaries is a prudent move.  I do wish we could do at least something for those who are on the lowest rungs of the state salary scale (such as the custodians). 

But as I have posted before, our state ranks #49 in per capita state and local tax burden.  The antipathy toward even the most modest tax increases strikes me as ideology and political expediency trumping common sense. 

Machiavelli teaches in The Prince that it is better to have the reputation for being miserly than for being generous.  Generous princes must keep the money rolling in so as to maintain their reputation.  Should the good times ever stop rolling, the people get angry.  On the other hand, the miserly prince does not invade the pocket books of the people, and should he ever distribute some money to him they are ever more grateful because of the rarity of the deed.  In addition, should the principality ever have to engage in some large and expensive project, he has the money to spend because he has not been heretofore lavish in his spending. 

South Dakota has been prudent in its handling of money.  That's why it can now give a slight tax increase without it hurting the people.  Would that those in Pierre have greater courage to say so. 

Here is Machiavelli on the subject.  This translation uses "liberality" and "mean" where I have used "generous" and "miserly." 

Therefore, any one wishing to maintain among men the name of liberal is obliged to avoid no attribute of magnificence; so that a prince thus inclined will consume in such acts all his property, and will be compelled in the end, if he wish to maintain the name of liberal, to unduly weigh down his people, and tax them, and do everything he can to get money. This will soon make him odious to his subjects, and becoming poor he will be little valued by any one; thus, with his liberality, having offended many and rewarded few, he is affected by the very first trouble and imperilled by whatever may be the first danger; recognizing this himself, and wishing to draw back from it, he runs at once into the reproach of being miserly.

Therefore, a prince, not being able to exercise this virtue of liberality in such a way that it is recognized, except to his cost, if he is wise he ought not to fear the reputation of being mean, for in time he will come to be more considered than if liberal, seeing that with his economy his revenues are enough, that he can defend himself against all attacks, and is able to engage in enterprises without burdening his people; thus it comes to pass that he exercises liberality towards all from whom he does not take, who are numberless, and meanness towards those to whom he does not give, who are few.

We have not seen great things done in our time except by those who have been considered mean; the rest have failed. Pope Julius the Second was assisted in reaching the papacy by a reputation for liberality, yet he did not strive afterwards to keep it up, when he made war on the King of France; and he made many wars without imposing any extraordinary tax on his subjects, for he supplied his additional expenses out of his long thriftiness. The present King of Spain would not have undertaken or conquered in so many enterprises if he had been reputed liberal. A prince, therefore, provided that he has not to rob his subjects, that he can defend himself, that he does not become poor and abject, that he is not forced to become rapacious, ought to hold of little account a reputation for being mean, for it is one of those vices which will enable him to govern.

All in the Family 3

I completely agree with the argument that my colleague makes below.  The argument against incest based on genetics (or taboo or both) is only one of the things wrong with incest.  It is not the most important.  Incest threatens the most important function of the family: the nurture of children.  It means that instead of being nurtured, children are exploited.  On the other hand, I suspect that the inhibitions and prohibitions against incest are older than family life.  Moreover, they are very clear to everyone even in modern societies, where the natural function of the family is no longer taken for granted in public discourse. 

The main reason that I did not focus on the more important argument against incest was that my post was not about incest, it was about marriage.  First cousin marriage, to be precise.  Issues of intra-familial exploitation may certainly arise in connection with cousin marriage, especially in cultures where some measure of inbreeding is encouraged.  But in this case I think the genetic argument is more important, especially in the West.  I presented what was, to me at least, a novel argument against first cousin marriage.  I thought that interesting in itself, and it backed up my broader contention that marriage is a matter of public concern. 

Besides, I didn't have to make the more important argument against incest in an already long post, as I could count on my spirited colleague to write a long one of his own. 

All In The Family

Prof. Blanchard's post on incest is of interest not only for what he says, which is interesting, but also for  what it doesn't say.  Prof. Blanchard maintains that there is a public interest in incestuous sexual unions as they are a danger to public health.  This is true in two ways: by narrowing our genetic code it makes it easier for disease to run through the population and also because of the increased likelihood of birth defects. 

Of course Prof. Blanchard's reasoning runs against the ideology of "reproductive freedom."  Who are we to tell siblings that they cannot have sex?  Sure, any children coming out of that union run a higher risk of birth defect, and sure that make us more succespible to to pathogens, but they can use contraception, right?  They can use abortion, right?  Even still, who are we to tell people what to do with their bodies, whether they can have children or can't? 

Of course this is part of Prof. Blanchard's point.  He shows that those who argue for a strictly private morality contradict their philosophy as few of them defend incest. 

Prof. Blanchard's argument has its own shortcomings, though.  Like the social scientist he is, he rests his argument purely on the ground of health.  Incest is wrong because it is unhealthy.  There are problems for making this the sole of our objection to incest. As I have suggested above, the health objection can be overcome by both ideology and by science itself.  Contraception and abortion regulate "dangerous" births, and perhaps in the future genetic testing and genetic engineering will further reduce the dangers of incestously conceived children.  Science can save us from science, so to speak.  Coupled with an ideology of liberation from constraint the objection to incest is easily overcome.  I notice it in my students who, when faced with the arguments I have just presented, can find no objection to incest other than "it's icky."  Well, we are a few Hollywood movies and perhaps a television series away from making it "un-icky." For many students, the only sexual morality they are willing to defend is "safe sex" coupled with consent.  As long as those are present, the sex is moral.  Thus, no principled objection to incest. 

Prof. Blanchard's argument starts from an assumption, it seems, that the only public concern is that of health.  This is the same notion that says that the only morality in sex is "safe sex" and consent.  This is the view of human sexuality through the lens of biology, namely that sex is simply animals rutting, an instinctual imperative with no rational basis for inhibition other than biology itself (ie, health). 

But as Aristotle would have it, society begins with the need for mere life, but has as its end the good life.  Thus Allan Bloom states that eros begins in sexual desire, but has as its end love.  Thus we must think of the various manifestations of love, the impact of eros (one kind of love) on human relationships, and how incest is implicated in all of this.

From this point of view, the objection to incest is not that it damages our bodies (i.e., our corporate health) but that it damages our souls.  To turn close family members into objects of sexual desire is to turn a love that is meant to be nurturing and supportive into one that is intimate and, literally, penetrating.  The purpose of the family is to nuture and to raise children in a safe and protective environment.  When mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers see each other as possible sexual conquests, it destroys the nurturing and protective fabric of the home.  One can only imagine the inevitable jealousies or the manipulation and exploitation that is likely to occur when family members become sexual posibilities.  Think of the damage to the psyche (Greek for "soul") caused when the safety of the home is invaded by sexual passion. 

I happen to know that Prof. Blanchard is no fan of philosphical dualism, but his post is an outcome of what happens when we assume that what happens to the body has no bearing on the soul.  Sex is no plaything.  The great joys and the terrible saddness that it can cause us tell us that it isn't just our bodies that our at stake, but our souls. 

Abourezk: Still A Disgrace

I suppose one should be happy that the Argus Leader, in choosing to print an anti-Israel rant by Jim Abourezk, at least offered an opposing view.  But inviting Jim Abourezk to debate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a bit like inviting David Duke to debate affirmative action.  For past postings on Abourezk and his defense of terrorists (or as he says in the latest piece, "conservative Muslims") and his toying with anti-Semitic stereotypes, go here, here and here.   

First Cousin Marriages & Public Morality

Some people think that homosexual couples should be allowed to marry. I say so myself. Some of those who say so argue that we shouldn't impose public morality on private relationships, but they don't really believe that. We impose a spectrum of public moral principles through marriage laws, and those limitations fall equally on everyone. No man can marry his mother or his sister under any set of laws anywhere that I know of. That universally accepted rule is an imposition on private relationships. To say that it is not a moral imposition badly misreads the facts. Whenever you tell people not to do what they are tempted to do, you are moving in the sphere of morality.

The grounds for the prohibition of incest have not changed at all over the centuries, but the interpretation of those grounds have changed. Incest was once universally prohibited because it was thought to be taboo. The evidence of this was the increased likelihood of birth defects. Today, this bit of public morality is reinforced by biology. There are two reasons why incest is medically contraindicated. The offspring of such a union, especially where incest were common, would be more likely to inherit two copies of a recessive gene coding for some birth defect. Second, dangerous pathogens will be more likely to find their way through the genetic defenses of a population that is inbred.

An interesting example of this kind of analysis concerns first cousin marriages, which are sometimes, but not always, illegal. William Saletan's Human Nature blog, posted at Slate, considers the biological calculations that might underlie such laws.

Many cousin couples can't pass on genetic diseases, since they're infertile. Are you going to ban them from marrying? If not, maybe the 24 states that ban cousin marriage should follow the lead of the five states that allow it if either party is sterile. And if procreation between first cousins is too dangerous, why stop there? Six states ban marriage between first cousins once removed, i.e., marrying the son or daughter of your first cousin. Theoretically, that's half as risky as marrying your first cousin, in terms of increasing the probability of passing on a genetic disease to your kids. How about marriage between second cousins? Theoretically, that's one-fourth as risky. No state bans such marriages. Should we change that?

In other words, one could come up with a pretty well-founded genetic calculation, since the number of genes two relatives share follows well established rules. A son is genetically related to his mother by a factor of 50%, since he gets half his genes from each parent. He is also 50% related to his sister, since he and she have a 50% chance of inheriting any given gene. He is 25% related to his aunt, but only 12.5% related to a first cousin. I note that is apparently possible in some places to marry your aunt, as Mario Vargas Llosa's marvelous novel, Aunt Julia and the Script Writer, is apparently semi-autobiographical.

So first cousin marriages look much less risky than coupling between brother and sister, based on genetic calculations alone. But not so fast. Saletan has a piece on some recent research that is thought provoking. One study found that the genetic risk involved in first cousin marriages was pretty small.

Their report concluded that the risks of a first-cousin union were generally much smaller than assumed—about 1.7%-2% above the background risk for congenital defects and 4.4% for pre-reproductive mortality—and did not warrant any special preconception testing. In the authors' view, neither the stigma that attaches to such unions in North America nor the laws that bar them were scientifically well-grounded.

But those calculations were based on North America, where it is generally assumed that, as you go up the family escalator, the grandparents and great grandparents were largely unrelated to one another. It's a small world, but I think it very unlikely that the Blanchards, Martins, Shooks, and Daughertys had many close relatives in common.

The same is not true of other societies and subpopulations.

In North America, marriages between consanguineal kin are strongly discouraged. But such an assumption is unwarranted in the case of UK Pakistanis, who have emigrated from a country where such marriage is traditional and for whom it is estimated that roughly 55%-59% of marriages continue to be between first cousins. Thus, the usual risk estimates are misleading: data from the English West Midlands suggest that British Pakistanis account for only ~4.1% of births, but about 33% of the autosomal recessive metabolic errors recorded at birth.

So if your grandparents were marrying their first cousins, it becomes a much riskier proposition for you to marry your first cousin, at least if you intend to have kids. There are a couple of lessons in this. One is that culture matters precisely because genetics matters. It's not a matter of one or the other: each influences the other.

Another is that first cousin marriages are a bad idea. They are probably pretty safe in North America just now. But that is only because they have been relatively rare in the past. They will probably continue to be safe, even where first cousin marriages are legal, provided that there is no culture pressure towards inbreeding. In populations where there is such pressure, it is not safe at all. The bottom line is that first cousin marriages ought to be prohibited by law. Cultures that encourage them are, in that respect, defective. That is the heart of moral argument.

Obama Morphs into Bush on the Daily Show

We hold Presidents responsible for all kinds of things over which they have little or no control.  That is as it should be.  It's part of their job description.  But he or she who would understand what is is really going on would do well to consider who much a President is restrained by the moment.  The Daily Show is on the case.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Changefest '09 - Obama's Inaugural Speech

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Barack Obama’s Not So Fast Reversal on Guantanamo

From the Washington Post:

President Obama took dramatic steps yesterday to reverse Bush administration policies on the detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists, ordering the closure of the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and banning the use of controversial CIA interrogation techniques. But he left open the question of how his administration will deal with any detainees it concludes are too dangerous to be released.

The Press is doing a pretty good job of presenting just the story that the Obama Administration wants presented. Even Fox is in on it. Right now, Obama wants to be seen as radically transforming the way we do business in Washington, while being very careful about what he actually does. The well-established pattern of big pronouncements unaccompanied by revealing details continues. This is not necessarily a bad thing, provided that we eventually do get details.

The New York Times, busy selling itself to Mexican telecommunications billionaire and apparent loan shark Carlos Slim, vents in the way that suggests a declining digestive system on the Guantanamo story.

Long before President Obama took office, pretty much everyone, even President George Bush, said the prison at Guantánamo Bay needed to be closed. In June 2007, the White House claimed it was working on a "number of steps" that had to happen first — but getting started was really hard.

Well, maybe not so hard. It took President Obama less than 12 hours. Before midnight of his first day in office, he took the obvious and vital step of halting the military tribunals at the prison camp. And he reportedly is considering a draft executive order that would direct that the prison be closed entirely within a year.

That first paragraph acknowledges, without any risk of honesty, that Obama's executive order was no reversal of policy. It was in fact a change of policy toward the same end. Maybe it will be a more effective policy. But if Bush announced a year and a half ago that Gitmo needed to be closed, and didn't manage it, Obama intends to take another year.

So the bit about doing it all in 12 hours is a transparent lie. What Obama did do is to shut down the military tribunals, which brings to a halt the only real mechanism in place for clearing out the facility. What he didn't do is say how he intends to solve the problems with which the Bush Administration wrestled. From the Wall Street Journal:

In the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the Bush Administration and Congress painstakingly set thresholds for who can be detained and under what rules. Mr. Obama argues that work was flawed and that the trials should not continue in their present form. But he also said in his ABC sitdown that he wants to create "a process that adheres to rule of law, habeas corpus, basic principles of Anglo-American legal system, but doing it in a way that doesn't result in releasing people who are intent on blowing us up."

Sounds great. But this "balance" is difficult to strike because many of the Guantanamo prisoners haven't committed crimes per se but are dedicated American enemies and too dangerous to let go. Other cases involve evidence that is insufficient for trial but still sufficient to determine that release is an unacceptable security risk.

The problem is simple: the prisoners in Gitmo were captured as a result of military actions. The U.S. military does not ordinarily read Miranda rules to people who are trying to kill them. Our soldiers are trained in war and trained in the rules that are supposed to make war a little less brutal. But they are not trained to collect evidence for criminal trials. So we have a lot of folks in Guantanamo who were are pretty sure are too dangerous to release, but whom we cannot convict in an ordinary court of law.

So what do we do with them? Turning them over to civilian courts will likely result in their release. But where? A lot of civilized nations have criticized the Guantanamo regime, but none has been willing to accept any of the detainees. Sending them back to their country of origin might or might not be possible, but it will surely result in some cases in a worse fate than any incarceration by Americans. It's possible that they might be transferred to other American facilities, but folks living around these facilities are going to be any more eager to get these new neighbors than are the British. But surely if President Obama wants to avoid "releasing people who are intent on blowing us up," he is going to have to come up with some as yet unmentioned strategy.

Maybe the President can find a way to cut this Gordian knot, but as yet we have no clue as to what it might be. So it's silly to say that Obama has "reversed" Bush policy until we have some idea what his policy will be.

SDP Jazz Note: Max Roach and Barack Obama

From the very beginning of the American Republic, the position of African Americans has been central both to our peril and our promise. Jefferson and Madison knew it. Abraham Lincoln realized it and it brought him back into politics in 1858 when Stephen Douglas urged us to adopt a pro-choice attitude toward slavery, thus abandoning our most sacred principle. Martin Luther King brought us back to it in his transcendent "I have a dream" speech. Whether you voted for Barack Obama or not, you might acknowledge that today represents the final movement of the great American symphony.

Jazz was intimately connected to the Civil Rights Movement if only because so many of its founding geniuses were African Americans. In honor of Barack Obama's inauguration, I present a bit of Max Roach. Here's a brief review of We Insist! Freedom Now Suite.

A jazz landmark, and one of the enduring artistic statements of the Civil Rights Movement. From the opening "Driva'man" — with Coleman Hawkins' tenor maintaining dignity in the face of the whip-cracks drummer Max Roach emulates with his rim-shots — to the closing "Tears for Johannesburg" — a wordless cry for the victims of apartheid — Roach alternately condemns and celebrates the African-American experience. There's inspired soloing by trumpeter Booker Little and trombonist Julian Priester, a stirring percussion jam with Olatunji and others, and hair-raising vocals, both verbal (lyrics by Oscar Brown Jr.) and nonverbal, from Abbey Lincoln. This provides the template for countless subsequent musical suites and dramatic presentations on the subject, but Roach was firstest with the mostest.

I have long loved this Max Roach album, as a rare example of narrative jazz. Here's one sample:

Max Roach/Freedom Day/We Insist! Freedom Now Suite

Obama’s Inaugural Hymn

I'll be discussing Obama's First Inaugural (no implication intended, but one thought of) tomorrow on Dakota Midday with Paul Guggenheimer on South Dakota Public Radio. You can listen in online using the above link (I hope!).

You can hear Obama's inaugural speech here, and read it here. As it happened, my American government class met just as the Presidency changed hands, but my smart classroom wasn't smart enough to get the streaming to work. I recommend listening to the speech in one window, and watching the text in another, which is what I did.

Inauguration day is a celebration of the American Republic. So a good inauguration speech will be the highlight of that celebration. But that can easily be at odds with the requirements for a great speech. A great speech, and there have been but few of those, does two things: it tells us where we are, and challenges us to go where we must go. Great speeches by definition involve discomfort. If it is easy to do what we need to do, no great speech is necessary or even possible. Abraham Lincoln's "House Divided" speech was a good example. Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech was another. The latter, I think, shows that it is possible to combine a soaring pride in America's achievement with a great and disturbing challenge to right what is wrong with America. That's a really high bar, but MLK cleared it.

Barack Obama faced an enviable challenge. The very fact that he stood there, one day after Martin Luther King Day, was itself as concrete an affirmation of the United States of America as one is likely to see. The position of African Americans in the body politic has been at the center of America's promise and peril since our very beginning as a people. The Constitutional Convention, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights Movement, were the great movements in this symphony. We now have come to the final resolution. President Obama acknowledged this, but did no more than that. He might have considered what it means for America's future.

What he did do is give a very eloquent address that rose to the occasion. Consider this:

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

That's pretty good. It celebrates what is great about America with what is proof of America's greatness. If you have a simple two bar graph representing all those who have left America to go other places over the last two years, and all those came here from other places, the one would be as tall as the width of a penny and the other would look like a skyscraper.

But it wasn't a great speech. He did a bit of scolding, some oblique criticisms of the previous administration, a lot of "our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America." But if he challenged the previous administration, he didn't really challenge us. He didn't tell us what we were going to have to give up, or bear up under. Higher taxes? Social benefit cuts? More Americans slogging around in Afghanistan? No clear outline of pains to be born, or difficult decisions to be made.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works…

That's the rub. Obama, like Bush before him, wants to deal with the current economic crisis by spending about two trillion dollars. But about half that is a gigantic spending package that is supposed to stimulate us out of recession, but most of which won't have any effect until years from now. Is this really government that works?

Today was a big day for America. Obama's speech was good part of that big day. But tomorrow it's back to the grind. Nothing in the speech says much about how to solve the problems we face.

Martin Luther King Jr.

The Bush Years

A reasonable person might conclude that George W. Bush was a bad president, or that he was a reasonably good one.  No reasonable person could view his Presidency as a smashing success.  Those who view him as the worst President ever are stroking their own puds.  The Washington Post has a reasonable take, from the Left. 

In Iraq Mr. Bush gambled his nation's international alliances and reputation. We agreed with him that Saddam Hussein's defiance of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions was intolerable and that sanctions against his regime could neither contain the long-term threat of weapons of mass destruction nor deliver the Iraqi people from unendurable tyranny. Like the president's, our sense of the war's necessity was shaken by the absence of WMD. Unlike the president's, our sense of his administration's competence was shaken by the war's disgracefully bad planning, which contributed to Iraq's post-invasion plunge into horrific violence. The global backlash against the war, especially in Europe, has cost the United States dearly, making it more difficult to rally the world against Iran's nuclear ambitions. Though relations with Europe have been significantly repaired, Iran exploited the divisions in Western ranks to make mischief in both Iraq and Afghanistan -- and to advance its bomb-building.

But, as matters in Iraq now stand, there is a decent chance of a reasonably pro-American incipient democracy in the heart of the Arab Middle East. This would be a major accomplishment, and one that would cast the invasion, the failures of the early years of occupation and the painful loss of more than 4,000 American lives and many thousand more Iraqi lives in a different light than the one in which they are seen by most Americans now. It would also vindicate his unpopular decision to stabilize Iraq with more U.S. troops rather than abandon it to civil war and possible genocide -- an instance in which Mr. Bush's self-assurance and steadfastness paid off.

Perhaps the brightest example of humanitarianism in Mr. Bush's record is his commitment of vast new resources to the battle against AIDS in Africa. With the Millennium Challenge Account, he attempted to link foreign aid to honest and efficient governance. And he put the United States firmly on the side of democracy and freedom, arguing, correctly, that the transformation of dictatorial regimes is, in the long run, necessary to peace and security. "Around the world, America is promoting human liberty, human rights and human dignity," he declared on Thursday. But he did not always practice what he preached; in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, support for dictators, justified by the anti-terrorism campaign, trumped support for liberty. The same desire for anti-terrorism cooperation may explain his protracted reluctance to recognize or respond to Russia's descent toward autocracy at home and bullying abroad. In China and North Korea, trade and denuclearization, respectively, prevailed. It is still too early to tell whether his choice of diplomacy in those areas will pay off; by not following through on his rhetoric, though, Mr. Bush ensured that he would get blame for being inconsistent without getting credit for any results. And, it's worth remembering, his blind faith in simplistic economics -- tax cuts for every season -- led him to pay for all his wars and foreign aid on credit, helping produce today's fiscal disaster.

That’s what a fair critique of the Bush years looks like.  The WaPo admits what most Bush critics completely ignore: that Saddam Hussein’s defiance of U.N. resolutions and agreements he himself signed would have been grounds for war in any earlier age.  I would add that neither President Clinton nor Al Gore nor John Kerry nor the Democrats in Congress ever offered an alternative Iraq policy.  The WaPo is unusually fair on other matters. 

From the right, Charles Krauthammer makes a more important point.

Except for Richard Nixon, no president since Harry Truman leaves office more unloved than George W. Bush. Truman's rehabilitation took decades. Bush's will come sooner. Indeed, it has already begun. The chief revisionist? Barack Obama.

Vindication is being expressed not in words but in deeds -- the tacit endorsement conveyed by the Obama continuity-we-can-believe-in transition. It's not just the retention of such key figures as Secretary of Defense Bob Gates or Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner, who, as president of the New York Fed, has been instrumental in guiding the Bush financial rescue over the last year. It's the continuity of policy.

It is the repeated pledge to conduct a withdrawal from Iraq that does not destabilize its new democracy and that, as Vice President-elect Joe Biden said just this week in Baghdad, adheres to the Bush-negotiated status of forces agreement that envisions a U.S. withdrawal over three years, not the 16-month timetable on which Obama campaigned.

It is the great care Obama is taking in not pre-emptively abandoning the anti-terror infrastructure that the Bush administration leaves behind. While still a candidate, Obama voted for the expanded presidential wiretapping (FISA) powers that Bush had fervently pursued. And while Obama opposes waterboarding (already banned, by the way, by Bush's CIA in 2006), he declined George Stephanopoulos' invitation (on ABC's "This Week") to outlaw all interrogation not permitted by the Army Field Manual. Explained Obama: "Dick Cheney's advice was good, which is let's make sure we know everything that's being done," i.e., before throwing out methods simply because Obama campaigned against them.

Yes.  Obama will keep more of Bush’s policies than he rejects.  Sorry. 

In a recent telephone conversation with an esteemed South Dakota reporter, I gave Bush a gentleman’s C.  That’s not because his policies were mediocre, but because a lot of highs and lows average out.  Bush failed to adequately prepare for the invasion of Iraq, but he did belatedly correct his policy and we did win the war.  He oversaw an expansion of government that we can now ill-afford.  On the environment, the U.S. has done better than most of our scolding European allies.  Bush didn’t nail Osama, but he gutted the international terrorist apparatus, by wrecking its finances, reducing its communications to smuggled video tapes, and by killing so many of its leaders that no one left in Al Qaeda can know or trust anyone else.  Maybe a gentleman’s C was unfair.  It was not overly generous. 

Patrick McGoohan Dies at 80.

 I missed this event on the day it was announced, and then caught it at the Volokh Conspiracy. I was a big fan of McGoohan. He was famous mostly for two TV roles, and was most famous for the wrong one.

In the late sixties he starred in The Prisoner. He plays a secret agent who resigns and is promptly kidnapped by, well, it isn't clear who. He is held prisoner on an island, where the whole point of the social organization is to drive him crazy so that he will reveal "information." If I recall correctly, no actual questions are ever asked. It's a very weird show, and was supposed to be making all sorts of shrewd and sophisticated comments on modern life. But really it was just weird. It must have been great fun if you were stoned, but I was way too young for that in 1968.

The Prisoner was sort of a spin-off of an earlier show,  Secret Agent. That's the American title. The British title was Danger Man. Ours was better. It had the best theme song of any TV series I can remember, and I include Hawaii 5-0. Johnny Rivers wrote "Secret Agent Man," and it probably ruined his life. The driving guitar is perfect, and the words are just as good.

Swinging on the Riviera one day,
and lying in a Bombay ally next day;
Oh no, you let the wrong words slip
While kissing persuasive lips,
Odds are you won't live to see tomorrow.

Secret Agent Man. Secret Agent Man.
They're giving you a number
and takin' away your name.

That's the good stuff boys and girls. A lot of story squeezed into a third verse. Here is a video clip of Rivers performing the song.

 

Secret Agent was a very shrewd and serious show. I watched it as a child and again on public TV when I was in grad school. McGoohan played John Drake, a secret agent working for, who, exactly? Britain? NATO? There were definite cold war themes. But the theme of the show was the moral ambiguity in cold war grand strategy. In every episode, Drake has to outsmart really bad guys, but he usually has to make moral compromises to do it. In one episode, he has to leave behind an innocent girl who trusted him as a prisoner in some Eastern bloc gulag. Circumstances leave him no choice, and the bitter taste of that is the last moment of that week's episode. That is really TV drama, and huge bouncing bubble gum balls chasing McGoohan along the beach in Prisoner can't compare.

McGoohan also played Longshanks in Brave Heart, the ruthless English king. By the end of the movie I decided that the Scots pretty much deserved what they got. McGoohan was the real thing.

Sticking It To Virtue

Over at what is quickly becoming my favorite site, Postmodern Conservatives blog over at Culture11 (a great site in itself), Patrick Deneen (late of What I Saw In America, my old favorite site), has a thought provoking post on the culture of "choice" and its ability to promote a virtuous citizenry.  It's worth a read.  Here's part:

But perhaps this is the wrong way to proceed, and misunderstands virtue:  perhaps virtue was not supposed to be this hard or this willed, but rather was an accomplishment not of individuals, but of cultures.  After all, it is Aristotle who begins in the Nicomachean Ethics to speak of virtue as a form of habituation, a pre-conscious set of practices that we learn before we are necessarily conscious of them as virtues.  One can compare the habituated acquisition of pre-modern virtue to the learning of table manners:  children are taught gradually the proper way of eating in a civilized manner before they have any awareness of the grounds for such practice.  Indeed, it is seldom the case that even parents know the deeper cultural and even philosophic grounds for the practice of table manners:  it is something into which they were likewise habituated when they were children.  There is a strong suggestion in Aristotle that most of the virtues of humans begin, and are ultimately successful, due to successful habituation, and not the heroic philosophic and willed capacity to act with virtue in spite of the structure and assumptions of the wider society. (snip)

A “culture” of choice is not neutral about choice itself.  Thus, while virtue is available to the few counter-cultural heroes of a liberal society, the anti-culture of liberalism has the effect of “habituating” its young toward the embrace of ever greater multiplication of choices.  I find very little virtue in resignation to such an outcome – rather, I see a deep reneging of the responsibility of an older generation in providing guidance to the young about choices that are better and worse, based upon the experience of history, past, and tradition....Liberal emancipation ultimately takes the form of not caring enough to send the very best.  It’s watchwords are, "not that there’s anything wrong with that" - no matter what "that" is.  One is hard pressed to imagine a worse philosophy of parenting, or, by extension, a worse attitude of an older generation to a younger.  Perhaps we should consider whether a “culture” of choice means that we are stuck with virtue, or whether in fostering such a “culture”  we are sticking it – but decidedly not virtue that we ourselves avoid – to our children.

Why should we care about the virtues, or as we now say, the "values," of the greater society?  Because they set the limits on what is acceptible and what is not.  We all have to live together, not as atomized individuals but as part of a greater whole.  Thus for a decent society to survive I must be concerned with controlling my own base desires and cultivating my own virtue, but that includes caring about the virtue of others with whom I must associate.  We need to know how to treat each other well.  The public has an interest in cultivating virtues associated with a free person, namely that ability to self-govern one's passions and desires.  For a homey example, take a look at my post below on dress.  Fifty years ago one would be ashamed to go to church wearing blue jeans.  Now one wouldn't think twice about it.  Here is an example (surely not the most important one) of how the greater cultural assumptions influence behavior.  To take an example more obviously associated with virtue, public cursing, both in the form of vulgarity and actual profanity (i.e., profaning the Lord's name), is certainly higher than in the past.  One reason is the proliferation of such language in our movies, television and music.  It sets the tone that it is acceptible to use harsh language in almost any situation (note that I make a distinction between public and private vulgarity).

Patrick Deneen may go too far in attributing the decline in virtue with the self-indulgence and consumerism that typifies modern market economies.  For a corrective, see Peter Lawler.  Still, I am afraid Patrick is more right than Peter. 

Obama’s Transition Blues

Like George W. Bush before him, and unlike Bill Clinton, Barack Obama has taken the transition process very seriously. It looked for a while there like he would beat Bush's record of seven cabinet appointments by inauguration day. That's perhaps an unfair comparison, as the Bush transition was artificially lengthened by the election irregularities. But it now looks like Obama won't break that record.

So far I see only one appointment that raises serious questions about Obama's judgment. It's not Bill Richardson, whose withdrawal was an embarrassment to the Democratic Party but not to its new chief. It remains to be seen how much trouble the New Mexico Governor is in, but two Democratic governors facing Federal investigations, that's a lot of governors.

And it's not Timothy Geithner for Treasury. Geithner's failure to pay his self-employment taxes is a genuine full tilt bozo sort of thing. It's going to come back to haunt him that he couldn't get his own taxes right whenever tax policy becomes an issue. But as long as he gets this issue squared away, it won't be a reoccurring problem. If Geithner looks to be the right man for the job, he ought to be confirmed. I don't buy the argument that the times are so perilous that we need to forget about silly things like personal integrity. I just think that the Senate ought to give the President the appointments he wants unless there is something really wrong with the nominee. I don't see this as that serious.

It is Ms. Clinton's nomination to State that still seems problematic to me. I am guessing that Senator Obama picked her for two reasons. One is that he wanted to take his former rival out of the Senate, where she might be trouble, and put her in his administration where he can control her. That required giving her a really significant post. But it shows a kind of strategic thinking that is desirable in a President. The second is that he may think she can succeed him after a successful eight years, if that is what he achieves. That is strategic thinking over a long period that is rare in presidents.

I see, however, three significant problems with the appointment. One problem is that Obama brings into his house two very strong and difficult personalities. Can the Clinton's be brought to heel? Maybe, and there are signs that Obama has thought about this. Apparently Mr. Bill has signed all kinds of agreements about what he will do and say, but the Scandal-in-Chief is not known for scrupulously abiding by any set of rules except the rule of "me first." That could be a problem. Of course it may be Obama's plan to fire Ms. C. as soon as the first problem arises, but that will be inconvenient.

A second problem is Bill's Clinton Foundation. Mr. Bill is raking in cash from sources all over the world for his foundation, which is going to combat global warming, cure AIDS, and "translate ideas into action." Christopher Hitchens points out the problem:

Here is a thought experiment that does not take very much thought. Picture, if you will, Hillary Clinton facing a foreign-policy conundrum. With whom will she discuss it first and most intently: with her president or her husband? (I did tell you that this wouldn't be difficult.) Here's another one: Will she be swayed in her foreign-policy decisions by electoral considerations focusing on the year 2012, and, if so, will she be swayed by President Barack Obama's interests or her own?

The next question, and I must apologize in advance for once again making it an un-strenuous one, is: Who else will be approaching Bill Clinton for advice, counsel, and "input" on foreign affairs? It appears from the donor list of the Clinton Foundation that there is barely an oligarch, royal family, or special-interest group anywhere in the world that does not know how to get the former president's attention. Just in the days since the foundation agreed to some disclosure of its previously "confidential" clients—in other words, since this became a condition for Sen. Clinton's nomination to become secretary of state—we have additionally found former President Clinton in warm relationships with one very questionable businessman in Malaysia and with another, this time in Nigeria, who used to have close connections with that country's ultracorrupt military dictatorship.

The problem is not, I expect, that Ms. Clinton will put State Department resources at the service of her husband's foundation. The problem is that any time American policy happens to be convenient for one of Mr. Clinton's world gangsta sugar daddies, it's a potential scandal. Giving Ms. Clinton the State Department might be the gift that keeps on giving.

The last problem is that Senator Clinton revealed herself during the campaign to be a disastrously bad manager. Obama probably wouldn't be President if she had been marginally competent. Has she suddenly acquired executive virtue? We'll see. But Obama has turned over the U.S. State Department to someone with a clear record of managerial failure. That might matter. I remain unconvinced that she was the right choice for Secretary of State.

Clothes Make The Man (And Woman)

Apparently the American News has run my latest, but it isn't online.  I'll reprint it here:

During our recent presidential search at NSU, all applicants came prepared for the on-campus interviews, including dressing in a professional manner.  They all wore suits and ties along with their dress shoes and socks. 

 

What would we think of an applicant who showed up in sweat pants, a t-shirt and sneakers?  Most of us would be insulted by such lax dress and this would represent the end of that applicant’s contention for the job. 

 

Why?  Professional dress represents a seriousness and care that shows that the job applicant went through the effort to give us his best.  To dress formally is to recognize that certain occasions require a certain “form” of acting and dressing.  To formalize an occasion is to set it off as important, necessitating its own kind of dress. 

 

Dressing well is one way in which adults set themselves apart from children.  Look at old pictures of people at baseball games.  The men wore shirts and ties, the women dresses.  For baseball!  The message was clear: no man is too poor to be a gentleman, no woman too lowly to be a lady.

 

Take the old notion of wearing one’s “Sunday best” to church.   The reason to wear your best clothes to church is to show that we know what happens there is important, indeed the most important thing that we do all week.  If one shows up to church dressed no differently than how one dresses while mowing the lawn, that is one way of saying that what happens in church isn’t important.  Church is not set aside as something different, something important requiring its own dress.

 

Surely, it can be asserted, God doesn’t care how we dress. True enough.  But it isn’t about God’s attitude toward us, but our attitude toward God.  Casual dress runs the risk of breeding a casual attitude about the most serious thing.  There is a reason why Medieval Christians built such beautiful churches and made them the highest buildings in town.  God deserves our best, they believed, not our most convenient. 

 

Something similar occurs in the work place.  To be sure, for those who engage in manual labor, comfort is the apotheosis of workware.  But for the rest of us, how we dress is one indication of how seriously we take our jobs.  In the past at universities, for example, faculty wore their academic regalia every day.  This performed two tasks.  First, it again showed the seriousness of the academic endeavor.  Second, it made a distinction between the professor and the student, that the former had authority over the latter.  Still, if one looks at images of college students in the 1930s, most of whom were men, like the men at the ballpark they were in shirt and tie, “just” to go to class. 

 

Recapturing the past is impossible and not totally desirable.  Still, we could all think harder about how we dress and what message it sends to those around us.  Dress is a form of communication.  When we dress below our station or worse than circumstances dictate, what are we communicating?  Modesty and formality in dress communicate a seriousness and maturity that circumstances often require. 

 

Bush Right on Warrantless Searches

The long scrolls of Bush Administration crimes, the ends of which are currently dangling about the feet of dedicated Bush-loathers, all include the charge that Bush trashed the Constitution in his warrantless surveillance after 9/11. Well, did he? Maybe not, according to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. This from the New York Times (yes, it is still in business):

In a rare public ruling, a secret federal appeals court has said telecommunications companies must cooperate with the government to intercept international phone calls and e-mail of American citizens suspected of being spies or terrorists…

But the ruling, handed down in August 2008 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review and made public Thursday, did not directly address whether President Bush was within his constitutional powers in ordering domestic wiretapping without warrants, without first getting Congressional approval, after the terrorist attacks of 2001.

Here is what is at question: no reasonable person doubts that the U.S. Government can monitor foreign communications that begin and originate abroad. Someone in Iran calls someone in Iraq, who calls someone in Oxford, and all of them are talking about "the next strike," well, we can listen in without bothering with warrants and all. Now, what if Oxford calls Chicago? Does Maxwell Smart have to determine whether the recipient is an American citizen, and if so, get a warrant, before he listens in? Well, that depends on how badly you want to monitor that intelligence.

The three-judge court, which hears rare appeals from the full Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, addressed provisions of the Protect America Act, passed by Congress in 2007 amid the controversy over Mr. Bush's program of wiretapping without warrants. It found that the administration had put in place sufficient privacy safeguards to meet the constitutional standards of the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches. Because of that, the company had to cooperate, the court said.

That finding bolstered the Bush administration's broader arguments on wiretapping without warrants, both critics and supporters said.

William C. Banks, a law professor at Syracuse University who has criticized the administration's legal position on eavesdropping, said that while the ruling did not address Mr. Bush's surveillance without warrants directly, "it does bolster his case" by recognizing that eavesdropping for national security purposes did not always require warrants.

After the World Trade Center fell, Bush decided that stopping the next attack was not a matter of law enforcement, but a matter of war. It was imperative to find out what the terrorists were planning, and make them stop. I think he was right to do so. His most vociferous critics accused him of trampling of civil liberties, but I wonder how much those liberties would have been worth to most Americans if 9/11 had been followed by a series of terrible attacks. Americans have not yet been scared. The World Trade Center was in New York. We don't want to see what happens when we get really scared. If you want to protect civil liberties, and I certainly do, you have to stop the really big scare from happening.

Bush leaves office with peace of mind. I know BB will cringe at this, but he does. He kept the next thing from happening. I expect that the next President will do much the same as he did.

SDP @ the Movies: The Unborn

I am wrapping up the editing of a book: Darwinian Conservatism: A Disputed Question. Look for it soon at Barnes & Noble! Tonight I took a breather and went to see The Unborn, with Odette Yustman and Gary Oldman. Quick judgment: it was a lot better than I expected.

To be sure, it had all the common weaknesses. Except for Oldman (Sirius Black, Commissioner Gordon), the cast was uniformly beautiful. The beginning was way too fast, with no sense of building or foreboding: the evil pops right up. But after the first half hour, the story line got focus, and I was hooked.

The story is set in Chicago in winter, and it makes great use of the bleak landscape around the city (a lot of dormant trees against white snow) and of some fine cityscapes. But its best trick was to base the movie on Jewish mythology. I am surprised that this is not done in more horror films. Asian horror works so well on me precisely because it is alien. Most Western horror relies on Christian mythology, but that mythology is so overused that it creates little resonance. These days vampires are so familiar they are about as scary as a high school marching band.

Jewish mythology has the virtue of being familiar and vaguely alien at the same time. This gives is a resonance that is vital for good horror cinema. To give you an idea of the plot, Yustman's Casey Beldon is being haunted by what she thinks is the ghost of her stillborn twin brother. But it's really a Dybbuk, a restless soul that was once human, but is human no longer. I like that 'ghost turns out to be demon' thing. The acting is passable, the dialogue uneven, but Gary Oldman shines as you would expect. One of the weaknesses in the movie is that his screen presence and story weight are limited. Oh, and the evil spirit looks a lot like Eddie Munster.

Anyway, if you like dabbling in the dark arts behind the spiritual protection of buttered popcorn, it's worth an hour and a half.

Anti-Semitism In Europe

Well, it happens in France. From Breitbart.com:

SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) - Two Molotov cocktails were hurled at a synagogue north of Paris, the latest attack in what France's interior minister said Monday is a new wave of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim attacks over the violence in Gaza. No injuries were reported.

President Nicolas Sarkozy met with religious leaders and reiterated the need to avoid "transposing" onto French soil a foreign conflict the country has been working to ease, his office said.

Firebombs broke a window and charred the walls of a pizzeria on the ground floor at Chabad House Ohr Manahem, in the town of Saint-Denis, said Isroeil Belinow, the synagogue's assistant rabbi. Belinow said police found 15 other unignited firebombs nearby.

Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said France has faced a "very clear increase" in anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim attacks since Israel started an offensive against the militant group Hamas in Gaza on Dec. 27.

God bless these Islamist terrorists. They aren't any better at getting their bombs to go off than they are at aiming their rockets. But what about these "anti-Muslim attacks" that began with Israel's Gaza offensive? As Powerline points out, there don't seem to be any.

[Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie] declined to provide specific figures on the increase, though she insisted police have been instructed to protect religious sites and places of worship.

Okay. I grant you that Muslims in Europe or America are often subject to prejudice. That's wrong, and it should stop. But do they really have to be afraid? Jews do. Daniel Schawammenthal tells the story in the Wall Street Journal:

There have been arson attempts on synagogues in Britain, Belgium and Germany. Police last week arrested Muslim protesters who wanted to enter the Jewish quarter in Antwerp. Several Danish schools with large Muslim student bodies say they won't enroll Jewish kids because they can't guarantee the children's safety. In France, a group of teenagers attacked a 14-year-old girl last week, calling her "dirty Jew" while kicking her.

At rallies in Germany and the Netherlands over the past two weeks, protesters shouted, "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the Gas." In Amsterdam, Socialist lawmaker Harry van Bommel and Greta Duisenberg, widow of the first European Central Bank president, marched at the front of one such "peace" demonstration. They didn't join in the background chorus calling for another Holocaust. Instead, they chanted, "Intifada, Intifada, Free Palestine." Mr. Van Bommel later insisted this wasn't a call for Jewish blood but for "civil disobedience" -- a laughable defense given that terrorists during the last intifada murdered more than 1,000 Israelis.

Jew-hatred is the canary in the coal mine, the little evil that should warn us of the big evil. It's that little itch in the back of your attention span that is screaming for you to pay attention.

Astounding Photos From Gaza

Here are some breathtaking photos from the Gaza war, courtesy of Boston.com.  One sample:

The Bizarre Title of Czar in U.S. Politics

I had an interesting, if somewhat b-Czar exchange with Lisa on my Keloland site. She objected to my reflections on Czar proliferation in the incoming Administration.

Oh, a new definition. Replacing brain-dead dolts with a few living cells is creating czars? Long live Sarah Palin.

I pointed out that "Czar" was a very common term used today for "an official whose job is to coordinate different departments and agencies dealing with some key issue." Lisa would have none of it.

Don't patronize an old broad. The word czar comes from the Russian tsar which in turn was derived from the Latin Caesar. It means an emperor or autocrat. When used in relation to American government it is used sardonically to suggest that someone is given authority inconsistent with a democracy.

Well, anyone who reads the online newspapers knows that I am right. I had the strong impression that the term "Czar" for policy coordinator dates back to the Nixon Administration, and I thought that the first "Czar" was Nixon's "Energy Czar." I was half right about that.

But Lisa isn't off her nut here. "Czar" was once a grave insult in American politics. Fortunately, there is a piece in Slate by Ben Zimmer that helps to clear all this up. Zimmer begins by observing the phenomenon that I observed: Czar proliferation.

Already Tom Daschle has been tapped for "health czar" and Carol Browner for "climate czar." Adolfo Carrión is expected to be the "urban affairs czar." There's also been talk of a "technology czar" and a "copyright czar." Plans for a "car czar" recently fell apart on Capitol Hill, but Obama and the incoming Congress will try, try again in the new year.

Here is a wealth of examples of appointed Czars and proposed Czars, all of them from news site headlines, and all of them used in a non-derogatory sense.

Zimmer gives a pretty good summary of the history of the term. Apparently "Czar" was an insult in American political language up until the Russian Revolution killed off the last real Tsar. Before that, Czarism was the big bad that American democracy rescued us from. Afterwards, well, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

But I am guessing that the increased frequency of the term has a very simple explanation. In most of the examples cited in the paragraph above, the term "Czar" appears in the headline, and is replaced by a more prosaic title, like "coordinator of energy and climate policy," in the body of the article. Suddenly the scales fall from our eyes. Headline writers like the term because it is four letters long. Writing headlines is a game of squeezing information into small spaces. I suspect that this is the real reason for the persistence of the term.

There is a real problem at the heart of all this. Czars don't work much better here than they did in the Russian regime. See Laura Meckler's piece in the Wall Street Journal:

The problem is that "czars" are meant to be all-powerful people who can rise above the problems that plague the federal agencies, he said, but in the end, they can't. "We only create them because departments don't work or don't talk to each other," Mr. Light said, adding that creation of a White House post doesn't usually change that. "It's a symbolic gesture of the priority assigned to an issue, and I emphasize the word symbolic. When in doubt, create a czar."

The creation of a policy Czar is a result of recognizing a problem in bureaucratic organizations, but it does nothing to solve the problem. So it's worth nothing that Obama is creating Czars a lot faster than the Romanoffs ever did. This is worth watching. I expect that Obama will go all Bolshevik on his Czars in pretty short order.

Ps. Nixon's first policy Czar was his Drug Czar. The Energy Czar was his second.

Leon Panetta as the American M

I can think of no good reason that Leon Panetta shouldn't run the CIA. He's a grown up, like Larry Summers and that's one promising thing about the Obama appointments. He isn't a spook, but the CIA has been such a basket case for so long that it obviously needs someone from outside it to give it a good scrubbing. But the question of competence in the field is not the only objection to Panetta. In appointing him, Obama has been accused of politicizing intelligence. But the CIA was already highly politicized. The Valerie Plame kerfuffle was the result of a cover campaign waged by Plame and her husband, Joe Wilson, against the Bush Administration. Maybe you think that campaign was a good idea. I think the CIA should work for the President. Maybe Panetta can make sure than it does. Finally, Panetta was chosen because he is innocent of all the nasty things the Bush Administration did or was said to have to done, while it managed to reduce Al Qaeda from a worldwide organization with enormous financial resources and a safe haven in Afghanistan to a back-packing adventure around the Khyber Pass. That's good, because the Obama Administration is going to go on doing pretty much the same things Bush did, only it needs to pretend that it is innocent. Leon Panetta will help.

If there is reason to be uneasy, it is not that Panetta is unfit. It is that the Obama Administration is looking to be assembling a lot of Chiefs, and no coherent organization. Obama is one man. He has a bunch of Federal Departments to manage, each with its own Secretary or General at the top. He is also creating a bunch of Czars. How is all this going to work? I am guessing it's not. Look for a major reorganization around year two.

Finally, one good reason to choose Panetta: Tony Bennett can serve as a double.

Daschle Discusses Health Care with Congress

Patterico's Pontifications:  "Tom Daschle, Obama’s Secretary-designate of Health and Human Services, addressed the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in Washington today in what the New York Times describes as the first of two steps in his confirmation hearing process. . . . This sounds more like a movie review than a report on a Senate committee hearing. At this rate, the New York Times will describe Daschle as walking on water at the Finance Committee hearing."

Sociology is Almost Ready to Acknowledge Genetics 3

I received a lot of responses and trackbacks from this post on Sociology & Genetics. Here is another good one:

Hi Ken,

My wife caught your recent blog entry about Sociology struggling with genetics.  I'm a sociologist...

...And you're absolutely right!  I wish it weren't so, but it is.  However, as your post suggests, there are some in the discipline who do use genetic explanations and there are some, like me, who openly admit that some behaviors absolutely must have biological elements (aggression, mate selection, sexual behavior, etc.).  It probably helps that my wife is a genetic counselor and I'm huge fan of Richard Dawkins and science in general.  So, please be kind.  :)   We aren't all naive anti-geneticists!

I'm certainly not going to defend Troy Duster's comments, but I think a little context may help.  Have you read The Mismeasure of Man?  That is a great example of social science refuting biological arguments.  The basic argument is that biologists claimed blacks were an inferior species.  Obviously blacks are not inferior.  They were considered "less intelligent", but only because we defined "intelligence" in ways that made blacks test lower given their limited access to education.  Thus, the reason why blacks score lower on standardized tests today and have less money isn't biological; it's sociological.  Ergo, sociology repudiated biology on this count.  Current theories on spousal abuse in the social sciences are increasingly dominated by evolutionary theories, with good reason.  It may be the case that biology will repudiate sociology on that front, and many others.  In short, we need both. 

Best,

Ryan T. Cragun
Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of Tampa
[email protected]

Thanks much for the post, Ryan. I find little to disagree with, but a few comments are in order. I be very surprised if every single person trained in sociology were hostile to biology. The article in the Chronicle of Higher Education to which I responded is proof that more than a few Sociologists are beginning to take genetics seriously. But I am guessing that sociology is right now where anthropology was when it began to divide into physical (or biological) and cultural anthropology. I gather a lot of these departments had to move into separate buildings to avoid fist fights. If so, your discipline is in for a wild ride.

I remember when I began to teach a course in biopolitics (or sociobiology), I looked at a number of sociology texts to see what they said about the topic. Some ignored the field, some compared it to the discredited social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer, and some gave it lip service at the beginning and then resolutely ignored it in the body of the text. No engagement at all. That would have been about ten years ago. At about that time I mentioned the theory to a sociologist I know. Her head spun 360 degrees twice, and she spit out green soup.

On your second point, I am also in agreement. I am familiar with Stephen Jay Gould's book. To be sure, biological explanations were once hijacked to justify the most vicious prejudices. But in correcting that error, the social sciences largely went to the opposite extreme. Consider this passage from the Shea article:

Just two years ago, in his presidential address to the American Sociological Association, Troy Duster, an eminent sociologist at New York University, went so far as to suggest that any sociologist who embraced genetic approaches was a traitor to the discipline. Two of the biggest problems facing sociology, he argued, were the "increasing authority of reductionist science" and "the attendant expansion of databases on markers and processes 'inside the body.'" If anything defined sociology, Duster said, it was its role as "century-long counterpoint" to such efforts to connect the roots of social problems to biology.

Duster recalled sitting on various governmental review boards and watching as what he considered an inordinate amount of money flowed toward geneticists and other scientists who studied maladies like alcoholism. Why spend millions searching for a predisposition to alcoholism among Native Americans, he asked, when their mistreatment and oppression offered explanation enough?

I do not believe for a moment that differences in economic and academic achievements between Africans and Europeans are due to genetics. For one thing, as many sociobiologists point out, genetic differences between Africans in different parts of that continent are greater than those between Africans in general and Europeans. I agree with you that sociology, with its greater stress on culture, can offer a needed counterweight to biological explanations.

But it can do that only if it is honest. Opposing studies of a genetic predisposition to alcoholism among Native Americans because such studies might undermine the narrative of oppression, that is simple corruption of science by political bias. Refusing to consider any causal factors that are "inside the body," that is more like the pious fear of the Creationists.

Again, I am not arguing with you here, for I think we are largely on the same page, if perhaps in different paragraphs. No reasonable person will argue that culture is not a powerful influence over human behavior. People don't grow up speaking French by nature. But Tory Duster clearly would like to ignore biology altogether. That is the point of friction.

Thanks very much for the comment. If I ever get down to your neck of the woods, the first round is on me.

What Happened in the 2008 Election?

Well, Obama won, and the Democrats cleaned up in Senate and House elections. But here's the thing: American elections are usually predetermined by demographic and social trends in various parts of the country. It's just that you can't tell how in advance. Only by looking back can you see what happened and make some guesses about why.

Jay Cost provided some of the best empirical analysis of national and local trends in last year's election. He is now teaming up with Sean Trende to analyze the actual results. The first installment is current available at RealClearPolitics. Cost and Trende use Census Bureau divisions of the country into regions and sub-regions. In part one they focus on the West South Central (Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas) and the East South Central (Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and Kentucky).

Here is a summary of their findings:

For the last thirty years, Republicans have consistently performed better here than they have nationwide - but when the GOP's fortunes decline nationally, candidates could expect a similar decline in the South Central. This trend was disrupted in the last election. Although John McCain did much worse than Bush nationwide, he only did slightly worse in the South Central.

What Cost and Trende find is that Obama did better than John Kerry among Black and Hispanic voters, and thus did a bit better in the region. But he lost ground among White voters, and especially among poorer, rural Whites.

While McCain's victories here were not surprising, they do carry some significance. After all, for the last twenty years (counting George H.W. Bush as a Texan, given that he began his political career there), the Chief Executive of the nation has hailed from the West South Central division - and the overlap between Clinton and Bush's voting coalitions here seems to have been pretty significant. Clinton was able to forge a coalition in this part of the country that united African Americans with lower income, rural/small town whites. Bush brought many of the latter into a coalition built upon the Republican base. So, while they don't get much press, these voters have, in a strange way, been ruling the roost for twenty years.

But this era is now over. Even as much of the rest of America swung toward Obama and the Democrats - these voters stuck with the Republican Party. In fact, it appears the GOP actually won a few more of them. For almost twenty years, you could say that the "first choice" of these swing voters would become President, but that's no longer the case. That seems pretty significant.

That is interesting. It may bode well for the Democrats in the next decade. But maybe not. Let's see the rest of the show. Meanwhile, check out this charter of counties won by Republican Presidential candidates (red) and Democrats:

That's pretty clear! The Hispanic fringe of Texas and the African American river corridors go Democrat. Everything else goes Republican. The only thing I am not sure about is that blue cummerbund Alabama is wearing. But maybe you can find a clue here and here.

Congress Makes Tee Shirts Illegal

Professor Schaff raises the alarm about a law that, if he reads it right, would virtually wipe out the market in second hand clothes.  From the LA Times:

Barring a reprieve, regulations set to take effect next month could force thousands of clothing retailers and thrift stores to throw away trunkloads of children's clothing.

The law, aimed at keeping lead-filled merchandise away from children, mandates that all products sold for those age 12 and younger -- including clothing -- be tested for lead and phthalates, which are chemicals used to make plastics more pliable. Those that haven't been tested will be considered hazardous, regardless of whether they actually contain lead.

"They'll all have to go to the landfill," said Adele Meyer, executive director of the National Assn. of Resale and Thrift Shops.

The new regulations take effect Feb. 10 under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, which was passed by Congress last year in response to widespread recalls of products that posed a threat to children, including toys made with lead or lead-based paint.

The law sounds as dumb to be as it does to Professor Schaff. But used clothing that cannot be sold in American thrift stores won't go to the landfill, as the Director of the National Assn. of Resale and Thrift Shops says.  It will go overseas. 

That's where most of the clothing donated in the U.S. goes, and it ends up supplying a thriving market in some of the worlds's poorest countries.  If health legislation forces all used clothing out of the country, rather than most of it, this will benefit the poor in the rest of the world, and hurt the relatively poor in the United States.  That is the kind of legislation the U.S. Congress is good at. 

Did Congress Really Ban Buying Kids' Clothes At Thrift Stores?

If I am reading this law right, yes they did, in effect.  See the LA Times story:

Barring a reprieve, regulations set to take effect next month could force thousands of clothing retailers and thrift stores to throw away trunkloads of children's clothing.

The law, aimed at keeping lead-filled merchandise away from children, mandates that all products sold for those age 12 and younger -- including clothing -- be tested for lead and phthalates, which are chemicals used to make plastics more pliable. Those that haven't been tested will be considered hazardous, regardless of whether they actually contain lead.

"They'll all have to go to the landfill," said Adele Meyer, executive director of the National Assn. of Resale and Thrift Shops.

The new regulations take effect Feb. 10 under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, which was passed by Congress last year in response to widespread recalls of products that posed a threat to children, including toys made with lead or lead-based paint. (snip)

 

Among the most vocal critics to emerge in recent weeks are U.S.-based makers of handcrafted toys and handmade clothes, as well as thrift and consignment shops that sell children's clothing.

"We will have to lock our doors and file for bankruptcy," said Shauna Sloan, founder of Salt Lake City-based franchise Kid to Kid, which sells used children's clothing in 75 stores across the country and had planned to open a store in Santa Clara, Calif., this year.

Read the whole thing and see Rod Dreher (hat tip) and the Handmade Toy Alliance for more info.  I note John Thune, Tim Johnson and Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin all voted for this law that will apparently stop the Salvation Army, for example, from selling used childrens clothes and toys.  Contact them and ask them to change this law.

Social Science and Genetics 2

In response to my last post, I received a couple of thought-provoking comments from DJ. I will deal with each in turn.

Genes may load the gun and environment, may pull the trigger, but for mankind not necessarily. In the animal kingdom genes establish a predetermined predisposition. A lion act differently than a monkey by reason of instinct. Both however are driven by a need to survive in their environment and their level of intelligence is no greater than what is needed to survive. Mankind with a much greater level of emotions is intelligent way beyond what is needed for survival and in addition expresses behavior unknown in the animal kingdom. You cannot compare the species.

I agree with you, DJ, that human beings are distinct enough from other animals to deserve their own category. In this, we are siding with Aristotle. But the difference is not nearly as great as you suppose. In fact many animals are quite capable of flexible responses to their environments. In an experiment I saw when I was in grade school, a couple of worms were placed in a t-shaped maze, with sandpaper on one side and food on the other. They learned after a few trips down the maze to turn right every time. Heck, I expect they voted for McCain.

More advanced animals can rapidly respond to very sophisticated problems with astonishing flexibility. Chimpanzee cultures have been observed, which include simple technologies for finding food that have to be taught. So I think you are wrong to say that you cannot compare the species. You can, and it's very illuminating.

Looking to the animal world for explanation for human behavior is a dead end street. Genes may load the gun and environment may pull the trigger but it fails to explain greed, avarice, deceit, hate, love, sacrifice, Hitler and Stalin. The animals are driven by a need to meet their survival needs only. Even their play is designed towards that end. A favored pet will follow anyone who provides its needs. Genes can be overcome but no animal in the wild can deny its preprogrammed nature. An eagle will always arrange the sticks to form a nest and not a cottage. Mankind with its enormous intelligence way beyond its need to survive cannot be compared to those creatures whose intelligence is limited to its survival needs.

Again, I cannot agree. Far from being a dead end street, there is a veritable metropolis of research results and research programs at the end of that road. Why are human males so much more likely to end up in prison? Over 90% of the prison population in every country is male. Well, males across a vast range of species are larger, better armed, and more aggressive. The simple reason is that they have to compete with other males for reproductive opportunities. Bigger males get the doe; the doe gives birth to bigger males. Or consider the testes to body-mass ratio. In primate species where the large male enjoys exclusive access to a harem, the ratio is low. Small balls. In a species where the males male promiscuously with all the females, the ratio is very high. The males have to produce enough semen to wash out the previous suitor. Super-soaker two thousand. What about human beings? Being in the middle with regard to behavior (mostly monogamous, but with cheating), our t/bm ratio is also in the middle.

I do not agree that all the things you mention cannot be explained, in part, by genetics. "Greed, avarice, deceit, hate, love, sacrifice," are all observed among animals. Hitler and Stalin are possible only in large, advanced societies, but the desire for dominion is present in the simplest societies.

The human mind is the result of what evolutionary theorists call "runaway selection." Sometimes a species trait becomes part of an adaptational dynamic where more keeps resulting in a net reproductive success. The peacock's tail, or the extraordinary antlers on the extinct Irish elk are examples. At some point in the history of our species, more intelligence and reproductive success became bound up in a feedback loop.

Human beings may be more than animals. They are at least animals. Evolution doesn't start from scratch with each speciation; it lays innovations on top of well established systems. Only we can write poetry. But just like the newt, we are composed of cells.

Sociology is Almost Ready to Acknowledge Genetics

For several years I have been teaching a course called "Human Nature & Human Values." It explores biological and particularly Darwinian explanations for social and political behavior. One of the topics I begin with is the resistance in the field of sociology to any engagement with biology. Most sociologists, I suspect, still cling to Franz Boas' prime imperative: you shall explain one social fact only by reference to another social fact. For example: if more men than women are imprisoned for murder (say, about 9 to 1), that might be explained by reference to the fact that parents give their little boys toy guns to play with, and their little girls dolls. That's one social fact explained by another. What you can't do is point out that males are more aggressive in almost every mammalian species. The latter is a natural fact, and in sociology, that is verboten.

This willful ignorance of nature seems to be slowly crumbling. From Christopher Shea in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

If sociologists ignore genes, will other academics — and the wider world — ignore sociology? Some in the discipline are telling their peers just that. With study after study finding that all sorts of personal characteristics are heritable — along with behaviors shaped by those characteristics — a see-no-gene perspective is obsolete.

Nor, these scholars argue, is it reasonable to concede that genes play some role but then to loftily assert that geneticists and the media overstate that role and to go on conducting studies as if genes did not exist. How, exactly, do genes shape human lives, interact with environmental forces, or get overpowered by those forces? "We do ourselves a disservice if we don't engage in those arguments," says Jason Schnittker, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. "If we stay on the ropes, people from a different perspective, with a more extreme view, will be making them."

Been there, done that. I have started my class quoting from sociology texts that acknowledge biological and even Darwinian explanations in their introductions, and then go on to ignore them in the rest of the text. That won't do.

In fact, a lot of sociologists are as offended by Darwin as your average Creationist.

Just two years ago, in his presidential address to the American Sociological Association, Troy Duster, an eminent sociologist at New York University, went so far as to suggest that any sociologist who embraced genetic approaches was a traitor to the discipline. Two of the biggest problems facing sociology, he argued, were the "increasing authority of reductionist science" and "the attendant expansion of databases on markers and processes 'inside the body.'" If anything defined sociology, Duster said, it was its role as "century-long counterpoint" to such efforts to connect the roots of social problems to biology.

Yeah, that's about it. "If anything defined sociology," and it's not clear that anything does, it's a kind of dualism that builds an impenetrable wall between human culture and human nature. This is goofy. Human beings are animals. They may be more than animals (I believe that is true), but they are at least animals. You can't understand human societies without considering human biology any more than you can understand an Elk harem without understanding sexual selection.

That sociologists resist this is evidence that their ideology is an obstacle to good science.

Israel & Gaza 2

My friend and favorite hostile character witness, BB, responded to today's post of my American News piece on the Gaza troubles. I will respond here rather than on the comments page of my Keloland site. BB opens with this:

Such strong opinions from one who is so ignorant as to be absurd! There is so much wrong with your post that it is hard to know where to begin. Apparently you have never heard of the Golan Heights. The Israelis took control of it from Syria during the Six Day War and Syria has been attempting to get it back ever since. Actually if you simply would read current events you would know that the Israelis and the Syrians have been close to brokering a deal lately for the Golan. Peace for land.

BB: you shouldn't call me ignorant even if you think I am. After all, I don't call you stupid for writing that. You are responding, I am sure, to this in my post:

[A] peace agreement between Israel and Syria is not in the cards. This is because Israel has nothing comparable to the Sinai that Syria wants. But one can imagine such an agreement. If someone could offer Syria something it did want badly enough, the Syrian government would at least be able to hold up its end of the bargain.

I did not mention the Golan Heights primarily for reasons of space, which is severely limited in American News columns. I would, however, draw your attention to the words highlighted above. If you had been a little less strident and a bit more thoughtful, you might have anticipated what my argument would be.

Let's review: Israel captures the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights in the 1967 war (along with the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem). In 1979 Jimmy Carter brokers peace between Egypt and Israel, and the Israelis give the Sinai back. That's twelve years. I conclude from this that Egypt was genuinely willing to trade peace for land. Well, now it's forty-one years after the 1967 war, and still no peace between Israel and Syria. During those four decades, there have been lots of negotiations. I seem to recall James Baker talking about Hafez Assad's "bathroom diplomacy." He wouldn't let you break up a meeting to pee. That would have been in 1990, I think. At any rate that's four decades of no deal. I conclude from this fact that, however much the Syrians want the Golan Heights, they aren't willing to cut a deal to get it. Am I going too fast for you, BB?

Now I could be wrong. I am well aware that the Syrians and Israelis are currently talking about the possibility of a deal. The terms seem to be that the Israeli's are willing to withdraw militarily but insist on keeping a security post on the ridge line. The Syrians are okay with that. The sticking point is the eastern border of the Sea of Galilee, upon which Israel is dependent for fresh water.

Maybe the clouds are about to part, and peace angels sing, as you seem to believe. But there was exactly the same kind of talk, with identical terms, at the end of Bill Clinton's administration. And I suspect that Syria's car bomb diplomacy in Lebanon suggests a certain kind of political culture. I don't think they will really feel they own the Golan until Israel is in smoking ruins. Call me jaded, call me the man from Missouri, but I will believe it when I see it. If I do, I will cheerfully admit that I was wrong. But my comments were not made out of ignorance. They came from knowing the history all too well. This is fun, so I go on:

Hamas is a local grass roots organization that won the election due more to splits amongst Fatah as well as corruption in Fatah. I agree that Hamas rhetoric is strident but Israel is also to blame too since they in no way wish to engage with Hamas.

A "grass roots organization," you say. Makes them sound like Greenpeace! Those thousands of missiles launched from Gaza into Israel were more than "strident rhetoric." I acknowledged that Israel isn't innocent, but they don't have to make penitence for "not wishing to engage with Hamas." Hamas wants them to die. Period. I agree with what you say about Fatah, but Fatah's willingness to negotiate in good faith didn't do them any good in the election.

The wall was ostensibly built in the West Bank to stop the suicide bombings but in reality is used to control the population. Israeli policy is to make life so miserable for the Palestinians that they will want to leave.

Yeah, and I open an umbrella ostensibly because it's raining. Before the wall, waves of suicide bombers blowing themselves up in nightclubs and buses; after the wall, no suicide bombers. Do you really need an ulterior motive for building it? Israeli policy has made life miserable for the Gaza Palestinians because Hamas has used every outlet to the world to import weapons shoot them at Israel.

Oddly enough, after all your complaints, you agree with me on the bottom line.

I do agree that there will be no peace in the Middle East. I can think of no solution that would be acceptable to all parties concerned. The best deal the Palestinians could have gotten was in 1948 with the UN mandate...too bad nobody ever asked them....

Yes. That was my point. Somehow I reached the truth in spite of my ignorance. I would point out that the existence of the State of Israel is the only reason that a Palestinian state is a real possibility. The obstacles to a coherent Palestinian state are awesome, but Gaza could have been the kernel of one. If the Palestinians were capable of making peace with Israel, that would have determined Israeli elections. Some deal would have been cut. But Hamas turned the first Palestinian controlled territory into a launch pad, neglecting all other necessities of state.

The Palestinian territories and southern Lebanon are ungoverned. They are crawling with death. From time to time Israel will be forced to clean them out. I see no alternative to this cycle in the near future.

Blanchard on Gaza in the American News

Some things simply can't be done

Published on Sunday, January 04, 2009

There's this problem with things that can't be done. It turns out that you can't do them. Bringing peace to Palestine is one of those things.

Since Coke tried to teach the world to sing, American presidents have been trying to broker a settlement between the nation of Israel and her Arab neighbors. The result of all those decades of earnest negotiations and Rose Garden photos is now on display.

Israel has launched military action against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Think of it as a belated Christmas gift to President-elect Barack Obama.

It's not that peace negotiations never achieved anything. Jimmy Carter did achieve a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, for which he genuinely deserved his Nobel Prize. Carter is an intelligent man, and he worked hard to master the details of the conflict. But he succeeded only because the ingredients for success were there.

You had two coherent governments, each wanting something from the other, and each able to deliver it. Israel wanted peace with Egypt and was willing to give up the Sinai Peninsula, which it occupied, to get it. Egypt wanted the Sinai Peninsula, and was willing to give up hostilities to get it back.

By contrast, a peace agreement between Israel and Syria is not in the cards. This is because Israel has nothing comparable to the Sinai that Syria wants. But one can imagine such an agreement.

If someone could offer Syria something it did want badly enough, the Syrian government would at least be able to hold up its end of the bargain.

Peace between Israel and the Palestinians is difficult even to imagine. At present, the Gaza Strip, at Israel's southwest corner, is under Palestinian control.

The Hamas faction followed up its legitimate election victory by launching a civil war against Fatah, the remnants of Yasser Arafat's party. But Hamas has turned Gaza into a military platform from which to launch a constant barrage of missiles into Israel.

It's not that Hamas is doing all the launching, or even most of it. It just “allows” the attacks to go on. It would be hard pressed to bring all the splinter factions under control if it should genuinely want to pursue peace with Israel.

Meanwhile Fatah, under Mahmoud Abbas, controls the West Bank territory. With whom do the Israelis negotiate: Hamas or Fatah?

Neither has developed coherent institutions with which to govern its own territory and people, so neither could be counted on to hold up its end of any deal.

The bigger problem is that Hamas doesn't want a deal with Israel; it wants the death of Israel. It's hard to see how you negotiate with someone whose bottom-line demand is that you give up the ghost.

Hamas cannot trade away its ultimate aim because that aim is precisely the reason for its triumph over Fatah in Gaza. It won because it was more brutal, more inflexible in its hatred of Israel, than its rival.

The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza was in part a success. Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon built a wall around the strip, which brought to an end the waves of suicide bombers that crossed into Israel and killed scores of innocent civilians. But the wall can't keep out missiles. Every Israeli withdrawal from disputed territory means that the terrorists move their missile launchers up to the new border.

Any truce is just so much time for Hamas and its allies to move in more weapons, and prepare more mayhem. Israel is hardly innocent. But there is this difference. Israel's recent strikes were precisely aimed at Hamas military targets. If they also killed civilians, that is largely because that's where Hamas puts its soldiers and hardware.

The terrorists, by contrast, aim their missiles, as precisely as they can, at civilians. Recently an improvised missile fell a bit short and killed two Palestinian children.

Now Israel faces missile attacks both from the Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, and from Gaza. That leaves nowhere to retreat. That might explain Israel's recent actions.

This situation is what President Obama will inherit. He will try to bring peace to the region. And he will fail.

Kenneth C. Blanchard Jr., is a professor of political science at Northern State University. His columns appears occasionally in the American News. Write to him at the American News, P.O. Box 4430, Aberdeen, S.D., 57402, or e-mail [email protected]. The views presented are those of the author and do not represent those of Northern State University.

e-mail [email protected]

Caroline “you know” Kennedy, um, for Senate

Let me begin with a confession. I was more charitable towards Sarah Palin, when she was picked as McCain's running mate, than I would have been if the Democratic nominee had chosen someone similar. In a now famous series of interviews, Governor Palin looked, well, not ready for prime time. My bad. But that being said, consider that Sarah Palin was Governor of a state. She also sported some very attractive spectacles.

Now consider Caroline Kennedy, the apparent replacement for Hillary Clinton as the next Senator of New York. Here I will point out that I praised Ms. Clinton for going to New York, carpet bag in hand, and earning her way back onto the national stage. That's more than Jesse Jackson ever did. But Caroline Kennedy is something else.

Ms. Kennedy is apparently New York Governor David A. Paterson's pick for his state's empty Senate seat. Should she be appointed, it looks like the seat will remain empty. The New York Times interviewed Ms. Kennedy, and she, you know, flubbed it. Here is a summary that you have to go to the London Times to get:

Caroline Kennedy's quest to enter the US Senate has suffered a self-inflicted blow in a series of interviews in which she can only be described as . . . um . . . excruciatingly, you know, unerudite.

During a series of meetings with the New York press, one of which was recorded and is now being admired on YouTube in all its ineloquent awkwardness, the daughter of President Kennedy was vague, unconvincing and displayed a potentially ruinous verbal tic.

In one sequence, lasting 2 minutes and 27 seconds, Ms Kennedy, 51, revealed that she had inherited none of the eloquence, energy or charisma associated with other members of America's foremost political dynasty: she used the phrase "you know" no fewer than 30 times.

Yesterday The New York Times, which published the interview with Ms Kennedy on Sunday – calling her forceful, but vague and largely undefined – released the full 8,500-word transcript of the encounter, revealing a verbal landscape knee-deep in "you knows". She used the phrase a grand total of 144 times.

All the warning signs of stupid. If you don't believe me, check out the, um, you know, YouTube video. Or check out the full transcript at the New York Times.  Let me get this straight. Caroline Kennedy has never run for, let alone been elected to, any political office. Not even one of those unimportant states like Alaska. In fact, she hasn't even bothered to vote in half the elections since she has been eligible to vote. She talks like she was doing a Saturday Night Live parody of a New York Street Sweeper. Her sole qualification for the office is her last name.

Hillary Clinton should be deeply offended that this is her possible replacement. Is this all the office is worth? A dock for celebrities? Whose next: Brittney Spears? The Democratic National Party should be raising a ruckus. So should the New York Press. But so far, only Michael Goodwin, at the New York Daily News seems to care.

SDP Jazz Note: Freddie Hubbard Dies at 70

 A blast from the vast goes into the past. Okay, I got a little carried away there. But trumpet man Freddie Hubbard was the genuine article: a straight ahead hard-bopper, and there ain't nothin' wrong with that. He played with the Jazz Messengers in the early sixties, and made some classic recordings as leader. I highly recommend Open Sesame, Hub-Tones, and Ready for Freddie. I'll try to do a decent review of these sometime this week, in honor of Hubbard.

Meanwhile, here is a sample from a lesser known but very strong recording, Red Clay (1970). It features Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, Lenny White on drums, and Joe Henderson on tenor sax. I just happened to have picked it up a few days ago at Barnes and Noble in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

Red Clay/Freddie Hubbard/Red Clay

And here is Hubbard playing one of his compositions with the Jazz Messengers. Curtis Fuller on trombone, Wayne Shorter on tenor, Cedar Walton on piano, Jymie Merritt on bass, and of course Art Blakey on drums.

Down Under/Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers/Mosaic

If you don't have Mosaic, for heavens sake buy it. It's pure gold from the guys that invented gold.

Also: be sure the check out Ken Laster's Tribute Podcast at In the Groove. 

Samuel P. Huntington Dies at 81

 

The author of The Clash of Civilizations died on Christmas Eve. Huntington was a brilliant analyst of international politics, and more importantly the father of one big idea. I am indebted to him for the latter, as I have frequently assigned his paper in my classes on geopolitics. While I think that his thesis is in the last analysis a mistake, it is the kind of mistake that illuminates a lot of the truth about world politics.

It's easy enough to state Huntington's big idea. It is that some persons will appear to me as strangers or even foes in a more local context, and as friends and allies in a larger context, but, and here the "but" is very heavy, other persons will never be perceived by me as "one of us," because there is no larger context in which we both fit.

If that isn't clear, let's give it specifics. In a Craighead County Arkansas nightclub, two persons, Black and White, might perceive each other to be very different. But if they met in a bar in St. Paul, surrounded by a lot of Minnesotans, they might suddenly feel like brothers. At that table, Reuben and Matt have a lot more in common than they have with the folks sitting around them. But put the two of them and one Minnesotan in a pub in Oxford England, and then the three all suddenly become homeboys. That is an important fact that is apparent to anyone who has traveled abroad or works on an American campus with international students. Watch who shops with whom at the Aberdeen Wal-Mart.

But Huntington argued that there are limits to the enlargement of cultural inclusiveness. Put a guy from Arkansas and a grad student from Italy and one Iranian in a restaurant in Beijing. It no longer works. The Arkie and the Italian feel a kinship. The Iranian is just as alien to "us" as the Chinese around us.

With that in mind, Huntington argued that the world is divided into a number of distinct cultural continents, or civilizations. Mostly, the fault lines are familiar: Western Christendom (U.S., Canada, Western Europe), the Orthodox World (Eastern Europe, Russia), Latin America, the Muslim World, Sub-Saharan Africa, China, Japan.

Huntington argued that international politics in the future would be largely driven by clashes between these cultural continents. As I said, it's a brilliant idea, and it's true for a lot of purposes. But it is not the bottom line in world history. For all the derision it has taken, I think Francis Fukuyama's End of History thesis is closer to the truth. Modern liberal democracy, including a more or less free market, is the only viable modern for civilizations that want to bring prosperity to their peoples and become master of their fates. I think that I and someone from Japan have more in common than we have with an Al Qaeda foot soldier. But maybe that is the question.

Anyway, Godspeed Professor Huntington. You have given this blogger a lot to think about.

Israel Drops Bombs. Obama Plays Golf. 2

A quick reply to my colleague and to an e-mail.  Professor Schaff made a much more serious argument for Obama remaining silent about the Gaza strikes than I did for him speaking.  Were I confident that he is being silent for the Lincolnian reasons Professor Schaff puts forth, I would stand corrected.  But I am not sure that the eve of the American Civil War and the recent upleasantness in Gaza are comparable.  A better comparison might be Ronald Reagan's silence on the hostage crisis in Iran as he prepared to take office.  But that was a question of interference with President Carter in his ongoing negotiations with Iran.  I don't think the same thing applies here. 

I got a pleasant note from Sandy, from which I excerpt this:

Bush WAS President when he went golfing after he got the memo that said Bin Laden Determined To Stike Inside US.  It doesn't matter which thing Obama chooses to do because no matter what - he is NOT President.  Whenever Bush went on vacation or golfing or read a book when our country was under attack - HE WAS PRESIDENT.

That is consistent with Professor Schaff's argument, and I acknowledge the force of it.  But things are being done right now that might have lasting and irremedial consequences.  Barack Obama will be President in less than three weeks, and I am guessing that Hamas and Israel both know this.  So what he says now may matter.  I am not sure what he could have said that would help.  But if this incident should blow up into a regional war by the time he enters office, a film clip of him ducking the question now with a golf club in his hands might come back to haunt him.