Wolfowitz in the WSJ

He outlines policy nicely on Iraq, covering the President's five point plan.

The End is Nie

My brother has seen The Day After Tomorrow and has reviewed it. So, it turns out has Matt Welch. He writes, "Utter horseshit, but damned entertaining."

Which is the Progressive Party?

Reading Roger Simon's post on "Did I leave the left or did the left leave me?" and subsequent comments. A long back and forth takes place as the notion of possitive social change and an adhearance to the status quo is discussed. Most conclude that both parties have on various occassions taken both roles. As someone who worries about the influence of the South on Republican politics, I am heartened to read this comment: "One could argue (as my own Democrat Father does) that the South has become more progressive the more Republican it has become." This means that the old Dixiecrat preservation of the status quo is not a Southern quality which transends party, but something that is being shed just as hostility to the party of Lincoln has.

Highway Follies

Almost three weeks ago I linked to Virginia Postrel's NYT article on highway spending. There has been some back and forth over at the Dynamist on this topic. First, a reader suspects some highways statistics are inflated and unsupportable by methodology. A Senior Staff Economist in the FHWA Office of Policy replies and defends the figure that one billion dollars in spending creates 48,000 jobs. VP remains dubious: "It still doesn't pass the smell test." A few more thoughts by VP on how a great deal of this road spending is "low-value roads with porkbarrel appeal. It also subsidizes neighborhood amenities." Road spending isn't aimed to be effecient expenditure, economically stimulating, but rather is its about political spending to bring dollars back to the district. She continues in a sequential post on how the assumption behind the 48,000 per billion statistic assumes Keynesian disequilibrium of Great Depression proportions.

Are you in an echo chamber?

Too many people are, and here is more evidence. Daniel Drenzer links to a prose stylist who has gone over the Marxist academic cliff. Chun the Unavoidable has mixed feelings about his anthropological discovery of a rare specimen (or so it is supposed), an alleged supporter of, "the President without having an obvious financial interest at stake." As the specimen, Sissy Willis, responds, "We were reminded, of course, of Pauline Kael's reaction to Richard Nixon's landslide presidential victory over George McGovern in 1972: 'How can that be?' she supposedly said. 'No one I know voted for Nixon.'"

Chun the Unavoidable has seemed to avoid a large segment of the population, given the number of people who voted for W. And I wouldn't be surprised if they were avoiding him too. As Virginia Postrel pointed out some time ago, people like it that way. People are congregating more and more with the like-minded. She notes, "The danger, of course, is that people will believe the stereotypes of their political opposites, because they don't actually know anyone on the opposite side of the red-blue divide."

The most interesting people to talk to and to read are those who are dealing with engagement (not neccesarily agreement) across their own boundaries. If you don't talk to and read what other people have to say, people with different assumptions, values, and goals, you are wearing a set of blinders.

The Outsourcing Bogeyman

This is the title of Daniel Drezner's article in Foreign Affairs on this hot election year topic. The heart of the matter is here: "The benefits of such free trade -- to both consumers and producers -- are significant. Cushioning this process for displaced workers makes sense. Resorting to protectionism to halt the process, however, is a recipe for decline."

Condorcet voting method

I came across something interesting on the web this morning. A method of voting advocated during the late eighteenth century by the marquis de Condorcet, the enlightenment mathematician and economist. I am familiar with his economic theories (we slight Condorcet in favor of Adam Smith, but in fact, both are founders of capitalism). In 1785, Condorcet wrote the Essay on the Application of Analysis to the Probability of Majority Decisions, which I had seen refereced, but never described. Here is a nice website on the Condorcet Method. Here is the wikipedia version.

I had always had a soft spot for Condorcet because of his economic ideas, his social ideas, and because I am generally partial to enlightenment figures, but here is another thing to weigh in favor of him.

As someone who laments the way winner take all eliminates the possibility of any escape from the two-party system, as well as the seemingly unresolvable problems of campaign finance reform, the Condorcet method seems quite interesting.

Cosby chastizes those poor parents in the Black community

This story seems to be ignored for the most part by major media out of concern for the minefield that accompanies issues of race. Matt Rosenberg covers it in NRO.

Shattered Glass

The movie is out on home format now, so I rented the DVD, watched the 60 Minutes interview, watched the movie, and watched the movie again with the commentary provided by the screenwriter/director and Charles Lane, who was a writer then the editor during the period of Glass' ficturnalism. Afterwards I went to the web to read the original Forbes coverage. This is Kambiz Foroohar's analysis written at the time. The movie makes him the editor of Forbes Online (which may well be accurate, but movies take liberties). This is Adam L. Penenberg's article on the New Republic piece which brought Glass down. As portrayed in the movie, Forbes is irked that they were scooped, and sets out to write a companion piece with a bit more meat for their business oriented readers. When they look at the story it comes apart in their hands. This is Penenberg's article on the Forbes revelation that the TNR story was no good.

I ended up at the Daily Standard's take, written by Jonathan V. Last. Last is not a sympathetic reviewer, because, I suspect he differs with TNR politically. While he points to all manner of charges against Glass from the Correspondence pages, I'd need to go back and read more of the correspondence to draw form conclusions about how telling these Last prints are. For myself, I would not be surprised if TNR doesn't find charges made by the college RNC, the American Conservative Union, and other similar groups to be disinterested. My old TNR's are in a box and I'll have to get them out at some point and take a look. I have seen some articles in TNR and other places generate heated correspondence, but as Last points out, its not one or even a few pieces that raise eyebrows, some issues are controversial, its that Glass had an unusual amount.

Its a interesting story. The movie was well done, neither sensational nor tedious. The actors were well chosen and interesting choices. I particularly enjoyed seeing Hank Azaria and Steve Zahn playing dramatic roles.

Swingers at Slate

Slate has a new feature on swing states, and its first example is Missouri. Show me!

Iraqi Progress or Quagmire?

Powerline has offered their criteria for measuring success in Iraq. They identify reconstruction, casualties, and popularity among Iraqis as the relevant measures. Deacon's conclusion is that things are going reasonably well.

They point to Max Boot's similarly constructed argument in the LAT. Boot's criteria are nation-building, casualties, and abuses. These are in fact the same criteria, since only abuses will seriously undermine American popularity among Iraqis.

Both Powerline and Boot argue that things are going very well when compared to past examples of similar nature. I've been reading Boot's Savage Wars of Peace, and when one compares the criteria identified here with the examples of the past, I too agree.

Delusions of Grandeur

While reading Laurie Spivak's analysis of how to build a countermovement to the right, I was struck by this "obervation": "Polls consistently show that the majority of Americans are more closely aligned with the Democratic Party on the issues than they are with the Republican Party. Yet today twice as many Americans identify themselves as conservatives than as progressives."

First off, the poll cited had a lot of interesting information, but none of the 25 polls on that page discussed party affiliation or ideological identification. The poll up front when I went there was on John McCain as a Kerry running mate.

Second, conservative is the broad description for people right of center. Progressive describes as specific wing of the left. Conservative identification is a reasonable (though imperfect) barometer of Republican affiliation. Progressive is not a reasonable description of Democratic affiliation. While progressives may be democratic, democrats are not progressive. Immeditaly, I find myself questioning the assumption upon which the article proceeds: that conservative success is based on marketing, not on genuine belief. For those who didn't pay attention in Marx 101, this is false conciousness.

Spivak writes, "How to explain this seeming paradox? Usually the preferred, or superior, product wins out in the marketplace, but not always. An inferior product can dominate with superior marketing. And this is precisely what has happened in American politics: Conservatives offer less desirable, inferior policies, but dominate through superior marketing."

Putting aside the axiological question of whether conservative policies are inferior, because beauty is in the eye of the beholder, this seeming paradox can more easily be resolved by abandoning the notion that people have been duped into thinking they are something that they are not. This contempt for the intelligence of regular people is one of the reasons the Progressives do as poorly in the public arena as they do. I'll generously attribute it to the defense mechanism denial.

The same argument in made by the right. They point to the conservative social stands by Blacks, Hispanics, and Jews, and argue that they belong more naturally in the Republican Party. I'd suggest that perhaps both sides see some natural allies across the fence, I know I do, but that's not the same thing as saying that they are mistaken to have chosen the party affiliation they have.

Spivak rather uncritically assumes there is a demographic shift favoring the democrats, but there are people claiming a demographic shift for everything. Thomas Riehle claims to have found a strong Republican surge among the young. Routine election watching shows the Republicans taking the House away from the Democrats in the 90's and increasing their influence there over time, gaining in the 2002 midterm elections, and holding on to their electoral advantages in the presidency. Again, I think both sides can see some favorable trends, but I also think that there is strong evidence in history that parties adapt to prevent an otherwise winning party to become a dominant party. Of course the self delusion represented by Spivak's article does present the possibility that committed progressives will force such leftist candidates and policies on the Democrats that they find it difficult to hold on to moderate voters. No doubt more sensible individuals within the party will eventually step up to thwart these actions.

Spivak goes on to write:
"At least in part, conservatives' monetary advantage can be offset by the vast, and largely untapped, progressive creative community, which includes a line-up of potential celebrity spokespeople for progressive issues that would literally make Madison Avenue weak at the knees. While at once building Air America, News World International and other dedicated distribution channels, progressives should use their wits and their wit and aim for the networks, primetime, and mainstream entertainment and media."

Wait, who has George Soros and who has Hugh Hewitt? I'll put the conservative creative community up against the left any day. Not only are more Hollywood types revealing that the days of silence are over and that there are conservatives among them, but Air America is a terrible failure that will vanish after November. Air America, it should be remembered is not supported by its popularity, but by the deep pockets of certain powerful lefties. Once again, Spivak has it exactly reversed.

"Consider the implications of the progressive frame on the war on terror. Conservatives missed the 9-11 threat because they were "preserved in amber," as Richard Clark put it, obsessed with Cold War thinking. The terrorist threat that America faces post-9-11 requires a modern foreign policy paradigm. The solution to a network of global terrorists that reaches across international borders lies in transnational networks and cooperation, not in regional Cold War models, alienating allies, and inflaming antagonisms."

This argument is so stretched and tortured one imagines the author laughing out loud while writing it. Cold war thinking was the kind where we backed dictators because we were anti-communist, stayed close to our allies and coordinated policy. Its the very awareness that all of that is behind us that has lead to the current administration ignoring the concerns of Germany, France, and Belgium, and pursuing a new policy vigorous engagement with the terror networks, including their state sponsors. The kinds of cooperative ventures that don't alienate anyone will be about as effective as the Clinton polcy of confronting terror, which is to say it will encourage terror.

There is a responsible left out there, but this ain't it.

Charles Krauthammer: Gas Tax Advocate

See his take on gasoline consumption here. His plan is a bit bolder than mine, and he doesn't specify what the tax would do, other than feed the U.S. Treasury. My plan, posted a few days ago, would take the money and spend it on automobile alternatives. Both municipal public transit and medium distance rail. Frankly, I there is a lot to like about Krauthammer's plan. It creates a price floor for gasoline, using a floating tax to keep the price at $3 a gallon. As consumption fell, both through lower consumption, and through consumer pressure for efficiency, the outside effects of high gas prices (feeding the Saudis, for example) would decline toward zero as we fell back toward domestic supplies.

Greg Easterbrook also advocates a gas tax. His NYT article makes most mention of a revenue neutral gas tax plan which raises the gas tax fifty cents, with a coresponding tax cut elsewhere. He makes other useful observations about the effect, including fewer highway deaths, lower demand, hence lower world oil price, less influence of Persian Gulf oil states on US policy, fewer dollars to oil sheiks, smaller trade deficit, and few greenhouse-gases. Easterbrooks plan is more likely, given political constraints, because its just a tax shift, rather than a tax increase, but its also less substantial. Also, it reduces demand by creating a higher price, but it does nothing to satisfy alternatives. As a good neo-liberal, Easterbrooke woudl expect the market to solve that problem on its own, and there is merit to that possition, but I would still prefer to divert the additional tax revenues to investment in automobile alternatives.

The Detroit News had an article on March 3 about how US automakers make fuel effecient cars for foriegn markets, but sell Americans cars with more power, a trade off for effeciency. So while Easterbrooke suggests a phased in approach to let Detroit adjust, this article informs us that the adjustment wouldn't be substantial, and would be more a shift in expectations, not in design philosophy. The article mentions the English version of the Ford Focus gets 37 miles to the gallon, while the Ford Focus homepage for Americans will get you 32-35 miles to the gallon depending on which configuration you select.

Supreme Irony

Roger Simon sets up some of Kerry's recent comments in a very revealing way.

"Kerry said. "I will get our troops home from Iraq with honor and with the interests of our country properly protected." How soon? "It will not take long to do what is necessary. I'm not going to give you a specific date, but I'll tell you that I have a plan and I will put that plan in place."

Why its Nixon's secret plan to end the Vietnam war! Dusted off and ready for use by someone who clearly loathes Nixon, and refered to Vietnam as Nixon's war, even though Johnson took us from a couple thousand to five hundred thousand men between '64 and '68. Kerry doesn't seem to recognize the parallel.

Star Wars: Episode III

I read this entry on MSNBC today and mostly walked away thinking that Christopher Bahn doesn't get it. I called my brother to find out that he's already blogged on it. Here's my take.

Most of the criticisms Bahn makes just make no sense. Complaining about special effects being overwhelming in a Star Wars film is like complining about all the violence in a slasher film. Its what wow'd us the first time and what keeps us comming back. Complaining that Greg McEwan (sic) doesn't emote is just a failure to make sense of his serenity and centeredness. It may make it harder to punch the emotions of an audience, but the same could be said about Buddhists or Stoics. Maybe that's why movies aren't made about those guys either. Either way, its part of the intellectual content of the picture, the jedi embrace ataraxia.

There were however, a few good ideas. The key paragraph is this:
"It’s no slur on the genuinely great first “Star Wars” that much of the plotline and characterization was lifted straight out of Akira Kurosawa’s “The Hidden Fortress.” Reusing older plotlines is a terrific way to shore up the fact that you have no interesting plots of your own. And after all, the extremely talented Kurosawa dipped into Shakespeare’s well of ideas more than once — and Shakespeare himself lifted many of his plots from earlier plays. For Episode III, rip off Kurosawa’s ripoff of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” and retell the “Throne of Blood” storyline as Darth Vader’s journey into evil."

That's really the only good idea in the peice, but its a heck of a good idea.

Fix Bayonet

The Sun reports, "The fearless Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders stormed rebel positions after being ambushed and pinned down." Fearless, I'll say. "They fixed bayonets and charged at 100 rebels using tactics learned in drills."

A salute to the fearless Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

I'm an advocate for trains

I think that in the mix of transportation, trains are under-utilized and cars and planes are over-utilized. I have no opinion at the moment on buses, ferries, or other boats. My sense comes from the costs to move a ton. We have confused the issue in two ways. First, we have built automobile cities, especially in the Western US, and then throw up our collective hands and say, we can't get around by any means but car. Second, we calculate the full costs of trains but ignore costs of air travel or highways.

According to Virginia Postrel,
"The White House proposed a $256 billion budget for roads, bridges and transit over the next six years. (The previous six-year measure, which expired last year, cost $218 billion.) The House passed a $284 billion version, while the Senate further upped the ante to $318 billion."

Postrel winds up her artical with a quote from Winston and Langer (read the whole thing) On average, they write, "one dollar of annual highway spending reduces the annual congestion costs to road users only 8 cents." This is not a return on a one-time investment but a continuing expense; we have to keep spending that dollar to get the 8 cents."

Google Missouri highway spending and the name Kit Bond comes up. I'm sure this is exactly as Senator Bond would have it. His job is at least in part to maximize Federal dollars comming to Missouri.

Two months ago, the Springfield News-Leader reported that "Missouri has seen a drop from $280 million in the budget year that ended June 30 to a projected $150 million during the current 12-month period." Add county and municipal spending, and that's quite a lot of money on roads. Add policing the roads, the cost of accidents, the cost to own and operate a vehicle, and other driving related costs, and its getting expensive.

Compare that to the data reported on the Missouri Public Transit Assoc website. "The State of Missouri provides $11.3 million annually for public transit." Busses obviously travel on the afore mentioned roads, so reclaim some of those costs, but my guess is that the cost per traveler is far lower. Consider light rail and inter-city high speed rail. "In fiscal year 2001 Missouri received nearly $60 million in federal capital funds, with an additional $9 million in operating assistance to small cities and rural areas." And, "Local funding sources provide the majority of transit financing, about $175 million." 175+69+11=255 million

Canada has already begun installing wifi in public transport. As this snipet in Converge! reveals. "The pilot program will provide free Wi-Fi for VIA 1 passengers traveling between Montreal and Toronto."

If more people were to use mass transit or alternatives to cars and planes, the benefits of economies of scale would begin to make financial costs and convenience costs even better.

As a final note, I have nothing against cars, I just don't think they are the most effecient way to move large numbers of people.

Who visits?

According to Site Meter, most visitors to this site in the past several months have been searching for free trade, educational theory, or church-state issues. Odd, that's what I've been writing about too.

More on the Socratic Method

Given a bit more thought, one observation that occured to me was a kind of inverse of a rule I stated yesterday. This inverse would be stated something like, "no matter who good a teaching method is, it can be screwed up by poor execution." One of the complaints about Socratic Teaching is that professors "hide the ball". My own parlance for this is "I'm thinking of a number". Good questioning, Socratic or otherwise, does not fall into this pattern. The question has a clear answer to anyone who is familiar with the material, or if the question is open ended, is stated clearly to be so. Just because I as the instructor can envision the answer I am already looking for does not mean its an obvious question. I was thinking of eight, by the way.

"What was Columbus looking for when he sailed west from Spain?" is a good question.
"Why did Columbus sail west from Spain" is a bad lead off question, but can be a good follow up question once particulars have been entered into the dialogue.

Good questions take baby steps. They ask one thing at a time. They don't have a large number of possible answers that are factually true but not accepted as correct.

To Lecture or not to Lecture

I fully believe I know more than my students do. While the set of things I know my not fully overlap with the set of things any given student knows (limiting outselves to academic subjects) its certainly a lot bigger. As a result, I am very comfortable lecturing. I'm good at it. Students tell me they learn a lot from my lectures and told me that they wished other teachers taught like I do.

Educational theory would argue that I am noticing students with a particular learning style. It would hold that students of other learning styles are ill-served. It is my general contention that overall, it is possible to do some things so well that they "cross over". In entertainment, we know of country artists who attract a popular or rock audience while performing in the country style. Without playing country-rock or country pop, and without the audience abandoning its taste, the artist has cross-over appeal. This is usually because they are very good, and quality is recognized even by those who otherwise don't value the genre. Likewise, I think that any teaching style can be done at a level of excellence that reaches most students regardless of their prefered learning style. (This raises another question, that teachers are optimizers, which I will get around to at a later date.) This is why advocates for anything in teaching can find some exemplar and point to real results. The problem with such anecdotal evidence is that, in my contention, anything done by someone who is really good will yield results, hence the practice may not be generalizable.

Professor Baimbridge has questioned the utility of the Socratic Method and refered to Brian Leiter’s attack upon the practice. Educational thoery likes things such as the Socratic Method because it requires active thinking. It opposes lecture because its easy to tune out and ignore the speaker. Of course in law school, one hopes that after paying all of that tuition, one desires to aquire the knowledge of the professor, something that cannot be assumed for all students in public school. In fact, I don't consider it exageration to say that some educational theorists go so far as being willing to abandon content all together in favor of active thinking about anything. The hope is that thinking skills, once developed will be transferable to life problems.

I have no problem with the Socratic Method, and use it in short bursts during lecture when students ask questions that I want then to reason through rather than provide an answer for. I don't and wouldn't conduct whole classes Socratically unless I was addressing a values question. Generally, students don't know enough to reason well about things, because their knowledge base is so incomplete. My own suspicion is that Plato's Dialogues are most analogous to graduate seminars, not high school classes. For reasoning excercises, I prefer simulations, (what law students would recognize as a hypothetical) not socractic reasoning.

Certainly, when you can assume that students want knowledge, giving it to them in the densest form, lecture, is best. If, and I think this is what I do, you can motivate students to want to know, lecture works well.

One of the things I see, is students who expect to be given the specific answers to the questions that they will be tested on. Leaning for learning's sake does not occur to them. When we know why something happened, I feel we understand it better and retain memory of it longer. Socratic questioning can solve that problem, both pushing studets who are used to being handed answers (often the brighter students) and getting students to understand the why questions and answers.

One of the weaknesses of Socratic Questioning, and I have alluded to this a few lines up, is that student knowledge is weak, and used poorly, you just provide a platform for ignorance. One also finds this in the so-called persuasive essay, which are almost always not.

Popular Baby Names of 2003

MSN reports the most popular baby names of 2003 and the results are interesting. Gone are the names derived from place names, and the new names are old-school biblical names. Most telling on this list is the appearance of Zachary on the boy's list. Anglicized versions and names more associated with the dominant culture than the Bible (Joe, John, Jim) are gone, but Joshua, Jacob, Ethan are there. More familiar, Matthew and Micheal are still on the list. There are three British names there. Tyler is English (one who tiles). Aidan and Ryan are Gaelic. Nicholas is there as well, a Greek name.

The girl's names reveals similar trends, but not so clearly as the boys.

Abandoning Vaccines

Glenn Reynolds has a good piece at TCS on the costs of abandoning vaccines because of unscrupulous media scares.

Finals End

Classes are over, so blogging should resume at its pre-finals intensity.

What's going on with Kerry's medals?

There is a big cloud of dust being kicked up on the right regarding Kerry throwing his medals (or where they ribbons?) over the fence at the White House. This is getting a lot of attention and its obscuring the issue. The fact that Kerry is booting the issue is just drawing more attention to his clumsiness, rather leaving the substance of the contraversy in the self same dust.

The real issue, for those who have missed it or forgotten, is that Kerry's actions and the context in which he undertook them imply a rejection of what many Americans hold dear. Kerry wants to interpret his actions in a way that is more palatable to many Americans. So the contraversy involves an attempt by the right to highlight Kerry's early 70's understanding of his actions in order to argue he's not the right man for the job.

We hear a lot about the fact that he's changing his story. This turns Kerry's current actions into the center ring, which is less damaging I think than his orginal actions. This is because its far more plausable to argue that his understanding of the act is not the same as a reasonable witness might infer. This is also because changing your opinion of things over a distance of thirty years isn't really surprising. Finally, a bit of seeing yourself in a positive light doesn't strike anyone as a grave disability for office.

Recently there is the issue of "where they ribbons or medals?" Kerry booted this one so badly with Charlie Gibson on Good Morning America that his performace becomes the issue. I think some of this goes to communication style. Using Linda McCallister's model, there are three pure styles, the plain speaking noble, the intellectual socratic, and the relationship oriented reflective. George Bush is clearly a noble, so people who find that style acceptable find his communication tolerable or better. I find that a lot of people on the left really want to see some reflective and some socratic style. A figure who can manage both simultaneously (Clinton, a famous candidate style speaker) woos them. A figure like Bush who lacks either style is a real turn off. And yet, I don't see Kerry's media clumsiness and stiffness as a matter of style. I don't know who likes his style. Bush's style really appeals to those who respect the noble communication style. The president went on Russert's show and gave what struck me as a rather medicore performance and his poll numbers jumped. Kerry seems to have the effect that the more people see him, the less the like him. That's just communication, obviously his ideology will appeal to people.

While his revisionist history and his lackluster media performance are getting the talk, I think the key message, the intellectual content of Kerry's words and deeds, are getting overlooked, at least a bit.

Church & State, not exactly chocolate in your peanut butter

I've been reading a bit on Church and State, and its been pushing be towards an Augustinian possition. I have a bit more reading to do (including finishing up Stephen Monsma's Positive Neutrality) and will post at length shortly.

O'Reilly analysis lacks any comprehension of the real world

Bill O'Reilly thinks politicians should express regret, like regular people. That for some mysterious reason, politicians are weasals, and this appears to be the tradition that is handed down.

Perhaps Mr. O'Reilly has never heard of this thing called the media. Or, perhaps he just doesn't know how it works. Perhaps he lives in the rarified atmosphere of the Factor, no spin ever enters and so he has, trapped in his ivory tower, lost touch with those who live in the real world where media spin would take hosest expressions that more was not done into admissions of guilt and even incompetance.

I offer as evidence, the Rumsfeld Memo of October 2003. Rumsfeld is one of those leaders not satisfied with success, who wants to know how to improve on success. So the SecDef asked his immediate lieutenants, are we adapting, learning, and anticipating as fast as we can, or can we do better, if so how? The press writes things like this USA Today opener:

"The United States has no yardstick for measuring progress in the war on terrorism, has not "yet made truly bold moves" in fighting al-Qaeda and other terror groups, and is in for a "long, hard slog" in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a memo that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sent to top-ranking Defense officials last week."

If everything you said got spun this way, you'd stop talking like a regualr person too. You'd think that someone who rails against the spin, would criticize the problem, not the victims of the spin. The administration has to speak to the whole contry, not just to friends who will appreciate what they has to say, never mind helping them with favorable spin. So, they have to be careful, cautious, and circumspect. But, O'Reilly is content to read this as a personality defect.

Ivory Towers will do that to you.

Lou Dobbs: Protectionist

Lou Dobbs has put a list of companies up on his CNN site who hire labor overseas. The only purpose of such a list is the encouragement of a subtle boycott. He has included a link to an article at a CNN:Money site that argues against free trade because those who take some part of their operations overseas benefit, while the harm tends to be located here, outside of the business. The author, Rory L. Terry, fails to compare the costs to the benefits outside of the business. Its pretty obvious that there is a benefit to business. They aren't stupid. The real question is whether the cost-benefit to the rest of us favors the practice or not, a question he doesn't address.

Blame America pt 2: Late Cold War

In today's NYT, in the Arts pages, of all places, they popularize the theory of Mahmood Mamdani that the Americans created terrorism. See my post of March 14 on this topic. What Mamdani does not do is address the chronology of American use of non-state proxies compared to Soviet use of same. I think there is plenty of evidence that the Soviets were way ahead in this area and that America was playing catch-up. I also think that the Americans prefered to support guerrillas rather than terrorists. The Soviets don't seem to have had a perference. I continue to see this as a case where American responsibility is substantially less than Soviet responsibility. Looking at only the American side without taking the Soviet role into consideration thoroughly skews our understanding of how and why non-state terrorism is the problem it is today.

Rice before the Commission

I watched Rice speak to the 9-11 commission this morning, and I think she did pretty well. Aside from the usual suspects trying to get Rice to play gotcha with them, it was pretty routine. What is disappointing is the way this puts everyone on the defensive so that no one is willing to admit that they made mistakes.

There is a great scene in Pearl Harbor where Dan Ackroyd as Captain Thurman, a cryptographer, tells a senior naval officer that he doesn't know what the Japanese fleet is up to. He suspects an attack on Pearl, because its the worst thing that could happen. He has no evidence for it. He pays attention to every itch, goosebump, or spine tinge, as well as troop movements and more conventional analytical tools. There are two points here. One is that its hard to predict the future. The second is that there is plenty of noise out there. The senior admiral was unwilling to mobilize the fleet because of a spine tingle. If we acted like every peice of intelligence traffic suggested a Pearl Harbor or a 9-11 we'd be constantly on edge, and we'd ultimatly fall prey to the "boy who cried wolf".

Consider in the past two years how many complained about the up and down colored alerts. Now that we are privy as a public to the general anticipation of threat, certainly we must realize that every warning does not foretell another 9-11. So why assume that Condi Rice and the rest should have assumed otherwise prior to 9-11?

Further, lets assume that they did. Let's assume that they were especially vigilant in these regards. What would Main Street have thought when the administration's Leftist opponants claimed that these alerts were intended to scare the public, to create a rally around the flag effect, or if we had gone so far as some suggested in the commission to attack Afghanistan, that we invented a foriegn war to distract the public from the "stolen election".

So, not only is it unrealistic that we should have drawn the right conclusions from all the data available, ignored the dead ends and connected the dots between the data actually related to the 9-11 conspiracy, but that even if we had, it would have been impossible to do anything about it because without the planes actually striking the buildings, the country would not have accepted the actions neccesary to do much of anything to stop it, or would have regarded the capture of the conspirators as exagerated.

From IMDB's list of quotes:
Admiral Chester W. Nimitz: So, sir, you would have us mobilize the entire fleet, at the cost of millions of dollars, based on this 'spine-tingling' feeling of yours?
Captain Thurman: No, sir. I understand my job is to gather and interpret material. Making difficult decisions based on incomplete information from my limited decoding ability is your job, sir.

Preperations for 9-11 would have impacted the civilian world much more than mobilizing the fleet. So the costs would have been more than just financial, they would have been far more broad.

A last gasp?

Fallujah - an unravelling or a last gasp? Its too early to tell, but I strongly suspect its a last gasp, or perhaps one of several death throws.

John Adams and the Establishment Clause

Discussions of the Establishment Clause often focus on Jefferson or Madison, but Adams should not be ignored here. His concern was that religion prospered when unencumbered by state connection. Leon Wieseltier has an article in The New Republic in which he argues the Adamsian line. Here is the money quote, "I had come to witness a disputation between religion's enemies and religion's friends. What I saw instead, with the exception of a single comment by Justice Souter, was a disputation between religion's enemies, liberal and conservative. And this confirmed me in my conviction that the surest way to steal the meaning, and therefore the power, from religion is to deliver it to politics, to enslave it to public life."

O'Reilly ready to cut and run

Seeming every more cowardly, Bill O'Reilly has apparently reached his casualty budget. The tough-talker is a paper tiger. Since his main appeal has been his directness, his recoil from actual cost makes him look more like the bully who cowers when someone stands up to him. We had hints of this with Al Franken, but its an opinion that is becomming pretty well established, as far as I am concerned.

Is Kennedy Ignorant or Cynical?

Cynical. His attacks on Bush could just as easily be leveled, word for word, against Jack Kennedy for the Bay of Pigs, Cuba Missile Crisis, involvement in Vietnam, his "bear any burden" approach, his tax cuts, ... why I could almost identify every part of President Kennedy's policy and action. Someone should ask Teddy why he so repudiates Jack's policies.

Is Kerry Ignorant or Cynical?

I ended my post 10 hours ago asking this question. Catching up on my Lileks, he addresses the same analysis to Iraq and France. "Kerry’s statement indicates that either he doesn’t know about the French government’s vested financial interests in Iraq, or he does know and thinks we don’t." Ignorant or cynical? Well, Mr Kerry, I think Goldfinger said it best, "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time is enemy action." If I catch the candidate in this kind of situation again, I'm just going to assume that he's cynically manipulating the electorate, or trying to.

Why Kerry and Dems are clueless on trade

Instapundit linked to this article at ContraCostraTimes.com entitled 'U.S. receiving more 'outsourced' jobs than it's losing.' Indeed. But what illuminates is this quote from Kerry, "not if you talk to any worker that's out there." The American worker who loses a job because of Free Trade is here, is visible, and you can court his vote. But it ignores all the other beneficiaries, like the guy who gets a job directly because of free trade, the guy who gets a job indirectly, and the overall lower prices paid by consumers.

1) Direct Job Creation.
We have seen several cases, and I have posted on some of them regarding outsourcing creating more jobs than are being lost. See here, here, here and a related post on values in economics here. Generally, when a company outsources some jobs, two things happen, it lowers costs and so creates new high paying jobs with some of the money. The famous IBM case (discussed here by Kim du Toit, with my comments here.) involved IBM moving some jobs oversees to create new ones at higher rates of pay. See this by Clay Risen in The New Republic, where he points out, "IBM, for example, plans to offshore 3,000 programming jobs this year. But, at the same time, it will also create 5,000 jobs in the United States. Does that count as jobs lost, jobs gained, or both?" So this is direct job creation (net 2000 better jobs) via free markets and outsourcing.
2) Indirect Job Creation
Porphyrogenitus has a post on a recent Financial Times article on free trade. The FT requires subscription, so no link. When the economy as a whole benfits through low prices, low interest rates, and vigorous trade, jobs are created by someone other than the outsourcer. Going back to the IBM example, IBM customers, who saved money on IBM products can use that money instead to create jobs, while at the same time, those 5,000 engineers, project supervisors, and managers are spending more money on consumer goods than the 3,000 programers were last year, so more jobs are created through consumer expansion.
3) Lower Prices
Even if wages are held constant, we benefit from falling prices. When you can combine higher wages and lower prices, you really create benefits to Americans.

The problem John Kerry has is in finding people who are advantaged by cases #2 and #3. The Contra Costa Times finds a BMW employee who is in the Carolinas because of free trade, rather than say in Bavaria. As many commentators have observed, the Clinton-Gore administration knew this about free trade and pushed for NAFTA despite the fact that John Kerry can find people harmed by it. Show me a policy and I'll show you someone harmed by it. This is because no policy is ever a pareto optimum. What Kerry is either not aware of, or is cynically demagoging, is that people harmed by outsourcing are directly aware of it, and those who benefit are generally (our BMW worker aside) unaware, or only vaguely aware.

If Kerry and other Dems are aware that the policies they advocate are harmful, but advocate them anyway, they are unfit. So, here's hoping they are just ignorant.

Hitch on the Street

Christopher Hitchens in the Wall Street Journal: what a world. He looks at the future without intervention in Iraq and posits seven questions for those who opposed intervention. Tim Blair has formated these seven questions in bullet points.

Liberal Messages planted in Entertainment

There is a recent storm over the use of entertainment as a platform for expressly political speech, as discussed here in the NYT. Glenn Reynolds notes, "Unaccountable corporate money influencing politics?" Micheal Medved spent an hour on Friday on this subject, covering all of the Times examples.

I find myself unable to enjoy certain entertainments I did enjoy prior to 9-11 because the stakes have changed. When producers put these kinds of messages in their program I am very likely to turn off the show and not return. I'm not sure whether they are trying to get the word out or whether they think we all agree with them, but I get enough of this nonsense in real life and need not get worked up when winding down with entertainment. Since I watch so little television, this mostly applies to music and movies, but the point remains.

Comments on the Postrel Article on Teacher Quality

The dynamist herself is popularizing the academic work of Sean P. Corcoran, who is now a prof. at California State University, Sacramento. His paper is here. The article states, "Research over the last decade has demonstrated that teachers' aptitude test scores, particularly their verbal scores, are the best predictors of how their students will achieve." Its nice that research validates this intuitively obvious assumption. Teachers convey a lot of information verbally, and the most complex information is often passed on verbally. The better the teacher is verbally, is stands to reason, the better job of passing along information. The research confirms this.

The article conforms that teacher quality has declines as women have been liberated from narrow career choices in nursing and teaching. However, the slip is less pronounced than has been assumed, being largely confined to the best and brightest women, who have the most choices about where to sell their abilities in a much larger marketplace. However, while we attract fewer of the brightest women in the teaching profession, we also recruit fewer of the low aptitude women. Teaching demand has fallen since the 50's and 60's when the Baby Boom had to be schooled. It reached a nadir in the 80's in a gap between the children of boomers and the grandchildren. In fact my own research shows that the vast majority of teachers were certified in the 70's and 90's. Its hard to find a teacher certified in the 80's, because the large number of the 70's to teach my generation left plenty of teachers in the system even as enrollments fell. Not only did hiring fall off, but teacher salaries fell in real terms in the early 80's. Aside from this dip they are stable in real teams over the past 40 years.

So, as one would expect from a free market unencumbered by gender bias inefficiency, the best and brightest are finding better employment elsewhere, the smaller demand has eliminated the need to scrape the bottom of the barrel. So, the average is pretty stable, since the broad middle seems much less effected. The decline, I mentioned was very slight, being confined to the top, and compensated for at the bottom.

The second part of the article explains what specific market forces are at work here. After, all given a free market, teaching might still be better than the alternatives. Given the needs of childcare, for instance, teachers share a similar schedule as their children, often arriving home shortly after the children do if they ride the bus. Children close enough to walk can get home almost an hour earlier than teaching mothers. This is still and hour or more better than 9-5 moms. So, given the notion that teaching offers some advantages, we have to look to the overall balance of the opportunity, and as we should expect, the opportunities for the top in a free market exist at a greater range. A potential teacher with the best scores will tend to seek the most free markets because the reward for her relative advantage will be most accurate. However, just as the market for women's employment became more free, the market for the supply of teachers became less free as unionization and pay-equity laws regulated the market. This constraint at the top of potential incomes are the downside that caused the best women to avoid teaching. They were not getting rewarded for their superior ability in teaching as they were in other fields. Apparently the superior compensation outweighed the other advantages of teaching as a profession, and so the brain drain.

See the paper by Caroline M. Hoxby and Andrew Leighon on incomes and teacher recruitment here. They conclude that 80% of the cause for high performing women to avoid teaching has been the compression of wages in teaching that fail to compensate them as they are able to be in the free market.

Postrel concludes, "In hiring teachers, we get what we pay for: average quality at average wages."

SMSU makes the Volokh Conspiracy

SMS (this is their prefered brand name), has been having a real problem with free speech of late. They have tried to create free speech zones. Now their Office of Thought Police (SMSU's Office of Equal Opportunity) is attacking the school newspaper for perfoming the function of a newspaper. Most outrageous, as far as I am concerned, is President Keiser's contention, "This is not a free speech issue. It's an education issue." I understand that running a large university means you will view the world through the lens of education, but there is this thing called the constitution, and it provides for this thing called Freedom of the Press. Further, this notion totally goes to reveal how much the university has abandoned the spirit of free enquiry in favor of extdending the high school model of in loco parentis by which students are regarded as children rather than citizens of the republic of letters.

Values and Economic Policy

Listening to the last few minutes of yesterday's Hugh Hewitt as I wait for today's show streaming from KRLA's site. Hugh ran the newest Bush commercials and in them Bush talks about how his policies benefit small business. The notion that we want to benefit small business, is a social value. Seeking effeciency is a value. Seeking equity, stability, sustainability, are all values. Its only sensible for Americans to prioritize their values, and they may well pick priorities that conflict with effeciency. In terms of economies globaly, America is more concerned with effeciency than any other industrialized country. Americans may well decided that they will nibble at the edges of effeciency by prefering "mom and pop businesses" while generally favoring effeiency as our overal economic priority. In Bernetein's post referenced below, he observes that, "Much of American antitrust law for many years was based on no economic theory whatsoever." But it is based on social values, and there is no reason to prioritize economic over social interests if that is not the desire of the people.

Anti-Trust critcism misplaced

David Bernstein makes what amounts to an aside, so this amounts to nothing more than a quibble. In a general criticism of anti-trust law, he attributes obe cause of anti-trust action to demogogery and cites Teddy Roosevelt. The achievement of Roosevelt is this: In a situation where the struggle was between unfettered capitalism and syndicalism, Roosevelt found a comprimise solution to eliminate the possibility of a syndicalist victory. His nephew later did much the same thing in so much as FDR's programs prevented worse. Its nice to criticize anti-trust legislation in the abstract, but given the observed fact that Democrats largely don't even bother to nod in the direction of free markets any more. If Republicans seriously started talking about ditching anti-trust legislation it would tend to "prove" the worst fears of the Left. The result would probabaly be sufficient to put anti-market forces in charge of the goverment. I argue that ineffeciencies like anti-trust, and I accept all of Bernstein's claims about them, are the price we pay to avoid the loss of control to those who would put a lower priority on market effeciency than they do for equity, enviromental impact, or other values that would substantially kill the goose. This means that Bernstein's post amounts to an "assume we have a can-opener" kind of speculation into ideal worlds that is utopian.

Jabon Levy on the Peldge

Here is what he has to say, more Lockian goodness, I might add. In the aftermath of 9-11 when the Pledge suddenly appeared in schools from which it had been abandoned, its meaning has renewed importance.

Full Bush Slideshow: White House Election-Year Album at MSNBC Click the launch button.

Local mother files suit over ten commandments plaque at school

The interesting issue here is that even in a small town in the Bible belt, there is no universal acceptance of public displays of religion in pubic institutions.

The Smart Guys discuss the Pledge

The Smart Guys, Erwin Chemerinsky and John Eastman, discussed the Pledge case before the Supream Court today. Typically my sympathies are with Eastman, but today I found Chemerinsky's arguments persuasive and well argued. Eastman made three errors which undermined his argument.

1) Original Meaning: Lawyers tend to make bad historians, and this is certainly the case here. Eastman posed the idea that the solution to the current problem was to return to the original meaning of the Constitution. Under the original meaning, "Congress shall make no law" restricted only Congress, not the states. Jefferson's famous Danbury Letter involved the fact that Congregationalism was an established church in Connecticut and Baptists were looking for assistance from Jefferson. Despite the fact that Congregationalists were usually Federalists, and Baptists were much more likely to be supporters of Jefferson politically, Jefferson refused to help them gain religious freedom, because the 1st Amendment created a wall between Church and State. Last week, Eastman complained about Blain amendments in state constitutions like Washington's, which were upheld in Locke v Davey. Original meaning allows Blain Amendments. Original meaning allows sectarian discrimination as long as the states do it, and not the federal government.

2) Eastman correctly identified the purpose of the 1st Amendment as a principle to prevent sectarian conflict in America. What he fails to see is that athiests are just one more kind of sectarian. Chemerinsky correctly analogized that where "one nation under Jesus" is obviously inappropriate, so is "one nation under God". (See below for me to anticipate a disagreement with Chemerinsky, since I don't think this is sufficient alone to strike the two words.) Atheists, like other Americans, have deeply held views about cosmological questions. Their views are entitled to the same protections as every other variety of philosophical, cosmological set of beliefs. This is, I think the heart of Chemerinsky's example. My own would involve a state mandated Hail Mary. Catholics would find it unobjectionable if applied appropriately, but Protestants would find it a troubling affirmation, since they reject the special nature of Mary held by Catholics. As a result, it is wrong for the state to impose such an affirmation. Likewise it is wrong for the state to impose such an affirmation, especially of children in a school setting.

3) Eastman argues that the line "they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights " means that God resides above the state as arbiter of a higher law and that our rights ultimatly come from God. President Bush has argued the same case. I had not heard this argument until moving to the Bible Belt. My understanding of this line is entirely different. I am troubled by this understanding, because of the kinds of things it allows, such as Roy Moore's antics. I also don't believe the author of this line intended this reading, since this kind of expression is at odds with Jefferson's other ideas. Instead, this line should be understood in terms of Locke. Locke, author of the Reasonableness of Christianity is hardly anti-Christian. His role here is several. First, we should look to his notions of toleration. Second, the notion of inalienable rights is one he worked with himself in the Second Treatise. For example, Jefferson's list of inalienable rights, the words follwoing the above phrase, are Locke's in meaning. Jefferson said Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness; Locke said Life, Liberty, and Property. I have seen it argued and agree that both men would have understood Property and the Pursuit of Happiness to mean the same thing. Consider Jefferson's view of the ideal America of yoeman farmers, individual property holders. He did not believe that we could pursue happiness as wage-earners in a Hamiltonian America. Why did Jefferson write Creator, rather than God? As an Enlightenment figure, and one with a certain hostility to religion, Jefferson prefered a rational creator diety which is often associated with Aristotle's First Cause. In fact the notion of inalienable rights is probabaly articulated first in a mature form by the Stoics, so this connection bears deeper resonance. The Stoics believed that all people had inalienable rights because all men posses reason. This argument would be far more satisfactory to Jefferson than the notion that a personal God interested in his salvation had crafted a specific social order for that purpose. A term like "Creator" should not be seen as an affirmation of the religiousity of the Founders, but rather of their desire to step as far away from a religious based politics in favor of a reason based politics as possible. Of course in there era, those making a religous based politics were monarchists and supported absolutist kings. Certainly its possible to assert that God created us and did not intend for men to have dominion over men. This is not what Jefferson was getting at, at least not the emphasis on God's intention. Chemerinsky argued that 10% of Americans would reject this possition (my guess is he is lumping all non-theists together here, because athiests are a smaller number) on the basis of no belief in God. BTW, Locke argued that athiests could not be trusted to hold office because they would not fear for their immortal souls. He also held that Catholics were not to be trusted because they followed a foriegn prince (the Pope). We have long held that one's American-ness, citizenship, or fitness for office is not basded on one's religious beliefs. While we have had no avowed athiests in high office, its is hardly prohibited. This notion of our rights comming from God is ultimatly not relevant, is not what Jefferson intended, and cannot be the basis of our collective political notions.

So, if we reject Eastman's possition do we adopt Chemerinsky's? No. Chemerinsky came very close the strict seperationist possition. Since the court had agreed with him and he could just defend the court against Eastman, he didn't have to articulate his ideas as completely as Eastman did. Nevertheless, I take Chemerinsky to be a strict seperationist on Establishment issues. For example, we can recall last week's discussion of Locke v Davey. I have no problem with citizens using a general government benefit for religious purposes. I have no problem with free religious expression. My only limitation is for the state. The state has great coercive power, and so it is the state that must be restrained where it can impinge on the happiness of citizens. I understand why people want the government to agree with them on matters of import. But the purpose of the state is limited. There are things it should not do. I don't want a state that looks out for my whole person. I want a state that provides a common defence and looks after the general prosperity. It need make no religious statements in order to achieve these goals.

Hugh Hewitt mentioned at least twice that he would like to see some prayer in schools, when taking callers. I have no problem with prayer in school in principle. But in practice, the state can't get involved, so the ideal solution is the abolution of the public school system in favor of public funding of children's education according to parent's wishes. See my recent post on school choice with a long discussion of the court's establishment cases. What I did not mention in that post was the competing views of what it means to be neutral.

One side says that neutrality means even-handedness. So that a neutral policy with regard to sectarian issues gives equal benefits and restrictions regardless of sect. So that neutrality means athiests, Buddhists, Lutherans, and Greek Orthodox belivers or organizations are treated the same. No favoritism, so special harm. Even for unpopular religious practicing animal sacrifice. I am refering here to Lukumi Babalu Aye Inc v. City of Hialeah, where the court held that this Santaria church could not have its animal sacrifice rituals banned just because people didn't like it.

The other side says that neutrality is impossible. The state will either err too much in one direction or another, so it should just be totally uninvolved in any religious thing. No funding, no cerimonial prayers, nothing. The unintended consequence is that this favors athiests, secular sentiments, and the non-religious in general. This possition strikes me as not being neutral, although I understand the impluse. I will provide an example. In WWI, Sec of State William Jennings Bryan took this notion of neutrality and believed that we could not trade with Britain and Germany because one side would, for whatever reason, trade more with us and we would be inclined to protect our recievables by making sure they won, and that's not neutral. He resigned when Wilson continued to support trade with the Allies. Byran wanted neutrality in thought, word, and deed. He wanted strict non-involvement with any beligerent. And that is the kind of neutrality that strict seperationists want in regards religion.

Since I prefer the even-handedness definition of neutrality, I tend to be an accomodationist, but I am a moderate accomodationist, since I do favor as much non-action by the state as the state can manage without becoming hostile to religion. So in the case of the Pledge, I look to its intentions. Eastman made three suggestions as to the purpose of the phrase "under God". It might be a religious statement, a historical statement, or a cerimonial statement. First off, I must say that anyone who favors religion has a hard time arguing this is not a religious statement. That is so convienient that its fails to pass muster. While Hugh Hewitt may derive social pleasure from fellowship at church, that not the main reason he attends Sunday services. Likewise, you don't see this kind of contraversy in matters only historical or cerimonial. Historical and cerimonial matters only become contraversial when they have implications for contraversial issues like race or religion. So the contraversy itself speaks to a religious meaning. If we look at the addition of these words, and they were added in 1954, we find that their addition was not to redress a historical lapse, it was part of our Red Scare responce to the Godless Communists. To deferentiate ourselves from the Athiest Marxists we established some religion. We added a specific reference to God to a patriotic pledge for no other purpose than to advertise our religiousity. Therefore, those words should be stricken from the pledge required of school children.

How EU will work in practice

If you follow euobserver.com, you have noticed that whatever else the EU organization is doing, there is a meeting of the big 5. This is Brirain, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy. See the lastest story. I rather think this is how the EU will operate in practice. The big 5 had a long history of working together, they are the core of NATO in Europe and of the EU, they are the largest states, economies, and militaries, and most importantly, Europe has always been run by her leading powers. The rival system of states that emerged during the Renaissance, and later the Concert of Europe when the Great Powers formally governed through the Congress System all work this way. The big powers expect it, and the little powers seem resigned to it. Regardless of what the EU constitution says, I predict this is how problems will be solved.

Imagine the Governors of California, New York, Texas, Florida, and Illinois sitting down and deciding how their Congressional delegations will vote in order to create a unified policy, in effect to direct policy for the rest of the states. Of course it could not work here. Congressional delegations won't take instructions from governors, and the very structure of the Senate anticipated such a move by the big states, as represented by the New Jersey Plan in the founding debates. The American big 5 I mentioned only have 10 out of 50 Senators. The same influence as North Dakota, Alaska, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and West Virgina. Europe lacks a New Jersey Plan sensibility to restrain its Virginia Plan history and impulse.

How do you Print your Digital Pictures?

Registering a digital camera, the manufacturer asked me this question. There was no option to say I never print prictures. In fact, I can't figure out why I'd ever want printed pictures. Pictures are just a way to store the image on paper. Why not just store them digitally? Is this some kind of hard-copy thing? Make backups. While I can understand not wanting to read very long texts on computer (say, books), I can't think of any reason to print pictures. Alright, I can think of reasons (say, Christmas cards), but I've never done these things and I don't forsee it in the future. Since the manufacturer didn't have an expectation that I would answer "I don't" to the above question, how can they ideally serve me?

War on Terror Catagories

The relevant catagories are:
With us willingly
With us unwillingly because you're on the terrorist's list anyway
Against us

The President knows full well that in all the essentials, countries like Russia and France are with us, not because they want to be (they don't), but because they have no choice. They can refuse to participate, but they aren't neutral and more than Belgium was in 1940.

Remember Katie Roiphe pt II

Last August I brought of Katie Roiphe's book The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism. The question about remembrance was apt because I had not heard about Ms Roiphe after the buzz from her book died down. She appeared in annual reviews of thought and culture at the end of the year, but after that I don't recall hearing much. I was reading Slate this morning and came across her name at the bottom of the article: Katie Roiphe is the author of Still She Haunts Me. Stunned by the implications, I scrolled back to the top of the page and there was her byline. A search of her name on Slate reveals she wrote maybe a half dozen things in 2003 and several things in 2002. I'll be going back and catching up through the archive and look forward to more by Ms Roiphe.

Blame America pt 1 Afghanistan

There are those who believe that it was American support for the Mujahideen is the cause for the creation fo the terrorists. Their thinking goes that because America is a bad thing, its actions will have pernicious consequences. But its not American support for the Mujahideen that created Osama or the Taliban, it was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that did. When the Soviets invaded, Islamists from the whole Muslim world took action to support resistance and coordinate their actions. Networks formed, leaders built organizations, and a lot of Islamists got quite a bit of combat, weapons, and munitions experience. Had America done nothing, all of this would have occured.

Instead, America did get involved and hoped for the best. But as happens so often, American assistance didn't purchase friends. Those who suppose that allegience is for sale think everyone is a mercenary. Our purpose there, after all was not to "buy" friends, but to stop Soviet agression. This explains America's sudden withdrawl after the withdrawl of the Soviets. The forces on the ground were Islamist, we had no friends there to protect or to stay engaged with.

Like the terrorist networks themselves, built by the Soviets as a way to combat the West by other means, the Islamist networks were formed by the Soviets as an unanticipated consequence of their invasion of Afghanistan. The merger of these two Soviet creations, the state sponsorship of international terrorism and the Islamist organizations devoted to establishing Islamic governments and purging Islamic societies of non-Islamic culture proved to be the challenge of our current era.

Strategy Page

James Dunnigan's Strategy Page had posts on ETA on March 6 and 10, and asked "What is Al Qaeda up to," on March 11. During the course of the day we appear to have found out, but in hindsight, these posts suggest that Strategy page is asking the right questions and is on top of what is going on. Keep an eye on Strategy Page.

Students learning the traditional curriculum (mostly) in Social Studies

A press release by the Center for Information and Research on Civil Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) suggests students are learning traditional approaches in the social studies. According to their website, "CIRCLE is based in the University of Maryland's School of Public Affairs and is funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and Carnegie Corporation of New York." this study employed a democratic and a republican polster to ask students of middle school and high school, what did their classrooms emphisize in their social studies classes.

• 45% -- The Constitution or the US system of government and how it works
• 30% -- Great American heroes and the virtues of the American system of government
• 25% -- Wars and military battles
• 11% -- Problems facing the country today
• 9% -- Racism and other forms of injustice in the American system
• 5% -- Other, all of the above, or don’t know

Clearly the top three are part of the traditional curiculum, the report says very traditional as though we are teaching aristocracy, patriarchy, and theocracy. Nevertheless we see that 20% of students are getting a problems or a social reconstructionist curiculum. If students get the full range of courses as identified above, I really don't have a problem with them being exposed to the 20%. If they are given a good fact base and start off with some patriotic teaching, I see no problem complicating that understand with probems based teaching. What might well be the case, however is that at many schools, no one really represents the 20%, and at other schools the problems approach and social reconstructionism is the dominant theme, even creeping into the attitudes around the fact based approaches (how the Constitution works and the Wars). Now I doubt this in the case of wars. People who really don't like war coulnd't sustain a curruculum of military history and have students come away and think they learned military history rather than "the problems facing American leaders." As I have mentioned before, lots of social studies teachers are coaches, they embrace winning, competition, struggle, effort, and the rest of those ideas anathema to the social reconstrcutionists. Many times I see that a teacher known to his students as "coach" has no books besides those dedicated to the American Civil War and World War II. So my tendency is not to believe that the 20% is anything more than one fifth of classroom experiences. This poll tends to agree with my own experience and to quantify that experience. Not to worry, I'll be on my guard againt been uncritically accepting just because it confirms my own views.

Madrid

In one of Osama bin Laden's post-9/11 broadcasts, his voice on the tape refered to the "tragedy of al-Andalus." The fall of Grenada in 1492 lead directly to the intolerant Spanish repression of Jews and Moors. Spain demanded conversion. Those who didn't convert were expelled, and those who did were subject to the inquisition. But, for all this, perhaps more important was the end of any Islamic state in Iberia. What precisely constitutes the "tragedy of al-Andalus" I can't say for sure, but I am pretty sure that Spain was assessed for this 500 year old event.

One must wonder, once more, about an ideology that kills commuters and office workers in revenge for a 500 year old injustice. I will suggest that the back and forth between the Moors and Christians in Iberia is not a simple one-sided affair. To propose a "tragedy of al-Analus" is to ignore all of the reasons why Castile and Aragon desired a unified, Christian Spain. We can quibble with the policies of Ferdinand II and Isabella, but what is totally outrageous is planting bombs on commuter rail lines as some kind of revenge against what happened in Andalusia some five centuries ago.

The enemy is terror and let all free peoples stand together against it.

Two Candidates pt II

"I have no intention whatsoever to apologize for my remarks," Kerry said Thursday in front of a group of Democratic senators he just met with. "I think the Republicans need to start talking about the real issues before the country." (FoxNews)

By real issues Kerry means participation in his fantasy world. Apparently to disagree with Kerry is to be a liar and crooked. It would seem, Kerry has taken a page from the Ralph Nader playbook. Its a disappointment really. Solutions to America's problems will be found by the dialectical method of public debate between the two parties. When the Democrat mistakes ad hominem attacks, broad mischaracterizations, and wishful thinking as debate, he offers no benefit to his party, his country, or to the quality of debate. There is indeed someone who should start talking about real issues, and its John Kerry.

Free Markets or pseudo-Free Markets

Eliot Spitzer & Andrew G. Celli, Jr. write in the New Republic about free markets. They play fast an loose with the lables however. It undermines what would be a good DLC argument about the proper place of government regulation.

Dennis Prager makes a mis-step

Prager takes intellectual honesty seriously and I think he does a pretty good job, but today's discussion of the story on virginity pledges fell short of that goal. Prager read the news he wanted to see and ignored the point of the study and the intent of the article. This is what is known as a tortured reading. The concern of the study was rates of STD's are part of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health funded by Centers for Disease Control. The article in the NYT spent most of its space on the rates of disease and closely related issues.

Prager is looking for social effects, not public health effects, so he is happy to see delayed sex, younger marriage, and fewer partners. However, since the question being asked was not about social effects but public health, these are extrernal issues. As a method of preventing STD's, pledges are not only worthless, since the rates are exactly the same, but actually pernicious, since pledge takers got the same number of STD's over a shorter period of time, having delayed sex, and with fewer partners. This is because they had a lower rate of preparation for sex, such as lower condom use, and engaged in less testing. Prager ignores this harm for the happy news he wanted to find from the beginning.

As I have argued earlier, the best policy is a true synthesis in which the practice of safe sex and the benefits of delayed sexual activity were both taught is superior. Unfortunately, no one wants both. Pro-chastity people might give lip service to safe sex but emphasize chastity, and the safe-sex people vise versa. Why is it impossible to say, don't have sex until you are married, and here is how as a married person you can prevent pregnancy until you are ready to have a child, and in the event that you give in to temptation, it prevents STD's too. Isn't two lines of defense better than one? Why is this idea so rejected by both sides?

I do know, its because neither side wants to admit the other has a point. Just as Prager refused to admit that the purpose of the NYT and AP articles were that despite the pledges, there is no better record on STD's than among other students. And all of this while patting himself on the back for looking at both sides.

Iraq

Below I talk about the charge that the war in Iraq was dreamed up in Texas as a political product. This is pure fantasy. Clearly as the containment of Iraq dragged on there would be three positions on what to do next: 1) abandon the containment and leave Iraq, 2) continue the containment indefinitely and pursue UN solutions, and 3) the time for continued containment is over, we should overthrow Saddam. See the Summer 1996 article in foreign Affairs by Kristol and Kagan. They later put it together into a book, for 2000. We know that Perle and Wolfowitz had been advocating greater action in Iraq for similar reasons throughout the 90's. Clearly this was a policy position based on a political philosophy now well known under the label of Neo-Conservatism. To charge that the war was conducted for oil, that it was conducted for Halliburton, or that it was conducted as a "political product" ignores this history of this policy advocacy. You can debate the policy as a good one or a bad one, but to pretend that the cause for war is something other than what Perle, Kagan, Wolfowitz, or Kristol had been arguing for some time requires the presentation of some other policy at least as compelling as that argued by Perle and Wolfowitz, who are in the administration, and Kagan and Kristol who are prolific writers on policy in the circles which generates ideas for many Republicans.

Two candidates on the stump

Today in Cleveland Ohio, Bush spoke before a women's business group and defended his record speaking of the worthwhile cause in Iraq, the effect of tax cuts on the economy, and reminding his audience that unemployment remains quite low.

John Kerry accuses Bush and his people of being liars and the most corrupt group of (garbled) that he's seen. The quote at CNN, "Oh yeah, don't worry man. We're going to keep pounding, let me tell you -- we're just beginning to fight here. These guys are the most crooked, you know, lying group of people I've ever seen."

There have been three explanations of this. #1 and most lame, Kerry was refering to talk radio, and aides have mentioned Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. Had either of these two said anything particularly scathing in the past couple of days, or had they been hitting him hard on questionable areas, this might have been convincing. I don't listen to Rush and I only listen to Hannity in the car (alas the inferiority of choice on radio), but I do know what Hannity is talking about every day the half hour to an hour I hear every day, and his theme is that Kerry has no core of beliefs because he flip-flops on issues. Today he played clips of Dean attacking Kerry on flip-flops. This constitutes lies and corruption? Its not even a dirty trick, the NYT on Saterday asked, "Kerry's Shifts: Nuanced Ideas or Flip-Flops?" And of course there are the Dean clips. This is a real charge. See also this in Slate by noted anti-Kerry Dem, Mickey Kaus. Frankly, conservatie talk radio hosts need to say something not being said by Democrats to warrent the charge liars and crooked.

#2 and somewhat less lame is the claim that the quote refers to GOP campaign figures. So, perhaps Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie. Crooked? You mean the way Terry McAuliffe has been connected to Global Crossing? If Rove or Gillespie had some scandle floating around, this might have legs, but as far as I have seen neither of these two have any taint of corruption or crookedness. If he had just said lies, well, we could put this down as a "stop lying about my record" type of comment.

#3 and most plausible, he means Bush and Cheney. The Left has been making the claims that both have lied and are crooked for some time. Here is David Corn's list. There are the Enron charges, the Halliburton charges, &c, &c. This is the only real plausible target of the quote. Kerry was talking to supporters at a partisan event and make a charge worthy of MoveOn.org. In this Boston Herald op/ed, Kennedy is taken to task for claiming that the war in Iraq was a political product dreamed up in Texas. Kennedy is saying such things as he campaigns for Kerry. Its all part of the campaign plan, its not a slip or a misinterpreted statement. It can be understood right at the center of the Democrats (Bush was AWOL!) campiagn against the president.

On the John Kerry for President blog, under the entry "the 'mother' of all house parties" we find a post that includes this:
"When Teresa Heinz-Kerry arrived, she handed me a pin that read in the center: ?Asses of Evil? with ?Bush?, ?Cheney?, ?Rumsfeld? and ?Ashcroft? surrounding it. She met, greeted and talked to a jam-packed room of Kerry supporters and others who came for the MoveOn documentary. Many were curious, others undecided, or belonging to other candidate camps."

This is not your father's war

One of the themes of my military analysis since 1991 has been the difference between modern war and post-modern war. Modern war, just all other phenomena of modern society, are preceeded by the word "mass". So when we speak of mass media, mass production, mass transit, or mass conscription, we are talking modernism. There are no clear boundaries to this period, since it was not ushured in by some revolutionary act, like the atomic age was, nor has it been displaced by some single event. Rather we should understand its rise and fall by analogy to its favorite fuel, coal. Coal was in use for a long time, for limited purposes, before becomming the fuel of mass production. Likewise we still use it a lot, though its importance has been eclipsed by oil. So we should see a gradual rise and fall of modernism in terms of the importance and prevelance of mass institutions. For example, before the modern age, entertainment was found in the home, often around the family piano or in group reading. Modern entertainments were unifying and conforming. We all listened or watched a small number of networks. While we many of us didn't tune in exclusively to the small number of networks, they were dominant culturally. The rise of FM, cable, and home playback (first as VCR's, then as DVD's, now TiVo) gave more power to the consumer and less to the producer, and this shift signals a problem for the modern producer and often heralds a shift to post-modern niche consumption. The Internet is the ultimate post modern media. Its the opposite of a conformity producing and unifying institution in which we all view the same websites. Rather its a huge variety of disparate kinds of experiences, from e-mail to expository sites to blogs written from as many perspectives as their are content producers (and according to PEW that's 44% of us). Without a group of editors responding to the same pressures, trainined in the same fashion, and often reflecting the same background and attitudes, there are few conforming pressures on the internet. Those that do exist tend to be in the nature of format, not content. There are standards, but they are mostly in terms of code, so that my machine can read your video file.

In terms of the military, the Great War is the quintessential modern war. Large numbers of unskilled or semi-skilled soldiers, conscripted in mass, trained in mass, and deployed in mass. By WWII, we see more diversity in the kinds of jobs and the rise of highly trained specialists, like marines, paratroopers, tankers, special forces, and the normal jobs in the plain old infantry got more technical and complicated. Today, the doctrine of combat requires such highly trained soldiers that mass armies are obsolete. I posted on the draft specifically last August. Small highly trained forces are a smaller burden than large mass forces. The draft itself is only one example of this. The use of manpower no longer available to industry (because they are in uniform) is another.

The shift from sail to steam and then to dreadnaughts imposed two radical changes on seapower during the 19th century (which ends in 1914). Twice Britain was forced to rebuild her navy because new powers like Germany and America were able to build the new ships making the older ship's in Britain's fleet obsolete. Today, we have seen radical shifts in military practice, but one of the things that is most obvious is that no one but America is adapting to the new style of war. Where shifts in military technology not only helped challenge British sea power, and create powers who were willing to mobilize mass conscript armies, no one is poised to combine the high tech weapons with the tactical methods developed to produce the recently observed victories. There are no challengers to American military technique. This reinforces the notion that all future war will be asymetrical. The implications of this on American military planning are at least in part unforseen. As America takes the leading role in fighting asymetrical wars, this gap will grow.

Education come full circle

According to a Wednesday NY Times article, New York City is scrapping many of its middle schools for a return to the K-8 grammer school. The add, "Many other districts across the nation have reinstituted kindergarten-to-eighth-grade schools."

The National Association of Middle Schools isn't sure this is a good idea. Perhaps they are just self-interested.

Another quote: "Since 1999, under New York State's tougher academic standards, fourth grade scores have risen sharply on the standardized English and math tests. But eighth grade scores have improved only modestly, reflecting what the state education commissioner, Richard P. Mills, has described as a lack of focus and mission at many middle schools."

This reflects a serious problem whose ultimate cause I suspect is peer socialization. If the new schools could be arranged to maintain adult authority in the school, those scores might be improved at the higher levels. The drawback is that longer childhood makes the shift to more adult behavior in high school harder. Dealing with the 10-15 year old is vexatious.

Interestingly, the remaining middle schools will be for gifted kids, which is probabaly a good move. By that age, its really counter productive to group them with the mainstream. Brighter kids just tune out and develop bad learning habits. They need more challenge and can handle more academic responsibility if handled right.

They are also experimenting with 6-12 high schools. I'm not sure what to make of that, I've heard nothing of it.

Schools used to be K-8 and then 9-12 at the beginning of the century. Then the junior high school movement came along and argued that upper elemntary kids would benefit from a more high school type of enviroment, the junior high. Organized like high schools by content area and including many of the same kinds of extra-curriculars, the junior highs were typically 6-8 or 7-9. They were replaced by the middle school movement which argued that there should be a school that transitions kids from elementary to high school and occupies a middle place between the central classroom of elementary and the content organized high school. So middle schools had less class movement because kids had a home room where they might spend almost half of the day.

This return to the original model sure casts doubt on the utility of experiment in the first place.

Nader exposed

Jonathan Chait writes in The New Republic about the myth of the "good" Nader. The thesis: "Nader is not a heroic figure tragically overcome by his own flaws; he is a selfish, destructive maniac who, for a brief historical period, happened upon a useful role."

Damning.

Chait doesn't say so explicitlt, but it seems that Nader prefers Republicans because his hatred of them is purer. What should one expect, they are the party of business. Doing their evil is no hypocracy. Nader's hostility to Democrats is based on the notion that they sell out, they betray him, and they aren't worthy because they are tainted by comprimise or some other weakness.