Social Studies gone soft on Civics
PS, the journal of the American Political Science Association had an article this April on the decline of civics education in the public schools. Hat Tip to Wilson Quarterly, which does a nice round up of interesting pieces. I'll focus on a part of the problem which is often featured here, contentious ideological conflict by those setting the agenda. When Social Reconstructionists want to present a radical critique of American political and social institutions, traditionalists recoil and want it stopped. When Perennialists want to explain and defend the establishment, the left cries foul and tries to push the kind of unpopular critique that I have mentioned. The end result is no civics education. There are two issues here, academic inquiry and parental control of the message presented to their kids.
Intellectual honesty requires that that teachers teach all substantive arguments, not just the ones they like or that are popular in the community. Teacher's don't need to teach them all equally, they just need to give them a fair hearing. Parents, the administration, and others in the community have greater tolerance for a teacher who is fair, even if some material is not their cup of tea. When things get ugly is when the teacher is both out of step and unfair.
In a public school system, parents are also voters and taxpayers, so ultimately they govern. Thumb your nose at them and they may well come back hard with cuts in funding, targeted funding, or regulations and legislation. They are the consumers acting for their children. If teachers and schools attempt to usurp that authority they risk confronting the parent's much greater political power.
The solution is a civics program that is based on the wants and desires of the parents and community with substantial consideration of alternative views. Consideration needs to be limited by good method and respect for evidence. Students who know how to apply good social science methods and have a respect for evidence will have a robust commitment to good ideas and a resistance to bad ones.
Monday, August 23, 2004
Saudization
Good news from the oil kingdom. Saudization is a program to replace departing westerners with Saudi workers. As the war on terror continues, many westerners leave the kingdom. The Saudi's in the past filled many of their labor needs with foriegn workers, westerners for the high skilled jobs, mideasterners for the unskilled work. Saudis themselves would sit back fat and happy on oil revenues, so it was thought. The shift from an oil-funded idleness, which has proved so ammenable to radical Islam and terrorism, to a bourgious society of skilled workers will inevitably bring liberalism.
Some commontators, notably Dennis Prager, miss this point. They reject the Friedman thesis because the 9-11 terrorists were not unemployed in the way Americans think about unemployment. In America, unemployment means poverty and is closely associated in its long term forms with low educational attainment. But in other parts of the world where industrial or commodity social welfare provide education and comfortable living standards without labor, its possible to be frustrated by a lack of opportunity without living under an overpass. Conservatives recognize the argument that dependence breeds resentment, which is why Americans are so cool towards generous social welfare policies, but by the same token, we should recognize that where the welfare is abundant, dependence will still be a source of frustration. Sitting around with nothing to do funded by oil wealth is not a recipie for the development of a liberal society. Let's flip that around, Prager and others will recognize that an ethic of work produces classical liberalism. Put Saudi's to work producing goods and services for decent incomes and liberalization and modernity will follow. We have seen it all over the globe. A middle class based on professional and commercial activity produces a middle class with the kinds of values that are a rocky soil to the seeds of fanaticism.
Good news from the oil kingdom. Saudization is a program to replace departing westerners with Saudi workers. As the war on terror continues, many westerners leave the kingdom. The Saudi's in the past filled many of their labor needs with foriegn workers, westerners for the high skilled jobs, mideasterners for the unskilled work. Saudis themselves would sit back fat and happy on oil revenues, so it was thought. The shift from an oil-funded idleness, which has proved so ammenable to radical Islam and terrorism, to a bourgious society of skilled workers will inevitably bring liberalism.
Some commontators, notably Dennis Prager, miss this point. They reject the Friedman thesis because the 9-11 terrorists were not unemployed in the way Americans think about unemployment. In America, unemployment means poverty and is closely associated in its long term forms with low educational attainment. But in other parts of the world where industrial or commodity social welfare provide education and comfortable living standards without labor, its possible to be frustrated by a lack of opportunity without living under an overpass. Conservatives recognize the argument that dependence breeds resentment, which is why Americans are so cool towards generous social welfare policies, but by the same token, we should recognize that where the welfare is abundant, dependence will still be a source of frustration. Sitting around with nothing to do funded by oil wealth is not a recipie for the development of a liberal society. Let's flip that around, Prager and others will recognize that an ethic of work produces classical liberalism. Put Saudi's to work producing goods and services for decent incomes and liberalization and modernity will follow. We have seen it all over the globe. A middle class based on professional and commercial activity produces a middle class with the kinds of values that are a rocky soil to the seeds of fanaticism.
Saturday, August 21, 2004
How to use the Show-Me Standards 1.1
This will be a continuing description of how to use the Show-Me standards. It will proceed in order of the four goals and the forty-three sub-goals. This is part 1 of Goal 1.
Goal 1: Students in Missouri public schools will acquire the knowledge and skills to gather, analyze and apply information and ideas.
part 1: Students will demonstrate within and integrate across all content areas the ability to
develop questions and ideas to initiate and refine research
The heart of this subject is question framing. (Useful pieces on question framing are here and here.) We all know the familiar list of question to ask, who, where, when, how, what, and why. But which are the important questions to ask to support research?
Who, where, and when are fact based questions, so they will not sustain inquiry (except in some sophisticated questions, see below) and will not challenge the researcher. Often they can be answered conclusively by recourse to one authority. If I can look up the answer in a reference book, its not a good question.
How is a very profound question (except in science, where its often technical) that is often far beyond most students capacity. Unless a student is capable of collecting a lot of smaller questions under one large how, thinking profoundly about what it all means, and managing the length, a how question should be re-phrased to turn it into a what or why question. How questions presuppose a knowledge of what and why questions or a capacity to provide what and why answers en route to a how.
The best questions for most students are what and why questions. A what question explains the nature of a thing by assembling its characteristics in a meaningful way. Every student is capable of a what question, although the best students will provide much more interesting and abstract answers to a what than will the struggling student. A barely satisfactory what answer is little more than a collection of descriptions of characteristics, including who, where, and when that is comprehensive and coherent. A proficient what answer will not only be factually accurate (which the the basic minimum requried, without which, no answer is passing) but will be meaningful as well.
Its good that a student can tell me who fought the American Civil War, when it happened, where important events took place, and organize other information of a factual nature about the Civil War. Its better what a student can do all of that and tell me what it means. There are no right answers to the meaning part of this question, but teachers must remember that there are wrong answers. The American Civil War is not a Marxist uprising of a working class against a capitalist class. Too often teachers will slide too far to either looking for one right answer (their own) or accepting any nonsense that comes along. Critical thinking, sound analysis, and solid research require that any thesis be based on the best explanation of the facts presented, while dealing substantively with facts that don't support the thesis.
A why question implies a firm grasp of what. If a student argues that the American Civil War was an economic struggle emphizing the tariff, its pretty easy to see how that student could begin to answer the question why did the American Civil War happen? To the student who has no answer to what, why will remain a mystery. Often, as in my example, a what will lead quickly to a why, but it is important to remember that while the direction of the thesis is clear, a why question requires more reserach, more interpretation of factual data (compared to description), and more experience handling ideas. A why is more advanced than a what, but not beyond a properly prepared student with adequate time.
Note that even though I am giving examples from older students, the same applies to younger students. If the issue at hand is animal locomotion, a middle elementary science subject, every student should be able to tell me what flying is an how a bird uses it. (eg, To escape predetors and to exploit resources unavilable to walkers and swimmers.) This would also be a reasonable answer to a why question, although a good why answer will also deal with the costs of flying, thereby explaining flightless birds, like penguins. A good why always takes more account of unsupportive facts than a what, because its more interpretive.
Finally, some students will demonstrate that they are capable of sophisticated question framing. If you find them attempting to cram a good when question into a what or why, free them up to ask the when question. A good when question is a question of periodization. Like a why, its assumes a clear what answer. For example, when does the Civil War become inevitable? This is a good question. It does have one weakness, it implies that it was inevitable. I'd rather weaken the word inevitable, rather than attach a qualifier, such as "if ever". If a student was willing to consider that the evidence might support the answer, "it wasn't," I wouldn't object too much to this title.
Who were the Populists? If the answer is at least as solid as I suggested for a what question, there is no need to rephrase the question to be "what is a Populist." A good who question is a description of a movement or group as compelling as a what, and should be an obvious springboard to more advanced work.
Where questions that fit this catagory also involve some interpretation of place. Attempting to identify regions in the five themes of geography is properly this kind of question. A good where question isn't based on one data-set. Where are the tropical rain forests is a good question of students are predicting their location based on a variety of climate factors, its not a good question if they are consulting a map. Some where questions can be parallel to why questions. Where are the rain forests threatened, presupposes an answer to why are rainforests threatened. This question takes the why version and locates it geographically. That may raise interesting questions when conditions vary on the basis of some new ingredient.
All students should be able to answer proper what questions, most students should be able to move on to why questions, and a few students will always ask interesting questions no matter what words they use.
This will be a continuing description of how to use the Show-Me standards. It will proceed in order of the four goals and the forty-three sub-goals. This is part 1 of Goal 1.
Goal 1: Students in Missouri public schools will acquire the knowledge and skills to gather, analyze and apply information and ideas.
part 1: Students will demonstrate within and integrate across all content areas the ability to
develop questions and ideas to initiate and refine research
The heart of this subject is question framing. (Useful pieces on question framing are here and here.) We all know the familiar list of question to ask, who, where, when, how, what, and why. But which are the important questions to ask to support research?
Who, where, and when are fact based questions, so they will not sustain inquiry (except in some sophisticated questions, see below) and will not challenge the researcher. Often they can be answered conclusively by recourse to one authority. If I can look up the answer in a reference book, its not a good question.
How is a very profound question (except in science, where its often technical) that is often far beyond most students capacity. Unless a student is capable of collecting a lot of smaller questions under one large how, thinking profoundly about what it all means, and managing the length, a how question should be re-phrased to turn it into a what or why question. How questions presuppose a knowledge of what and why questions or a capacity to provide what and why answers en route to a how.
The best questions for most students are what and why questions. A what question explains the nature of a thing by assembling its characteristics in a meaningful way. Every student is capable of a what question, although the best students will provide much more interesting and abstract answers to a what than will the struggling student. A barely satisfactory what answer is little more than a collection of descriptions of characteristics, including who, where, and when that is comprehensive and coherent. A proficient what answer will not only be factually accurate (which the the basic minimum requried, without which, no answer is passing) but will be meaningful as well.
Its good that a student can tell me who fought the American Civil War, when it happened, where important events took place, and organize other information of a factual nature about the Civil War. Its better what a student can do all of that and tell me what it means. There are no right answers to the meaning part of this question, but teachers must remember that there are wrong answers. The American Civil War is not a Marxist uprising of a working class against a capitalist class. Too often teachers will slide too far to either looking for one right answer (their own) or accepting any nonsense that comes along. Critical thinking, sound analysis, and solid research require that any thesis be based on the best explanation of the facts presented, while dealing substantively with facts that don't support the thesis.
A why question implies a firm grasp of what. If a student argues that the American Civil War was an economic struggle emphizing the tariff, its pretty easy to see how that student could begin to answer the question why did the American Civil War happen? To the student who has no answer to what, why will remain a mystery. Often, as in my example, a what will lead quickly to a why, but it is important to remember that while the direction of the thesis is clear, a why question requires more reserach, more interpretation of factual data (compared to description), and more experience handling ideas. A why is more advanced than a what, but not beyond a properly prepared student with adequate time.
Note that even though I am giving examples from older students, the same applies to younger students. If the issue at hand is animal locomotion, a middle elementary science subject, every student should be able to tell me what flying is an how a bird uses it. (eg, To escape predetors and to exploit resources unavilable to walkers and swimmers.) This would also be a reasonable answer to a why question, although a good why answer will also deal with the costs of flying, thereby explaining flightless birds, like penguins. A good why always takes more account of unsupportive facts than a what, because its more interpretive.
Finally, some students will demonstrate that they are capable of sophisticated question framing. If you find them attempting to cram a good when question into a what or why, free them up to ask the when question. A good when question is a question of periodization. Like a why, its assumes a clear what answer. For example, when does the Civil War become inevitable? This is a good question. It does have one weakness, it implies that it was inevitable. I'd rather weaken the word inevitable, rather than attach a qualifier, such as "if ever". If a student was willing to consider that the evidence might support the answer, "it wasn't," I wouldn't object too much to this title.
Who were the Populists? If the answer is at least as solid as I suggested for a what question, there is no need to rephrase the question to be "what is a Populist." A good who question is a description of a movement or group as compelling as a what, and should be an obvious springboard to more advanced work.
Where questions that fit this catagory also involve some interpretation of place. Attempting to identify regions in the five themes of geography is properly this kind of question. A good where question isn't based on one data-set. Where are the tropical rain forests is a good question of students are predicting their location based on a variety of climate factors, its not a good question if they are consulting a map. Some where questions can be parallel to why questions. Where are the rain forests threatened, presupposes an answer to why are rainforests threatened. This question takes the why version and locates it geographically. That may raise interesting questions when conditions vary on the basis of some new ingredient.
All students should be able to answer proper what questions, most students should be able to move on to why questions, and a few students will always ask interesting questions no matter what words they use.
Parents: bar the doors and hide the kids!
The school year is starting and the Leftists want your child. The most recent posting on the listserv for the National Council for Social Studies is one for the Education for Sustainable Development Teacher Project. If this doesn't reek of Social Reconstructionism to you, you just aren't following education. I looked over their materials and took their survey, and sure enough, its the same anti-capitalist, technocratic experts will ban plastic bags for you, anti-globo, socialist claptrap we've come to expect from the Social Reconstructionists, whose goal it is to reconstruct society into a Leftist utoptia.
This is why we have high stakes testing. Parents with a clue see this stuff and they demand a return to education, as opposed to indoctrination. When their (and their political proxies') demands are ignored, they pull out the sledge-hammer.
This is why we have home schooling. Parents with a real aversion to this kind of indoctrination give up on the re-education camps and being the kids back home for real eduation.
This is why we have vouchers and charter schools. Parents see this kind of nonsense and want there kids somewhere else.
Teachers who don't get this are part of the problem. Teachers who push this kind of curriculum against parent, community, and administration desires, are the enemy of the public schools.
The school year is starting and the Leftists want your child. The most recent posting on the listserv for the National Council for Social Studies is one for the Education for Sustainable Development Teacher Project. If this doesn't reek of Social Reconstructionism to you, you just aren't following education. I looked over their materials and took their survey, and sure enough, its the same anti-capitalist, technocratic experts will ban plastic bags for you, anti-globo, socialist claptrap we've come to expect from the Social Reconstructionists, whose goal it is to reconstruct society into a Leftist utoptia.
This is why we have high stakes testing. Parents with a clue see this stuff and they demand a return to education, as opposed to indoctrination. When their (and their political proxies') demands are ignored, they pull out the sledge-hammer.
This is why we have home schooling. Parents with a real aversion to this kind of indoctrination give up on the re-education camps and being the kids back home for real eduation.
This is why we have vouchers and charter schools. Parents see this kind of nonsense and want there kids somewhere else.
Teachers who don't get this are part of the problem. Teachers who push this kind of curriculum against parent, community, and administration desires, are the enemy of the public schools.
North Koreans Defect while South Koreans Protest for Unification
On the one hand, Koreans living in the North have a clear idea of the difference between North and South. In the story, Reuters notes, "More than 100,000 North Korean refugees -- possibly twice that number -- are camped out or in hiding, mostly in China and increasingly in Southeast Asia after fleeing poverty and repression in the North, activists say."
On the other hand, Koreans living in the South have a romanticized notion of the Nation. The BBC ends a story on public protest with the line, "protesters say their government's close ties with the US are hindering the detente with Pyongyang." People are risking assasination to get out, and these kids want to get in.
At least the government has some perspective. The Beeb reports, "President Roh criticised anti-American protests on the anniversary of the country's liberation from Japanese forces in the World War Two. 'This attitude seems to reflect the thinking that the United States is responsible for all the past, present and future problems of [South Korea],' he said."
In this case at least, we can answer Machiavelli's question opening Chapter 29 of the Discources, a head of state displays less ingratitude than at least some of the people. The wise old Florentine writes, "As to the errors made in maintaining itself free, among others they are those of offending those Citizens whom it ought to reward, and of having suspicion of those in whom it ought to have confidence." If we substitute allies for citizens, we have the situation exactly. South Korea should honor and celebrate the American effort which allowed the South to go from an impoverished land to one of the most prosperous and advanced in the world. The long term sacrifice of the Americans for the South Koreans should inspire confidence. But it is not so, at least not among those taking to the streets.
Indeed, there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.
On the one hand, Koreans living in the North have a clear idea of the difference between North and South. In the story, Reuters notes, "More than 100,000 North Korean refugees -- possibly twice that number -- are camped out or in hiding, mostly in China and increasingly in Southeast Asia after fleeing poverty and repression in the North, activists say."
On the other hand, Koreans living in the South have a romanticized notion of the Nation. The BBC ends a story on public protest with the line, "protesters say their government's close ties with the US are hindering the detente with Pyongyang." People are risking assasination to get out, and these kids want to get in.
At least the government has some perspective. The Beeb reports, "President Roh criticised anti-American protests on the anniversary of the country's liberation from Japanese forces in the World War Two. 'This attitude seems to reflect the thinking that the United States is responsible for all the past, present and future problems of [South Korea],' he said."
In this case at least, we can answer Machiavelli's question opening Chapter 29 of the Discources, a head of state displays less ingratitude than at least some of the people. The wise old Florentine writes, "As to the errors made in maintaining itself free, among others they are those of offending those Citizens whom it ought to reward, and of having suspicion of those in whom it ought to have confidence." If we substitute allies for citizens, we have the situation exactly. South Korea should honor and celebrate the American effort which allowed the South to go from an impoverished land to one of the most prosperous and advanced in the world. The long term sacrifice of the Americans for the South Koreans should inspire confidence. But it is not so, at least not among those taking to the streets.
Indeed, there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.
Friday, August 20, 2004
Map of Missouri by Presidential Voting over 40 years according to county
Red is consistant Republican victories.
Lt Red voted for the Rep Pres candidate except during Democratic landslides.
Violet are those states who voted for Democrats during Democratic victories
Sky Blue are counties voting Republican during republican victories
Medium Blue vote Democratic except during Republican landslides
Blue vote Democratic all the time
Dark Blue is St Louis and is perponderantly democratic.
I'll add the geographic information from the Survey USA poll I examined in my last post.
They divide the state into four regions: St Louis/East, Kansas City Area, Ozarks, and Central. From my map, I would divide Missouri into three districts. North, SW, and SE. Anyway...
StL: 306 likely voters, 43% for Bush, 51.6% for Kerry
KC: 141 likely voters, 44.7% for Bush, 51.8% for Kerry
Ozark: 122 likely voters, 57.4% for Bush, 36.9% for Kerry
Central: 75 likely voters, 56.2% for Bush, 30.7% for Kerry
Ozark seems to be the 18 counties in the south west, and I have to guess that Central at least includes the 9 counties in the center of the state that are Red. The Central results are so similar to the Ozarks its hard to figure out where everything north of the Missouri River is allocated.
The area just south of KC which is violet, that's in Ike Skelton's district. I suspect that if Ike were to retire and a Republican take the seat, the area would begin to drift into the solidly red column. A big chunk of his district always votes Republican at the top of the ticket and is happy to send this Truman Democrat to Congress every two years. Skelton is the only Democrat elected in 2002 who was not in KC or StL. See the Secretary of State for Missouri map of the districts of federal representation. The 1st district is St Louis and has elected William Clay with 70% in 2002. The 3rd district is Dick Gephardt's district. He won with 59% in 2002. The 5th district is Kansas City. Karen McCarthy won there with 66%. Those are all safe democratic areas. There is no question in the 1st and 5th districts. It will be interesting to see what happens in the 3rd district when Gephardt has retired. Over at the Arch City Chronicle they have an interesting breakdown of the 3rd district. The Republican, Federer, ran against Gephardt in 2000 and got 40% of the vote. Russ Carnahan won the primary, so will meet Federer in November. Carnahan is the son of Mel (former governor) and Jean (former senator). So having covered the four districts currently in Democratic hands, let's turn to the other five.
The 2nd district is a suburban, affluent district, where the republican, Akin, won with 67% of the vote in 2002. The 6th district in NW Mo elected the Republican with 63%. The 7th district, the Ozarks, sent Roy Blunt, the Majority Whip, to Congress with 75% of the vote. In the SE, Emerson won with 72% of the vote. The 9th is NE Mo, Hulshof won with 68%. All were incumbants. Results from CNN.
Red is consistant Republican victories.
Lt Red voted for the Rep Pres candidate except during Democratic landslides.
Violet are those states who voted for Democrats during Democratic victories
Sky Blue are counties voting Republican during republican victories
Medium Blue vote Democratic except during Republican landslides
Blue vote Democratic all the time
Dark Blue is St Louis and is perponderantly democratic.
I'll add the geographic information from the Survey USA poll I examined in my last post.
They divide the state into four regions: St Louis/East, Kansas City Area, Ozarks, and Central. From my map, I would divide Missouri into three districts. North, SW, and SE. Anyway...
StL: 306 likely voters, 43% for Bush, 51.6% for Kerry
KC: 141 likely voters, 44.7% for Bush, 51.8% for Kerry
Ozark: 122 likely voters, 57.4% for Bush, 36.9% for Kerry
Central: 75 likely voters, 56.2% for Bush, 30.7% for Kerry
Ozark seems to be the 18 counties in the south west, and I have to guess that Central at least includes the 9 counties in the center of the state that are Red. The Central results are so similar to the Ozarks its hard to figure out where everything north of the Missouri River is allocated.
The area just south of KC which is violet, that's in Ike Skelton's district. I suspect that if Ike were to retire and a Republican take the seat, the area would begin to drift into the solidly red column. A big chunk of his district always votes Republican at the top of the ticket and is happy to send this Truman Democrat to Congress every two years. Skelton is the only Democrat elected in 2002 who was not in KC or StL. See the Secretary of State for Missouri map of the districts of federal representation. The 1st district is St Louis and has elected William Clay with 70% in 2002. The 3rd district is Dick Gephardt's district. He won with 59% in 2002. The 5th district is Kansas City. Karen McCarthy won there with 66%. Those are all safe democratic areas. There is no question in the 1st and 5th districts. It will be interesting to see what happens in the 3rd district when Gephardt has retired. Over at the Arch City Chronicle they have an interesting breakdown of the 3rd district. The Republican, Federer, ran against Gephardt in 2000 and got 40% of the vote. Russ Carnahan won the primary, so will meet Federer in November. Carnahan is the son of Mel (former governor) and Jean (former senator). So having covered the four districts currently in Democratic hands, let's turn to the other five.
The 2nd district is a suburban, affluent district, where the republican, Akin, won with 67% of the vote in 2002. The 6th district in NW Mo elected the Republican with 63%. The 7th district, the Ozarks, sent Roy Blunt, the Majority Whip, to Congress with 75% of the vote. In the SE, Emerson won with 72% of the vote. The 9th is NE Mo, Hulshof won with 68%. All were incumbants. Results from CNN.
Some Poll Analysis
Watching the polls over at Real Clear Politics. From May and June, Bush was up by one or two points (and that lead seemed to be growing). The first three weeks of July, Kerry had a two or three point lead, but by the last week of July it was less than a full point. This was the week of the Convention. Begining in August, Bush has his one or two point lead back. In the most recent Survey USA poll, Bush was up one (with a +/- of 4%). So the question is, was July just part of the random variation within this +/- or was July a bump? Its hard to say, because other state polls don't show a similar pattern. Survey USA shows Matt Blunt taking the state house by five points, which clears the +/- by a point. Bond is a run-away winner getting 55% of the likely voters with 2% undecided, and 5-6% identifying "other." I think that reverse coat-tails are the new effect. So that I predict Bond and Blunt will help Bush.
One of the most interesting background results was this, "88% of Bush voters pick Bond." Given Bond's huge lead, who are the Bush-Yes, Bond-No people? Are they 9-11 Democrats? Looking at this another way, 82% of Bush supporters said they were voting for Bush, while 14% said they were voting against Kerry. Is this 9% Bush-Yes, Bond-No the same as the 14% who was voting against Kerry? If so, its probabaly a good sense of the 9-11 democrat. Likewise, 14% of Bush voters are voting for McCaskill for governor.
How many Bush voters could return home by November? Bush has more solid report. Of those voters who are certain who they will vote for (and the whole poll is of likely voters), Bush gets 50% and Kerry gets 46%. Of the merely probable, Kerry gets 55% and Bush 36%. Part of this can be explained by two phenomena. First, there are conservatives who are mad at Bush and are responding to pollsters for Kerry but will come back to Bush when the voting counts. They are sending a message. Second, conservatives tend to under-report in polling, especially in urban areas. Some of this Kerry softness can be explained by these. Another way to look at this is the voting-against column. Only 44% of Kerry respondants are for Kerry. 53% are just anti-Bush. One of the key third catagories in voting is the stay at home voter. Voters who are dissatisfied with both candidates are more likely to stay at home, even if they did appear to be likely voters.
Where is Bush strong demographically? Voters who know who they are voting for, males, voters 35-65, white and hispanic voters.
Where is Kerry strong? Probable voters, females, young voters, black and asian voters.
I've already mentioned political affiliation and the cross-tabs with other candidates, but I haven't mentioned independents. 53% support Kerry, and 39% support Bush. First, we should note that 89% of the survey responants, 573 out of 643 are certain who they will vote for. The other 70 are soft on their selection. 193 responants were Independents. 75 independents said they would vote for Bush. 102 independents said they would vote for Kerry. 1o said they would vote for someone else. 5 were undecided. There is 1 independent unaccounted for. By comparison, Blunt got 74 independents to 96 for McCaskill. Bond gets 88 independents to 86 for Farmer. Bond is a very popular Republican. So assume he has attracted every independent who would consider a Republican. That's 46% of independents. Keep in mind that 5% of so-called independents are actually partisans for 3rd parties. So an index of Bush's progress or failure might be this figure. he's at +1 with 39% of independents, with a maximum goal of 46%. If we attempt to test this by ideological self-identification, we get similar numbers. Conservatives support both Bond and Bush in similar numbers. Out of 259 conservatives, 204 support Bond, 207 support Bush. Out of 281 moderates, 115 support Bond, 84 support Bush. Bond has 41% of moderates, Bush has 30% of moderates. The gap here is slightly wider than independents, so it might well be easier to see progress. You'll notice the large number of conservatives who don't support the Republican. Missouri democrats tend to be conservative democrats. Check out Ike Skelton, Missouri Democrat.
Let's continue in the vein by looking at where a candidate's support comes from. Out of the 311 Bush supporters, 301 of them identified themselves as conservative, moderate, or liberal. So out of 311, 66.5% are conservative, 27.0% are moderate, and 3.2% are liberal. Out of 302 Kerry supporters, 288 identified themselves C, I, or M. So out of 302, 14.6% are conservatives, 61.3% are moderates, and 19.5% are liberals. So Kerry needs to capture Bush's moderates without giving up the same number of conservatives. Bush's ideal situation would be to go after moderate votes in such a way that it reveals how far left Kerry is. Since only one in eight Missouri voters is liberal, this is not the place to win elections.
Here's an interesting set. 54% of 100 likely voters with graduate hours are for Bush. 56% of 125 college graduates are for Bush. 55% of 178 likely voters with some college are for Bush. 41% of likely voters with no college support Bush. The previous month's Survey USA found a more more even match based on education, except for college graduates. The numbers for Bush in July were 44% for voters with grad hours (to Kerry's 43%), 57% of college graduates, 46% of some college (to Kerry's 47%), and 46% of no college (to Kerry's 49%). These number have a pretty wide margin of error. They figured for a sample of 100 it was +/- 10%. Putting them together, gives you a better sense in so much as it lowers the margin of error.
Watching the polls over at Real Clear Politics. From May and June, Bush was up by one or two points (and that lead seemed to be growing). The first three weeks of July, Kerry had a two or three point lead, but by the last week of July it was less than a full point. This was the week of the Convention. Begining in August, Bush has his one or two point lead back. In the most recent Survey USA poll, Bush was up one (with a +/- of 4%). So the question is, was July just part of the random variation within this +/- or was July a bump? Its hard to say, because other state polls don't show a similar pattern. Survey USA shows Matt Blunt taking the state house by five points, which clears the +/- by a point. Bond is a run-away winner getting 55% of the likely voters with 2% undecided, and 5-6% identifying "other." I think that reverse coat-tails are the new effect. So that I predict Bond and Blunt will help Bush.
One of the most interesting background results was this, "88% of Bush voters pick Bond." Given Bond's huge lead, who are the Bush-Yes, Bond-No people? Are they 9-11 Democrats? Looking at this another way, 82% of Bush supporters said they were voting for Bush, while 14% said they were voting against Kerry. Is this 9% Bush-Yes, Bond-No the same as the 14% who was voting against Kerry? If so, its probabaly a good sense of the 9-11 democrat. Likewise, 14% of Bush voters are voting for McCaskill for governor.
How many Bush voters could return home by November? Bush has more solid report. Of those voters who are certain who they will vote for (and the whole poll is of likely voters), Bush gets 50% and Kerry gets 46%. Of the merely probable, Kerry gets 55% and Bush 36%. Part of this can be explained by two phenomena. First, there are conservatives who are mad at Bush and are responding to pollsters for Kerry but will come back to Bush when the voting counts. They are sending a message. Second, conservatives tend to under-report in polling, especially in urban areas. Some of this Kerry softness can be explained by these. Another way to look at this is the voting-against column. Only 44% of Kerry respondants are for Kerry. 53% are just anti-Bush. One of the key third catagories in voting is the stay at home voter. Voters who are dissatisfied with both candidates are more likely to stay at home, even if they did appear to be likely voters.
Where is Bush strong demographically? Voters who know who they are voting for, males, voters 35-65, white and hispanic voters.
Where is Kerry strong? Probable voters, females, young voters, black and asian voters.
I've already mentioned political affiliation and the cross-tabs with other candidates, but I haven't mentioned independents. 53% support Kerry, and 39% support Bush. First, we should note that 89% of the survey responants, 573 out of 643 are certain who they will vote for. The other 70 are soft on their selection. 193 responants were Independents. 75 independents said they would vote for Bush. 102 independents said they would vote for Kerry. 1o said they would vote for someone else. 5 were undecided. There is 1 independent unaccounted for. By comparison, Blunt got 74 independents to 96 for McCaskill. Bond gets 88 independents to 86 for Farmer. Bond is a very popular Republican. So assume he has attracted every independent who would consider a Republican. That's 46% of independents. Keep in mind that 5% of so-called independents are actually partisans for 3rd parties. So an index of Bush's progress or failure might be this figure. he's at +1 with 39% of independents, with a maximum goal of 46%. If we attempt to test this by ideological self-identification, we get similar numbers. Conservatives support both Bond and Bush in similar numbers. Out of 259 conservatives, 204 support Bond, 207 support Bush. Out of 281 moderates, 115 support Bond, 84 support Bush. Bond has 41% of moderates, Bush has 30% of moderates. The gap here is slightly wider than independents, so it might well be easier to see progress. You'll notice the large number of conservatives who don't support the Republican. Missouri democrats tend to be conservative democrats. Check out Ike Skelton, Missouri Democrat.
Let's continue in the vein by looking at where a candidate's support comes from. Out of the 311 Bush supporters, 301 of them identified themselves as conservative, moderate, or liberal. So out of 311, 66.5% are conservative, 27.0% are moderate, and 3.2% are liberal. Out of 302 Kerry supporters, 288 identified themselves C, I, or M. So out of 302, 14.6% are conservatives, 61.3% are moderates, and 19.5% are liberals. So Kerry needs to capture Bush's moderates without giving up the same number of conservatives. Bush's ideal situation would be to go after moderate votes in such a way that it reveals how far left Kerry is. Since only one in eight Missouri voters is liberal, this is not the place to win elections.
Here's an interesting set. 54% of 100 likely voters with graduate hours are for Bush. 56% of 125 college graduates are for Bush. 55% of 178 likely voters with some college are for Bush. 41% of likely voters with no college support Bush. The previous month's Survey USA found a more more even match based on education, except for college graduates. The numbers for Bush in July were 44% for voters with grad hours (to Kerry's 43%), 57% of college graduates, 46% of some college (to Kerry's 47%), and 46% of no college (to Kerry's 49%). These number have a pretty wide margin of error. They figured for a sample of 100 it was +/- 10%. Putting them together, gives you a better sense in so much as it lowers the margin of error.
Thursday, August 19, 2004
Classical Education
In stark contrast to my previous post, the NYTimes has a great article on classical materials for education. A key sentence is this: "Wootton remains every bit as convinced of education's power to transform stunted lives. He has changed his tool of choice, however, from a mirror in which students see only reflections of themselves to a window that opens onto the rest of the world."
Indeed, the watchword of the blob (Bill Bennett's description of the educational establishment) is relevance, but what you so often get in fact is naval gazing. The subject of the piece, Kurt Wootton, understands that education isn't about adjustment, its about making sense of the way the world works. I am reminded of the elementary public school teacher I met who insisted that her school was existentialist. Uh huh. Someone wishes it were, perhaps. Existentialism is a fine frame of mind for college students, but younger people need a firm grounding in how the world works before they can begin to make sense of what it means. The classics which we are familiar with are all about how the world works. We remember Pythagorous for his explanation of who triangles work and tend to ignore his numbers-are-reality explanation of things. Of course part of the reason this is so, is that once most of the workings of the world were established, later generations would refer back to the ancients, rather than re-inventing the wheel. But to forget the foundations and to attempt education is peril, as the ancient learning has it, to attempt to build a house on a foundation of sand.
Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock.
Render unto all your students the learning of the Greeks, Hebrews, Egyptians, Chinese, Romans, Indians, and Babylonians. For they taught us everything we take for granted today. Such ignorance is like a blindness. Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? I'm on a parable role here. Knowledge of the ancients, whether focusing on the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, or casting your net widely, is the proper foundation of learning.
The Times writes, "Mr. Wootton, a disciple of the progressive educator Theodore Sizer, admits that it "feel strange in some ways" to have fared so well with an administration that emphasizes standardized testing and traditional pedagogy in its education policy. In part, federal officials say, ArtsLit has done well because of qualitative evidence that it has raised students' interest in reading and improved their public-speaking skills. "
As I have argued repeatedly here, standarized testing is a tool by the community to force the school back to the traditional curriculum. If you go back to it on your own, there is no reason to hold you to it with testing. The same is true with students. Students who engage with the subject out of interest need their evaluation to hone their skills, other students need the threat of evaluation to bother to make the effort. Teachers need to distinguish between the two and attempt to convert the second group into the first, but they need to make the distinction first.
The Department of Education of Rhode Island says, "This is an arts program focusing on many classic texts, which we certainly like," and "it has a rigorous evaluation in place. So we'll find out if the methodology works. And if it does, then we'll have a program we can share." What did I tell you? Teach the classics in rigorous fashion and they'll take away the high stakes.
In stark contrast to my previous post, the NYTimes has a great article on classical materials for education. A key sentence is this: "Wootton remains every bit as convinced of education's power to transform stunted lives. He has changed his tool of choice, however, from a mirror in which students see only reflections of themselves to a window that opens onto the rest of the world."
Indeed, the watchword of the blob (Bill Bennett's description of the educational establishment) is relevance, but what you so often get in fact is naval gazing. The subject of the piece, Kurt Wootton, understands that education isn't about adjustment, its about making sense of the way the world works. I am reminded of the elementary public school teacher I met who insisted that her school was existentialist. Uh huh. Someone wishes it were, perhaps. Existentialism is a fine frame of mind for college students, but younger people need a firm grounding in how the world works before they can begin to make sense of what it means. The classics which we are familiar with are all about how the world works. We remember Pythagorous for his explanation of who triangles work and tend to ignore his numbers-are-reality explanation of things. Of course part of the reason this is so, is that once most of the workings of the world were established, later generations would refer back to the ancients, rather than re-inventing the wheel. But to forget the foundations and to attempt education is peril, as the ancient learning has it, to attempt to build a house on a foundation of sand.
Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock.
Render unto all your students the learning of the Greeks, Hebrews, Egyptians, Chinese, Romans, Indians, and Babylonians. For they taught us everything we take for granted today. Such ignorance is like a blindness. Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? I'm on a parable role here. Knowledge of the ancients, whether focusing on the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, or casting your net widely, is the proper foundation of learning.
The Times writes, "Mr. Wootton, a disciple of the progressive educator Theodore Sizer, admits that it "feel strange in some ways" to have fared so well with an administration that emphasizes standardized testing and traditional pedagogy in its education policy. In part, federal officials say, ArtsLit has done well because of qualitative evidence that it has raised students' interest in reading and improved their public-speaking skills. "
As I have argued repeatedly here, standarized testing is a tool by the community to force the school back to the traditional curriculum. If you go back to it on your own, there is no reason to hold you to it with testing. The same is true with students. Students who engage with the subject out of interest need their evaluation to hone their skills, other students need the threat of evaluation to bother to make the effort. Teachers need to distinguish between the two and attempt to convert the second group into the first, but they need to make the distinction first.
The Department of Education of Rhode Island says, "This is an arts program focusing on many classic texts, which we certainly like," and "it has a rigorous evaluation in place. So we'll find out if the methodology works. And if it does, then we'll have a program we can share." What did I tell you? Teach the classics in rigorous fashion and they'll take away the high stakes.
Charter Schools
The NYTimes has been on a tear against charter schools. On Tuesday, they printed what the American Federation of Teachers handed them. Nice job of carrying water, guys. Rod Paige replied on the Dept of Ed website. The Times reporter who had handled the AFT folder two days ago responded with some misleading quotes.
Eduwonk has posted on the subject, observing, "most of the charters are new" and "charters tend to serve the most at-risk and struggling students." New schools need a shake-down, "so this data is better considered as baseline data rather than some sort of final evaluation." Serving the most at-risk and struggling students has two effects. One the one hand, shedding some of the toughest students will bouy the public school numbers, on the other hand, the charters are producing comparable numbers with those students. Though the Times claims there is a difference, and highlights that with a chart, the AFT analysis of the Dept of Ed data admits, "when one controls the grade 4 data for race it turns out there is no statistically significant difference between charter schools and other public schools." The Times intentionally states the opposite, and does so wrongly.
I detect a sleeper issue here that was mentioned almost in passing by Bill Bennett on his radio show this morning. The Times notes that charter schools are "hailed as a free-market solution ... to moribund public schools." They later note, as if its a bad thing, "Around the country, more than 80 charter schools were forced to close, largely because of questionable financial dealings and poor performance." Put out a hurrah. When charter schools fail, they get shut down. When public schools fail they blame someone else and demand more money. This is what free market solutions means. Not that a privatly run school is better (I'm not a fan of corporate schools, I'd prefer committed principals and teachers who share a vision to hang out a shingle) but that in a market place, success succeeds and failure fails.
Hardly surprising, the Center for Education reform has a different take on the data compared to the American Federation of Teachers and the faculty of teacher's colleges.
The NYTimes has been on a tear against charter schools. On Tuesday, they printed what the American Federation of Teachers handed them. Nice job of carrying water, guys. Rod Paige replied on the Dept of Ed website. The Times reporter who had handled the AFT folder two days ago responded with some misleading quotes.
Eduwonk has posted on the subject, observing, "most of the charters are new" and "charters tend to serve the most at-risk and struggling students." New schools need a shake-down, "so this data is better considered as baseline data rather than some sort of final evaluation." Serving the most at-risk and struggling students has two effects. One the one hand, shedding some of the toughest students will bouy the public school numbers, on the other hand, the charters are producing comparable numbers with those students. Though the Times claims there is a difference, and highlights that with a chart, the AFT analysis of the Dept of Ed data admits, "when one controls the grade 4 data for race it turns out there is no statistically significant difference between charter schools and other public schools." The Times intentionally states the opposite, and does so wrongly.
I detect a sleeper issue here that was mentioned almost in passing by Bill Bennett on his radio show this morning. The Times notes that charter schools are "hailed as a free-market solution ... to moribund public schools." They later note, as if its a bad thing, "Around the country, more than 80 charter schools were forced to close, largely because of questionable financial dealings and poor performance." Put out a hurrah. When charter schools fail, they get shut down. When public schools fail they blame someone else and demand more money. This is what free market solutions means. Not that a privatly run school is better (I'm not a fan of corporate schools, I'd prefer committed principals and teachers who share a vision to hang out a shingle) but that in a market place, success succeeds and failure fails.
Hardly surprising, the Center for Education reform has a different take on the data compared to the American Federation of Teachers and the faculty of teacher's colleges.
Blogs in the classroom
This article in the NYTimes is remarkably free of content. Correction. For those who already know about blogs, its remarkably free of content. As an announcement to those who live in caves that blogs are now in the classroom, I suppose it has something to say.
I'm still of the opinion that mailing lists (such as Yahoo Groups) are better suited to many of these purposes than blogs are. Teachers have a strong propensity to reach for the fashionable tool rather than the tool best adapted to the job. For example, "For teachers, blogs are attractive because they require little effort to maintain, unlike more elaborate classroom Web sites, which were once heralded as a boon for teaching." When web sites were the big thing, teachers flocked, now the vogue is for the blog. Mailing lists never had a vogue (its e-mail plus one other thing, too high a barrier) so they never became a pedagogical tool.
"In one blog entry, for instance, Ms. Poling asked her students what qualities they looked for when rating books for a statewide award. When several students responded that a book has to be creative and grab their attention, she posted a follow-up question asking them if they used the same criteria for both fiction and nonfiction books."
This thing must be a nightmare to read. This kind of query and response must be in the comments, where there is still no organization to the posts. As I think about it, the ideal form these schools may be looking for is the message board.
Its no wonder that technology doesn't produce the benefits promised. Teachers by and large doesn't use it very effectively.
Web sites: Good for one way flows of information, best use are for schedules, policies, requirements, announcements, all put together might be understood as a hyper-syllabus, with units organized by date, clickable for more in-depth information.
Mailing Lists: Good for information flows by communities, since one message not only goes to all, but is easily organized by date, sender, or subject. Mailing lists also have the characteristic that they are pretty insular. Unless efforts are made to publicize ways to view the archives, students can assume that their posts are not public.
Boards: Good for the same reasons as mailing lists, they function slighly different, but have no clear advantages or disadvantages in function. The main difference between these and mailing lists is that its much easier to make boards a place for public viewing. Boards are possible media by which students could maintain a portfolio viewable publicly. Boards are more easily connected to web sites.
Blogs: Like websites, blogs are better suited to the dissemination of information than they are to a conversation. Even with copious links, a blog doesn't support lend itself to a conversation without making it difficult to read all of the posts. Blogs don't strike me as nearly as useful as some of these other tools. Obviously its not because I'm not fond of blogs. Having students maintain their own blogs certainly won't hurt, neccesarily, but its not the best solution out there.
This article in the NYTimes is remarkably free of content. Correction. For those who already know about blogs, its remarkably free of content. As an announcement to those who live in caves that blogs are now in the classroom, I suppose it has something to say.
I'm still of the opinion that mailing lists (such as Yahoo Groups) are better suited to many of these purposes than blogs are. Teachers have a strong propensity to reach for the fashionable tool rather than the tool best adapted to the job. For example, "For teachers, blogs are attractive because they require little effort to maintain, unlike more elaborate classroom Web sites, which were once heralded as a boon for teaching." When web sites were the big thing, teachers flocked, now the vogue is for the blog. Mailing lists never had a vogue (its e-mail plus one other thing, too high a barrier) so they never became a pedagogical tool.
"In one blog entry, for instance, Ms. Poling asked her students what qualities they looked for when rating books for a statewide award. When several students responded that a book has to be creative and grab their attention, she posted a follow-up question asking them if they used the same criteria for both fiction and nonfiction books."
This thing must be a nightmare to read. This kind of query and response must be in the comments, where there is still no organization to the posts. As I think about it, the ideal form these schools may be looking for is the message board.
Its no wonder that technology doesn't produce the benefits promised. Teachers by and large doesn't use it very effectively.
Web sites: Good for one way flows of information, best use are for schedules, policies, requirements, announcements, all put together might be understood as a hyper-syllabus, with units organized by date, clickable for more in-depth information.
Mailing Lists: Good for information flows by communities, since one message not only goes to all, but is easily organized by date, sender, or subject. Mailing lists also have the characteristic that they are pretty insular. Unless efforts are made to publicize ways to view the archives, students can assume that their posts are not public.
Boards: Good for the same reasons as mailing lists, they function slighly different, but have no clear advantages or disadvantages in function. The main difference between these and mailing lists is that its much easier to make boards a place for public viewing. Boards are possible media by which students could maintain a portfolio viewable publicly. Boards are more easily connected to web sites.
Blogs: Like websites, blogs are better suited to the dissemination of information than they are to a conversation. Even with copious links, a blog doesn't support lend itself to a conversation without making it difficult to read all of the posts. Blogs don't strike me as nearly as useful as some of these other tools. Obviously its not because I'm not fond of blogs. Having students maintain their own blogs certainly won't hurt, neccesarily, but its not the best solution out there.
Monday, August 16, 2004
Bush describes a national sales tax as "interesting"
Fred Barnes suggested on the Beltway Boys that Bush was just floating the idea. That's probably right. A plan to replace the income tax with a consumption tax (H.R. 25) is supported by a large number of representatives. Its so much wiser to tax consumption over savings that its pretty much obvious as far as I am concerned. Kerry's comments reveal him either to be a staggering idiot, unaware of this pending legislation, or a lying demagogue who would prefer to scare voters rather than see the other side implement good policy. "John Kerry said Thursday that President Bush's musing about a national sales tax is an insult to financially struggling voters and would amount to "one of the largest tax increases on the middle class in American history."
Section 204 (& 302) provides for a monthly refund of $ 200 for everyone. Annually, that's $2400, or 26.7% of the poverty level. Given that the tax rate is 23%, its a tax exemption on the first 10,435 of spending with no taxation on savings, income, thereby advantaging work and savings, good things that they are. Today low income workers are taxed and get an annual refund. Under this plan, they'd get a monthly refund for what they spend. Frugal folks can avoid taxes until they spend.
In Federalist 21, Hamilton wrote, "It is a single advantage of taxes on articles of consumption, that they contain in their own nature a security against excess." Once again, Hamilton was right. He's easily on the short list of the most important founders. I'm reading the Chernow biography now.
Fred Barnes suggested on the Beltway Boys that Bush was just floating the idea. That's probably right. A plan to replace the income tax with a consumption tax (H.R. 25) is supported by a large number of representatives. Its so much wiser to tax consumption over savings that its pretty much obvious as far as I am concerned. Kerry's comments reveal him either to be a staggering idiot, unaware of this pending legislation, or a lying demagogue who would prefer to scare voters rather than see the other side implement good policy. "John Kerry said Thursday that President Bush's musing about a national sales tax is an insult to financially struggling voters and would amount to "one of the largest tax increases on the middle class in American history."
Section 204 (& 302) provides for a monthly refund of $ 200 for everyone. Annually, that's $2400, or 26.7% of the poverty level. Given that the tax rate is 23%, its a tax exemption on the first 10,435 of spending with no taxation on savings, income, thereby advantaging work and savings, good things that they are. Today low income workers are taxed and get an annual refund. Under this plan, they'd get a monthly refund for what they spend. Frugal folks can avoid taxes until they spend.
In Federalist 21, Hamilton wrote, "It is a single advantage of taxes on articles of consumption, that they contain in their own nature a security against excess." Once again, Hamilton was right. He's easily on the short list of the most important founders. I'm reading the Chernow biography now.
US to bring 70,000 troops home from Cold War deployments
Its about time. The Financial Times writes that 45,ooo will come from Germany. "The German reductions are expected to include the withdrawal of heavy army divisions the 1st armoured, based in Wiesbaden, and the 1st infantry, based in Wurzburg and the closure of 13 installations near the towns of Friedberg and Giessen. The air force will withdraw from Rhein-Main air base in Frankfurt and consolidate operations in Ramstein and Spangdahlem."
CNN or Fox News (I was watching both last night) reported that Rumsfeld wants them to shift toward a rapid deployment focus.
Its about time. The Financial Times writes that 45,ooo will come from Germany. "The German reductions are expected to include the withdrawal of heavy army divisions the 1st armoured, based in Wiesbaden, and the 1st infantry, based in Wurzburg and the closure of 13 installations near the towns of Friedberg and Giessen. The air force will withdraw from Rhein-Main air base in Frankfurt and consolidate operations in Ramstein and Spangdahlem."
CNN or Fox News (I was watching both last night) reported that Rumsfeld wants them to shift toward a rapid deployment focus.
Grand Inquisitor worried about infidels
EUobserver reports, "In an interview last week with Le Figaro magazine, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said that Turkey is "in permanent contrast to Europe" and that linking it to Europe would be a mistake."
"The German, who heads the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said that Turkey, which is a predominantly Muslim secular republic, should seek political union with Arab states and not with European countries."
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is the modern name of the Inquisition. Mostly Ratzinger goes around in public debates arguing the case for Catholic doctrine, which is a step up from trials with the forced confessions.
EUobserver reports, "In an interview last week with Le Figaro magazine, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said that Turkey is "in permanent contrast to Europe" and that linking it to Europe would be a mistake."
"The German, who heads the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said that Turkey, which is a predominantly Muslim secular republic, should seek political union with Arab states and not with European countries."
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is the modern name of the Inquisition. Mostly Ratzinger goes around in public debates arguing the case for Catholic doctrine, which is a step up from trials with the forced confessions.
Laura Ingraham back from Africa
She reports that foreign newspapers are such much more unamerican than our own media she is tempted to stop being so hard on US major media.
1) Laura needs to pay a little more attention to the global press. This is how you catch some stuff on the horizon.
2) Nixon said that the US press is liberal, but they are storyhounds first, so they'll cover stories of liberals in scandal too, they are just a bit more sensitive and forgiving. A perfect example is the scandal over the New Jersey governor who set up his adulterous lover in a state job for which the lover was unqualified. That's the real story, the fact that the governor is bisexual is a coincidence. See this CNN story. Their headline is "New Jersey governor quits, comes out as gay: McGreevey announces resignation after telling of affair." The quitting is news. The gay (he's married with children, I think bisexual is more accurate, but whatever) is just a big warning flag for the media to use kid gloves. He's not quitting because he had an affair.
3) Its no wonder the rest of the world is hostile. By coincidence, my previous post was on international trade news, and as I noted, the German version of the story supported the home team against the Americans. A great deal of foreign news is pretty outrageous. I'm generally more interested in figuring out what's going on rather than finding examples of crazy foreign news, but I do come across it from time to time.
She reports that foreign newspapers are such much more unamerican than our own media she is tempted to stop being so hard on US major media.
1) Laura needs to pay a little more attention to the global press. This is how you catch some stuff on the horizon.
2) Nixon said that the US press is liberal, but they are storyhounds first, so they'll cover stories of liberals in scandal too, they are just a bit more sensitive and forgiving. A perfect example is the scandal over the New Jersey governor who set up his adulterous lover in a state job for which the lover was unqualified. That's the real story, the fact that the governor is bisexual is a coincidence. See this CNN story. Their headline is "New Jersey governor quits, comes out as gay: McGreevey announces resignation after telling of affair." The quitting is news. The gay (he's married with children, I think bisexual is more accurate, but whatever) is just a big warning flag for the media to use kid gloves. He's not quitting because he had an affair.
3) Its no wonder the rest of the world is hostile. By coincidence, my previous post was on international trade news, and as I noted, the German version of the story supported the home team against the Americans. A great deal of foreign news is pretty outrageous. I'm generally more interested in figuring out what's going on rather than finding examples of crazy foreign news, but I do come across it from time to time.
Free Trade in the Sky
"The European Union has indicated that it would be ready to cut aid to Airbus, the world's biggest plane maker, if Washington were prepared to do the same for Boeing." Good news from EUobserver. Apparently, Bush commented on this on Friday and the EU said "we will if you will" regarding support for the aeronautical manufacturers. See also Forbes.com. Deutsche Welle has comments as well, but tend to feature American support for Boeing much more. As long as the preferences and subsidies end, I don't care who blames who for the current favoritism. The competition will be good for everyone.
"The European Union has indicated that it would be ready to cut aid to Airbus, the world's biggest plane maker, if Washington were prepared to do the same for Boeing." Good news from EUobserver. Apparently, Bush commented on this on Friday and the EU said "we will if you will" regarding support for the aeronautical manufacturers. See also Forbes.com. Deutsche Welle has comments as well, but tend to feature American support for Boeing much more. As long as the preferences and subsidies end, I don't care who blames who for the current favoritism. The competition will be good for everyone.
Saturday, August 14, 2004
Venezuela's Fake Democrat
Bernard Aronson has a good peice on Hugo Chávez: "Like former President Alberto Fujimori of Peru, Mr. Chávez represents a new breed of Latin autocrat - a leader who is legitimately elected but then uses his office to undermine democratic checks and balances and intimidate political opponents."
Bernard Aronson has a good peice on Hugo Chávez: "Like former President Alberto Fujimori of Peru, Mr. Chávez represents a new breed of Latin autocrat - a leader who is legitimately elected but then uses his office to undermine democratic checks and balances and intimidate political opponents."
Fisking the Indispensable Allies
Today the NYTimes published this editorial. Lets have a closer look.
"Iraq provides a textbook lesson for a superpower about the dangers of going it alone in the world, but the Bush administration seems to suffer from attention deficit disorder."
New York is a suburb of White Plains. Just because you write it, doesn't make it true. Repeating the fiction that the US is alone gets you a nomination to the truth challeneged. As of mid-July, the number of countries with troops in Iraq was 31. The number offering political support is larger still. Critics will note that US forces predominate. I remind them that the US represents about a third of military spending world-wide. Given that China and Russia are not on board, we are bound to predominate. If we are alone without China and Russia, we're alone most of the time. The other countries who seem to be able to keep us from being lonely are France and Germany, one of whom seeks as a matter of policy to oppose the US because they so miss the system of rival states under which they both did so very well between 1914 and 1945. France is fully deployed all over the globe in a large number of actally unilateral deployments, such as in the Ivory Coast and the Congo. In Afghanistan, Germany is the second largest provider of troops, comming in at a whopping 810. Today Germany has 6000 troops serving outside its borders and is more or less at its deployable limits. More than half of these troops are in Kosovo. Even if Germany and France were supportive of US policy in Iraq, they simply don't have the capacity to replace very many troops anywhere. Its simply true that we are not alone, and that our perponderance is a function of our greater capacity, not some kind of unilateralism. Unless your idea of coallition requires Russia and China.
"Some of its more hawkish officials are now pressing to confront Iran over its nuclear weapons development, regardless of whether America's main allies are convinced that diplomacy and inspections have been exhausted."
The distinction here is not between warlike hawks and peaceful doves, but hawks, who have keen vision, and ostriches, who hide their heads in the sand. As such, waiting for allies to become convinced that diplomacy and inspections are exhausted may be waiting for pigs to fly. It may never happen. Iran thumbs its nose at the big three (France, Germany, and UK) attempts to use diplomacy and inspections. In the midst of this, Iran even took UK Royal Marines captive. As I observed in late June, The Telegraph urged Blair to abandon the policy of rapprochement, coordinated with France and Germany, and shift toward the American position. Failed policies, even when based on pretty fantasies, are best abandoned. Iran wants a bomb and will build a bomb. One's choice is to accept it or prevent it. Attempts to convince them not to do so will prove fruitless.
"Nobody in Washington proposes invading Iran, but administration officials hint darkly about starting an effort to destabilize Tehran's clerical dictatorship."
It may well be that a change in regime driven by the most pro-American population in the Middle East and supported by a US administration is the most reliable way to prevent an Iranian bomb.
"Iran's ruling mullahs are justifiably unpopular. But unilateral American bullying is one sure way to rally flagging support for them among nationalistic Iranians."
I suppose that depnds on who, precisely is being bullied. Boris Johnson writing in the Telegraph observed, ""In deciding whether a country is suitable to wield nuclear weapons, you may think that its promotion of suicide bombers is not an encouraging sign." So when he asks, "on what grounds, exactly, should one country - no matter how powerful - be able to prohibit another sovereign state from acquiring a weapon that the government of that country may desire?" His answer is, " as soon as they have a full and functioning democracy, they can have the bomb that goes with it." Indeed there is quite a difference between bullying the tyranical, terrorist supporting mullahs, and the Iranian people. That's why a proper destabilization program supports the people against the tyranny. The Times seems to suppose we just start going off on Iranians.
"Stopping Iran from building nuclear weapons could eventually require strong, concerted international action. This is no time for Washington to strike out ahead of the allies whose active cooperation may well be needed in the months ahead."
Would that we lived in a world where strong international action condemned nuclear proliferation and supported those words with actions, rather than sales of nuclear proliferation materials. I'm talking to you, France, Germany, Russia, and China. Hmm, where have I seen this list before?
France: $1 billion in loans for the uranium enrichment plant at Tricastin. How is this investment repaid if the international community stops the project?
Germany: Considering sale of the German firm Sket Magdeburg, a machine tool manufacturer with their gas centrifuge and calutron production as well as other tools of weaponization.
Russia: Russian-Iranian nuclear accord which provides raw uranium, development of a uranium mine, and assistance building the Bushehr VVER-1,000MW reactor.
China: Besides just providing three research reactors in the mid-90's, China has provided technical assistance in plutonium enrichment and uranium mining.
source
Oh yeah, these are the key allies were need to keep from being alone. With friends like these ...
"Unlike Iraq's long-dormant nuclear weapons program, Iran's program seems to be moving steadily forward, and it has drawn sharp criticism from the International Atomic Energy Agency."
So did the genocide in Rwanda. So did the ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia. So did Hussein's gassing the Kurds. Boy, that sharp criticism stops international crisies cold.
"Tehran has defiantly proclaimed its intention to produce enriched uranium, which can be used in bombs as well as electrical-power reactors. Late last month it resumed building the centrifuges needed for such enrichment, ending a construction freeze it had agreed to earlier this year with Britain, France and Germany."
Enriched uranium can also be used as paper-weights, but that's not what Iran wants it for. When an oil rich country wants nuclear development, I don't think its because its looking for low-cost power. A gallon of gas was going for a dime this past spring in Iran. In the United States we pay about twice per kilowatt-hour for oil produced electricity as we do for nuclear, but we're not getting our oil as cheaply as its available to Iran. It costs billions to produce nuclear facilities and there is the storage problem. Given our situation, we don't build them any more. Is dime-a-gallon-Iran looking for energy or bombs?
"Though Iran seems to be staying just within the limits of what is allowed under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, it is positioning itself so it could withdraw from the treaty and make bombs once it has completed building the new equipment and has amassed enough natural uranium to begin enrichment. "
It should remind one of the German penchant for gliders in the 1930's. Airforce? What airforce?
"The three European allies, while harboring few illusions about Iran's intentions, believe that tough-minded negotiations still have a chance of producing positive results."
How can negotiations be tough-minded unless their is a willingness to act if you don't achieve your goals? Tough talk backed up by stern criticsm doesn't frighten nuclear powers. As I said above, you can either accept that they will build a bomb, or do something about it. The only point in negotiations is to convince Iran what the consequences of its actions will be and your willingness to follow through. If they don't respect your actions or your willingness to impliment them, you may as well be doing nothing. (See David Sanger's Aug 8th peice in the NYTimes on the success of diplomacy so far in thwarting the nuclear ambitions of Iran and N. Korea.)
"Until they conclude otherwise, they are unlikely to support any American request to impose coercive sanctions."
Perhaps the flight of pigs will convince them otherwise.
"European officials are awaiting the results of an I.A.E.A. analysis of traces of enriched uranium found on centrifuge parts in Iran. That analysis should resolve, among other things, whether the parts were contaminated elsewhere, before Iran got them, or whether Iran has already begun a covert uranium-enrichment program in violation of its treaty commitments. The agency will announce its findings next month."
Given that Iranian cleric, Rafsanjani has advocated nuking Israel its clear that the stakes for failure here are serious. One is given hope by statements by Iranian commentators that, "the destruction of the Jewish State would also means the mass killing of Palestinian population as well", as it signals an awareness of the sword of damocles that is nuclear weapons. Once that realization is widespread, as it became in Latin America several decades ago, nuclear weapons research ends.
"Continuing uncertainty over issues like this argue for giving Europe's diplomacy some more time, but not much."
Its an encouraging thing to see "but not much" but I fear a case of Zeno's paradox. No matter how dangerous the situation, will we always hear the refrain, "just one more envoy?"
"Neither Europe nor America can afford to wake up one day to discover that Iran is quitting the nonproliferation treaty and building weapons. If diplomacy fails, tough Security Council action will be required to head off such a move by Iran, and Washington will need the full support of its key allies then. It should be fully supporting their diplomatic efforts now."
Waking up to an Iranian bomb, as we saw with North Korea, is not a matter of if, but when. If we could be sure that the French and Germans would be willing to take tough action before it was too late (if ever), this would be a reasonable position. I think France and Germany will accept an Iranian bomb before they are willing do stop one. As such, this approach is doomed to failure. Since we "cannot afford" this prospect, at the very least we should play the bad cop to the European's good cop, and ultimatly need to be willing to take the mullahs to the alley and work them over with a rubber hose if neccesary.
Today the NYTimes published this editorial. Lets have a closer look.
"Iraq provides a textbook lesson for a superpower about the dangers of going it alone in the world, but the Bush administration seems to suffer from attention deficit disorder."
New York is a suburb of White Plains. Just because you write it, doesn't make it true. Repeating the fiction that the US is alone gets you a nomination to the truth challeneged. As of mid-July, the number of countries with troops in Iraq was 31. The number offering political support is larger still. Critics will note that US forces predominate. I remind them that the US represents about a third of military spending world-wide. Given that China and Russia are not on board, we are bound to predominate. If we are alone without China and Russia, we're alone most of the time. The other countries who seem to be able to keep us from being lonely are France and Germany, one of whom seeks as a matter of policy to oppose the US because they so miss the system of rival states under which they both did so very well between 1914 and 1945. France is fully deployed all over the globe in a large number of actally unilateral deployments, such as in the Ivory Coast and the Congo. In Afghanistan, Germany is the second largest provider of troops, comming in at a whopping 810. Today Germany has 6000 troops serving outside its borders and is more or less at its deployable limits. More than half of these troops are in Kosovo. Even if Germany and France were supportive of US policy in Iraq, they simply don't have the capacity to replace very many troops anywhere. Its simply true that we are not alone, and that our perponderance is a function of our greater capacity, not some kind of unilateralism. Unless your idea of coallition requires Russia and China.
"Some of its more hawkish officials are now pressing to confront Iran over its nuclear weapons development, regardless of whether America's main allies are convinced that diplomacy and inspections have been exhausted."
The distinction here is not between warlike hawks and peaceful doves, but hawks, who have keen vision, and ostriches, who hide their heads in the sand. As such, waiting for allies to become convinced that diplomacy and inspections are exhausted may be waiting for pigs to fly. It may never happen. Iran thumbs its nose at the big three (France, Germany, and UK) attempts to use diplomacy and inspections. In the midst of this, Iran even took UK Royal Marines captive. As I observed in late June, The Telegraph urged Blair to abandon the policy of rapprochement, coordinated with France and Germany, and shift toward the American position. Failed policies, even when based on pretty fantasies, are best abandoned. Iran wants a bomb and will build a bomb. One's choice is to accept it or prevent it. Attempts to convince them not to do so will prove fruitless.
"Nobody in Washington proposes invading Iran, but administration officials hint darkly about starting an effort to destabilize Tehran's clerical dictatorship."
It may well be that a change in regime driven by the most pro-American population in the Middle East and supported by a US administration is the most reliable way to prevent an Iranian bomb.
"Iran's ruling mullahs are justifiably unpopular. But unilateral American bullying is one sure way to rally flagging support for them among nationalistic Iranians."
I suppose that depnds on who, precisely is being bullied. Boris Johnson writing in the Telegraph observed, ""In deciding whether a country is suitable to wield nuclear weapons, you may think that its promotion of suicide bombers is not an encouraging sign." So when he asks, "on what grounds, exactly, should one country - no matter how powerful - be able to prohibit another sovereign state from acquiring a weapon that the government of that country may desire?" His answer is, " as soon as they have a full and functioning democracy, they can have the bomb that goes with it." Indeed there is quite a difference between bullying the tyranical, terrorist supporting mullahs, and the Iranian people. That's why a proper destabilization program supports the people against the tyranny. The Times seems to suppose we just start going off on Iranians.
"Stopping Iran from building nuclear weapons could eventually require strong, concerted international action. This is no time for Washington to strike out ahead of the allies whose active cooperation may well be needed in the months ahead."
Would that we lived in a world where strong international action condemned nuclear proliferation and supported those words with actions, rather than sales of nuclear proliferation materials. I'm talking to you, France, Germany, Russia, and China. Hmm, where have I seen this list before?
France: $1 billion in loans for the uranium enrichment plant at Tricastin. How is this investment repaid if the international community stops the project?
Germany: Considering sale of the German firm Sket Magdeburg, a machine tool manufacturer with their gas centrifuge and calutron production as well as other tools of weaponization.
Russia: Russian-Iranian nuclear accord which provides raw uranium, development of a uranium mine, and assistance building the Bushehr VVER-1,000MW reactor.
China: Besides just providing three research reactors in the mid-90's, China has provided technical assistance in plutonium enrichment and uranium mining.
source
Oh yeah, these are the key allies were need to keep from being alone. With friends like these ...
"Unlike Iraq's long-dormant nuclear weapons program, Iran's program seems to be moving steadily forward, and it has drawn sharp criticism from the International Atomic Energy Agency."
So did the genocide in Rwanda. So did the ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia. So did Hussein's gassing the Kurds. Boy, that sharp criticism stops international crisies cold.
"Tehran has defiantly proclaimed its intention to produce enriched uranium, which can be used in bombs as well as electrical-power reactors. Late last month it resumed building the centrifuges needed for such enrichment, ending a construction freeze it had agreed to earlier this year with Britain, France and Germany."
Enriched uranium can also be used as paper-weights, but that's not what Iran wants it for. When an oil rich country wants nuclear development, I don't think its because its looking for low-cost power. A gallon of gas was going for a dime this past spring in Iran. In the United States we pay about twice per kilowatt-hour for oil produced electricity as we do for nuclear, but we're not getting our oil as cheaply as its available to Iran. It costs billions to produce nuclear facilities and there is the storage problem. Given our situation, we don't build them any more. Is dime-a-gallon-Iran looking for energy or bombs?
"Though Iran seems to be staying just within the limits of what is allowed under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, it is positioning itself so it could withdraw from the treaty and make bombs once it has completed building the new equipment and has amassed enough natural uranium to begin enrichment. "
It should remind one of the German penchant for gliders in the 1930's. Airforce? What airforce?
"The three European allies, while harboring few illusions about Iran's intentions, believe that tough-minded negotiations still have a chance of producing positive results."
How can negotiations be tough-minded unless their is a willingness to act if you don't achieve your goals? Tough talk backed up by stern criticsm doesn't frighten nuclear powers. As I said above, you can either accept that they will build a bomb, or do something about it. The only point in negotiations is to convince Iran what the consequences of its actions will be and your willingness to follow through. If they don't respect your actions or your willingness to impliment them, you may as well be doing nothing. (See David Sanger's Aug 8th peice in the NYTimes on the success of diplomacy so far in thwarting the nuclear ambitions of Iran and N. Korea.)
"Until they conclude otherwise, they are unlikely to support any American request to impose coercive sanctions."
Perhaps the flight of pigs will convince them otherwise.
"European officials are awaiting the results of an I.A.E.A. analysis of traces of enriched uranium found on centrifuge parts in Iran. That analysis should resolve, among other things, whether the parts were contaminated elsewhere, before Iran got them, or whether Iran has already begun a covert uranium-enrichment program in violation of its treaty commitments. The agency will announce its findings next month."
Given that Iranian cleric, Rafsanjani has advocated nuking Israel its clear that the stakes for failure here are serious. One is given hope by statements by Iranian commentators that, "the destruction of the Jewish State would also means the mass killing of Palestinian population as well", as it signals an awareness of the sword of damocles that is nuclear weapons. Once that realization is widespread, as it became in Latin America several decades ago, nuclear weapons research ends.
"Continuing uncertainty over issues like this argue for giving Europe's diplomacy some more time, but not much."
Its an encouraging thing to see "but not much" but I fear a case of Zeno's paradox. No matter how dangerous the situation, will we always hear the refrain, "just one more envoy?"
"Neither Europe nor America can afford to wake up one day to discover that Iran is quitting the nonproliferation treaty and building weapons. If diplomacy fails, tough Security Council action will be required to head off such a move by Iran, and Washington will need the full support of its key allies then. It should be fully supporting their diplomatic efforts now."
Waking up to an Iranian bomb, as we saw with North Korea, is not a matter of if, but when. If we could be sure that the French and Germans would be willing to take tough action before it was too late (if ever), this would be a reasonable position. I think France and Germany will accept an Iranian bomb before they are willing do stop one. As such, this approach is doomed to failure. Since we "cannot afford" this prospect, at the very least we should play the bad cop to the European's good cop, and ultimatly need to be willing to take the mullahs to the alley and work them over with a rubber hose if neccesary.
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Holiday in Cambodia
"This is like Bush insisting that he flew an intercept mission with the Texas Air National Guard to repel Soviet bombers based in Cuba, and later stating that this event was “seared in his memory – seared” because it taught him the necessity of standing up against evil governments, such as the ones we face today." James Lileks in today's Bleat. The argument's Kerry has drawn from this incident are the core of his porfessed anxieties about such interventions as Iraq. Indeed, when you ask Kerry about Iraq he talks about Vietnam. Matthew Yglesias, on the Hugh Hewitt Show, argued that Kerry has embelished a story which continues to have a general truth about the folly of such conflicts. Hewitt makes the lawyers' mistake of assuming that dishonest once, dishonest always. As a historian I remind him that every factual claim has to be evaluated on its own merits. Hewitt goes too far trying to make this story do much work.
I go back to Lilek's read on the story. Kerry wants to tell a story about foriegn adventures. When that story turns out to be fabricated, not just embelished, one wonders not about Kerry's other statements, one wonders about the central message of foriegn adventures. This is a species of the worst case fallacy. In the worst case fallacy you present the most radical professor as a characterization of all of the professoriate, or you pick the most dogmatic Christian. Neither is a sound characterization because they are examples of the worst case. Kerry has taken the worst case scenario and juiced it up a bit. By doing this he not only presents a fallacious argument, but he builds it on factual errors. When both your premices and your inferences are unsound the argument can only be right by accident.
Mark Steyn, in the link I posted previous to this one, writes, "Look, I would rather talk about the war. The current one, I mean — not the one that ended three decades ago." Steyn is on to the core problem with Kerry's claims. Kerry is fighting the last war, and by the evidence, its a fantastic account of the last war too boot. There is a powerful irony here. Vietnam went as poorly as it did because the US Army fought the war in Vietnam they way they fought the Germans in WWII, not the way the Marines had defended allies around the globe from insurgent forces for decades. They drew on the wrong experiences taken from a previous war in order to form a template to fight the current war. Kerry wants to repeat that process now.
Given the important role given to the Marines, given the emphasis put on a transition to light units and small war operations, the person or people who seem to have the best understanding of things would be Rumsfeld and his people.
"This is like Bush insisting that he flew an intercept mission with the Texas Air National Guard to repel Soviet bombers based in Cuba, and later stating that this event was “seared in his memory – seared” because it taught him the necessity of standing up against evil governments, such as the ones we face today." James Lileks in today's Bleat. The argument's Kerry has drawn from this incident are the core of his porfessed anxieties about such interventions as Iraq. Indeed, when you ask Kerry about Iraq he talks about Vietnam. Matthew Yglesias, on the Hugh Hewitt Show, argued that Kerry has embelished a story which continues to have a general truth about the folly of such conflicts. Hewitt makes the lawyers' mistake of assuming that dishonest once, dishonest always. As a historian I remind him that every factual claim has to be evaluated on its own merits. Hewitt goes too far trying to make this story do much work.
I go back to Lilek's read on the story. Kerry wants to tell a story about foriegn adventures. When that story turns out to be fabricated, not just embelished, one wonders not about Kerry's other statements, one wonders about the central message of foriegn adventures. This is a species of the worst case fallacy. In the worst case fallacy you present the most radical professor as a characterization of all of the professoriate, or you pick the most dogmatic Christian. Neither is a sound characterization because they are examples of the worst case. Kerry has taken the worst case scenario and juiced it up a bit. By doing this he not only presents a fallacious argument, but he builds it on factual errors. When both your premices and your inferences are unsound the argument can only be right by accident.
Mark Steyn, in the link I posted previous to this one, writes, "Look, I would rather talk about the war. The current one, I mean — not the one that ended three decades ago." Steyn is on to the core problem with Kerry's claims. Kerry is fighting the last war, and by the evidence, its a fantastic account of the last war too boot. There is a powerful irony here. Vietnam went as poorly as it did because the US Army fought the war in Vietnam they way they fought the Germans in WWII, not the way the Marines had defended allies around the globe from insurgent forces for decades. They drew on the wrong experiences taken from a previous war in order to form a template to fight the current war. Kerry wants to repeat that process now.
Given the important role given to the Marines, given the emphasis put on a transition to light units and small war operations, the person or people who seem to have the best understanding of things would be Rumsfeld and his people.
The Wrong Candidate
Mark Steyn writes the following, "The one thing the Democratic Party owed America this campaign season was a candidate credible on the current war. The Democrats needed their own Tony Blair, a bloke who's a big socialist pantywaist when it comes to health and education and the other nanny-state hooey but believes in robust projection of military force in the national interest. "
Bullseye
Mark Steyn writes the following, "The one thing the Democratic Party owed America this campaign season was a candidate credible on the current war. The Democrats needed their own Tony Blair, a bloke who's a big socialist pantywaist when it comes to health and education and the other nanny-state hooey but believes in robust projection of military force in the national interest. "
Bullseye
Goods News from Philly
The Declaration of Beliefs and Visions in Philadelphia has been posted with comments, at Reform K12. Its good stuff.
The Declaration of Beliefs and Visions in Philadelphia has been posted with comments, at Reform K12. Its good stuff.
Monday, August 09, 2004
More Memories of Kerry's Service
Last week Hugh Hewitt said that conflicting accounts of Vietnam service would be meaningless unless some verifiable facts were identified that proved Kerry a liar. Presumably its pointless to prove Kerry detracters to be liars since they are running for no office and if lying are just noise. The Christmas in Cambodia story may well prove to be that verifiable Kerry lie.
They Kerry campaign seems to be dropping the ball. This could be a sign of some pesky statements bouncing back at the candidate, or it could just be a sign that the candidate is run by wind up toys. Which it is will break over the next week.
Instapundit has blogged on this, as has Roger Simon.
Last week Hugh Hewitt said that conflicting accounts of Vietnam service would be meaningless unless some verifiable facts were identified that proved Kerry a liar. Presumably its pointless to prove Kerry detracters to be liars since they are running for no office and if lying are just noise. The Christmas in Cambodia story may well prove to be that verifiable Kerry lie.
They Kerry campaign seems to be dropping the ball. This could be a sign of some pesky statements bouncing back at the candidate, or it could just be a sign that the candidate is run by wind up toys. Which it is will break over the next week.
Instapundit has blogged on this, as has Roger Simon.
Sunday, August 08, 2004
Memories of Kerry's Military Service
John McCain knows that any close investigation of specific events of anyone's military career will produce conflicting reports and memories of how things happened. Indeed any close investigation of any event, traffic accidents, the Kennedy Assasination, Kerry's Vietnam heroism will produce a new account for every witness that is identified. Inevitably, witnesses won't agree. Welcome to source criticism.
John McCain knows that any close investigation of specific events of anyone's military career will produce conflicting reports and memories of how things happened. Indeed any close investigation of any event, traffic accidents, the Kennedy Assasination, Kerry's Vietnam heroism will produce a new account for every witness that is identified. Inevitably, witnesses won't agree. Welcome to source criticism.
Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan
The very fact that I know the name of the Pakistani computer expert who was a US mole in Al Qaeda means that he's no longer a mole.
See Jim Dunnigan on the subject: Reading al Qaedas Encrypted Email
The latest Kuwait Times story on Khan: Pak hunts for two Africans linked to plots in US, UK
Captain Ed: Al-Qaeda Takes Body Blows, Shifting Direction
Most unpleasantly, the New York Times: Unmasking of Qaeda Mole a U.S. Security Blunder - Experts
They write, "Last Sunday, U.S. officials told reporters that someone held secretly by Pakistan was the source of the bulk of the information justifying the alert. The New York Times obtained Khan's name independently, and U.S. officials confirmed it when it appeared in the paper the next morning."
Tim Ripley, a security expert who writes for Jane's said, "It's not exactly cloak and dagger undercover work if it's on the front pages every time there's a development, is it?''
Indeed. The first cause here was some government official who said something he shouldn't. Do they have any more of those loose lips sink ships posters laying around? Maybe they should put a few up on the walls. The times is correctly reporting this as a blunder. The Times is totally silent on the effect its role has had in this fiasco. My take is, the official bludered, the Times is malicious. They knew what they were doing. First up against the wall when the revolution comes.
The very fact that I know the name of the Pakistani computer expert who was a US mole in Al Qaeda means that he's no longer a mole.
See Jim Dunnigan on the subject: Reading al Qaedas Encrypted Email
The latest Kuwait Times story on Khan: Pak hunts for two Africans linked to plots in US, UK
Captain Ed: Al-Qaeda Takes Body Blows, Shifting Direction
Most unpleasantly, the New York Times: Unmasking of Qaeda Mole a U.S. Security Blunder - Experts
They write, "Last Sunday, U.S. officials told reporters that someone held secretly by Pakistan was the source of the bulk of the information justifying the alert. The New York Times obtained Khan's name independently, and U.S. officials confirmed it when it appeared in the paper the next morning."
Tim Ripley, a security expert who writes for Jane's said, "It's not exactly cloak and dagger undercover work if it's on the front pages every time there's a development, is it?''
Indeed. The first cause here was some government official who said something he shouldn't. Do they have any more of those loose lips sink ships posters laying around? Maybe they should put a few up on the walls. The times is correctly reporting this as a blunder. The Times is totally silent on the effect its role has had in this fiasco. My take is, the official bludered, the Times is malicious. They knew what they were doing. First up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Monday, July 26, 2004
Thoughts on European thoughs on America
"Were these actions reflective of a society more serious, more thoughtful, than the one I’d left? Or did they reveal a culture, or at least a media class, that was so awed by America as to be flattered by even its slightest attentions but that was also reflexively, irrationally belligerent toward it?"
Bruce Bawer writes at the Hudson Review. A tip of the hat to Virginia Postrel for the link.
"Were these actions reflective of a society more serious, more thoughtful, than the one I’d left? Or did they reveal a culture, or at least a media class, that was so awed by America as to be flattered by even its slightest attentions but that was also reflexively, irrationally belligerent toward it?"
Bruce Bawer writes at the Hudson Review. A tip of the hat to Virginia Postrel for the link.
UN Human Rights Commission
Mark Steyn writes:
"The UN system is broken beyond repair. In May, even as its proxies were getting stuck into their ethnic cleansing in Darfur, Sudan was elected to a three-year term on the UN Human Rights Commission. This isn't an aberration: Zimbabwe is also a member. The very structure of the organisation, under which countries vote in regional blocs, encourages such affronts to decency.
The Sudanese representative, by the way, immediately professed himself concerned by human rights abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib."
A complete list of states represented on the UN Human Rights Commission is here. Milt Rosenberg writes, "Mark Steyn puts aside his usual ironic stance and offers up, in this article from today's London Telegraph, a true and deeply-felt, "j'accuse" directed at the cynical murderers in Khartoum. "
Mark Steyn writes:
"The UN system is broken beyond repair. In May, even as its proxies were getting stuck into their ethnic cleansing in Darfur, Sudan was elected to a three-year term on the UN Human Rights Commission. This isn't an aberration: Zimbabwe is also a member. The very structure of the organisation, under which countries vote in regional blocs, encourages such affronts to decency.
The Sudanese representative, by the way, immediately professed himself concerned by human rights abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib."
A complete list of states represented on the UN Human Rights Commission is here. Milt Rosenberg writes, "Mark Steyn puts aside his usual ironic stance and offers up, in this article from today's London Telegraph, a true and deeply-felt, "j'accuse" directed at the cynical murderers in Khartoum. "
Sunday, July 25, 2004
How People Make their Political Decisions
Victor Davis Hanson has a great article on how some people make their political decisions. Wanted to appear to be on the winning side, they mouth the words that are supported by the news of the past 48 hours. This is only possible with a lack of historical knowledge. When you study the most successful campaigns, indeed the more campaigns of any kind that you study, you see that they all involve setbacks, intelligence failures, moments of brutality, and failure. Victory does not involve perfection, certainly not of a mechanical sort whereby the campaign unfolds like a clock. War involves two sides seeking victory, attempting to thwart the other, hide its secrets, and so forth. If you fail to grasp this essential fact, you might be presuaded that the outcome of the campaign will most resemble the freshest news.
On the other side from those who have no anchor and who drift about on the most recent news, there are the ideologically committed. All across the political spectrum you will find them. Paleocons who opposed the war, neocons who support it, 9/11 democrats, the hard left and so forth. Some of these people may loose faith and join those whose support or objection follows the latest news, but many will hold fast to their long held convictions that the war is either good or bad. Note that its very hard to hold fast to convictions to be indifferent, that tends to devolve into reflecting the lastest news, although possibly without much enthusiasm either way. Hanson doesn't explore the neocons and 9/11 democrats who remain committed, he's looking at the left who is committed to our defeat. Those who want to relive the Vietnam War, or who use that war as a template for all wars, or who otherwise are fighting the last war. I say that because in miniltary history, fighting the last war is a common mode of analysis. Why did France loose so badly in 1940? They were fighting WWI. Why did the Americans have such troubles in Vietnam? They were fighting the war they prepared to fight, a war against the Soviets in Central Europe that they expected to look like WWII. The Army was, anyway, one can look to the Marines and their seperate experience of small wars, but I digress. In many ways, people have lined up on this war, not on the basis of the the merits, but on the basis of long held beliefs about the last war. The neocons see the last war as the Gulf War, and they think about what happened after the withdrawl of the Soviets from Afghanistan, and they focus on the missed opportunities to advance democracy. The left is still fighting Vietnam.
Hanson observes three problems with our remarkable victories in Afghanistan and Iraq. First, they were so swift that many enemies were not defeated, they were over-run. Like the Japanese soldier on some Pacific Island, the war continues. Second, the American observers who lack firm commitments based on historical knowledge, ideology, or the merits of the case, were flush after the victories and have since slinked over to the other side. Bill O'Reilly is the exemplar of this case. This creates a perception that everyone is turning against the war. Be on the lookout for a Cronkite moment, or perhaps its more like a series of mini-Cronkite moments. Third, the swift victories set the bar fantastically high for what American success looks like. Instant success without any casualties became the standard, and that's impossibly high. So our swift victory created the problems of undefeated Taliban and Baathists still resisting, and unsustainably high expectations from observers and standards, which make the reconstruction look like a failure by comparison, regardless of its actual status.
Hason figures that there is a committed 20% who oppose the war no matter what and a committed 30% who favor the war no matter what. My own guess is that this 30% is a combination of those who favor the war for ideological reasons and those who are committed to the merits of the case. This leaves a 50% block who lacks a basis for judging the merits, generally to be found in some kind of metaphysics, an understanding of how the world works. Two key bodies of ideas that could form such an understanding are a knowledge of history and a well formed ideology. So this 50% is ungrounded, responding to the lastest news, or the most clever observer.
Hanson's conclusion? "Brace yourself: In the next three months we are all in for the ride of our lives."
Victor Davis Hanson has a great article on how some people make their political decisions. Wanted to appear to be on the winning side, they mouth the words that are supported by the news of the past 48 hours. This is only possible with a lack of historical knowledge. When you study the most successful campaigns, indeed the more campaigns of any kind that you study, you see that they all involve setbacks, intelligence failures, moments of brutality, and failure. Victory does not involve perfection, certainly not of a mechanical sort whereby the campaign unfolds like a clock. War involves two sides seeking victory, attempting to thwart the other, hide its secrets, and so forth. If you fail to grasp this essential fact, you might be presuaded that the outcome of the campaign will most resemble the freshest news.
On the other side from those who have no anchor and who drift about on the most recent news, there are the ideologically committed. All across the political spectrum you will find them. Paleocons who opposed the war, neocons who support it, 9/11 democrats, the hard left and so forth. Some of these people may loose faith and join those whose support or objection follows the latest news, but many will hold fast to their long held convictions that the war is either good or bad. Note that its very hard to hold fast to convictions to be indifferent, that tends to devolve into reflecting the lastest news, although possibly without much enthusiasm either way. Hanson doesn't explore the neocons and 9/11 democrats who remain committed, he's looking at the left who is committed to our defeat. Those who want to relive the Vietnam War, or who use that war as a template for all wars, or who otherwise are fighting the last war. I say that because in miniltary history, fighting the last war is a common mode of analysis. Why did France loose so badly in 1940? They were fighting WWI. Why did the Americans have such troubles in Vietnam? They were fighting the war they prepared to fight, a war against the Soviets in Central Europe that they expected to look like WWII. The Army was, anyway, one can look to the Marines and their seperate experience of small wars, but I digress. In many ways, people have lined up on this war, not on the basis of the the merits, but on the basis of long held beliefs about the last war. The neocons see the last war as the Gulf War, and they think about what happened after the withdrawl of the Soviets from Afghanistan, and they focus on the missed opportunities to advance democracy. The left is still fighting Vietnam.
Hanson observes three problems with our remarkable victories in Afghanistan and Iraq. First, they were so swift that many enemies were not defeated, they were over-run. Like the Japanese soldier on some Pacific Island, the war continues. Second, the American observers who lack firm commitments based on historical knowledge, ideology, or the merits of the case, were flush after the victories and have since slinked over to the other side. Bill O'Reilly is the exemplar of this case. This creates a perception that everyone is turning against the war. Be on the lookout for a Cronkite moment, or perhaps its more like a series of mini-Cronkite moments. Third, the swift victories set the bar fantastically high for what American success looks like. Instant success without any casualties became the standard, and that's impossibly high. So our swift victory created the problems of undefeated Taliban and Baathists still resisting, and unsustainably high expectations from observers and standards, which make the reconstruction look like a failure by comparison, regardless of its actual status.
Hason figures that there is a committed 20% who oppose the war no matter what and a committed 30% who favor the war no matter what. My own guess is that this 30% is a combination of those who favor the war for ideological reasons and those who are committed to the merits of the case. This leaves a 50% block who lacks a basis for judging the merits, generally to be found in some kind of metaphysics, an understanding of how the world works. Two key bodies of ideas that could form such an understanding are a knowledge of history and a well formed ideology. So this 50% is ungrounded, responding to the lastest news, or the most clever observer.
Hanson's conclusion? "Brace yourself: In the next three months we are all in for the ride of our lives."
Friday, July 23, 2004
Problems with lawyers
Watching how lawyers are responding to the 9/11 Commission is troubling. Jeff Jarvis makes note that lawyers are part of the problem.
"Lawyers are necessarily a suspicious breed. They live by rules. They think in terms of us vs. them. They think contention. They argue for sport. They always think they can appeal to a higher authority. They aim for victory. They are patient.
All those traits have an impact on American society -- many or most of them not good."
Jarvis is making a broad point about society in general and is contrasting the lawyer world view to that of programmers. I'm interested in borrowing Jarvis' analysis on lawyers, looking at the 9/11 Commission and contrasting it with historians.
The lawyers I hear commenting on the 9/11 Commission, at least from the right, are making the argument that Wilson lied, Berger stole, Gorelick was judging her own policies, and Richard Ben-Veniste was a rabid partisan. Since it is a principle among lawyers that one's credibility tends to be established by one's least credible statement, they saw the Commission and its Report as thoroughly comprimised by these somewhat less than disinterested public servants. Hugh Hewitt has been especially lawyerly here. And the lawyers have conformed to Jarvis' analysis, suspicious, looking to rules of courtroom evidence, us vs them, argumentative, claiming that all of this is authorotative, seeking to win the argument, and I presume patient as well.
Historians are aware that all sources are full of bias. We know that Einhard did not write an objective account of the life of Charlemagne. That the historiography of Napoleon is strongly for or against. That the answer you get depends as much on the evidence you consult and on the questions you ask as it does on what really happened. We are not witnesses of the past, but have to rely on written accounts that are full of the author's own intent and understanding of events. But historians have a method. The historical method, developed during the Rennaisance and advanced in the centuries since, aims to get at the truth despite the presence of bias and the problem that 1st person accounts will tend to protect the interests of the author/speaker. I have a much greater level of confidence that I can read the 9/11 Commission Report and find useful knowledge than the lawers seem to. Its a product of historical rather than legal training.
Watching how lawyers are responding to the 9/11 Commission is troubling. Jeff Jarvis makes note that lawyers are part of the problem.
"Lawyers are necessarily a suspicious breed. They live by rules. They think in terms of us vs. them. They think contention. They argue for sport. They always think they can appeal to a higher authority. They aim for victory. They are patient.
All those traits have an impact on American society -- many or most of them not good."
Jarvis is making a broad point about society in general and is contrasting the lawyer world view to that of programmers. I'm interested in borrowing Jarvis' analysis on lawyers, looking at the 9/11 Commission and contrasting it with historians.
The lawyers I hear commenting on the 9/11 Commission, at least from the right, are making the argument that Wilson lied, Berger stole, Gorelick was judging her own policies, and Richard Ben-Veniste was a rabid partisan. Since it is a principle among lawyers that one's credibility tends to be established by one's least credible statement, they saw the Commission and its Report as thoroughly comprimised by these somewhat less than disinterested public servants. Hugh Hewitt has been especially lawyerly here. And the lawyers have conformed to Jarvis' analysis, suspicious, looking to rules of courtroom evidence, us vs them, argumentative, claiming that all of this is authorotative, seeking to win the argument, and I presume patient as well.
Historians are aware that all sources are full of bias. We know that Einhard did not write an objective account of the life of Charlemagne. That the historiography of Napoleon is strongly for or against. That the answer you get depends as much on the evidence you consult and on the questions you ask as it does on what really happened. We are not witnesses of the past, but have to rely on written accounts that are full of the author's own intent and understanding of events. But historians have a method. The historical method, developed during the Rennaisance and advanced in the centuries since, aims to get at the truth despite the presence of bias and the problem that 1st person accounts will tend to protect the interests of the author/speaker. I have a much greater level of confidence that I can read the 9/11 Commission Report and find useful knowledge than the lawers seem to. Its a product of historical rather than legal training.
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Jumping the Gun?
Watching CNN, and Anderson Cooper's poll today is "Do you agree with the conclusions of the 9/11 commission?" My question is, who knows what it says? I know what I have been told about it, but much of that information is inconsistent and contradictory, so I really have very little idea what the conclusions are themselves, just how various people want them spun. So I guess the real question being asked is, "Do you agree with what opinion leaders have been saying the 9/11 commission says?"
Watching CNN, and Anderson Cooper's poll today is "Do you agree with the conclusions of the 9/11 commission?" My question is, who knows what it says? I know what I have been told about it, but much of that information is inconsistent and contradictory, so I really have very little idea what the conclusions are themselves, just how various people want them spun. So I guess the real question being asked is, "Do you agree with what opinion leaders have been saying the 9/11 commission says?"
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Who Lied?
Instapundit is linking to Just One Minute, where the Wilson's CNN appearance is examined. Wilson wants to have his cake and eat it too. He claims in the interview that Niger was not involved in any uranium talks with Iraq, but he also claims that any errors or untrue statements attributed to him are, "either misquotes or misattributions." Lord Butler's report puts poor Wilson in quite a conundrum. Mark Steyn is describing Wilson as a serial liar, and as usual, the evidence is with Steyn.
Instapundit is linking to Just One Minute, where the Wilson's CNN appearance is examined. Wilson wants to have his cake and eat it too. He claims in the interview that Niger was not involved in any uranium talks with Iraq, but he also claims that any errors or untrue statements attributed to him are, "either misquotes or misattributions." Lord Butler's report puts poor Wilson in quite a conundrum. Mark Steyn is describing Wilson as a serial liar, and as usual, the evidence is with Steyn.
Monday, July 19, 2004
Jaw Dropping
AP is reporting that Sandy Berger removed highly classified terrorism documents and handwritten notes from a secure reading room while preparing for the 9-11 commission hearnings. He apparently concealed them in his jacket, pants, and portfolio. While the documents he concealed in his pants were obviously intentional, he claims that those placed in his portfolio were unintentional. What kind of panic motivates a former national security adviser to try and walk out with hand written notes of classified documents from the National Archive? This is stunning.
Hat tip to Hugh Hewitt for passing along this wire.
AP is reporting that Sandy Berger removed highly classified terrorism documents and handwritten notes from a secure reading room while preparing for the 9-11 commission hearnings. He apparently concealed them in his jacket, pants, and portfolio. While the documents he concealed in his pants were obviously intentional, he claims that those placed in his portfolio were unintentional. What kind of panic motivates a former national security adviser to try and walk out with hand written notes of classified documents from the National Archive? This is stunning.
Hat tip to Hugh Hewitt for passing along this wire.
Sunday, July 18, 2004
Libertarians and Social Conservatives
There is growing evidence of disaffection between Libertarians and Social Conservatives. Red State puts it just right when they observe, "If we were not at war right now, the pressures in the Republican Party would be much, much closer to the surface than they are right now ... particularly when Democratic foreign policy positions are not notably reassuring."
Given the presence of folks on the Left who have a cultural agenda, there are two common responces, get your government out of our culture, and rally around the cross. In the negative sense, they agree, neither want to see the cultural agenda of the Left imposed by a regulatory state. But, there are two problems. The Libertarians object to the impossion by a regulatory state, and could care less about the agenda itself. The Conservatives object to the agenda and are not particularly riled by the regulatory state. This distinction is obvious when talking about prayer in schools. Libertarians will reject both the multiculti-indoctrination and the state endoursement of prayer. Conservatives have no problem with the state nurturing a Biblical social order. The second problem should be obvious. Not only do they both disagree about where the problem is but should the Conservatives find themselves in a position to push their agenda, they will find the Libertarians are now in opposition.
My party preserving plan is Adamsian. Adams compared America and Britian and argued that state support undermined the individually found commitment possible in America. Certainly there was some state support for various churches in Adams day, but its a comparative argument. If the party adopts the Libertarian position, that the state will not be in the business of advancing or restricting anyone's cultural agenda's, religion will flurish, conservatives will avoid a backlash that goes with authority (no matter who has it), and culture will fade from political significance as its issues cease to be political ones.
There is growing evidence of disaffection between Libertarians and Social Conservatives. Red State puts it just right when they observe, "If we were not at war right now, the pressures in the Republican Party would be much, much closer to the surface than they are right now ... particularly when Democratic foreign policy positions are not notably reassuring."
Given the presence of folks on the Left who have a cultural agenda, there are two common responces, get your government out of our culture, and rally around the cross. In the negative sense, they agree, neither want to see the cultural agenda of the Left imposed by a regulatory state. But, there are two problems. The Libertarians object to the impossion by a regulatory state, and could care less about the agenda itself. The Conservatives object to the agenda and are not particularly riled by the regulatory state. This distinction is obvious when talking about prayer in schools. Libertarians will reject both the multiculti-indoctrination and the state endoursement of prayer. Conservatives have no problem with the state nurturing a Biblical social order. The second problem should be obvious. Not only do they both disagree about where the problem is but should the Conservatives find themselves in a position to push their agenda, they will find the Libertarians are now in opposition.
My party preserving plan is Adamsian. Adams compared America and Britian and argued that state support undermined the individually found commitment possible in America. Certainly there was some state support for various churches in Adams day, but its a comparative argument. If the party adopts the Libertarian position, that the state will not be in the business of advancing or restricting anyone's cultural agenda's, religion will flurish, conservatives will avoid a backlash that goes with authority (no matter who has it), and culture will fade from political significance as its issues cease to be political ones.
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Fighting the Wrong Fight pt3
Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Randy Barnett is summing up a debate between Richard Epstein and Stephen Bainbridge on the use of judicial review. This is a discussion of the kind of institutional arrangement that might lead to fruitful reform. Epstein wrote at the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), and Baimbridge replied on his weblog, including generous quotes of Epstein's article. Further, Epstein has a reply at Bainbridge's site.
As I reveal in pt 1 (just below), my sympathies are with the libertarian side here, specifically, "guarantees of individual rights [pushed] to their logical conclusion." However, I recognize the concerns of the social conservatives (advocating a majoritarian democracy) that this is dangerous with a radical bench and schools. These radical institutions put us in a give-them-an-inch- and-they-take-a-mile situation. While I am loath to enshrine a Christian view of marriage in law, I am drawn to the conservative argument which Russel Kirk makes in an excerpt by Bainbridge, "Constitutional restrictions, political checks and balances, adequate enforcement of the laws, the old intricate web of restraints upon will and appetite—these the conservative approves as instruments of freedom and order," because the will and appetites of those who would re-define the family appears infinite.
There is much truth in the conservative motivations which Bainbridge espouses, and it may be sufficient to win my support for the marriage amendment as a last resort to block the actions of radical judges. Nevertheless, the better solution is an attempt to forge a somewhat more majoritarian order, not to rely on stop gap measures like this one. The schools and the courts must be reformed to bring them more into line with the popular will. Once that has been accomplished, it will be safe to apply Epstein's principle, that "The path to social peace lies in the willingness on all sides to follow a principle of live-and-let-live on deep moral disputes." That's why the marriage amendment is the wrong fight. We need to re-establish an order capable of retraining overweening appetites, so that the greatest and most expansive liberty can be extended free from the fear that abuses of liberty will undermine the very social order that preserves it.
Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Randy Barnett is summing up a debate between Richard Epstein and Stephen Bainbridge on the use of judicial review. This is a discussion of the kind of institutional arrangement that might lead to fruitful reform. Epstein wrote at the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), and Baimbridge replied on his weblog, including generous quotes of Epstein's article. Further, Epstein has a reply at Bainbridge's site.
As I reveal in pt 1 (just below), my sympathies are with the libertarian side here, specifically, "guarantees of individual rights [pushed] to their logical conclusion." However, I recognize the concerns of the social conservatives (advocating a majoritarian democracy) that this is dangerous with a radical bench and schools. These radical institutions put us in a give-them-an-inch- and-they-take-a-mile situation. While I am loath to enshrine a Christian view of marriage in law, I am drawn to the conservative argument which Russel Kirk makes in an excerpt by Bainbridge, "Constitutional restrictions, political checks and balances, adequate enforcement of the laws, the old intricate web of restraints upon will and appetite—these the conservative approves as instruments of freedom and order," because the will and appetites of those who would re-define the family appears infinite.
There is much truth in the conservative motivations which Bainbridge espouses, and it may be sufficient to win my support for the marriage amendment as a last resort to block the actions of radical judges. Nevertheless, the better solution is an attempt to forge a somewhat more majoritarian order, not to rely on stop gap measures like this one. The schools and the courts must be reformed to bring them more into line with the popular will. Once that has been accomplished, it will be safe to apply Epstein's principle, that "The path to social peace lies in the willingness on all sides to follow a principle of live-and-let-live on deep moral disputes." That's why the marriage amendment is the wrong fight. We need to re-establish an order capable of retraining overweening appetites, so that the greatest and most expansive liberty can be extended free from the fear that abuses of liberty will undermine the very social order that preserves it.
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Fighting the Wrong Fight Pt 2
Called the Hugh Hewitt Show and gave a brief summary of the post immediately below. Hugh's response was that the structural problems can't be solved, the Marriage Amendment is the only practicable approach. That may well be true in this instance, since thorough going reform would take a long time. Nevertheless, if these out of step institutions are not made somewhat more responsive, than these kinds of fights are now a perennial feature of American society. Its not satisfactory to just accept constant discord over social issues where the preponderance of will is so one-sided, and where neither of the two contending political positions reflects the great mass of Americans. So, I contend that we must continue to explore the nature of desirable reform so that the will of the people is not thwarted by institutionalized power in the hands of radicals.
In a related note, Hewitt argued there was no long term solution, at least to the judge problem. "Its a republic, if you can keep it." Hugh reminds us of one of Franklin's last pronouncements. But the early republic was far more legislative than our current system. The legislature has given way to the courts and the executive over the last two centuries. I do not think that this is inevitable or unsolvable. I'd much rather be posting on an Amendment to tilt power back to the legislature than on one to address the symptoms of a larger problem.
Called the Hugh Hewitt Show and gave a brief summary of the post immediately below. Hugh's response was that the structural problems can't be solved, the Marriage Amendment is the only practicable approach. That may well be true in this instance, since thorough going reform would take a long time. Nevertheless, if these out of step institutions are not made somewhat more responsive, than these kinds of fights are now a perennial feature of American society. Its not satisfactory to just accept constant discord over social issues where the preponderance of will is so one-sided, and where neither of the two contending political positions reflects the great mass of Americans. So, I contend that we must continue to explore the nature of desirable reform so that the will of the people is not thwarted by institutionalized power in the hands of radicals.
In a related note, Hewitt argued there was no long term solution, at least to the judge problem. "Its a republic, if you can keep it." Hugh reminds us of one of Franklin's last pronouncements. But the early republic was far more legislative than our current system. The legislature has given way to the courts and the executive over the last two centuries. I do not think that this is inevitable or unsolvable. I'd much rather be posting on an Amendment to tilt power back to the legislature than on one to address the symptoms of a larger problem.
Fighting the Wrong Fight
My thoughts on so-called "gay marriage."
I have no problem with what arrangements people want to make for themselves, so that property is managed, significant others are recognized as such. So in that regard, civil unions is a no-brainer.
I am uncomfortable with an amendment to cast in stone a Christian definition of marriage, in a government which claims to welcome all ideas and peoples, including, non-Christians. In this regard, the best solution would be to take marriage entirely out of the hands of the state, give it entirely over to the churches, and leave in the state's hands only the civil union for all. Marriages would refer to the religious understanding, the civil union would refer to the state's understanding. Churches would regulate marriage, the state unions.
Social conservatives do have a point, however. The social understanding of the institution is critical because of the effect it has on children. The arrangements for raising children; for teaching children what is normal, or ideal, or functional; for giving children the best chance for a happy life is at stake. There is no one right way to raise children, and no ideal of companionate marriage should be imposed. Likewise, the traditional system is based on a wealth of experience and should not be cast aside for an alternate ideal of some "new definition of family." These issues should be promulgated by families, schools, churches, and communities in cooperation.
But, these institutions are not in cooperation. Social conservatives argue that judges take no account of the traditional understanding of the laws or customs of marriage, and push a radical agenda. That they do so trumping legislatures is troubling. Judicial oligarchy. Social conservatives argue that schools will take the most radical models of family and project them as normal. Anyone who has seen what schools have done with models of family to date will appreciate the potential for school-as-social-engineer.
The problem isn't that somewhere a gay couple wants to legally identify itself as a couple, nor is it that somewhere a social worker might find such a couple to be parents suitable for adoption. The problem is that no matter where Americans want to set the standard, radical judges will force a shift to the left, and that public schools will promulgate the most radical interpretation of the family. The problem isn't a gay couple looking for legal protections, the problems are our radical judges and public schools. That's where the efforts would be better spent.
My thoughts on so-called "gay marriage."
I have no problem with what arrangements people want to make for themselves, so that property is managed, significant others are recognized as such. So in that regard, civil unions is a no-brainer.
I am uncomfortable with an amendment to cast in stone a Christian definition of marriage, in a government which claims to welcome all ideas and peoples, including, non-Christians. In this regard, the best solution would be to take marriage entirely out of the hands of the state, give it entirely over to the churches, and leave in the state's hands only the civil union for all. Marriages would refer to the religious understanding, the civil union would refer to the state's understanding. Churches would regulate marriage, the state unions.
Social conservatives do have a point, however. The social understanding of the institution is critical because of the effect it has on children. The arrangements for raising children; for teaching children what is normal, or ideal, or functional; for giving children the best chance for a happy life is at stake. There is no one right way to raise children, and no ideal of companionate marriage should be imposed. Likewise, the traditional system is based on a wealth of experience and should not be cast aside for an alternate ideal of some "new definition of family." These issues should be promulgated by families, schools, churches, and communities in cooperation.
But, these institutions are not in cooperation. Social conservatives argue that judges take no account of the traditional understanding of the laws or customs of marriage, and push a radical agenda. That they do so trumping legislatures is troubling. Judicial oligarchy. Social conservatives argue that schools will take the most radical models of family and project them as normal. Anyone who has seen what schools have done with models of family to date will appreciate the potential for school-as-social-engineer.
The problem isn't that somewhere a gay couple wants to legally identify itself as a couple, nor is it that somewhere a social worker might find such a couple to be parents suitable for adoption. The problem is that no matter where Americans want to set the standard, radical judges will force a shift to the left, and that public schools will promulgate the most radical interpretation of the family. The problem isn't a gay couple looking for legal protections, the problems are our radical judges and public schools. That's where the efforts would be better spent.
Monday, July 12, 2004
Had Chevy Chase been commenting on politics in 1944
"I'm frightened by FDR, if you want to know the truth. He's a narcissist, as are we all. But, eh, he's managed to, ah, you know, form a few fascist kooks into a, ah, an entire world war, and I, ah, I don't trust him. I don't like him. And I think he's venal, and I just don't like him, for the record. I want him out. I want Norman Thomas in."
Hat tip to Hugh Hewitt for posting the transcript of Chase's yammering.
"I'm frightened by FDR, if you want to know the truth. He's a narcissist, as are we all. But, eh, he's managed to, ah, you know, form a few fascist kooks into a, ah, an entire world war, and I, ah, I don't trust him. I don't like him. And I think he's venal, and I just don't like him, for the record. I want him out. I want Norman Thomas in."
Hat tip to Hugh Hewitt for posting the transcript of Chase's yammering.
Senate Intelligence Committee Report
Bill Bennett was lamenting this morning the fact that the intelligence failures surrounding the WMD's (and I might add the post war estimates) might have the pernicious effect of raising the bar so high that we'll never be able to act until its to late to do so.
But I suspect this may not be so. There are two reasons for this. One is that I'm not floored by the intelligence failures. Knowing too well the history of war, serious intelligence failures are a dime a dozen. They are a subset of Clauswitzian friction. Another group of humans is trying to defeat our efforts, in this case hiding their secrets, and so to a great extent our efforts are cancled by theirs. Some things are easier to detect, and so we'll be right more often than wrong. A secret weapons program, however, is the type of thing that we'll be wrong about more often than not. For example, we had no idea of the Japanese warplane development through the 30's until the end of the war when we discovered the prototypes of quite advanced designs. Keep in mind that we had broken several Japanese codes and that the Second World War is generally a war characterized by intelligence successes. Had they been working on gas or biological weapons it would have been as much a surprise as our own atomic weapons had been to the Japanese.
Another point to be made here is that the extent of our intelligence failures is over-estimated. Perhaps the most famous example is the sixteen words Bush included in his State of the Union Speech in early 2003. Lord Butler's report (officially out in two days) is previewed in the Financial Times (registration required) this way: "People with knowledge of the report said Lord Butler has concluded that this claim was reasonable and consistent with the intelligence." As we look over the paperwork in Bagdad, we find that we over-estimated some threats and under-estimated others. Anyone whose tried anyting as simple as vacationing with a family of four will acknowledge that this is pretty much par for the course. While its true that we have a vast, expensive intelligence service, never forget that on the other side are people endevoring to keep their secrets secret.
The second point is the one made by John Podhoretz in his Post column. And that is that no one relied only on the WMD argument, and so the role of the intelligence failures are only a leg to one part of the argument. Consider, you want to drive to a friend's wedding, but encounter unexpected highway construction. Had you known about the contruction you still would have gone to the wedding, you just would have altered your decision making about whether or not to drive. As Podhoretz writes, "Those who supported the war, in overwhelming numbers, believed there were multiple justifications for it." For those who opposed, the WMD arguments were not persuasive as a cause of war when they accepted the arguments as true.
So the problem of the intelligence failures is one of methods, not one of justifications. We must seek to improve intelligence not in order to justify the next action, but to save lives and speed up the process. This is not to say that the intelligence failures didn't cost some supporters or won't raise the bar a bit the next time the intelligence is examined closely, but that this is a shift on the margins. The next case that needs to be made in the war on terror will find most of the same supporters and most of the same opponants.
Bill Bennett was lamenting this morning the fact that the intelligence failures surrounding the WMD's (and I might add the post war estimates) might have the pernicious effect of raising the bar so high that we'll never be able to act until its to late to do so.
But I suspect this may not be so. There are two reasons for this. One is that I'm not floored by the intelligence failures. Knowing too well the history of war, serious intelligence failures are a dime a dozen. They are a subset of Clauswitzian friction. Another group of humans is trying to defeat our efforts, in this case hiding their secrets, and so to a great extent our efforts are cancled by theirs. Some things are easier to detect, and so we'll be right more often than wrong. A secret weapons program, however, is the type of thing that we'll be wrong about more often than not. For example, we had no idea of the Japanese warplane development through the 30's until the end of the war when we discovered the prototypes of quite advanced designs. Keep in mind that we had broken several Japanese codes and that the Second World War is generally a war characterized by intelligence successes. Had they been working on gas or biological weapons it would have been as much a surprise as our own atomic weapons had been to the Japanese.
Another point to be made here is that the extent of our intelligence failures is over-estimated. Perhaps the most famous example is the sixteen words Bush included in his State of the Union Speech in early 2003. Lord Butler's report (officially out in two days) is previewed in the Financial Times (registration required) this way: "People with knowledge of the report said Lord Butler has concluded that this claim was reasonable and consistent with the intelligence." As we look over the paperwork in Bagdad, we find that we over-estimated some threats and under-estimated others. Anyone whose tried anyting as simple as vacationing with a family of four will acknowledge that this is pretty much par for the course. While its true that we have a vast, expensive intelligence service, never forget that on the other side are people endevoring to keep their secrets secret.
The second point is the one made by John Podhoretz in his Post column. And that is that no one relied only on the WMD argument, and so the role of the intelligence failures are only a leg to one part of the argument. Consider, you want to drive to a friend's wedding, but encounter unexpected highway construction. Had you known about the contruction you still would have gone to the wedding, you just would have altered your decision making about whether or not to drive. As Podhoretz writes, "Those who supported the war, in overwhelming numbers, believed there were multiple justifications for it." For those who opposed, the WMD arguments were not persuasive as a cause of war when they accepted the arguments as true.
So the problem of the intelligence failures is one of methods, not one of justifications. We must seek to improve intelligence not in order to justify the next action, but to save lives and speed up the process. This is not to say that the intelligence failures didn't cost some supporters or won't raise the bar a bit the next time the intelligence is examined closely, but that this is a shift on the margins. The next case that needs to be made in the war on terror will find most of the same supporters and most of the same opponants.
Friday, July 09, 2004
Virginia Postrel comments on defections
The dynamist herself comments on Jacob Levy and Andrew Sullivan and others who consider Kerry because Bush has ushered in a giant new medical entitlement, flirted with tariffs, and smiles at ag subsidies.
She observes that if dissatisfaction with the Bush economic policy bothers some on the right, Kerry is not the answer. Indeed her post is called the "Kerry Delusion." Postrel suggests that the flirtation with Kerry is fasionable.
Levy objects.
Postrel responds.
The dynamist herself comments on Jacob Levy and Andrew Sullivan and others who consider Kerry because Bush has ushered in a giant new medical entitlement, flirted with tariffs, and smiles at ag subsidies.
She observes that if dissatisfaction with the Bush economic policy bothers some on the right, Kerry is not the answer. Indeed her post is called the "Kerry Delusion." Postrel suggests that the flirtation with Kerry is fasionable.
Levy objects.
Postrel responds.
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
I'm ready to strangle somebody
Its been several hours since Kerry named Edwards as his running mate, and already I am ready throttle whoever has decided that they need to bash Edwards because he lacks foreign policy experience. I find this argument both intellectually dishonest and politicaly offensive. It intellectually dishonest because the former governor of Texas, and for that matter, Arkansas, California, and Georgia, didn't have foriegn policy experience. To attempt to deflect the question to Dick Cheney's experience, as Laura Ingraham ignore the fact that someone on the Dem ticket, Kerry, does have foriegn policy experience. He's no Dick Cheney, but to expect that you have to gave the foriegn policy experience of a Dick Nixon, a GHWB, or a Dick Cheney to run excludes a heck of a lot of candidates. Which leads me to my second reason for rejecting this argument, I find it politically offensive.
Its part of the American myth that anyone can grow up to be president. (By myth I mean that its a fundamental idea, regardless of its truth value. Obviously very few people will be president, but since men like Lincoln, Nixon, and Clinton rose from obscurity to become president, there is something to the notion that anyone could grow up to be president.) Under the theory of democracy, anyone can hold office. The Athenians really belived this. Most offices in Athens were allocated by lottery. That's a commitment to the capacity of every citizen. The Romans, on the other hand, had an office holding class, the patricians, but eventually allowed the rest of the citizens to decide which patrician would get elected. This theory assumes that some people are better suited to office than others, and the pool of candidates should be limited to some criteria.
As a classicist, I think there is a golden mean between these positons. Nevertheless, I think that anyone who serves a term of a statewide office, such as senator or governor, is eligable for consideration for the presidency. If the people want to consider someone seriously, I think that suggests that he person is qualified. Edwards was a Senator, so I think he's qualified to put himself forward for the highest office. Edwards ran a strong second in the primary, certainly that qualifies him to be veep. If you think he's not qualified, I have two words for you: Abraham Lincoln. Failed businessman, failed politician, some rank him as the top president. Edwards may very well fall short of Lincoln's stature, but the option to give him the chance belongs to the voters.
Its been several hours since Kerry named Edwards as his running mate, and already I am ready throttle whoever has decided that they need to bash Edwards because he lacks foreign policy experience. I find this argument both intellectually dishonest and politicaly offensive. It intellectually dishonest because the former governor of Texas, and for that matter, Arkansas, California, and Georgia, didn't have foriegn policy experience. To attempt to deflect the question to Dick Cheney's experience, as Laura Ingraham ignore the fact that someone on the Dem ticket, Kerry, does have foriegn policy experience. He's no Dick Cheney, but to expect that you have to gave the foriegn policy experience of a Dick Nixon, a GHWB, or a Dick Cheney to run excludes a heck of a lot of candidates. Which leads me to my second reason for rejecting this argument, I find it politically offensive.
Its part of the American myth that anyone can grow up to be president. (By myth I mean that its a fundamental idea, regardless of its truth value. Obviously very few people will be president, but since men like Lincoln, Nixon, and Clinton rose from obscurity to become president, there is something to the notion that anyone could grow up to be president.) Under the theory of democracy, anyone can hold office. The Athenians really belived this. Most offices in Athens were allocated by lottery. That's a commitment to the capacity of every citizen. The Romans, on the other hand, had an office holding class, the patricians, but eventually allowed the rest of the citizens to decide which patrician would get elected. This theory assumes that some people are better suited to office than others, and the pool of candidates should be limited to some criteria.
As a classicist, I think there is a golden mean between these positons. Nevertheless, I think that anyone who serves a term of a statewide office, such as senator or governor, is eligable for consideration for the presidency. If the people want to consider someone seriously, I think that suggests that he person is qualified. Edwards was a Senator, so I think he's qualified to put himself forward for the highest office. Edwards ran a strong second in the primary, certainly that qualifies him to be veep. If you think he's not qualified, I have two words for you: Abraham Lincoln. Failed businessman, failed politician, some rank him as the top president. Edwards may very well fall short of Lincoln's stature, but the option to give him the chance belongs to the voters.
Monday, July 05, 2004
Divisions on the Right pt. IV
Daniel Drezner takes notice of Jacob Levy's post (see below) on his problem's with Bush. He then goes on to quote Andrew Sullivan's recent post on "the looming Republican [civil] war."
My own sense is that Sullivan is over-stating the effect of divisions within a coallition. If contradictory, conflicting factions blew parties apart, the democrats would have exploded a dozen times by now. Parties have ways of managing diverse opinions. As Drezner notes, "it's telling that the Bush administration has decided to award prime time slots at the GOP convention to a lot of Republicans that have had strained relations with the White House. It's also telling that they've accepted." Bithead posted in the comments section of Drezner's blog that its, "mere wishful thinking on Sullivan's part." That seems pretty accurate to me.
Sullivan writes, "The FMA battle now looks more and more like an attempt by Santorum to identify Republican social moderates so he can use primary hardliners to challenge them in the future." Perhaps, but I think it looks more like an attempt to force Kerry to clash with the pro-gay-marriage forces in his own party, possibly sending them to Nader. If Bush makes enough of an issue of it, it may rally some parts of the base. The question of whether it can do so without alienating other parts of the base relies on how its done. Levy mentioned it by writing, "The President doesn't play a direct role in amending the Constitution and anyway I feel sure that the FMA will never pass." Likewise, I discount it as so much pandering, all fluff. Not the direction I would take, since I would just take the state out of the marriage business altogether, but no one is asking me.
Drezner thinks that a Bush win will salve party divisions: "Nothing eases internal party divisions like winning." Though he also suggests a loss will produce, "internecine conflict [...] bloodier than [Sullivan] projects." Sullivan is clearly unhappy with the influence of the Religious Right in Republican circles, as he wrote in the Sunday Times. Sullivan misses one key part in the telling of this story, however, the hostility toward faith by the Left, and more and more by the Democratic Party. The Dems, as Sullivan points out, once had Catholics, Southern Baptists, and Jews. They have lost nearly all of the faithful because of their absolutist position on abortion, their strict seperationist politics, and their approval at the purging of religion from public life.
Plenty of Republicans accept the need for legal, safe abortions, but they don't feel the need to be absolutists. Plenty of Republicans favor an accomodation of religion far short of Roy Moore and would defend the principle of seperation of church and state without the need to purge the seal of the county of Los Angeles of its mission past. As a result one party is more hospitable to faith than the other. That is something the Dems did to themselves. He concludes by writing, "The partisan fusion of politics with religion in this campaign is poisoning an already toxic cultural atmosphere. God help us if it makes its way onto the altar itself." I think its a long accomplished fact and is a legacy of the New Left, not the New Right.
Daniel Drezner takes notice of Jacob Levy's post (see below) on his problem's with Bush. He then goes on to quote Andrew Sullivan's recent post on "the looming Republican [civil] war."
My own sense is that Sullivan is over-stating the effect of divisions within a coallition. If contradictory, conflicting factions blew parties apart, the democrats would have exploded a dozen times by now. Parties have ways of managing diverse opinions. As Drezner notes, "it's telling that the Bush administration has decided to award prime time slots at the GOP convention to a lot of Republicans that have had strained relations with the White House. It's also telling that they've accepted." Bithead posted in the comments section of Drezner's blog that its, "mere wishful thinking on Sullivan's part." That seems pretty accurate to me.
Sullivan writes, "The FMA battle now looks more and more like an attempt by Santorum to identify Republican social moderates so he can use primary hardliners to challenge them in the future." Perhaps, but I think it looks more like an attempt to force Kerry to clash with the pro-gay-marriage forces in his own party, possibly sending them to Nader. If Bush makes enough of an issue of it, it may rally some parts of the base. The question of whether it can do so without alienating other parts of the base relies on how its done. Levy mentioned it by writing, "The President doesn't play a direct role in amending the Constitution and anyway I feel sure that the FMA will never pass." Likewise, I discount it as so much pandering, all fluff. Not the direction I would take, since I would just take the state out of the marriage business altogether, but no one is asking me.
Drezner thinks that a Bush win will salve party divisions: "Nothing eases internal party divisions like winning." Though he also suggests a loss will produce, "internecine conflict [...] bloodier than [Sullivan] projects." Sullivan is clearly unhappy with the influence of the Religious Right in Republican circles, as he wrote in the Sunday Times. Sullivan misses one key part in the telling of this story, however, the hostility toward faith by the Left, and more and more by the Democratic Party. The Dems, as Sullivan points out, once had Catholics, Southern Baptists, and Jews. They have lost nearly all of the faithful because of their absolutist position on abortion, their strict seperationist politics, and their approval at the purging of religion from public life.
Plenty of Republicans accept the need for legal, safe abortions, but they don't feel the need to be absolutists. Plenty of Republicans favor an accomodation of religion far short of Roy Moore and would defend the principle of seperation of church and state without the need to purge the seal of the county of Los Angeles of its mission past. As a result one party is more hospitable to faith than the other. That is something the Dems did to themselves. He concludes by writing, "The partisan fusion of politics with religion in this campaign is poisoning an already toxic cultural atmosphere. God help us if it makes its way onto the altar itself." I think its a long accomplished fact and is a legacy of the New Left, not the New Right.
Keeping an eye on discontent on the Libertarian Right
Jacob Levy on the Volokh Conspiracy weighs in on his Presidential fitness calculations. As I argued here, satisfaction on the right for Bush depends on how your prioritize policy. Levy is a Libertarian who has here to fore not voted for a major party candidate. So, he is somewhat outside of the point I was making last month. Nevertheless, he does reflect the dissatisfaction of the Right with Bush for not pursuing a certain parts of the agenda Bush seems to favor. We writes, "And, man oh man would I prefer to be supporting a pro-Social Security privatization, pro-voucher, pro-tax cut incumbent president who was serious about fighting the war on terrorism and democratizing the Middle East and who might appoint Supreme Court justices who would enforce a strict reading of the Commerce Clause." Further, he identifies what attracts him to Bush, as tax cuts, his hawkishness, and a desire not to find himself assisting certain parts of the Left. But, he is steeling himself for a Kerry vote because there is no Social Security privatization movement, no voucher effort, and the tax cuts are meaningless without spending cuts, and he believes the administration to be "terrible incompetent" all the while making decisons on political rather than policy grounds.
Its a serious set of charges. Its also further evidence that there are people on the Right (as Levy described himself) who are dissatisfied with Bush. My earlier consideration focused on social issue conservatives, which Levy certainly is not. He's on the libertarian side of the right wing, as his own policy wish list should make clear.
The question is, are we just watching the normal cross-over up close? I'm really only interested in the divisions on the right. I accept that there are plenty of pro-war democrats who will be crossing over. Ed Koch is only the most obvious example, a fellow who proudly proclaims he opposes Bush on everything except the war, and then affirms that the war is more important than everything else, so supports the President. Its certainly possible that these two groups simply are part of the normal crossover of any election. Its certainly possible that one group or the other will be substantially larger than the other. Some of this can be revealed by closely watching the polls and taking clues from certain responces, not just the summary numbers. Some of this will be revealed as the election nears. Some may require post election analysis.
I'll keep watching the dissatisfaction on the right, hoping to make some sense of it, as well as looking out to see if the left is up to anything interesting.
Jacob Levy on the Volokh Conspiracy weighs in on his Presidential fitness calculations. As I argued here, satisfaction on the right for Bush depends on how your prioritize policy. Levy is a Libertarian who has here to fore not voted for a major party candidate. So, he is somewhat outside of the point I was making last month. Nevertheless, he does reflect the dissatisfaction of the Right with Bush for not pursuing a certain parts of the agenda Bush seems to favor. We writes, "And, man oh man would I prefer to be supporting a pro-Social Security privatization, pro-voucher, pro-tax cut incumbent president who was serious about fighting the war on terrorism and democratizing the Middle East and who might appoint Supreme Court justices who would enforce a strict reading of the Commerce Clause." Further, he identifies what attracts him to Bush, as tax cuts, his hawkishness, and a desire not to find himself assisting certain parts of the Left. But, he is steeling himself for a Kerry vote because there is no Social Security privatization movement, no voucher effort, and the tax cuts are meaningless without spending cuts, and he believes the administration to be "terrible incompetent" all the while making decisons on political rather than policy grounds.
Its a serious set of charges. Its also further evidence that there are people on the Right (as Levy described himself) who are dissatisfied with Bush. My earlier consideration focused on social issue conservatives, which Levy certainly is not. He's on the libertarian side of the right wing, as his own policy wish list should make clear.
The question is, are we just watching the normal cross-over up close? I'm really only interested in the divisions on the right. I accept that there are plenty of pro-war democrats who will be crossing over. Ed Koch is only the most obvious example, a fellow who proudly proclaims he opposes Bush on everything except the war, and then affirms that the war is more important than everything else, so supports the President. Its certainly possible that these two groups simply are part of the normal crossover of any election. Its certainly possible that one group or the other will be substantially larger than the other. Some of this can be revealed by closely watching the polls and taking clues from certain responces, not just the summary numbers. Some of this will be revealed as the election nears. Some may require post election analysis.
I'll keep watching the dissatisfaction on the right, hoping to make some sense of it, as well as looking out to see if the left is up to anything interesting.
Sunday, July 04, 2004
Essay on Schools, Nerds, and the Social Pathologies of Students
Something of an object lesson on how the internet works, this. I started off reading the Volokh Conspiracy, in which Eugene questions the foundations of statutory rape laws. Find updates here, here, here, and here. The second "here" includes a link to Glenn Reynolds' Fox piece on our disfunctional schools and the resulting student pathologies. Over at Reynold's Instapundit, he has this post. In it, he included links to this essay, by Paul Graham on how school induced pathologies are a problem for nerds. There is also a link to Kimberly Swygert's site, Number 2 Pencil.
I have seen four theories. The envy theory, the puberty theory, the distopian theory, the distraction theory, and the awareness theory. The envy theory and the puberty theory are popular out there somewhere, but these reviewers here are not fond of them. I think they have some truth to them, but are very limited in their explanatory ability. Providing more explanation are the distraction and the awareness theories. The distraction theory, which is argued by Graham, is that bright kids have other interests that distract them from putting forth the effort to be popular. The awareness theory, which I heard argued at a presentation for parents of gifted children, is that bright kids are aware of things not known to average kids, and are thus thought to be weird, boring, or otherwise odd. There is a lot of similarity between the distraction and awareness theories, except that the distraction theory suggests that bright kids could be popular if they wanted to prioritize popularity over their other pursuits, while the awareness theory would require not only priority, but concealing their awareness as well. Both argue different things, so I distinguish between them. Both are limited to explaining why people who achieve success as adults were so often not popular in high school, but does little to explain the sex, drugs, or violence that are the more serious problems in the school.
The final theory is the distopian. Glenn Reynolds is mostly arguing the distopian theory, although it is also lurking right behind the curtain in Paul Graham's essay. The distopian theory argues that schools are environments that select for disfunctional behaviors. Reynolds cites the way society infantilizes adolescents, the way marketers exploit their leisure, and the peer socialization. Graham takes issue with the pointlessness of the time spent in school, from which flows an artificial society based on popularity. He points to analogs like prison and the idle rich. Graham writes, "Teenagers now are neurotic lapdogs. Their craziness is the craziness of the idle everywhere."
Its the distopian theory that carries the most weight the longest distance. It may or may not rise to the level of dominancem let's see what the critics of it can muster, but it can't be counted out.
Something of an object lesson on how the internet works, this. I started off reading the Volokh Conspiracy, in which Eugene questions the foundations of statutory rape laws. Find updates here, here, here, and here. The second "here" includes a link to Glenn Reynolds' Fox piece on our disfunctional schools and the resulting student pathologies. Over at Reynold's Instapundit, he has this post. In it, he included links to this essay, by Paul Graham on how school induced pathologies are a problem for nerds. There is also a link to Kimberly Swygert's site, Number 2 Pencil.
I have seen four theories. The envy theory, the puberty theory, the distopian theory, the distraction theory, and the awareness theory. The envy theory and the puberty theory are popular out there somewhere, but these reviewers here are not fond of them. I think they have some truth to them, but are very limited in their explanatory ability. Providing more explanation are the distraction and the awareness theories. The distraction theory, which is argued by Graham, is that bright kids have other interests that distract them from putting forth the effort to be popular. The awareness theory, which I heard argued at a presentation for parents of gifted children, is that bright kids are aware of things not known to average kids, and are thus thought to be weird, boring, or otherwise odd. There is a lot of similarity between the distraction and awareness theories, except that the distraction theory suggests that bright kids could be popular if they wanted to prioritize popularity over their other pursuits, while the awareness theory would require not only priority, but concealing their awareness as well. Both argue different things, so I distinguish between them. Both are limited to explaining why people who achieve success as adults were so often not popular in high school, but does little to explain the sex, drugs, or violence that are the more serious problems in the school.
The final theory is the distopian. Glenn Reynolds is mostly arguing the distopian theory, although it is also lurking right behind the curtain in Paul Graham's essay. The distopian theory argues that schools are environments that select for disfunctional behaviors. Reynolds cites the way society infantilizes adolescents, the way marketers exploit their leisure, and the peer socialization. Graham takes issue with the pointlessness of the time spent in school, from which flows an artificial society based on popularity. He points to analogs like prison and the idle rich. Graham writes, "Teenagers now are neurotic lapdogs. Their craziness is the craziness of the idle everywhere."
Its the distopian theory that carries the most weight the longest distance. It may or may not rise to the level of dominancem let's see what the critics of it can muster, but it can't be counted out.
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