"alleged insurging rebel militants of non-specific ideology"

Ah, Mark Steyn. He's not on my extreamly short blogroll for nothing.

Interestingly, he touches on an issue I made a few days ago about the intelligensia and wishful thinking. Steyn writes:

"I underestimated multiculturalism. After 9/11, I assumed the internal
contradictions of the rainbow coalition would be made plain: that a
cult of "tolerance" would in the end founder against a demographic so
cheerfully upfront in their intolerance. Instead, Islamic "militants" have
become the highest repository of multicultural pieties. So you're nice about
gays and Native Americans? Big deal. Anyone can be tolerant of the tolerant,
but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense frisson of pleasure
to the multiculti- masochists. And so Islamists who murder non-Muslims in
pursuit of explicitly Islamic goals are airbrushed into vague, generic
"rebel forces." You can't tell the players without a scorecard, and that's
just the way the Western media intend to keep it."

Indeed. Just like the academics, they have a way they want to interpret the world and they won't let the facts get in the way of that. So why is that? In this case, I think Steyn is right to attribute it to multiculturalism. People have trouble moving the particlular (metropolitan) to the general (cosmopoilitan) without becoming hostile to the parochialism of the particular. This is because people have a hard time with "and" and an easy time with "or". They don't like competing goods, and prefer a good/bad binary opposition. So when people move from metropoloitanism to cosmopolititanism, they frequently become hostile to the metropol. As such, by embracing the broader world, they become anti-American. For journalists, who aspire to be people of words and ideas, this means rejecting the American view of things, not so much that they root for the other side (such as some Leftists do - a habit picked up when there was a Soviet system to root for). So they seek neutral words in order not to take sides. Hence the "alleged insurging rebel militants of non-specific ideology."

There are two alternatives. One is the "and" position. All people are good, universalist yeah, and up with people, and America is good, wants these things in its words and deeds. Some people see the Iraq was as Americans against Iraqis, others see the Iraq war as Amerians with Iraqis against tyranny of various forms.

Another alternative is the "truth" position. In this case, you regard both American claims and other claims as just that, claims, and seek out the truth based on the best evidence. Further, you describe things as they are, regardless of who is pleased or displeased. You need a certain amount of sophistry to do this, because you need to hold all the competing ideas in your head as viable claims to be tested. To do this well you need to avoid impeaching the good evidence with the bad. For example, just because it is in figure X's advantage to say Z, doesn't mean Z isn't true. Second, you need to be able to recognize partial truths. Even if you are unwilling to say that Z is true, does X have a point? Is there some truth, a truth that may need nuance, but a truth that can't just be rejected. Too often the press reports government statements as if they were just claims absent any truth, or possessed of some unknowability. Then evidence is assembled to argue for the opposite point, even when that looks like special pleading to the informed.

Lileks on ElBaradei

"Let's look at Mr. ElBaradei's highlight reel: Completely whiffed the Libyan nuke program. Failed to notice that Iran had a secret nuclear program going for a fifth of a century. (You can hardly blame the U.N. types – it was secret, after all. I mean, it's not like you can barge in and say, "What's all this, then?") The IAEA also didn't have a clue about A.Q. Khan, the wannabe Bond villain who ran a nuclear Wal-Mart for rogue states. Mr. ElBaradei would have been better off sending Mr. Magoo to ferret out Mr. Khan's network; at least Mr. Magoo would have tripped over something."

Audible Althouse

These are some interesting podcasts. Clever, idiosyncratic, and worth listening to.

Bennett and the Babies

I came across William Saletan's human nature submission on Bill Bennett's statement about abortion and black babies. I think its clear that Bennett was proposing a straw man in order to knock it down. When you create a straw man, you mean it to get knocked down. He created a case against utilitarian arguments against abortion so obsene no one would be willing to cling to it. That is why he followed up with "ridiculous and morally reprehensible." People who took Bennett's straw man argument seriously are apparently unable to distinguish between the two. John McWhorter's line about this was, "Mr. Bennett, actually, was rejecting a possible defense of his own pro-life position. He was demonstrating thoughtful nuance. I assume that the rest of us, black and white, can too. " Jonah Goldberg offers "The former philosophy professor picked a hypothetical that he thought would make the horror of such utilitarianism obvious to everybody. [...] Bennett's real mistake was in thinking people would be mature enough to get it."

When the Intelligensia Wishes Upon a Star

LGF links to a piece in the Guardian that makes a familiar mistake. The author, a “leading black intellectual and anti-racist campaigner,” engages in some wishful thinking that the terrorists' campaigns are "struggles against poverty, against dictatorships and against foreign occupation." He's hoping for "a profound and desirable shift in the anti-imperialist struggles waged by the Muslim world: away from individual acts of terror, to mass, collective action that finds common cause with the anti-globalisation, anti-imperialist movement beyond it."

I've seen academics make the same mistake, interpreting the war on terror in terms of Marxist theory or some other Leftist template. Rather than interpreting the current events in terms of what I already knew (entirely) I looked at arguments being made by others, and found Marc Sageman and Fawaz Gerges. Their argument follows the ideas of the Salafi jihad through their development, debates within the movement, and getting to the current situation. I did have some applicable knowledge, since the nature of insurgency is something I look at. But what I knew applied mostly to what the coallition should do in responce, rather than being able to answer "why did it happen / who are they."

This failure by many on the Left to recognize the real nature of the Salafi jihad is not only a great analytical mis-step, but it has resulted in a few Lefties, possessed of clearer understanding, breaking with the rest. Christopher Hitchens may only be the more famous example. With this kind of thinking coming from the intelligensia, the whole Left is polluted by an analysis that is so wrong, its worse than useless, its dangerous. And as those like Hitchens and David Horowitz makes clear, this failure to understand means that the causes of the Left are most at risk. This "unholy allaince", as Horowitz puts it, is nothing short of an abdication of what the Left has believed in order to interpret the current situation according to those beliefs. Or to state it plainly, imagining that Islamist terrorism is not part of a fascist (or at least reactionary) attack on modernity, freedom, diversity, self-determination, but rather some kind of fellow traveling "struggle against poverty, against dictatorships and against foreign occupation." To believe that this imperialism of reaction is a Marx-compatable anti-imperialism is to get it exactly backwards. Neither the current pronouncements, the actions, or the history (the Afghani jihad was against Soviet athiesm in a Muslim land) of the Salafi jihad seems to have any influence.

Deciding Rightly

The NYTimes has a peice on American's lack of science savvy.

"American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century."

Folks on the left point to something like this as evidence that people cannot decide rightly. So many public issues involve science: "If you don't know what a cell is, you can't make sense of stem cell research." Of course many issues are the opposite. Many issues, such as which car you should drive, are such that experts cannot know what is best in your particular situation, and individuals are experts in such matters.

There are two issues here:
people are persuadable
a group full of people with imperfect knowledge can make decisions that are good enough

Because people are persuadable, when an object of knowledge moves from the realm of the well educated person to a political issue, we can explain the issue as evidence for our argument. This happens all the time with specific facts. While I do prefer that people understand the basic workings of physics, chemistry, and biology, but given that it is not so, I am content that people can be informed when an object of knowledge becomes a policy issue.

Second, the essense of democracy is that people can govern themselves, and that the best and brightest (aristocracy) are not required for governance. I am not a Jacksonian, suspiscious of the best and brightest, but am well aware of the dangers of too much confidence in the best and brightest. When you know you're right and the people reject your great ideas you have two choices, stand down and wait for them to embrace your ideas, or force it on them. If you stand down, you are a democrat, yielding to the will of the majority. If you impose, you are aristocratic (at best) and have two choices. When people resist, comprimise or repress. Too often, small minorities convinced of their ideological rightness have been willing to repress the majority to maintain their prefered policies. So, to conclude, I don't suspect the best and brightest, but I do suspect when they think they know better than the people.

American Elites

Instapundit describes it as "an elite problem." Michael Barone writes in USNews about the disconnect between America's elites and its populace. One could tease this even further, and distinguish between the cosmopolitan character of most elites, the concept of the revolutionary vanguard, and their attitude toward the people.

Elites have always been cosmopolitan, will ever be so. The question to ask is whether their cosmopolitanism is in addition to a strong Americanism, or whether its an either/or proposition. Barone's mention of FDR is an example of Americanism plus cosmopolitanism. (I suppose the proper parallel formulation here is metropolitanism and cosmopolitianism. Metropolitan refers to the mother city, and so has a meaning similar to patriotism, which refers to a fatherland.)

Elites often think that their job is to conserve the heritage and greatness of the society in which they are elites, but elites can also be strong advocates of progress. The Enlightenment was an elite effort, and large landowners in England were behind the second agricultural revolution. Above, I used the Lennist phrase, "vanguard of the revolution" and it was done as much to suggest elite change leaders as it was to suggest a leftist reconstruction of society. Part of the elite problem discussed by Barone is the Leftism of many elites. Their vision of America is substantially different from the people's (see next item), but what is pretty clear is that they seek significant change.

Elites can regard themselves as the first servants of a society, restrain themselves with nobless oblige, and have something of a paternalistic concen for the welfare and happiness of the people. The elites we are confronted with today, and which Europe has labored with, regard the people as incapable of deciding rightly and in need of leadership: what Lenin called the dictatorship of the proletariat. A tyranny in the name of the people lead by idealogues in contempt of the people.

We can certainly imagine an elite that is cosmopolitan, advocates progress, and regards the people as the reseviour of wisdom, greatness, and values encouraging change in society. Much of the history of America has seen an elite more or less cosmopolitan which had a deep faith in technology and technological improvement, even accepting unpredicatble social change as a consequence. A feature of the problem Barone identifies is the contempt for the people as ignorant, superstitious, and incapable of right understanding.

In discussions with people on the center left I have seen this notion of the people having been fooled by the Republicans, the need for slicker advertising, redefining the terms of debate, more telegenic candidates, and other issues of style rather that substance. It certainly reasonable for the Democrats to argue that the country is evenly split and that they just need to persuade people of the quality of their ideas, but too many on the left don't give the people the benefit of any belief in their ability to think for themselves.

Bennett and Credentials

Bill Bennett has been opposing Meirs on the basis of her lack of credentials, record, and intellectual gravity. Supporters have been making Jacksonian arguments that Meirs' character is right, and so she is qualified. Bennett however has been making weak arguments against the Jacksonians. I called the show and said as much, but it was clear by the end of it why. Bennett is himself too much of a Jacksonian to attack the assumptions of that kind of American. It seems obvious in hindsight that Bennett is a believer in character as a qualification for office, but in his opposition to Meirs he has relied on his Jeffersonian side. As such, the Meirs supporters might be described as "character only" and Bennett as "character plus". Contrast this to Dennis Prager's critique of character. Prager makes several attacks on a character only position. He points to the errors of good intentions. He identifies that there are people of good character who hold to bad ideas. For instance, he regards GHWB as being an excellent person and a poor president. Carter might even be a stronger example. For Prager, character is not a reliable guide to public performance. This can also tie into his public-private distinction. I think Prager likes good character, but regards it as much weaker as a qualification for right political action. This is why Prager can bring stronger arguments to bear against the character issue. Jacksonians are suspicious of sophistication, and Bennett is seeking sophistication. But the Jacksonians want character (and regard character as suficient) while Bennett wants character as well. So Bennett, who wants character plus, fails to offer a really good criticism of the character only argument.

Flu Pandemic

The CDC has a six phase description of pandemic, from phase 1) the disease exsists, but is not a serious risk, to 6) full blown pandemic. It appears we may be in phase 2

Phase 2: No new influenza virus subtypes have been detected in humans. However, a circulating animal influenza virus subtype poses a substantial risk of human disease.

Pandemic alert period
Phase 3: Human infection(s) with a new subtype, but no human-to-human spread, or at most rare instances of spread to a close contact.

Once we start hearing about human to human spread or mutations of a new subtype in humans, then we're up to stage 3. The Survival Manual suggests preperation well ahead of serious threats. Plan now.

Slate slips a shade closer to a Blog

There are blog things that can work well for an on-line publication, like Slate. Nearly all of them have embraced links, but Slate has started to put additional links below articles. These link to related articles by the same author, other authors, and other sites that cover the issue. TCS has a bar on the left side with some of the same stuff.

Hugh on Party

I first found Hugh Hewitt because James Lileks described him

Generally, I have been very happy with Hewitt, and through him, have discovered Dennis Prager, whom I also value. I did have a problem with Hewitt's "gang of seven" talk of purge back in may, but its good to see Hugh arguing for victory over ideology (the half a loaf is better than no loaf theory of politics). Stephen Bainbridge is typical of many whom I have seen, in numbers growing since victory in the Iraq War, who wants a full loaf and disparages the half he has won. I think that many such critics, have sound criticisms, in so much as their loaf is not as full as they desire. The problem is, there is no such thing as a full loaf. So the better question is, how much of a loaf is it reasonable to expect given my views and the present political climate. Further, when you find that your desired portion of loaf is too small, rather than attacking the politicians who operate in a given political climate, one instead should advocate for change in the political climate, not the politicians closer to your position and party.

I sympathize with Baimbridge in that without 9-11, I too would be unhappy. But those as conservative as Baimbridge, who attack Bush from the right should also understand that I would be opposing them from the center if they had sway. My priorities in politics start with foreign policy, move to economics, and then to domestic politics. As such, being right on Iraq and taxes, and being wrong on everything else counts for quite a lot for me.

One current critic, at least of the Miers nomination, Bill Bennett has argued that the SCOTUS is a great seminar. Therefore the person nominated must be capable of debate, rich of ideas, and able to advance the causes to which the nominating President's supporters seek such advance. This argument troubles me because the only cause I seek advanced in the court is that the court stops legislating. I want an irrelevant court which merely requires the actual legislature to fix its bad laws. I certainly do not want the court taking on an activism of the right. I want the court to simply ignore bad precident, not over-turn it. Let the court settle into a quietude as soon as possible. The rich debate should not take place in the Court, but first among the people, and second, in the legislature. It is Bennett himself, on TV, radio, print, and web, that advances debate. Let the Justices be mere technitians of the law.

Fellow Traveling

How does fellow traveling work? Take a look at this Anatomy of a Photograph. As you can see by this example, a fellow traveler is someone who is sympathetic to some part of a radical, generally communist, agenda, and overlooks those parts they might disagree with to advance the other part. Indeed, a fellow traveler often overlooks the disagreable part even to themselves.

McCaffery coming to Springfield

Barry McCaffery is speaking at MSU on Tuesday the 11th of October. The News-Leader includes his attacks on the Administration with a rebuttle from a MSU professor. Several related stories take the same defeatist tone. Here, Here, and Here. The last link, "Poll finds scant support...," seems to reflect the coverage. I wonder of one causes the other. If they both cause the other, we have a feed-back loop.

Trouble for Transformation

Defence Tech has a piece on problems implimenting transformation. It certainly appears that the solution is fewer armored vehicles and more personal armor. Of course some changes, shifting from divisions to brigades as core units, smarter weapons, better communications are already under way. Making units lighter is the area where troubles remain. Rapid deployment is the benefit, but the ability to stand up in a fight is threatened. I suspect that combat endurance will be achived by abandoning heavy technologies (armor and vehicles) and protecting troops with the lighter technologies, smart weapons, communications, tactics, and training.

More Renaissance Conference: reviews

Here is the schedule

Attended "The Shakespearean Stage" though I was tempted to attend "Art History, North and South" but ended up in Shakespear and stayed put. The most interesting paper was "Antitheatrical Tracts" because these issues, and as it turns out, these arguments are still with us today.

Attended "Classical and Humanist Influences in the Late Renaissance." Interesting, but all three papers were heavy on text analysis, such as comparisons of versions of Daphnis and Chloe, assumed qualities (in Bembo and followers) of particular word choices and patters, and so on.

The Museum Demonstration was nice. I've been there many times before, but the presentation was pleasing and informative. Its always interesting to have art de-coded.

Dinner was excellent.

The Plenary talk, "The Facetious Renaissance" was on humor, and focused mostly on how humor operated in the Renaissance with specific attention to how some things they found funny are not commonly funny now, and the reverse. The speaker's personality was strong in the choices made, but given the subject, that's inevitable.

I would have attended "Belief and Ethics in English Thought" but I visited friends the night before, and slept in.

I started Saturday off with "Art History, Images and Patrons." As a graduate student, I had given a gallery talk on the patronage of Marie de Medici of Reubens, and as far as art history goes, patronage and thertefore the political content of art, is the only place I am strong. The Sistine paper reader wasn't there, so we heard about sculpture pieces of St George and John the Baptist above doors, and related objects in Genoa. The speaker, Madeline Rislow of KU argued that Genoa's artistic heritage is undervalued, indeed almost dimissed, but this has more to do with the kinds of art created than the quality of Genoese art production. The second speaker gave a longish (45-50 min) illustrated biography of Alphonso V, Isabella and Ferdinand. It should have found a focus and stuck with that, but it was otherwise interesting. I am reasonably well versed in these figures and had some differences with the speaker, but otherwise enjoyed the paper.

"Faith and Last Things" was the end of the day, and was a very interesting session. The first paper was on a minor author's apocalyptic writings. The second was on the Roman Inquisition, in which the speaker, Jane Wickersham, argued that the Inquisition intended both the recovery of souls and the supervision of the wayward. The last paper was on Mary Magdalene and her use by early modern Protestants (mostly English) as a redeemded sinner. An interesting observation was that where Catholic works theology saw the Virgin Mary as the ideal model, Protestant grace theology saw Mary Magdalene as the ideal model.

More on Intel

Strategy Page has more on some of the same kind of thing I wrote about in the previous post, with specific interest in OPSEC (Operational Security).

Problems at the Pentagon

Andrew C. McCarthy has a good peice on some things wrong over at Defense. Its unfortunate that institutions operate this way, but as James Q Wilson and others have shown in their studies of bureaucracy, this kind of turf activity is as natural as breathing. I am not as familiar with the business literature, but I have seen the same kind of thing there too. Reasons can include glory seeking, empire building, worry that someone else will screw things up, or just being so accustomed to keeping secret information secret that telling someone, even another intelligence agency seems like the wrong thing to do. In business, refoming the old tired ways is so common that Dilbert makes sport of ridiculing the attempts to improve operations. Indeed the reforms are not a panacea, and often are as bad as the problem they are meant to solve. What one must keep in mind is that these shifts are not a question of better or worse, they are a question of shifting the costs around. Peter paying Paul. In its most general sense, one can choose to err on the side of keeping secrets, knowing that some analysis might fail because secrets were too secret; or one can choose to err on the side of analysis, knowing that some secrets might get out. Enter a new problem. When analysis fails, its normally never known to anyone. Does the CIA know where Vladimr Putin is right now? If they don't, the consequences are probabaly very small. Occassionally failures of this kind result in a Pearl Harbor or a 9-11. On the other end of the table is loose lips sinking ships. When secrets get out, its more likely to get noticed, and that means trouble for whoever should have been keeping that secret. So, under normal circumstances, there is a tendency to favor keeping secrets, because it avoids more routine and regular loss of secret information, even though it means occassional lapses in analysis that result in Pearl Harbors and 9-11's.

The US intelligence community used to have to operate with a very aggressive KGB attempting to winckle secrets out of it. The result was a tremendous emphasis on secrecy. Keep in mind all of this follows some spectacular examples of Soviet spies being discovered in American government. Al Qaeda doesn't have spies in the FBI or the CIA, but careless handling of information can still result in operational details or the names of moles (and one hopes we are developing them) getting into terrorists' hands. One example we may all remember is Geraldo Rivera drawing operational maps in the Iraqi sand. Ooops.

Nevertheless, it still appears that US intelligence is still too concerned with secrets at the expence of analysis, which means sharing intelligence with anyone who can help interpret it. This a cultural issue, because lessons have been learned in the intelligence community that go way back to before any of its current members were doing this kind of work. The CIA is over fifty years old, the FBI a few decades older, and Army intelligence, older still. Institutional memory makes an organization risk averse. Since there is more routine risk in sharing secrets than there is in keeping them, that's what intelligence organizations will default to, without strong leadership to do otherwise.

Analysis of British in Iraq

There is an interesting piece up at Belmont Club (new addy, blog got too big to publish) about British operations in Iraq.

How Evan Blew It

Evan Thomas has moved from being reputable to being disreputable because of his Katrina coverage. The fallacies involved in Thomas' coverage have become too burdonsome to excuse henceforth. The fundamental flaw in his coverage is of this kind: The President has characteristics x, y, and z; I am unsatisfied with the Federal responce to Katrina; therefore not only is the President responsible, but his characteristics x, y, and z are the cause of his poor performance. Thomas is now in the Paul Krugman catagory of partisan hacks, as far as I am concerned.

More Renaissance Conference

One of things that puts a little difference between me and the rest of those attending CRC this past weekend is our notions of what the Renaissance actually is. There were art historians, who have a very clear and quite useful sense in terms of art. For example, attention to details like fingers, attempting to portray a figure realistically rather than stylistically, interest in landscapes, and a preference for natual colors rather than expensive materials. The shift from International Gothic to Early Renaissance is clear and makes sense. Something new is at work. The same is true for literature. I am not in a position to describe what is different, but I have enough of a sense of then difference to accept that something new is going on. But for me, the new thing occuring, the thing that needs a name to distinguish it from that which happened before, concerns the nature of the state. For me, the Renaissance is a new era for the state which involves a new emphasis on Roman Law, Roman concepts of soveriegnty invested in a monarch, professional bureaucracies, and a seperation between the person of the monarch and the office of the monarchy. I also look to the new permanent diplomacy, the new structure of international relations, and the military revolution. For me, these are the markers of the Renaissance, not new arts and letters. Certainly I am aware of what the new arts and letters mean for the new thinking, and they are important, but aside from issues of patronage and the political uses of art, the items I have mentioned prove to be much better markers for the Renaissance in the areas in which I work. I probabaly ought to write a paper on this subject for the next time I go to this thing.

Price Gouging

The Missouri Attorney General, Jay Nixon, is on a bender against price gouging. Apparently, the Democrat belives he knows better than the market what the best price of gas is. He also proudly claims Nixon v Shrink, a case heralded on his website as reinstating "Missouri’s campaign contribution limits and cleared the way nationally for campaign finance reform. " This kind of paternalism, including censorship and price controls, is the kind of illiberal regulation of an otherwise free society that makes government the problem.

No Pork

One of Missouri's Senator's, Kit Bond, is good at bringing home the pork. His website frequently advertises what Federal dollars and programs he has brought home. There are various ways to position yourself as a representative of the people. One could advertise your spots on committees or chairmanships of same regarded as important to constituents. One could champion a few issues near and dear to the voters. Or, one can bring home the bacon. Kit Bond is invincible in Missouri, because he can win in Kansas City as well as Republican areas of the state. Looking at his press releases today, its the same as it ever was.
Bond honors hurricane heroes
$23 million for agriculture
Funds for Danforth Plant Science Center
$2.3 million for transportation in Columbia
Bond honored for supporting spending money for HIV/AIDS
Bond speaks to conference, advocates spending money on waterways and infrastructure
Bond keynotes at the opening of a bridge

Kit Bond's theory of government is to spend money to make the people happy. Because he's a Republican, he seems to view infrastructure projects as better than welfare, but he's a big government guy all the same. Tax and spend. He's a reliable Republican vote, but all of his own initiatives involve spending Federal dollars in Missouri. How much more valuable it would be if we had a Senator who championed things that would improve the lives of Missourians and other Americans without spending nearly so much money, such as the Fair Tax, Social Security Privatization, Military Transformation, repealing Campaign Finance censorship, supporting free trade, and otherwise advocating limited government in ways that show up in the press releases.

Conference

I returned yesterday evening from the Central Renaissance Conference in Columbia Missouri. It was very interesting, although since the period was a bit early for me and a lot of the presentations were literary, I was aware of being in a little over my head. There were four papers on Titus Andronicus, for instance. I saw a few people I knew- always a pleasure to renew contacts. I'll review the papers in a subsequent post, all were impressive, some were also interesting.

Since I'm not supported by any institution, I get no travel support and have to take off work to go to these, so I only attend the ones reasonably close to home. This means that I'll go to stuff that isn't in the heart of my academic area or period. I don't go very often, either, but it does a good job of re-connecting me to the values and culture of the acadamy. Being away, either in education or some other employment, carries a different culture and values. Its a sad statement that the culture and values of education and higher ed are so different and so often incompatable, but they are.

Since I participate on several academic mailing lists and do a lot of academic reading, its not so much the ideas of the academy I get back in contact with. Like the latter, I overheard one sustained anti-Bush rant by three literary types which wandered way off the path of sense and reason. I heard one of the participants give a paper, and it was well reasoned and contained solid evidence. Why its possible to abandon these standards in contemporary politics strikes me as very odd.

The Nature of Love

MSN Lifestyle has a piece on the two kinds of husbands. To my eighteenth century eyes, this looks like the distinction between Enlightened love and Romantic love. Using the MSN terms, it would seem that a marriage to Husband was the ideal in the early eighteenth cenury, and by the very end of the century and into the nineteenth, Boyfriend was the ideal partner. There is a missing stage, between Englightenment and Romanticism, was the Age of Sensibility, and love in this period is love of the soul mate, the abandoning of the rest of the world for a immursion in the couple. Its the most domestic love. It lacks some of the passion and fire of Romantic love, but none of the depth.

Clinton on This Week

Powerline has a dead on decription of Clinton's truth-challenged performance. John Hinderaker writes:

"Again and again, President Bush has tried to work with the Democrats as if they were loyal Americans first, and partisans second. He has treated Bill Clinton with a friendship and respect that, candidly, is disproportionate to Clinton's meager accomplishments. Again and again, the Democrats have rebuffed Bush's overtures and taken advantage of his patriotism and good faith. Clinton's politically-motivated tissue of lies and distortions is just the latest example out of many. But it is unprecedented, coming from a former President. That is a sad thing: the latest wound inflicted on the body politic by the Democratic Party."

German Elections

Its still being described as a tie, in so much as we don't know who will be Chancellor. Checking out the history of elections in Germany (here) you can see how things have changed in the past decade or so. From market liberalism to socialism. Go Free Democrats!

Home Made Software Upgrades

Those who take a regular look at Jeff Jarvis' site have no doubt noticed the discussions of how products that are out there are now being improved by consumers and the ideas and techniques disseminated by internet. I've been over at the boards for Imperial Glory (see previous post) and players are updating and improving the look for their favorite countries as well as improving things like the way smoke works. Value added indeed.

My "main" computer has been in the shop all week. My CD drive died, and I elected to upgrade to a DVD drive. I also added 80 gig of HD goodness. My other compluter is dedicated to video and doesn't allow me much time to use it for amusements. I tried to install my new Napoleonic war game (Imperial Glory) but it won't work with Intel video chipsets. I tried the fix on their tech site, but it didn't work. So far its still installed on my video machine, but that means I have yet played the game only once. Well, I once again have a computer I can actually use, rather than just having one that renders video all day long.

Too Naive?

The neo-neocon posts on the motives of the soft-left and center-left, and then concludes by wonder if she is too naive or giving too much benefit of the doubt. I say that she is not. The left regards the right as bad people because they don't try and get to know people on the right, or Republicans. If they did, they would continue to disagree with them, but they couldn't regard them as bad people. It is by knowing people on both sides that makes it easy to disagree in a honorable way that assumes that the other side has different ideas, but are essentally good people with different values, and hence advocate different policies. The other side can be way off on a few things, but mostly they are just applying a different set of first principles. On both the far right and the far left are those who can't do this and end up regarding even people on their own side as comprimised and unworthy, let alone people on the other side. Such extremists are almost always nuts.

Keeping in touch with people who know the other side, either because of personal experience, or because they sit on the other side, is valuable. Hating people who are bad is neccesary, hating good people because you mistakenly think they are bad is itself bad.

More on Pacification

Last week I made mention of Robert Kaplan's artical, Imperial Grunts. A few days ago, the LA Times ran a story on the improvements in Sadr City that makes some of the same points.

The Classical Academy

Number 2 Pencil links to The Classical Academy in Colorado Spring as a reference on the value of memorization of foundational information. I have at various times looked forward to school choice as a source of just such a school with a classically inspired curriculum. The website is impressive and its sources and inspirations are classically grounded. I wonder how much of a classical curriculum it has. I see two years of world literature, in addition to 9th grade English and one year of American. I hope that this is a Great Books approach based heavily on the work of classical and classically influenced works, light on modernism, romanticism, and other 19th and 20th century works, except where merit is overwhelming and to juxtapose how such works are not classical. I would rather students read one too many plays of Sophocles than one too many modern novels. There are three required semesters of world history and geography, followed by a year of American history and a year of Civics. This would appear to support my social studies curriculum with a semester of the Greeks, a semester of the Romans, a semester of English history all building to a knowledge of the Founding and the ideas which are essential to a knowledge of the American experiment. I would cover the rest of world history in an 8th semester.

Regarding character education, my own preference would be for an Aristotelian approach. I see that they integrate character education rather than making it a seperate study. This is the correct approach. Their basic statement in this area is: “We will demonstrate the virtues of integrity, honesty, respect and responsibility, upholding others to that standard.” I was at first given pause when I read the following, "A classroom dialogue which resembles situational ethics is also discouraged. Therefore teachers are encouraged to resist the temptation to create artificial moral dilemmas for students which pit character traits against each other (e. g. family loyalty vs. honesty). " Immediatly the importance of competing values got my back up. Aristotle's middle path is only complete by understanding that an excess of loyalty can lead to the kind of blindness that was characteristic of the US Grant administration. Then I continued to read, "However, issues in history can provide an appropriate place for students to explore the meaning of responsible judgment and action, and to study events that involved complex ethical issues. " Yes! It is indeed better to confine conflicting values to historical examination rather than conjectural situations because in historical examples, the consequences are natural, and not supposed by the author of the dilemma. As in my example of Grant, the specific problems of Grant's loyalty and his assumption of the honesty of his officials are factual. In a hypothetical, the right balance can be struck according to the aesthetics of the author, but in a historical situation, it is the nature of things that governs what is and what is not. This preference for the empirical over the rational pleases your humble author.

They have a nice page of recomended books. I clicked and picked up three of them.

Learning Curve

A very good post at EagleSpeak on learning from Katrina.

Why do academics lack the ability to apply their academic methods to news items?

As I follow the responce of Katrina on academic lists, I am shocked by the fact that so called scholars fail to employ elemental methods, such as source criticism, let alone a general thoughtfulness. As I learned various methods of seperating reliable from unreliable information, the historical method, the scientific method, the quantitative method, and so on, I regarded these as useful for distinguishing between reliable and unreliable information. Apparently, this is not typical. It seems that not only do many academics only apply their method to their narrow field, and use wishful thinking for everything else, but most other academics don't seem bothered enough to call them on it.

Divisions between Liberals and Conservatives

A good piece on the divsisions in the Republican Party between its liberal and conservative wings.

A Strategy for the War on Terror

My own view, based on my study of history from Suchet to Vietnam is that the proper style of war for the War on Terror is counter-insurgency. As such, I am troubled by Bill Bennet's, Bill Kristol's, and others' call for a more aggressive posture in the war on terror. These statements strike me as too much Westmoreland. General William Westmoreland once replied in a press conference that his strategy for counter-insurgency was firepower. His attrition strategy is largely responsible for making the Vietnam war a costly and unpopular war. Aggressive search and destroy missions ripped up the North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies, but at too great a cost in American lives. The rival strategies advocated by Lewis Walt, Sir Robert Thompson, Victor Krulak, William Colby and John Paul Vann strike me a much closer to the right approach. You can read about the basics of this approach as advocated by the Marines here and here.

In this month's Atlantic, Robert Kaplan has a great article called Imperial Grunts. Kaplan is right on and puts his analysis right up front in the very first sentences. He draws the right lessons from our various small wars, notes the Small Wars Manual, and demonstrates the success of unconventional warfare approach of the Special Forces.

Bennett has an axiom which states that you are either on offence or defense. And its clear that one does not win on the defensive. If, according to the principles of conventional war, the object is to defeat the enemy in battle and break his will to fight, being on the offensive is pretty strait forward. However, in guerilla and other unconventional wars, offensive actions can be counter productive and the benefits of offensive and defensive can appear to be reversed. To make sense of this we need to understand the principle of strategic offensive and tactical defensive. This phrase has been applied to the campaigns of then Duke of Wellington. Wellington would advance into Jospeh Bonaparte's Spain threatening ket targets, such as Madrid (strategic offensive) but when the French began to prepare to face him, Wellington would adopt a tactical defensive. When Wellington was on the strategic defensive in Lisbon, the French could just go about the business pacifying Spain, but when Wellington advanced into the heart of Spain and then adopted a tactically defensive position, the French had to push him out. Yet, because of his defensive posture, Wellington chose the battlefield and was able to eliminate many of the advanatges of the French artillery and column formations. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the Coallition is on the strategic offensive. We have advanced into the world of the Islamic jihad and the terrorists must drive us out lest we convert these places into modern, liberal states. In Zarqawi's message last year, he expressed concern that as the Iraqi government endures it gains legitimacy and the police and security forces will look like the people and be of the people, making it harder to portray the terrorist campaign there as anything but attacks by Al Qaeda on the people of Iraq. Recall that in Vietnam, the North played the nationalist card, because the Americans did a lot of the fighting directly. If the Americans train, assist, and support local forces instead, nationalist claims wither. Likewise Islam vs the Infidel.

When you look at the Marine strategy of the Small War, you find that its about providing security to the locals, not attacking the enemy. Its about building schools, roads, hospitals, and water treatment. Its about hearts and minds, not about body count. Its not about adopting a more aggressive posture. When I hear that we should get more aggressive, I think I am hearing from someone of the Westmoreland school. This is spot on for conventional war. But off the mark for unconventional warfare.

Egyptian Democracy

Noman Gomaa, leader of Egypt's oldest and largest opposition party 'Wafd' criticized Mubarak and his Finance Minister on state television. An unprecidented step in freedom in politics there. Democratization appears to be progressing, but Mubarak is missing a chance to be a historic figure in Egypt. Mubarak is 77 years old. He should cloak himself in the mantle of Washington and Gorbachov and be the kind of guy who steps down in the interests of democracy. Keen observers would find him wanting in such a role, given his record, but in Egypt such a step would seccure Mubarak's place as the man who made the transition to democracy peaceful by stepping down. History (Egyptian history at least) would cover him with a glow of the great men. Instead, Mubarak risks his legacy as being nothing more than more autocracy, sham electoralism, or a humiliating loss. Certainly at 77 he can retire.

Pop-Up Irony

What is it about pop-up ads selling pop-up blocking software? Sure they demonstrate the need for the product, but in the way that keying your car demonstrates the need for a paint job. OK, not quite. But certainly they do sacrifice some good will by the tactic. The combination of Microsoft Anti-Spyware and the Google toolbar have kept me pretty clean, but when I'm out and about, I am distressed by the way the machines I see are all eaten up by spyware and adware.

Attempting to Raise the Dead?

There is a new blog devoted to waking the NEA. Every David needs to select some polished stones to take down the Goliath.

Ecraser l'infame

Goldmine

Use this Educational Jargon Generator to leverage technology-enhanced interfaces in your work. So armed you can visualize compelling articulation and cultivate "meaning-centered" schemas.

Hitchens on Sheehan

Check out the recent post, and the earlier one. There is also a related piece on what the Left wants.

Why is Social Studies struggling?

I happened across this post at Number 2 Pencil linking to a post by Polski3 on problems with history education. Issues noted include
• NCLB’s emphasis on reading and math
• History teachers are not typically history majors
• Textbooks are dry as brick, and just a heavyPolski3 adds the following
• Intentional neglect of history
• Political correctness
• Parents who’d rather entertain than educate their children

I think the issue most worth pursuing is that too many history teachers are teaching without a history background. The rest are either red herrings or are actually useful to history. Do we suppose that illiterate or innumerate students will comprehend history? History is the study of authentic documents. If I hand out a speech by Henry VIII to Parliament, can the students make sense of it? Only if they are competent readers. If I throw a pair of data sets on the wall of women’s participation in the workforce, can students recognize what we’re doing (rate of change, percentage calculations, math reasoning) in order to interpret the data? Let them emphasize reading and math in the early grades; I want students who have those skills in my class. Second, too much of history and social studies is abstract and is difficult for concrete learners to grasp. There is a limit to how effective teaching about different times and places can be without introducing all kinds of mental errors that would require unlearning. What can be done is to have some of these reading materials young children are expected to read and master include a heavy dose of biography (Franklin, Washington, Lincoln, &c) historical adventure (Lewis and Clark, Johnny Tremain, Kit Carson, &c) and exiting events (Kittyhawk, Gettysburg, Pearl Harbor) which will have a natural appeal to children. But this isn’t teaching history so much as it is making history part of the fabric of reading and learning. The social studies taught in most of Missouri in elementary school are foundational civics and economics. They learn the three branches of government (legislative, executive, and judicial), the division of federal, state, and local government (federalism), and so forth.

Textbooks as they exist now should be treated as reference books to be consulted for elaboration on key terms and events, not to be read for content. Readings should be more intensive than any textbook would be anyway. Teachers should select readings (primary and secondary) based on what they want to emphasize and encourage students to consult textbooks to look up people, dates, and places when they missed something in their notes. This would be much easier for teachers with BA’s in history (or better, MA’s), but I get ahead of myself.

Political correctness is a problem, but not for history itself. History is still being taught; it’s just not the content, emphasis, or understanding that many people think should be taught. This is part of the social reconstuctionist agenda. But there is a difference between arguing that history is being taught poorly and being taught with somebody else’s political slant. Again, this just isn’t a problem where the teacher selects their own documents and materials. I knew a civics/sociology teacher who used the text as a device to argue against. He had the class perform a close reading of the textbook during class and evaluated its bias, sources, and politics covering the material in the text. Good teachers can make use of poor materials.

Parents generally regard the school as the people who should do the education, leaving them to do the entertainment. If I could change something about parents, I’d encourage parents to communicate to their children that its essential to acquire skills, to encourage a love of learning, a curiosity, and an interest in the world around them. Taking kids to museums, historic sites, and the like are great, but its also great if kids build a robot, give up television for telescopes, take up sculpture, play jazz clarinet, or write poetry. Any intellectually engaged student will learn more, will have learning skills, and is easier to teach. Spending family time on my subject would just be gravy.

That leaves us with teachers who teach history, but don’t have history degrees. This is the cause I take to be the primary source of weak history learning. So let’s consider it in greater detail. The best available dataset is the School and Staffing Survey from 1999-2000 from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. (some revisions here)The NCES calculate the statistics several different ways. They survey out of area teachers by the following criteria: main assignment field, classes taught, and students taught. They consider subjects and sub-fields. They break teachers down by those with majors, those who just minored, and those who are merely certified, and they run combinations of these as well.

At the middle grades, 52% of teachers who teach social studies have a major in one of the social studies. That’s higher than any other academic field, exceeded only by art, music, and physical education. The other fields show majors in the mid-40’s, except math, where the figure is 33%. If we look at the number of courses taught in the social studies in the middle grades, 40% of them are taught by people with majors, which is only somewhat higher than other fields (such as 32% in English). If we look at specific history classes, the number of classes taught by history majors is only 22%. These numbers look better if we look at the number of students. 49% of students in the middle grades learn their social studies from a teacher with a degree in the social studies. 29% of students in the middle grades have history majors teaching them in distinctly history classes.

There are several issues here. First, which is more meaningful the percent of social studies teachers with degrees in one of the social studies, or the percent of history teachers who are teaching history? Is it OK for a certified geography major to teach whatever your 7th grade curriculum is? Is the work at a level of generality (a course that is multi-disciplinary, so that the American colonies unit looks at the geography, economics, politics, culture, and history of the colonies, not just the history) that any one of these majors is just as good over the course of the year as any other major? Second is the level of content difficult enough that an allied field is out of its depth teaching across disciplinary boundaries? Should we take as the more meaningful figure the fact that 49% of social studies students are taught by certified teachers with a major as discussed, or should we look to the 29% of history students? How many classes are that specifically historical? In my observation, middle school is pretty multi-disciplinary with strong doses of geography and political science a part of the curriculum. As such my own sense is that the content difficulty is light enough that a political science major can handle the history and geography, and frankly an anthropology major (especially one with a grounding in archaeology) can handle the whole thing as well. I also think that there is so much geography and civics along side whatever history we have in American history, and geography and archaeology along side the world history, that no one discipline can claim to be essential and denounce the other majors. So I contend that the 49% figure is the better for the middle grades. As such, social studies as more majors teaching students than all other academic fields, exceeded only by art, music, and physical education.

Let’s look next at high school. 79% of high school social studies teachers have a degree in the social studies. That’s better than all the other academic fields again. English is 76%, math is 73%, and science is 75%. If we look beyond the department someone is in, and look to the courses, only 63% of courses are taught by someone with a degree in the field, and only 33% of history courses are taught by people with a major in history. This is comparable to the other academic fields (62%, 59%, 65% as above). In history, that 33% compares to some of the sub-disciplines in science, where 48% of biology courses are taught by biology majors, 31% for chemistry, 16% for geology, and 23% for physics. If we look, finally, at the students, we find that 72% of students in a social studies class are taught by someone with a major in one of the social studies. This exceeds every other subject, except science, where there are far more core sub-fields. Only history is a core sub-field in the social studies (indeed, history is the queen of the social studies in a way that neither biology, chemistry, or physics could say about science). While there are psychology and sociology courses at most high schools, and many high schools require a geography credit, history dominates the social studies. And the curriculum requirements for courses tend to rely much more on the history skills and knowledge than they did in the middle grades. At high school it is reasonable to argue that any degree in the social studies is no longer just as good as any other. However, we might ask at this point about minors. While its pretty clear that a history major would not do as well as a psych major for a high school psych course, what about the history major who minored in psych? Unfortunatly, the data doesn’t really tell us how many people were majored in the main assignment field, and minored in the course subject area. Though it can be argued that the number of sociology majors with history minors is small, are they as qualified to teach most history classes as the history majors are? The data offer no specificity here. So, while 72% if all social studies students are taught by someone with a major in one of the social studies fields, only 38% of students in a history class are getting a history major. Again, this compares to the science sub-fields (55%, 39%, 21%, and 34%).

So, what kind of difference is there between a political science major and a history major in the teaching of American history? Students are getting as many broad field majors as they are in any other field. For example, the survey doesn’t even bother to separate creative writing and literature types in the English areas, presumably because every course involves both writing and literature. But that also means that every English student is getting at least partly an out-of-area teacher even when the survey says they have a major in the course subject area. Certainly the best case is for those 38% of history students that receive teaching from a history major. Less desirable is the situation for those students whose teacher is a social studies field major, but is teaching some allied field. How many students this applies to is hard to measure because only the sub-field of history is recorded. At a minimum its 35%, but is almost certainly higher. The next category are those who are certified for social studies, but have no major in the field, some 12% (actually 12.4%, basically one in eight). As it turns out, 76% of students learned social studies from someone with a major or a minor in social studies, 4% more than those who just had a major. Only 9% of students had teachers who lacked both a major and a minor, despite being certified, some 3% less than those whose teachers lacked a major. The percent of teachers who lack a major, a minor, and a certificate is about 1%.

In conclusion, the number of teachers who have a major in their main assignment field is about the same, or better, for the social studies as it is for other disciplines. Like the sciences, the number of history majors accounts for only a third of all social studies teachers. Unlike the science sub-fields, history dominates the social studies at the higher grade levels. What remains unclear is how significant this is. While the survey demonstrates that slightly more than a third of all social studies teachers have majored in the allied fields of the social studies other than history, how effective they are teaching a field dominated by history remains a question.

"Terrorism is just a Tactic"

Unrestricted submarine warfare was just a tactic. Americans had no interest in whether the Kaiser set up a puppet state in Poland, annexed Belgium, or whether the flavor the Reich was not to their liking. American support for war increased as German submarines attacked American shipping. What ultimate goal they purused was not the critical issue. British impressment was sufficient a cause for many Americans to support the War of 1812. Why the British needed these sailors was not the issue, the procedure itself was.

One of the key arguments that the administration put forward for the war on terror, including the attack on Iraq, was that in a era when terrorists were only a plane ride away, it was unaccepable for terrorist supporting states to obtain weapons of mass destruction. This argument states that regardless of their aims, this tactic is unacceptable. We have no problem with this reasoning in law enforcement. If I pursue a lauable goal (feeding my sister's children) through criminal activity (stealing) I am still subject to the law. The ends, as they say, do not justify the means.

The advocates of salafi jihad have three tactics: preaching, political action, and terrorism. Suppose the Salafiyyah pursued only preaching as a tactic. Would we still pursue a war against Islamic extreamism? What about preaching and political action? Indeed, its only the use of the terror tactic that makes them our enemies. We might otherwise regard them as ideological rivals. We might be wary of their thinking. Would we attack them?

However, just as we have begun wars over unacceptable tactics, American frequently fight wars to end war, and so put the ideology central into our war aims. Americans frequently believe or are easily persuaded that bad ideologies are much more liable to using bad tactics. Therefore, Americans pursue root causes to end problems once and for all. If a tactic is so unacceptable that we will go to war to end its use, let's end its use! Set up a democracy and shift that plot of land from the danger column to the friendly column for ever.

Constructivist Setback

The weak constrcutivist position argues that everyone constructs knowledge for themselves. The strong constructivist position goes further and argues that because of this, teaching should be child centered, especially finding what a child's prefered method of learning is (seeing, hearing, touching, moving) and tailoring the lesson to the child. However, via a link at Number 2 Pencil, there is another installment of Ask The Cognative Scientist at the AFT website. Its very interesting, and worth a look-see. The thesis is a blow to the strong constructivist:

"What cognitive science has taught us is that children do differ in their abilities with different modalities, but teaching the child in his best modality doesn’t affect his educational achievement. What does matter is whether the child is taught in the content’s best modality. All students learn more when content drives the choice of modality. "

We might call this the Structuralist theory of knowledge. Content has its own best structure independently of the mind that understands the content. This was the dominant approach to knowledge, which often viewed knowledge as a tree, dividing subjects into specialities based one how they are related. Sciences would be grouped together, because they have common mental tools, for instance. Structuralists, I have have termed them, would argue that it is best to thing about science in a scientific way, rather than in what ever way is most pleasing to the student. The class, the unit, the lesson should all reflect the structure of the subject.

Aristotle proposed that knowledge is a series of catagories, some broad, some specific. This is based on logic. All blue-jays are birds, and inherit the qualities of "bird". So I can imagine a catagory "bird", and "blue-jay" and "that blue jay who nests in my yard" as ever more specific catagories. This is the basis of deduction. It is said that the Syrian philosopher Porphyry famously employed a tree as a metaphore for this process, and it has been used by taxonimists ever since.

Stong constructivism generally makes two kinds of attacks on this kind of approach. Either they deny the metaphysics of it, arguing that the world lacks the order being presented, and that the only order that exists is in the mind; or they they deny the epistomology of it, arguing that we cannot truly know anything and we just construct our own knowledge of things. These ideas stand in strong opposition to realism (Aristotealian philosophy) and empiricism (Lockean epistomology).

Anemona Hartocollis has a long piece on teacher education in the Education Section this Sunday. One curious aspect of the reforms discussed is the notion that student teachers should significantly increase their internship under closer univsersity supervision. It would seem to me that a longer internship makes sense, but why should the emphasis in supervision be the university? Hartocollis writes, "There is consensus that apprenticeship along the lines of medical school - students learn the science of medicine in the classroom, then practice it in a hospital, supervised by faculty doctors - is a better model than traditional student teaching." Labratory schools often have teachers in classrooms who are also faculty at the sponsoring university. That's the only similar situation. Is there another unstated reform here, whereby the university supervisors of student teachers would no longer be retired teachers now at university, but rather there would be supervisors who were faculty at both university and local school? I'm not sure this is neccessary, although I can see the appeal. Overall I would favor more high school-university connections. They are fundamentally disconnected now.

Another problem identified in the article is low teacher pay: "Among the historically intractable problems in retaining teachers are low status and low pay, says Anthony Carnevale, a senior fellow at the National Center on Education and the Economy. Because the public sector will never pay as much as the private, he says, and because unions have resisted extra pay for high-demand skills like math teaching, the gap in ability between teachers and other white-collar professionals will become bigger, not smaller."

However, I think the real reason for low teacher pay is identified by Warren Farrell in his book Why Men Earn More. His thesis revolves around the idea that pay is compensation. People don't need to be compensated for doing things that are themselves rewarding. Teaching is a very attractive job. It comes with all kinds of intrinsic rewards, from working with children, to the family friendly schedule, to its security. As such, there is a large pool of teacher hopefuls. And so with a large supply of potential teachers, pay is low. This can have consequences in terms of who considers teaching, but as long as the pool of hopefuls is large the pay must remain low. The problem, ultimatly is related to grade inflation. All of the pressures in the system conspire to keep standards low. As long as an increase in teacher qualifications does not induce parents to (or the broader community) to pay more for teachers, it is insensible to raise teacher pay. One of the problems of the public schools is that one customer's quality is not the next customer's, so that its hard to get the quality you want, and no one wants to pay for someone else's idea of quality. A free market in education might well solve this problem, after all college tuition, subject to market forces, continues to attract consumers despite rising costs.

The International Movie Industry

David Kipen has an interesting peice in the Atlantic for June on how no one is left producing films for the American market, having been lured away by the much larger international market. Registration or subscription are required (I'm not sure which, I subscribe.)

Neutrality

I contend that the war on terror is a global counter-insurgency. Such efforts have two sides, the hard and soft counter-insurgency. Hard counter-insurgency involves arresting, killing, capturing, or otherwise preventing leaders, cadres, and propagandists from getting their message out, recruiting, or organizing operations. The numbers of such leaders and cadres are inevitably small, and seek to get control of much larger populations. Likewise, attempting to win over these same populations is the effort of the soft counter-insurgency. The billion muslims appear to be more or less neutral in the struggle between Al Qaeda and the West. In democracies we are accustomed to some significant level of popular support for military actions. But not only do the non-democratic states of the Islamic world lack such popular soveriegnty, but Al Qaeda is no state and represents the most radical members of the Salafi Jihad. Four times Al Qaeda has been radicalized by the loss of moderate members who abandon the Jihad. First when the Soviets left Afghanistan volunters went home, their work accomplished. Only the most radical mujahedin and those who were not welcome at home because of their political activities remained. When Al Qaeda moved to Sudan, the movement again lost its least committed members. When Al Qaeda decided to shift from the near enemy to the far enemy, fighters left. And when Al Qaeda returned to Afghanistan, a final portion, again the least committed, left them and did not go to Afghanistan. So this radical movement, built in many ways in the fashion of a Lennist cell, a radical vanguard of revolution disconnected from any population, is at war alone against the Coallition lead by the United States. The prize in this conflict are the people and governments of the Middle East.

John Adams recalled that during the American Revolution, a third supported the revolution, a third supported the crown, and a third was indifferent. Speculating what portion of the Islamic world supports Al Qaeda is guesswork. Many Western observers are disappointed in the limited support which the Muslim world has provided to its cause. It appears that the majority are neutral.

Victory in the war on terror will ultimatly amount to moving this large body of neutrals into the Western camp. The most obvious way to do this is to spread democracy. People undertaking the defense of their democracies will be invested in a way that subjects of Egyptian, Saudi, and other undemocratic regimes are not.

A combination of soft diplomacy, public diplomacy, and a reformist agenda are the soft counter-insurgency which will win the war, a victory made possible by the hard counter-insurgency carried out by the military, special forces, intelligence, and law enforcement. The hard counter-insurgency prevents an Al Qaeda victory and limits their ability to act, while soft counter-insurgency wins for the West.

Multi-Cultural Social Reconstructionist Peace School!

James Lileks has some thoughts on a school of this stripe.

Times Quote of the Day

"We know why these things are done, they're done to scare people and to frighten them, to make them anxious and worried," Mr Blair told a press conference.

Sweden after the Swedish Model

Dennis Prager has had a Liberal (Liberty seeking) member of parliament and a professor of economics from Sweden on his show today. Mauricio Rojas fled Chile after the fall of Allende and made his way to the socialist paradise. He is however not a socialist (equity seeking) today. A member of the Swedish Liberal Party, he is also a senior advisor at a free market think tank, Timbro. He has written a book, Sweden after the Swedish Model. The book can be downloaded from a link at this site. He argues that the Swedish Model, Folkhemmet (folk + home), was an adaptation to rapid industrialization. However, once the process was compete, the growing costs of the system was a burden which threatened Sweden significantly. The resolution to this crisis was to shift from socialism to liberalism.

As I have discussed on this blog, Germany is confronting the same problem, but has proved so far unwilling to facing up to real change. It may prove that the intigration of East Germany will delay this shift by a generation.

More Against the Appeasers

I seem to be collecting links to articles and arguments against those who embrace the "its our fault" theory of terrorism. Here is another fine contribution to my collection. Tony Parkinson writes in the Australian paper The Age.

The "Left-Wing Professor" as Bi-Polar Intellectual

Catching up on my Austin Bay, I find an analysis of a problem I've mentioned recently that really seems to hit the mark. My last several posts include two on academics who seem to wander out of their element and get lost. But Bay discusses Juan Cole who has some grounding in the field. Bay offers a different kind of analysis and I wonder to what extent it applies more broadly. He writes:

"Cole exemplifies the 'left-wing professor' as bi-polar intellectual. When he’s at the professorial pole, he’s a knowledgeable person. Cole understands tribal relationships in Iraq and has a detailed feel for Middle Eastern history. When his “left wing” pole takes control he’s a reactionary defeatist and a sad, antiquated ideologue. His utterly wrong, knee-jerk post about Jenin and 9/11 could be forgiven with a genuine retraction and an apology –yes, everyone makes mistakes– and Cole appears to have issued a “sort of” retraction. However, Cole’s call for “oppo research” on Kramer (really a call for mass personal attacks) is uncivil and inexcuseable. Let’s add intellectually dishonest– and a sure sign of intellectual defeat."

Point of explanation, Cole seems to have argued that the attackresponse1 were in responce to the Jenin incident, despite the fact that Jenin took place at the end of March, 2002. When called on it by Kramer, he called for an investigation of Kramer.

My operating theory up to now has been that academics are accustomed to being the smartest person in the room, and have just assumed that they were qualified to discuss policy, strategy, and the root causes of any conflict regardless of academic specialty. The case of Cole as discussed by Bay offers an alternative theory and it may well apply to others as well.

Bay on the purpose of Terrorism

Austin Bay has a nice piece in the Washington Times on terrorism as a means of warfare. It also includes a good analysis of the motives behind Al Qaeda's use thereof. Its a nice antidote to the "its our fault" crowd.

Speaking of Austin Bay, the current post on his blog about property rights in Africa is also very good.

Its Always Our Fault!

Hugh Hewitt links to an excellent piece by Gerard Baker which demonstrates how effective the "its our fault" argument is, because it lacks any conditions under which it cannot be used. Its important to distinguish the "its out fault" argument from those which acknowledge that American or Western policies have resulted in specific counter-policies. The "its our fault" arguements arise because those who make them are so hostile to the polcies made that they agree with the motivation of the terrorists, if not their means. No doubt those who make such arguments would prefer a world where the Salafi jihadists would engage in dramatic street theater and Imperialism would die away and everyone would live in a utopian enviroment where it would become obvious that the Salafi jihad is really just a social-democratic movement. That's why so many in the "its our fault" camp make such an effort to ignore evidence that the Salafi jihadists are not motivated by the same things that motivate them. The "its our fault" really wants to believe that terrorism is caused by an anti-imperialism and will melt away when the mean old imperialists tend only to their domestic people with social justice, &c, &c, &c.

The Ten Commandments as a Fetish

Very interesting post on the fetishization of a text.

C18-L and Bastile Day

Whereas the interdisciplinary eighteenth century academic mailing list was surly on the 4th, they are downright pleasant on the 14th. Comments do not tend to dismissal, criticism, or irony-seeking, but reflect the best places to be and see the festivities. Warming to the French Revolution seems to me to require a greater effort than the American, given its radicalism and the measures required to defend this radicalism, one must conclude that this change of tone reflects either a radical politics or an anti-Americanism.

I should perhaps also remark on the comments made after the London bombings of the 7th. Academics have a tendency to be educated amatures when they wander outside of their chosen field. Within their field they know the literature, the perspectives and approaches of approaching their topic, and are aware of where the pitfall lay in interpretation and understanding their subject. Suffice it to say that literary scholars (in theory interdisciplinary, in practice literary) are not prepared to perform a serious analysis of the causes of terrorism or the motives of terrorists. The do not know the literature, are unaware of the debates between the perspectives on the subject, and are unaware of the difficulties peculiar to the topic. As such, they are vulnerable to any argument they are disposed to agree with, and perhaps worse, misinterpreting an argument to match their dispositions being entirely unaware of points and evidence proposed even within a peice to the contrary of the argument desired by the amature.

Certainly amatures can have interesting things to say about a subject. General John Abizaid might well have some interesting observations on character in Austen, theme in Defoe, or the popular reception of Addison. But whether he knows what he's talking about or is off the mark is hard to determine unless you know more about the subject than he does. Somehow when it comes to contemporary politics, none of this is thought to apply. Articles are cited (and misinterpreted) and opinions offered without regard for the normal scholarly concerns with expertice.

Worse Than Watergate !?

Chuck Schumer can be seen here with a visual aid at a press conference with the title "Worse than Watergate." Granted the phrase has its origin with Chris Matthews, but who ever has the bad sense to use this phrase demonstrates a stunning ignorance of history. Schumer's venality deminishes the Senate and trivializes what Philip Agee did and leaks of this kind. For Rove to give background on who it was who arranged to sent Wilson to Africa (Wilson claimed it was Cheney, one in a series of truth-challenged statements) and identify someone who was introduced at cocktail parties as a CIA official and who drove to Langely is so trivial that a comparison to using the "plumbers" for any purpose is like comparing the casualties of Iraq to those of Vietnam as if there were some kind of parity.

The WSJ has the real deal here.

Bad News for Liberalism

Daniel Drezner has a link to a TNR article which contends (in the terminology of this blog) that socialists (equity seekers) and conservatives (traditional order seekers) are squeezing out liberals (liberty seekers) as socialists and conservatives, now in greater numbers (thanks to gerrymandering) forge alliances across the populist (William Jennings Bryan) axis, aka the illiberal axis. More and more, I think, the parties will view conservatives or socialists as their base, and attempt to woo liberals over to their side, rather than the more traditional sense that Republicans were a hybrid liberal-conservative party while the Democrats were a liberal-socialist party. Liberals may find more and more that thay lay outside either party. If the country really is more liberal than it is not (its founding is quintessentially liberal) then one of two things will eventually happen. Either a third party will rise up and replace one of the parties, or one of the parties will lurch back toward the liberal pole and establish electoral dominance until the other party does likewise.

Big weekend

My weekend starts in about 30 minutes, much adjusted from my normal schedule, but a wedding and reunion activities await. I will be spending several days at the Lake of the Ozarks, so I will link to Lileks' site and the 1972 add campaign for the area. Some of the sites advertised are the same, most have changed. The giant cat eyed fang-fish are still menacing hapless fishermen.

Hitchens hits the mark again

Christopher Hitchens is right on in his latest "Fighting Words." I seem to remember posting on these lines sometime after the occupation set in and this spring, but I don't recall when nor does searching my site yield much (but my site search doesn't find things I know are on there, like my previous post).

In any event, too much force protection is counter productive. As I though I had written, the purpose of the military is to carry out the political will of the country, and this requires taking risks and sacrifice. See what Hitch has to say.

Academics and the 4th

C18-L, an academic e-mailing list which deals with the eighteenth century in an interdisciplinary fashion has been the site of some very particular kinds of 4th of July messages. Using their search page and the keyword "American", one can get a sense of what at least some academics think of America. Contributions begin with Frederick Douglas', "What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?" Continues to a Johnson quote, "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes." And then from Johnson's Life of Milton, "It has been observed that they who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it." Finally a swipe at Athenian democracy. One listmember did offer this, "Better a flawed liberty than none at all." So one can conclude that the cause of liberty is not entirely foriegn to academics who claim a special interest in the eighteenth century.

These people presume to "teach" young men and women.

Kuhn as esoteric teacher of secrets

I've been seeing Kuhn and his paradigm shift popping up in educational writing a lot recently. I haven't seen it this much since the business gurus got a hold of it in the mid-ninties. Both of them got Kuhn so wrong (or so simplistically a child could have professed the same conclusions) I strongly suspect these education and business experts have never actually read Kuhn.

Here are two examples:
Constructivism, Education, Science, and Technology in the Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, V. 29(3), Fall 2003
Bersin's essay in the San Diego Union Tribune.

In the first example, Moses A. Boudourides makes a case of special pleading for constructivism, but like so much on constructivism, really just states the commonplace and imagines it to be profound. The author invokes Kuhn in order to invoke the profound by association. Khun is rejecting the positivist view of science, but Boudourides performs a bait and switch and substitutes realism for his bogeyman. Unfortunatly, his constructivism is just a re-statement of the realist critique of positivism. Indeed, if you go to the Radical Academy (a realist archive, resource, and encyclopedia) and search the terms constructivist or constructivism, neither result gets a hit. Realists pay no attention to constructivists, because constructivists have little if anything to say that realists haven't already said. Yet, realists are attacked, though their mouthes are stuffed with positivism. Such authors and perhaps constructivists of all kinds, must attack realism because it deflects the observation that constructivists are just putting the old wine of the realist epistomology into the new ontological bottles with out improving them at all. Indeed seperation of some realist ideas from the rest of the body of realism does a harm, and the attacks on realism as a philosophy is dishonest. What is a choice irony in Boudourides' article is his favorable mentions of real positivists like Wittgenstein. Obviously the constructivists have no idea who their friends and enemies are, nor do they understand Khun. So Boudourides takes Khun's attack on the positive view of science, and re-states it, with the help of positivists, as an attack on realism, when in fact Khun is making a realist argument. A nice little piece by George Hein, the Constructivist Museum, makes a similar mistake, attacking the name of realism, but desribing the ideas of idealism. Indeed, he cites Plato. Hein goes on to confuse Lockean empiricism with a radical deviation, Watsonian behaviorism, but all of this leads me to no greater conclusion than the constructivists don't know their history of ideas. (Or more precisely, they know one fact very well, that in the middle ages there was a notion called realism which is contrasted to nominalism, which holds that when I say green I am refering to a real greenness that exists without objects, perception, or observers, that it is a Platonic Form. But finding people who will argue for Platonic Forms and will argue for medieval philosophical realism, in contrast to most other uses of the term realism to refer to Aristotle's philosphy, and those which are derived from it, expand on it, or otherwise based upon it. Bait and switch!)

The second example, Bersin's essay in the Union-Tribune, seems to suggest that it was Khun who recognized that Copernicus introduced a new way of understanding the heavens, but that would need to be reconciled with De Revolutionibus being placed on the index of forbidden books in 1616 as a result of Galileo's additional argument for the heliocentric theory. Modern science often teaches its own history only in terms of what older scientists got right, rather than what their complete work was. Modern science points to Copernicus' heliocentricism but ignores his continued reliance on epicycles (which last until Kepler can replace them with the ellipse). This is what Kuhn was talking about. The revolution of Copernicus (and how convienient that Kuhn wrote a book specifically treating this subject, beyond his more familiar Structure of Scientific Revolutions with all its talk of paradigm shifts) was not just a shift from geo-centric to helio-centric, but of aristotelian concern with the primacy of observation (does the theory describe the observations) with a neo-platonic concern with aesthetics of symmetry (is the theory elegant), with the fact that the theory overthrown was very well established, so much so that churchmen failed to distinguish Ptolemy from Christian doctrine, Ptolemy being taught to them by the Church in university. Further, the old theory made sence with the classical physics of the day. If the earth is the center of the universe because "earth" is the heaviest of the four elements and has "fallen" to its location, we can now explain why objects fall when released. If the earth is a mere planet which is in motion around a larger object, why do objects fall at all? [Summon Newton, please.] What Kuhn did, indeed the heart of his achievement was not to take notice of the fact that Copernicus had a new theory. That's not only wrong, but so simple minded that everyone knew it then, and children know it now. What Kuhn tells us is that each one of these supporting ideas which are a part of Ptolemaic geo-centricism, the growing unwieldliness of matching the theory to the observations amd the accumulation of epicylces upon epicylces upon epicycles to "save the appearances", requiring, Ockham-like a less complicated theory. He generalizes to say that when science starts having to "save the appearances" by making the theory cumbersome, you have a problem. What happened with Copernicus was that the new theory suddenly through into doubt other theories (why do things fall) which had not been otherwise in need of new theories. That's why its a revolution. No one thing is changed, a whole boat-load of things are ultimatly changed.

I'm a bit on a rail against Kuhn simplifiers and misinterpreters, so I may be a bit hard on old Bersin. As an introduction to a piece on education, Khun is fine, it is the summary of his argument that rubs me the wrong way. Of course just how applicable Kuhn is depends on just how revolutionary Bersin wants to be. Is he changing one thing that's already obvious to experts inside the profession? [Bersin was an outsider when he became superintendent.] Siegfried Engelmann certainly thinks so. (link here, scroll down past the Bersin article). My own sense is that Bersin, who was U.S. attorney of the Southern District of California until 1998, absorbed the earlier Kuhnophilia when it ran through the business world as the latest fad. As such, Bersin might well have been accustomed only to the most superficial interpretation of Kuhn.

Does Bersin call for changes not just from geo-centrism to helio-centrism, but further ground his challenge in terms of all the supporting changes in ideas do that his "revolution" isn't superficial, but creates change all over the system at many, many key points? Bersin challenges a species of superficial change, what GE's Jack Welch called "superficial congeniality." If what Bersin means by this is that education must abandon its faddishness, and focus on maximizing productivity (which I take to mean annual yearly progress) does it therefore follow that we just speak about the priority of productivity and ask of "every program [...] and every reform: does it improve student achievement?" Or does he propose (or will the logic of this thinking produce) radical changes in education which will break the many monopolies which strangle student performance and effective teaching? Will there be competing educational philosophies appealing to parents in an eviroment of real choice, in which the state and the collaition of teacher's colleges and professional organizations will give up their monopolies (or be forced to do so) in the name of student achievment?

I understand other kinds of reforms could be implimented, but his invocation of "harnessing self-interest" is so Smithian, being the formula of the invisible hand, and his mention of "flexibility, competition, incentives, effeciency, and innovation" also spells a regard for capitalism and markets that suggests at least the direction of reform I have proposed.

But so much of the essay sounds like the kind of bussiness Kuhnism which is just empty. I also find so much to disagree with in his analysis. For example, he says that faddism is the paradigm of the schools, but I would contend there is a system of competing, rival paradigms of which none has dominance, so that like some European multi-party parliament, no one can govern without the approval of other factions. This is why every school mission statement sounds like its got something for everyone. A little rigor, a dash self-esteem, a teaspoon of existential development, and sound hard discipline, except when it might injure someone's self-esteem, and so on. Bersin fails to understand that our system "is immune to harnessing self-interest" because our system matured in the 1930's when "self-interest" meant 1929 and the market crash, and technocratic solutions run by a brain trust (read: party apparchniks) would apply the princples of George Counts and his latter day incarnations like Alfie Kohn. Some of what Bersin says suggests he has too much bought into this kind of thinking to imagine he is really prepared for a genuine paradigm shift. I end up expecting what I would expect from those business reformers who spouted Kuhn a decade ago, little if anything. Certainly no revolution. We'll see what happens as Bersin takes over as California's state secretary of education.

Fighting Poverty in Africa

There are plenty of good intentions out there, but I don't expect much in the way of results, no matter what is spent. We've been trying various strategies for improving things in Africa for a long time, but without the desired success. We finally seem to be at a tipping point regarding South American economic growth and prosperity, but there are many more advantages to work with there. I'm certainly willing to try new things, make a big push, and so forth, but I also would hope those who support African assistance would understand that some will be skeptical and might want to allocate resources elsewhere given the track record of aid to Africa.

Computer Fixed

My main computer had gradually gotten eaten up by spyware. I had run some anti-spyware programs, and that stopped pop-ups and some other problems, but Explorer and Outlook were a mess and didn't run properly. My brother, who had clued me in to the earlier spyware clean-up tools told me Microsoft is running a spyware beta, and he's been running it. I tried it and Outlook and IE run like a champ again. Danke Bruder! Its payback for the excellent drain clearing advice I gave him two weeks ago.