An Andover, Yale, and Harvard grad has this said in his defense, care of Thinkprogress:
>Karl Rove claimed that the people criticizing Bush are “sort of elite, effete snobs who can’t hold a candle to this guy. What they don’t like about him is that he is common sense, that he is Middle America.”
Today one finds a fairly typical George Will hit job on a “liberal” (complete with insults borrowed from the right blogosphere) and racial innuendo. The apparent purpose of this op-ed is to show that Barack Obama has no justification for opposing Leslie Southwick’s appointment to the 5th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. Unfortunately, Obama has had little to say about it. That makes it hard for Will to criticize Obama’s position, so he turns instead to the position of “some” who are “liberal.”:
>But because he is a white Mississippian, many liberals consider him fair game for unfairness. Many say his defect is “insensitivity,” an accusation invariably made when specific grievances are few and flimsy.
Kind of like this accusation–which doesn’t seem to belong to anyone in particular (least of all Obama).
He continues:
>To some of Southwick’s opponents, his merits are irrelevant. They simply say it is unacceptable that only one of the 17 seats on the 5th Circuit is filled with an African American, although 37 percent of Mississippians are black. This “diversity” argument suggests that courts should be considered representative institutions, like legislatures, and that the theory of categorical representation is valid: People of a particular race, ethnicity or gender can be understood and properly represented only by people of the same category.
We’re meant to conclude that these are also Obama’s reasons–even though they’re not. One wonders, therefore, what they’re doing here in the middle of a piece about Obama’s opposition to a judicial appointee. If perhaps George Will finds Obama’s stated reasons unsatisfactory–then he ought to stick that those. Thus we have a fairly classic red herring–change the subject from what Obama has said to things that will inflame right wing passions (racial quotas, identity politics, judicial activism, etc.).
I’m going to borrow this from the Howler. In a recent Newsweek article about the charlatans who pollute our scientific discourse (particularly that about global warming), editor John Meacham writes:
>As Sharon Begley writes in this week’s cover, however, we are living in a very different time. On global cooling, there was never anything even remotely approaching the current scientific consensus that the world is growing warmer because of the emission of greenhouse gases inextricably linked to human activity (like, say, driving).
>When Sharon and I—along with Julia Baird and Debra Rosenberg, the editors on the project—began talking about what Sharon calls “the denial machine,” I was somewhat skeptical. Corporate America is calling for action and thinking green. California is curbing emissions. Al Gore is now an Oscar-winning PowerPoint presenter. If Gore, whom George H.W. Bush called “Ozone Man” in 1992, and ExxonMobil could agree on the gravity of the issue, then who, I wondered, wasn’t onboard?
>Too many people, as it turns out. Sharon’s reporting illuminates how global-warming skeptics have long sown doubt about the science of climate change, doubts that have affected—and are still affecting—our response to a real and growing problem.
>Our story is not a piece of lefty cant. Honest, well-meaning people can disagree about what we should do about climate change, but it is increasingly difficult to maintain that the problem simply does not exist, or is a minor threat.
>We are not saying that it is time for all Americans to give up their cars and bike to work, or that Gore should be canonized or that the board of the Sierra Club should be given emergency powers to run the country. But Sharon is saying that to reflexively deny the scientific consensus does a disservice to the debate, which is shortchanged and circumscribed when Rush Limbaugh tells his listeners, as he did earlier this year, that “more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not likely to significantly contribute to the greenhouse effect. It’s just all part of the hoax.”
Americans probably should bike to work (where and when possible) and Gore should be rewarded for putting up with this kind of crap. Even though that’s a concessive phrase, it suggests that one major group in the global warming discussion has a religious, not a scientific, character. That group, of course, is the one that’s been right all along (even about things other than global warming, by the way) about the science. Perhaps they ought to be accorded with a little rhetorical respect. Such characterizations, even outside of the bounds of argument, do a worse disservice than the classic National Review straw man–at least there one knows what one’s getting.
**Quick update below I've noticed several mea-culpae about Iraq floating around lately. We talked about one of them (Ignatieff) the other day. Being wrong about such a thing as monumental as war ought probably to carry serious consequences for the credibility of the person who was wrong. In light of that obvious but completely ignored imperative, it's entertaining to watch the ones who were wrong explain themselves:
We might test judgment by asking, on the issue of Iraq, who best anticipated how events turned out. But many of those who correctly anticipated catastrophe did so not by exercising judgment but by indulging in ideology. They opposed the invasion because they believed the president was only after the oil or because they believed America is always and in every situation wrong.
So Ignatieff was wrong, but some of those who were right were right for the wrong reasons (so he claims). We might then say that they're wrong too. Because after all it's just as bad to have a true belief which is unjustified as it is to have a unjustified false belief (like Ignatieff had). Any mature person can see that Ignatieff has picked on the college socialist again–a slogan chanting and capitalistically challenged representative of the anti war left. Everyone ought to know by this point–especially a former Harvard Professor of political science–that such a lefty exists in Rush Limbaugh's mind. Pointing out that someone might have had stupid reasons for being right doesn't have anything to do with your stupid reasons for being wrong. Now to his stupid reasons:
The people who truly showed good judgment on Iraq predicted the consequences that actually ensued but also rightly evaluated the motives that led to the action. They did not necessarily possess more knowledge than the rest of us. They labored, as everyone did, with the same faulty intelligence and lack of knowledge of Iraq's fissured sectarian history. What they didn�t do was take wishes for reality. They didn't suppose, as President Bush did, that because they believed in the integrity of their own motives everyone else in the region would believe in it, too. They didn't suppose that a free state could arise on the foundations of 35 years of police terror. They didn't suppose that America had the power to shape political outcomes in a faraway country of which most Americans knew little. They didn't believe that because America defended human rights and freedom in Bosnia and Kosovo it had to be doing so in Iraq. They avoided all these mistakes.
First off, I think a good number had some knowledge of Iraq's "fissured sectarian history." It was no secret to experts in Middle East history. But the more perplexing thing (aside from its self-serving comparisons) about this mea culpa is that it puts the entire matter in terms of gambling about an uncertain future–where no one could possibly predict the outcome. And this is just the point that Ignatieff and others fail to get. A person with even a casual knowledge of the history of the region (say the recent war between Iraq and Iran) could have predicted the outcome of this war with a good deal of precision. It's not a question, as Ignatieff frames it, of being unduly critical of the motives of the administration (which one always should be in any case), it's rather a more straightforward matter of good judgment. And so this underscores the shallowness of Ignatieff's thinking about matters of life and death (which is what it was to think about invading Iraq in case that wasn't obvious). The experts he trusts don't have any knowledge of the very public and relevant facts about the history of Iraq (and the entire region). So it's not only a case of taking wishes for reality. It's simpler than that.
**Update: Here's Crooked Timber, always a worthwhile read. I'd be interested in seeing more apologiae pro errore meo if anyone knows where to find them.
Normally we don’t talk about the letters to the editor. They’re just ordinary citizens, after all, and there’s no need to poke fun at them on the internet. But when the letter writer is someone important, that’s a different story. Today one finds a letter from the Chairman of the Board of the American Medical Association in the New York Times (which, by the way, has taken down or will take down the firewall protecting the brilliant work of Maureen Dowd and Tom Friedman). He writes:
>Your assertion that reducing physician income will significantly reduce health care costs doesn’t acknowledge that physician income only accounts for 5 to 10 percent of total health care spending (“Sending Back the Doctors Bill,” Week in Review, July 29).
>The American Medical Association agrees that strategies are needed to contain health care costs and achieve greater value for health spending. Health care spending has yielded substantial clinical, economic and quality-of-life benefits, but the overall growth in health care costs has outpaced general inflation.
>While physicians play a key role in efforts to contain costs, problems like obesity, tobacco use, alcohol, substance abuse and violence will require action by stakeholders from inside and outside the health care system to drive major societal change.
>With a predicted shortage of 85,000 physicians by 2020 and an aging population, we need to attract the best and brightest students to medicine. We must fix the flaws in our health care system, including ensuring that all Americans have health care coverage, reforming the broken medical liability system and stopping Medicare cuts to doctors that make it hard to care for seniors.
>Edward L. Langston, M.D.
>Chairman, Board of Trustees, American Medical Association
>Chicago, Aug. 3, 2007
He was on to something with the “significantly.” But if Dr. Langston had bothered to read the piece he takes issue with more carefully, he would have noticed that the argument did not concern the base income of doctors; rather, the author of that piece took issue with the method (and to some extent quantity) of compensation for the reason that it places incentives in the wrong places. So Langston ignores the core argument.
The funny thing–for me at least–is his turning attention away from the doctor’s fat paycheck to the doctor’s fat patient. Indeed, the man who needs to see the doctor is primarily the cause of the health care cost, and if he needs to see the doctor a lot (for reasons he can avoid) then even more so. But the percentage of health costs caused by the doctor rather than the patient was never the issue. It’s certainly distracting, however, to think about all of those fat patients. Almost makes you forget what you were talking about.
Here is another one of those meta-political paeans to “bipartisanship”:
>The distinguishing characteristic of this Congress was on vivid display the other day when the House debated a bill to expand the federal program that provides health insurance for children of the working poor.
>Even when it is performing a useful service, this Congress manages to look ugly and mean-spirited. So much blood has been spilled, so much bile stockpiled on Capitol Hill, that no good deed goes untarnished.
>The State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is a 10-year-old proven success. Originally a product of bipartisan consensus, passed by a Republican Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton, it was one of the last domestic achievements before Monica and impeachment fever seized control.
Sounds like you’ll have to blame Bush and the Republicans are to blame for this one. They will not allow a successful program on ideological grounds. And, even though they are the minority in the House (and very unpopular in the Presidency), they refuse to compromise.
Not so. The Democrats took advantage:
>But rather than meet the president’s unwise challenge with a strong bipartisan alternative, the House Democratic leadership decided to raise the partisan stakes even higher by bringing out a $50 billion bill that not only would expand SCHIP but would also curtail the private Medicare benefit delivery system that Bush favors.
>To add insult to injury, House Democratic leaders then took a leaf from the old Republican playbook and brought the swollen bill to the floor with minimal time for debate and denied Republicans any opportunity to offer amendments.
I wonder what the Republican objections to that bill were. I won’t find out, because Broder doesn’t care. If it didn’t involve the Democrats compromising, it’s ugly partisanship. It’s ugly partisanship even if the Democrats want to pursue the politicization of the Justice Department:
>The less-than-vital issue of the firing of eight U.S. attorneys has occupied more time and attention than the threat of a terrorist enclave in Pakistan — or the unchecked growth of long-term debts that could sink Medicare and Social Security.
That the unpopular and unrepentant ideologue in office insists on gutting successful government programs (and that his equally unpopular party follows his lead) seems like the more obvious conclusion from these matters.
Michael Gerson has a profound view of liberals:
>These messages of responsibility are often reinforced by tightknit religious communities, but they are not owned by them. Wilcox notes that American liberal elites often “talk left and walk right, living disciplined lives and expecting their children to do the same, even when they hold liberal social views.” Divorce rates among college-educated Americans, he points out, have fallen since the 1980s, as it became more evident that casual divorce did not serve the long-term interests of their children.
Well, it’s not him, but some guy he quotes.
Perhaps he ought to be reminded that some liberals–probably most–were against “abstinence-only” sex-education because it was moronically ineffective at its stated goal of reducing teen pregnancy, STDs and so forth, not, as he seems to suggest (via Wilcox) because “liberal elites” embrace consequence-free licentiousness.
UPDATE**
In a related matter, “slippery slope” is a logical fallacy, not a kind of cogent argument. The National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez writes:
>Slippery Slope?
>Just a coincidence that this happened in Massachusetts [where gay marriage is legal–NS editors]?
>”Sherborn teen charged with bestiality”
Someone please inform the National Review.
To her credit, however, she links to this from Alabama.
And then she apologizes–but not for the silly argument.
This is one of the dumbest ad hominem arguments I’ve seen in a major newspaper for quite a while:
>My younger son calls the Toyota Prius a “hippie car,” and he has a point. Not that Prius drivers are hippies. Toyota says that typical buyers are 54 and have incomes of $99,800; 81 percent are college graduates. But, like hippies, they’re making a loud lifestyle statement: We’re saving the planet; what are you doing?
>This helps explain why the Prius so outsells the rival Honda Civic Hybrid. Both have similar base prices, about $22,000, and fuel economy (Prius, 60 miles per gallon city/51 highway; Civic, 49 mpg city/51 highway). But Prius sales in the first half of 2007 totaled 94,503, nearly equal to all of 2006. Civic sales were only 17,141, up 7.4 percent from 2006. The Prius’s advantage is its distinct design, which announces its owners as environmentally virtuous. It’s a fashion statement. Meanwhile, the Civic hybrid can’t be distinguished by appearance from the polluting, gas-guzzling mob.
The dumb thing is that Samuelson doesn’t even disagree with the idea of cutting greenhouse gas emissions (he’s not a George Will global warming denier). Later in the piece he argues that very drastic things ought to be done:
>But we’ve got to start somewhere, right? Okay, here’s what Congress should do: (a) gradually increase fuel economy standards for new vehicles by at least 15 miles per gallon; (b) raise the gasoline tax over the same period by $1 to $2 a gallon to strengthen the demand for fuel-efficient vehicles and curb driving; (c) eliminate tax subsidies (mainly the mortgage interest rate deduction) for housing, which push Americans toward ever-bigger homes. (Note: If you move to a home 25 percent larger and then increase energy efficiency 25 percent, you don’t save energy.)
Samuelson’s problem is that actions such as driving a Prius are not adequate by themselves to curb the accumulation of greenhouse gases. He uses his son’s hippie comment (why are people beating up on hippies now?) to impugn the motives of people who advocate measures that are partial or inadequate. They only do so because it’s fashionable. They don’t really want to curb global warming because they don’t wish for the hard things.
There doesn’t, however, seem to be any reason to think that. At least none that Samuelson offers. And it’s probably the case that no one thinks such measures (driving a Prius vs. a Honda Hybrid) are adequate in the first place. But just because such individual actions are inadequate by themselves, doesn’t mean they and the people who do them are shallow and worthless.
This has to be one of the funniest responses to the chickenhawk charge:
>The caller, besides his anger, raises a point that’s brought up, out against the supporters of the war a lot and that’s the argument that if you really supported the war, you’d be fighting it. And, unfortunately, that goes against the Constitution, which gives every American the right to speak their mind, regardless of their biography or regardless of what they do, so it’s an unconstitutional argument. It’s a demeaning argument to the troops in the field because it assumes that they’re somehow victims, and that they’re not there of their own free will. We have a voluntary Army and the people serving are there of their own free will.
Whatever the merits of the chickenhawk argument–and as long as tours in Iraq get extended it certainly has some–the way to respond to it is not to hide behind the Constitution. The Constitution, Matthew Continetti ought to know, governs the legal rights of American citizens, not the kinds of arguments that can be made in a public forum.
This is from Jonah Goldberg one long exercise in the tu quoque (among much else):
>At a candidate forum for trial lawyers in Chicago on Sunday, Hillary Rodham Clinton proclaimed that the Bush administration is “the most radical presidency we have ever had.”
>This is, quite simply, absurd. But such boob-bait for the Bush bashers is common today in Democratic circles, just as similar right-wing rhetoric about Bill Clinton was par for the course a decade ago. The culture war, it seems, has distorted how we view politics more than we realize. Trust in government is at historic lows, but faith in one’s own “team” remains remarkably durable. (President Bush’s job-approval rating among Republicans is 80 percent, according to the polling company Rasmussen Reports.)
Then he goes on to criticize Woodrow Wilson.
Nobody is defending Woodrow Wilson. And whether Bill Clinton pardoned convicted felons has nothing to do with whether Scooter Libby deserved a pardon.