Category Archives: Unclassifiable

specious comparisons, Unclassifiable

You’re no Jack Neibuhr

We have a category here for politicians, but we rarely use it.  Unless they're making specific claims about policy or about reality (which they really don't do in speeches), one can't really expect them to be subject to the minimal standards of coherent reasoning.  They're not really reasoning, after all, when they make speeches–they're motivating, encouraging, etc.  When they send out their surrogates to give rational grounds for their views, or if they themselves do so, that's another matter.  But the speeches, especially speeches to very large crowds of people in foreign countries, really shouldn't be subject to the kind of scrutiny one would expect even of campaign stump speech.  This is why, I think, today's David Brooks' column is so silly.  He chastises Obama for saying not being hard-headed enough:

The odd thing is that Obama doesn’t really think this way. When he gets down to specific cases, he can be hard-headed. Last year, he spoke about his affinity for Reinhold Niebuhr, and their shared awareness that history is tragic and ironic and every political choice is tainted in some way.

But he has grown accustomed to putting on this sort of saccharine show for the rock concert masses, and in Berlin his act jumped the shark. His words drift far from reality, and not only when talking about the Senate Banking Committee. His Berlin Victory Column treacle would have made Niebuhr sick to his stomach.

Obama has benefited from a week of good images. But substantively, optimism without reality isn’t eloquence. It’s just Disney.

And he's no Jack Kennedy either.  That would have been funnier.  The really dumb thing about this is the Brooks even admits that Obama has more to offer than the speeches–while claiming at the same time that he doesn't.  People, some people at least, can tell the difference between a speech in front of a crowd of 200,000 screaming Teutons and a health care proposal that has a chance of passing.  David Brooks can't seem to make this basic distinction.

Kathleen Parker, Unclassifiable

Judgment at C-Span

11 Comments

I saw an interesting film last night–Judgment at Nuremberg–In case you haven't seen it, you should.  As the title suggests, the film deals with the war crimes of the Nazis–but in particular the criminal complicity of lower level Nazi judges who participated in the legal machinations of the Nazi regime.

On a related theme, Kathleen Parker has found a new way to pass out moral responsibility in such situations.  If you think you're involved in a criminal regime (but are not yourself criminally responsible), then your saying nothing is worse, yes, worse, than the crimes you have witnessed being committed.  Speaking on C-Span, courtesy of Crooks and Liars, she says:

Parker: Oh wow that’s, you know I’ve met Scott and he is, comes across as just the sweetest, nicest fellow. I took great umbrage at this primarily because, whether the… you know, if… if he were… if he sat in those meetings where evidence was being trumped up and people are actually dying and never so much as cleared his throat or raised an eyebrow–which is what I’m told by everyone in the White House– then I think that he is guilty of something much greater than whatever he presents to the public in this book. You don’t sit there and listen to what you now consider lies and know… you walk out the door. An honorable man walks out the door. And you can go and call a press conference if you are the Press Secretary of the President of the United States. You can call a press conference. You can walk out and get a book contract that day, but you don’t sit through it for years and years and then say ‘well, I think I’ll go get a book contract and you know, present basically my notes that I’ve taken all these years knowing that these people were doing wrong.’ So I simply don’t trust a person like that.

That's novel.  The usual claim is that the person is complicit in the crimes, a silent accomplice perhaps.  Perhaps in an extreme case one might consider the person guilty of a serious crime, but no one could sustain the claim that his or her crime is worse than the original crime.  This would, after all, make the actual criminal less bad than the silent witness.

Thomas Friedman, Unclassifiable

Analyze foreign affairs like Tom Friedman

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Tom Friedman on Iraq today:

One of the first things I realized when visiting Iraq after the U.S. invasion was that the very fact that Iraqis did not liberate themselves, but had to be liberated by Americans, was a source of humiliation to them. It’s one reason they never threw flowers. When someone else has to liberate you in your own home, that is humiliating — and humiliation, I believe, is the single-most underestimated force in international relations, especially in the Middle East.

Tom Friedman on Iraq, May 30, 2003 (transcript courtesy of Atrios):

I think it [the invasion of Iraq] was unquestionably worth doing, Charlie.
…
We needed to go over there, basically, um, and um, uh, take out a very big stick right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble, and there was only one way to do it.
…

What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, "Which part of this sentence don't you understand?"

You don't think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we're just gonna let it grow?

Well Suck. On. This.

Okay.

That Charlie was what this war was about. We could've hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. We coulda hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could. That's the real truth.

Remarkable they don't feel liberated by the likes of Friedman.  Remarkable indeed. 

 

 

Michael Gerson, Unclassifiable

Satire

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Jonathan Swift, like Al Franken, was a satirist.  When Swift suggested the Irish solve their problems by raising and eating their own children, he wasn't serious.  While perhaps Franken is no Swift, satire is satire.  Satirizing the opinions, actions, and morals of others by hyperbolizing them does not mean you endorse those opinions, actions, and morals.  Nor does it mean you think such extreme things constitute "entertainment" pure and simple.

Someone ought to tell Michael Gerson, when he wakes up from his fainting spell at the "vulgarity."

Satire has been called "punishment for those who deserve it." Writers from Erasmus to Jonathan Swift to George Orwell have used humor, irony and ridicule to expose the follies of the powerful, the failures of blind ideology and the comic weakness of human nature itself. 

So what is Franken's "provocative, touching and funny" contribution to the genre? Consider his article in Playboy magazine titled "Porn-O-Rama!" in which he enthuses that it is an "exciting time for pornographers and for us, the consumers of pornography." The Internet, he explains, is a "terrific learning tool. For example, a couple of years ago, when he was 12, my son used the Internet for a sixth-grade report on bestiality. Joe was able to download some effective visual aids, which the other students in his class just loved." Franken goes on to relate a soft-core fantasy about women providing him with sex who were trained at the "Minnesota Institute of Titology." 

I'd be tempted to say he's taken Franken out of context, but he's has just said that Franken is a satirist.  If Gerson weren't so earnest in his desire to avoid "vulgarity," I'd say his op-ed was satire.  

Unclassifiable

Something old

5 Comments

These odd reflections from Peggy Noonan seem to make the coming election a battle between Barack Obama and the Andy Griffith Show:

Mr. McCain is the Old America, of course; Mr. Obama the New.

* * *

Roughly, broadly:

In the Old America, love of country was natural. You breathed it in. You either loved it or knew you should.

In the New America, love of country is a decision. It's one you make after weighing the pros and cons. What you breathe in is skepticism and a heightened appreciation of the global view.

Old America: Tradition is a guide in human affairs. New America: Tradition is a challenge, a barrier, or a lovely antique.

The Old America had big families. You married and had children. Life happened to you. You didn't decide, it decided. Now it's all on you. Old America, when life didn't work out: "Luck of the draw!" New America when life doesn't work: "I made bad choices!" Old America: "I had faith, and trust." New America: "You had limited autonomy!"

Old America: "We've been here three generations." New America: "You're still here?"

Old America: We have to have a government, but that doesn't mean I have to love it. New America: We have to have a government and I am desperate to love it. Old America: Politics is a duty. New America: Politics is life.

The Old America: Religion is good. The New America: Religion is problematic. The Old: Smoke 'em if you got 'em. The New: I'll sue.

Mr. McCain is the old world of concepts like "personal honor," of a manliness that was a style of being, of an attachment to the fact of higher principles.

Mr. Obama is the new world, which is marked in part by doubt as to the excellence of the old. It prizes ambivalence as proof of thoughtfulness, as evidence of a textured seriousness.

Both Old and New America honor sacrifice, but in the Old America it was more essential, more needed for survival both personally (don't buy today, save for tomorrow) and in larger ways.

The Old and New define sacrifice differently. An Old America opinion: Abjuring a life as a corporate lawyer and choosing instead community organizing, a job that does not pay you in money but will, if you have political ambitions, provide a base and help you win office, is not precisely a sacrifice. Political office will pay you in power and fame, which will be followed in time by money (see Clinton, Bill). This has more to do with timing than sacrifice. In fact, it's less a sacrifice than a strategy.

A New America answer: He didn't become a rich lawyer like everyone else—and that was a sacrifice! Old America: Five years in a cage—that's a sacrifice!

In the Old America, high value was put on education, but character trumped it. That's how Lincoln got elected: Honest Abe had no formal schooling. In Mr. McCain's world, a Harvard Ph.D. is a very good thing, but it won't help you endure five years in Vietnam. It may be a comfort or an inspiration, but it won't see you through. Only character, and faith, can do that. And they are very Old America.

Old America: candidates for office wear ties. New America: Not if they're women. Old America: There's a place for formality, even the Beatles wore jackets!

Which does Noonan favor, the old or the new?

I weigh this in favor of the Old America. Hard not to, for I remember it, and its sterling virtues.

Queue Andy Griffith music.

(Thanks to Dagon for the suggestion.)

Academics, Unclassifiable

Conservative thoughts

1 Comment

Perhaps this person could be nominated for the Self-Refuting Chair of Logic:

“The University of Colorado is considering a $9 million program to bring high-profile conservatives to teach on the left-leaning Boulder campus.”

From this affirmative action hire the occupant could rail against university education, intellectualism, and affirmative action.   

**h/t Stanley Fish.

Unclassifiable, William Kristol

I’m also a client

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Success is hard to measure.  It's especially hard to measure when the standard moves.  So Iraq.  This, unfortunately, is how success is now described:

Gen. David Petraeus testified Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He noted that the number of security incidents in Iraq in the past week had fallen to the lowest level in over four years. And he held out the prospect, despite “tough fights and hard work” that lie ahead, of “an Iraq that is at peace with itself and its neighbors, that is an ally in the war on terror, that has a government that serves all Iraqis.”

They said there would be flowers.  Now we'll have to make due with the "prospect" of an Iraq something like the one we found when we got there. 

Of course, lest we forget, Iraq is not only an ally in the war on terror, it's also a client–I mean, it's also the central front.

E.J.Dionne, General discussion, Unclassifiable

La’ ci darem la mano

4 Comments

E.J. Dionne seems conflicted about gay marriage.  He writes:

And, as a New York Court of Appeals judge cited by the California court majority noted, fundamental rights "cannot be denied to particular groups on the ground that these groups have historically been denied those rights." If history and tradition had constrained us, equal rights for African Americans would never have become law.

But to find a constitutional right to gay marriage, the California majority chose to argue that the state's very progressive law endorsing domestic partnerships for homosexuals — it grants all the rights of marriage except the name — was itself a form of discrimination.

This is odd and potentially destructive. As Justice Carol Corrigan argued in her dissent, "to make its case for a constitutional violation, the majority distorts and diminishes the historic achievements" of the state's Domestic Partnership Act.

The court found, correctly according to Dionne, that the domestic partnership law–however historically  "progressive"–amounted to discrimination.  Dionne ought to know that these two laws are different things (the progressive one about domestic partnership and the one about marriage).  "Progressive" legislation aimed at circumventing legal discrimination (the denial of marriage to homosexuals for whatever reason) may be nice, but it still endorses the discrimination as legal (so goes, at least, the argument of the California court).  So even if the legislation is, in its proper historical context quite "progressive", that fact hardly justifies maintaining it.  Imagine had equal rights been handled this way–let's not call them "rights" but "things due" or something like that.  Dionne's position, it seems to me, is just the obverse–the double negative as it were–of the argument he has just rejected.  That is to say, the "progressiveness" of the legislation is no more reason to maintain it than the fact that such discrimination has long been lawful.      

 

Argument Analysis, David Brooks, Other problems, Unclassifiable

Religious experience

3 Comments

Just as my lawyer friends cannot watch "Law and Order," my doctor friends cannot watch "ER," and my military friends cannot watch "Missing in Action," I find it hard to read things like the following meditation on the philosophy of mind from David Brooks.  He writes:

In 1996, Tom Wolfe wrote a brilliant essay called “Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died,” in which he captured the militant materialism of some modern scientists.

To these self-confident researchers, the idea that the spirit might exist apart from the body is just ridiculous. Instead, everything arises from atoms. Genes shape temperament. Brain chemicals shape behavior. Assemblies of neurons create consciousness. Free will is an illusion. Human beings are “hard-wired” to do this or that. Religion is an accident.

In this materialist view, people perceive God’s existence because their brains have evolved to confabulate belief systems. You put a magnetic helmet around their heads and they will begin to think they are having a spiritual epiphany. If they suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy, they will show signs of hyperreligiosity, an overexcitement of the brain tissue that leads sufferers to believe they are conversing with God.

Wolfe understood the central assertion contained in this kind of thinking: Everything is material and “the soul is dead.” He anticipated the way the genetic and neuroscience revolutions would affect public debate. They would kick off another fundamental argument over whether God exists.

That could be any number of views known as materialism (or compatible with it).  Brooks contrasts this view with the following:

Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development.

Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.

Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.

That's still materialism of a fairly decisive variety.  On the strength of this, he erroneously concludes:

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

Notice these descriptions are all brain-sided.  Intuitions, experience, "love," etc., all are all, on the view Brooks is describing, neurologically based.  That's still a variety of materialism. 

General discussion, Op-Eds and other opinions, Unclassifiable

Whatsa Matta Yoo?

A Justice Deparment lawyer, John Yoo (now a law professor at Berkeley–that’s liberal academia for you), put together a legal memo in 2003 that amounted to a justification of the President’s right to torture people in his capacity as Commander in Chief in time of war.  Here’s a critical passage in that argument:

As we have made clear in other opinions involving the war against al Qaeda, the Nation’s right to self-defense has been triggered by the events of September 11. If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network. In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch’s constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions. This national and international version of the right to self-defense could supplement and bolster the government defendant’s individual right.

One reason you torture someone is to discover information (whether that information is any good is another matter).  You might also torture someone for fun or for punishment.  But the relevant sense of torture for this memo is the former–torture for information about the future.  Yoo argues that if you put "information discovery" under the broader rubric of self-defense, then you can torture anyone at any time, so long as you are attempting to "prevent future attacks" (which would probably characterize any interrogation after all).

That seems to be a rather vague standard, as it could be invoked to justify any instance of interrogation torture.  But the weird thing here is that Yoo would construe this national right of self-defense (which applies I would guess to war) as applicable to individual torturers.  Any particular defendant who torturers a suspect for information, you see, is merely engaging in a completely justifiable act of personal self-defense.