Right Question

Best Comment on the Miers Nomination

2005-10-06T13:40:00.000-07:00

A.J. Strata of the Strata-Sphere in a comment at Decision '08 had this comment:

[George Will] knows nothing so he projects his worst fears on her. All the pundits are doing that.

All the rest of the commentary is but nervous fidgeting, for now.

Schwarzenegger's Lasting Legacy?

2005-10-06T13:12:00.000-07:00

This new poll (hat tip: Power Line) on Governor Schwarzenegger's latest round of ballot propositions this fall, looks very promising.

Proposition 77 would take legislative districting out of the hands of the legislature (leading to the obvious and inevitable positive feedback loop called "Gerrymandering" -- named for the notorious Elbridge Gerry and a roughly salamander shaped legislative district in 1812 Massachusetts) and into the hands of a non-partisan commission of retired judges. Although this is only likely to buy voters one or two generations before the commission is routinely packed with partisan hacks, and becomes an even harder problem to eradicate, this is still an enormous step forward. Hopefully, the example of California will shame other states into enacting such policies over the next couple of decades.

Governor Schwarzenegger is again showing us that he well understands California's nearly unique system of ballot Propositions which allows an energetic governor to make an end run around the legislature and get his initiatives passed directly by the voters. Using this to clean up the redistricting process is an unsexy, technical-detail sort of reform that will have a profound impact on decades of California legislatures (and U.S. Congressional representation as well). We will probably never really know what legislative measures it will forestall, and what measures it will have made possible, but this is probably the Gubernator's single most important initiative, and the one that could never have come from a mainstream candidate of either party. It's exactly the sort of initiative he was elected to champion.

Bravo, Governor Schwarzenneger.

How is a Democrat like a Red Sox fan?

2005-10-02T16:44:00.000-07:00

In the wake of the Yankees stunning Division-title victory yesterday at Fenway Park, it occurred to me, that the recent difference between Democrats and Republicans bears a striking resemblance to the long-time difference between Red Sox fans and Yankees fans.

I could give a long list of similarities, such as the most superficial: Yankees players have long been required to show up clean-shaven with short hair. Perhaps in reaction to this, star Red Sock Johnny Damon sports shoulder-length hair and a scruffy beard.

But the most telling facet of the analogy is this: for one side, it's personal. Yankees fans love the Yankees, and don't particularly like the Red Sox; Red Sox fans both love and hate the Red Sox, but really, really hate the Yankees. Witness one of the more popular Red Sox tee-shirts: I support two teams... Boston and whoever beats New York. Similarly, it's hard to imagine any Democratic voter waxing rhapsodic over John Kerry, but ask him about George W. Bush and watch the emotions explode. Howard Dean who hates Republicans and everything they stand for is the proper spokesman for this party, which hates Republican officials far more than it loves Democratic ones.

In contrast, I can well recall, growing up in a staunch Yankees household, rooting for the Red Sox when they played teams from the south or midwest -- loyalty was by geographic proximity, not passionate personal hatred. This seems much more like most Republican loyalties -- which depend on "proximity" to one's own policy preferences, not party identification.

Much of this could just be human nature in response to a series of electoral defeats. The recent rise of the Red Sox hasn't yet banished the ghosts of generations of heartbreaking losses and trans-generational legends of the "Curse of the Bambino." For comparison, most Democrats can still recall the end of the multi-generational domination of our national legislature, and combined with two heartbreakingly-close Presidential elections... could we be witnessing the start of the trans-generational legend of the Curse of the Lewinsky?

What Does It Say When Lynndie England Out-Classes a Washington Post Op-Ed Columnist?

2005-10-01T17:30:00.000-07:00

I don't believe it can possibly indicate that Lynndie England, yes that Lynndie England, has class.

Still, Richard Cohen, today, is upset that while she apologized for her own crimes, and the disgrace she brought to her country, she didn't take the moment to demand apologies from her leaders. "Apologies for what?" you might reasonably ask. And Cohen has a list:

"George W. Bush: How dare you send me into war for reasons that seem downright specious?"
Donald Rumsfeld: "an apology for a military plan that no one, with the possible exception of Mrs. Rumsfeld, thinks called for enough troops and which, anyway, was implemented before all of the troops were on the ground"
the Army: "for sending her over to work in a bad and chaotic place without proper training"
of no one in particular: for not telling her she shouldn't do what she did.

Before a contradictory "But...", Cohen answers the last for himself: "It's impossible not to be revolted by what England did and to insist that no American should need special training in the humane treatment of fellow human beings." Lynndie England, finally, has accepted responsibility for what she did. A Washington Post columnist is disgusted that she showed even this much class, rather than trying to deflect blame onto some of his own hobgoblins.

In the end, his complaints say more about his own narrow views of the world. Our Army is poorly trained? Fighting this war at all was a mistake? No one believes we used enough troops? Make no mistake, these are fringe viewpoints, magnified to sound like a consensus in the echo chamber Mr. Cohen lives in. And to have demanded apologies on these bases, during her allocution -- her one public admission of guilt -- for her own crimes, would have demonstrated a breathtaking lack of perspective and, yes, class, that would, apparently qualify her as a spokeswoman for the modern left.

Poland Sees the Right

2005-09-26T08:03:00.000-07:00

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”

—Winston Churchill

Our staunch European ally Poland now seems poised to rediscover the blessings of liberty for herself. The ruling ex-communist groups have been voted out and replaced with two center-right parties one dedicated to tax-cuts and creating a welfare state (that that's center-right in Poland tells you much about the political spectrum there) and the other a pro-business free-market party.

Of course, as the BBC reports, every time they've gone to the polls, the Poles have tossed out whoever was in power -- so we'll have to see whether this newly forming coalition government can finally satisfy the Polish people. With unemployment pushing 18% in the wake of (ex-)communist economic theory, they seem likely to have a good shot at this. So raise a glass and join me in wishing our Polish friends well -- Na zdrowie!

The Conservative Approach to Poverty

2005-09-22T08:34:00.000-07:00

For as long as I can remember, the Democratic Party has claimed that Republicans don't care about the poor. For as long as I can remember, the Democratic Party has offered no new ideas to help the poor. For as long as I can remember, the Democratic Party has gone to the mattresses to stall, stop or sabotage any new conservative idea to help the poor.

In the wake of his recent address on rebuilding New Orleans and the rest of the recently storm-ravaged region, the President has received a great deal of criticism for his proposals of huge new spending programs. Others have noted that his proposals uniformly represent conservative free-market approaches to rebuilding and helping people -- not the "do-nothing' proposals of the Democratic Party's strawman of conservatism, but real conservative solutions that really work. Want to increase employment -- let the market, not bureaucrats, dictate wages; want to stimulate business in a depressed region -- provide tax incentives to all businesses in the region, not grants to businesses which grease the right palms; want to improve education for our children -- set standards, provide financial rewards for exceeding them, and let private industry do what it does best.

Pundits and opinion bloggers from the left seem to have caught on. Today's Washington Post editorializes: "there is also talk -- still vague -- of spending $7,500 per displaced student, regardless of whether they choose public or private education. ... Any "emergency" bill that has the potential to turn into a long-term federal subsidy for private schools must be quashed." And blogger Josh Marshall's lastest crusade is against what he calls the President's "Wage Cut" proposal -- his insistence that the construction companies restoring the region's devastated infrastructure pay wages the market will bear, rather than the inflated wages demanded by unions.

At some level, these arguments sound right. We certainly shouldn't be using a national tragedy to gain traction for partisan political programs. However, this argument (or insinuation, perhaps, since it's not explicitly stated) gets it completely wrong.

Conservatives have known for some time that there were better ways to help people than the often very poorly-thought-out programs of the ironically named "Great Society". And we should not now, when people require our help, consider it a virtue to give them the foolish and counterproductive "help" which the government has given them time and time again in the past. It is morally incumbent upon us to help those who need our help in the best way that we know how. That the Washington Post can both acknowledge that vouchers may indeed be the best way to help Katrina victims with their educational needs and at the same time demand that we not do it, because of the risk that this superior program might also be provided to other Americans in need, should be seen as a strong hint that it's not the Republicans proposing this that are allowing partisanship to taint their response to the hurricane.

FDR and LBJ each instituted enormous changes in the way our government interacts with those who need help. Some of those programs were successes and others were failures. It's time for GWB to add his name to that list -- and demonstrate conclusively how the free market can strengthen any government program: partial privatization of Social Security, tax cuts to spur local entrepreneurship, relaxing some of the more harmful employment requirements to spur employment, giving support money directly to individuals in the form of "vouchers" for job training and medical costs and education, empowering individuals as consumers with a choice rather than as passive "beneficiaries" of large, ineffective government bureaucracies. As some, or perhaps all, of these proposals prove themselves with the recovering victims of Katrina, perhaps we will see more people in need reacting like these (hat tip: Michelle Malkin) and demanding similar effective programs for themselves.

Possibly the Best Take Yet on the Roberts Hearings

2005-09-21T20:38:00.000-07:00

Here.

More: Here.
and: Here.

No Wonder Hanoi Jane Loved This Guy...

2005-09-21T13:15:00.000-07:00

Hugh Hewitt at Radio Blogger is covering Ted Turner's interview (by Wolf Blitzer) about his latest visit to North Korea: here.

Some highlights:

"I am absolutely convinced that the North Koreans are absolutely sincere. There's really no reason for them to cheat or do anything to violate this very forward agreement."
WB: But this is one of the most despotic regimes, and Kim Jung Il is one of the worst men on Earth... TT: ...he didn't look too much different than most of the other people I've met.
WB: But look at the way he's treating his own people. TT: Well, hey. Listen, I saw a lot of people over there. They were thin, and they were riding bicycles instead of driving in cars.

There were other revelatory remarks, like when Wolf Blitzer mentioned the million North Korean soldiers on the DMZ, Ted Turner corrected him that there were only half a million troops -- ours. And he blamed us for keeping them there in an unproductive job when they could be doing things like building hospitals. Wolf Blitzer asked about Kim's missiles. Ted Turner responded that they couldn't hit the U.S. and dismissed as unimportant their ability to attack our allies in Japan and South Korea. And he concluded by insisting that any "facts" Blitzer thought he knew were irrelevant because he'd never personally been permitted to enter North Korea. And his "then go there on vacation" response to Blitzer's claim that NoKo had always refused his requests to visit has to rank up there with "let them eat cake" in the not-getting-the-problem category. But by far the most insane line was this:

Praising a genocidal dictator for the fact that his people (who are being systematically starved to death) are so thin, unlike our own car-and-obesity epidemic. I haven't the words.

Washington Post Favors of Voter Fraud.

2005-09-20T14:47:00.000-07:00

Is there another explanation for today's editorial?

A bipartisan commission finally has its recommendations for reducing voter fraud -- mostly by rationalizing voter lists at the state level and requiring photo ID at the polls, while making photo IDs available at taxpayer expense for those without a drivers license.

The requirement that voters present identification is opposed by the post because, in their own words: "For those who don't already have identification, the hurdle of assembling the necessary documentation and obtaining the cards could prove a deterrent to voting."

That's it. That's the entire argument. Seriously.

There are some other bits about "we should do this too..." and "here are some things we agreed with..." along with a some "we don't think that kind of voter fraud is so bad..." but otherwise, that one sentence is the whole actual argument for what would be bad about asking the people who show up at the polls and cast votes to present an ID.

Some people might not be willing to bother to vote.

How confident are we that a citizen who can't be bothered to pick up a free ID card will actually know the names of any of the candidates running for office?

Perhaps next week the Post will point out that we could encourage fuller participation if we didn't bother to ask voters their names when they arrive at the polls -- after all, more people might vote if they didn't have to bother registering.

Fun with Grammar...

2005-09-20T13:42:00.001-07:00

A recent convoluted discussion reminded me of an odd line of thought from my college linguistic days.

In English, you can append an unlimited number of clauses to a sentence, resulting in the silly, but perfectly well formed, children's tale that started with "This is Jack." and added a clause on each subsequent page, ending with something like:

This is the dog that chased the cat that killed the mouse that ate the cheese that was dropped by the girl who lived in the house that Jack built.

Of course, there are several different ways to insert clauses, and some of them don't work quite as well as this. For example:

This is Jack.
This is the Jack-built house.
This is the Jack-built-house-living girl.

and so on. But that's awkward even from the start. A more interesting version begins sounding reasonable, and but grows more and more difficult to parse with length:

The man is named Jack.
The man, by whom the dog was scolded, is named Jack.
The man, by whom the dog, by whom the cat was chased, was scolded, is named Jack.
The man, by whom the dog, by whom the cat, by whom the mouse was killed, was chased, was scolded, is named Jack.
The man, by whom the dog, by whom the cat, by whom the mouse, by which the cheese was eaten, was killed, was chased, was scolded, is named Jack.
The man, by whom the dog, by whom the cat, by whom the mouse, by which the cheese, which the girl dropped, was eaten, was killed, was chased, was scolded, is named Jack.
The man, by whom the dog, by whom the cat, by whom the mouse, by which the cheese, which was the girl who lived in the house that Jack built dropped, was eaten, was killed, was chased, was scolded, is also named Jack.

What's interesting is that, spoken with the right intonation, the third sentence (with Jack, the dog and the cat) is perfectly straightforward, but the fourth sentence (with the addition of the mouse) is not.

Anyway, nothing to do with politics, just my random thought of the day.

All the Hypocrisies Fit to Print

2005-09-20T10:04:00.001-07:00

A few days ago, the NYT published this editorial (one of the last to be freely available on their web site) calling on Senators to vote against Judge Roberts for Chief Justice. The piece was an amazing bit of sophistry, describing Judge Roberts in glowing terms: "Few lawyers in America can compete with Mr. Roberts in professional accomplishments."; "Mr. Roberts could be a superb chief justice." and "If the test were legal skill alone, Mr. Roberts would certainly pass."

My first response to this last line was to think that someone ought to look at what they had to say when Ruth Bader Ginsberg -- a great legal mind on the far other side of the ideological spectrum. Fortunately, it didn't take long for Matt Barr at New World Man to point out that that's exactly the standard the NYT considered relevant in 1993.

No wonder they are planning to hide their editorials behind a pay-per-view firewall.

UPDATE: James Taranto is, of course, all over this.

Are There No More Decent Democrats?

2005-09-19T01:06:00.000-07:00

Just when Bill Clinton's been doing so well transitioning to the role of elder statesman... he violates generations of tradition to publicly tear into his successor, the current President Bush.

John Hinderaker at powerline does an excellent job of Fisking President Clinton's comments. I will add only this: How sour are those grapes, Mr. former President?

Has Iraq Really Made Us Look Weak??

2005-09-18T17:38:00.000-07:00

I common "concern" I've been hearing from the left is that the "quagmire" we're now in, in Iraq, has made our military appear weak. One might reasonably respond that nothing could make us look weaker than the retreat from Somalia did, or that the dictators of Syria and Libya seem to have responded as though we appeared stronger, and I have.

The Academic Elephant points us in the direction of a much clearer and stronger rebuttal: this interview of a senior Chinese general, on what the lessons the Chinese military takes from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Short version: they're scared spitless.

Lt. Gen. Liu compares the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan with the American one: "Both the Soviet Union and the United States were superpowers, and when they fought wars with the same opponent, the results were totally different. The Soviet Union successively employed 1,500,000 troops in its war on Afghanistan, fighting mainly ground battles with that country for a decade, only to be defeated in the end, resulting in more than 50,000 casualties on the Soviet side. What was more, the power of the Soviet Union never recovered. While in the case of the recent war in Afghanistan, the US only employed a special force of 1000 some-odd troops—accompanied mainly by its air forces—and dismantled the Taliban forces in just 61 days, with only 16 deaths among the US troops (of whom none were killed in action)."

He is impressed with our advantages in military technology, but he is in awe of our ability to observe a need, invent new weapons systems, manufacture it en masse, and deploy them within a few months -- as with cave-busting "thermobaric" bombs in Afghanistan, and heavily up-armored transports to deal with IEDs in Iraq. In contrast, he points out that the Chinese military saw virtually no change in military technology between the Korean and Vietnamese wars.

He points out the extraordinarily rapid military progress the American military has seen in the last fifteen years: "In battle, a period of time was needed to complete the so-called attack chain, from discovering a target to conducting a precise attack on that particular target. And that process would have included the following steps: discovering, locating, targeting, attacking and operation evaluation. In the first Gulf War, the operation of such a “chain” took 100 minutes, while in the wars in Kosovo and Afghanistan, it took 40 and 20 minutes respectively. In the Iraqi War, it took just 10 minutes, thus nearly realizing the goal of “discovering means destroying”." The difference between this and the speed and mobility of any other military in the world is like the difference between German panzers in WWII facing horse-mounted riflemen in Belgium. And our Naval power is even more dominant.

At the end of the first section of the interview, General Liu comments: "Due to the poor performance of the Iraqi forces, the real war capacity of the US force was not fully manifested in the Iraqi War." and goes on to predict that within a generation, the U.S. will have easily conquered the world. While I don't think he's right about that -- it's hard to argue that he's feeling contempt for our military weakness.

His take on the military philosophical "debate" between Powell and Rumsfeld at the start of the Iraq War (and his unequivocal statement that the War proved Rumsfeld right) also make fascinating reading. He writes: "Rumsfeld’s victory was... also over Russian military theory. Facts proved that a more flexible military, though smaller in size, would absolutely defeat a huge army bugged by outdated concepts." and "Military observers in Russia exclaimed, “The military paradigm has been rewritten. Other countries had better notice that the US has rewritten the military textbook.”"

The whole piece is interesting reading on how Beijing's high command is thinking about potential future conflicts with the U.S.

One More Reason to Love Condi...

2005-09-18T13:23:00.000-07:00

as if you needed another, after her NYT interview last week, is her quiet rejection of identity-politics.

Madeleine Albright, our first female Secretary of State, organized meetings of her female colleagues (female foreign ministers and secretaries of state) at international gatherings. According to Reuters, via the Washington Post, Condoleeza Rice has politely declined to attend the gathering tonight.

Given the high-level diplomatic presence from around the world in New York City this weekend, she apparently feels that there are more valuable uses of her time, such as working to strengthen the international consensus on nuclear weapons development in Iran. It's hard to imagine how anyone could disagree with her priorities.

If even liberal columnists aren't listening to Democratic politicians...

2005-09-17T12:54:00.000-07:00

... who is?

Washington Post op-ed columnist E.J. Dionne's latest installment calls on Senate Democrats to vote against John Roberts. The main thrust of the essay seems to be that esoteric questions of executive privilege during senatorial confirmations involving nominees who have worked in past administrations should be more important than, for example, the nominee's qualifications. But this transparent attempt to manufacture an excuse for Senate Democrats to vote against Roberts isn't what inspired me to respond.

At the start, Dionne quotes Senator Graham's response to some questioning by Senate Democrats, who seem to be saying that "the only way you can have a good heart is adopt my value system." Dionne dismisses this critique with a simple: " the doubts about Roberts have nothing to do with his good heart." -- which begs the question, "whose doubts are you referring to, Mr. Dionne?"

The Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean, just the other day opined at length and in writing that the problem with Judge Roberts is that he has no compassion, no understanding, no mercy. The chief spokesman for the Democratic Party clearly states his doubts about Judge Roberts, and they are very much about his good heart.

But then, Howard Dean is not a senator. Perhaps Mr. Dionne is more interested in the doubts expressed by Democratic senators on the Committee on the Judiciary. For those who missed the hearings, a full transcript is available from the A.P.

On day four, as the Senators were essentially getting their final thoughts into the record, Senator Kennedy opined at length that the "law requires both a heart and a head. If you do not have a heart, it becomes a sterile set of rules removed from human problems and it will not help." and asked Judge Roberts what assurances he could provide that he wouldn't be like that.

After asking a few questions, Senator Schumer summarized his feelings at exhaustive length, first laying out the reasons to confirm Judge Roberts, and then the reasons to oppose him. He said, "Let me go to the con side here. First, is the question of compassion and humanity. I said on the first days of these hearings it's important to determine not just the quality of your mind but the fullness of your heart."

Senator Feinstein jumped in to turn Schumer's three 'cons' into a question: "I think that Senator Schumer really summed up the dilemmas. And not only he has them on our side... What kind of a justice would you be, John Roberts?"

On day three, Senator Durbin was quite straightforward about his doubts: "so frequently, when asked, you have said, appropriately, that you will be driven and inspired by the rule of law, which is an appropriate term, but a hard and cold term by itself. We know you have the great legal mind and have proven it with the questions here. But the questions that have been asked more and more today really want to know what's in your heart."

So, that's four of the eight Democratic Senators on the Committee directly expressing doubts about Judge Roberts' heart, and the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee stating quite clearly that he has none. In that context, it just seems bizarre for E.J. Dionne to write, "the doubts about Roberts have nothing to do with his good heart."

Howard Dean and the Politics of the Personal (Attack)

2005-09-13T13:49:00.000-07:00

George W. Bush, despite his excellent speech writers, will not be remembered as a great orator. Fortunately, he has no competition. The chief spokesman for the Democratic Party, Howard Dean, seems constitutionally unable to open his mouth without sticking his foot in.

A few days ago, he discussed Hurricane Katrina and the Roberts confirmation hearings with Wolf Blitzer on CNN. The whole interview is worth reading (it's the last segment, down at the bottom -- find 'dnc' to jump right to it) -- Dean refuses to back off his suggestions that Bush's response was racially motivated, even when lobbed a softball on Kanye West, he responds: "No. I do not think that this president cares about everybody in America." Despite repeated questions from Blitzer, he refuses to assign any blame to the Governor or Mayor, and finally gets to the point of accusing Wolf Blitzer of applying a double standard (**). On Judge Roberts, Dean concludes with: "I know Judge Roberts loves the law. I'm not sure he loves the American people."

Today's message: Republicans don't care. Add this to his previous refrains: "I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for" and "This is a struggle of good and evil. And we're the good." (sadly, referring to Republicans, not Islamofascists)

One of the most frustrating things about the policy debate in this country right now is that only one side is showing up. For the Democrats, it's never about proposing a policy, it's about attacking a person. Howard Dean has become the personification of that problem. John Roberts doesn't have a different view of the Constitutional separation of powers -- he doesn't love the American people. John Ashcroft doesn't have different ideas of how to keep America safe, he's "not a patriot", "a descendant of Joe McCarthy". Republicans don't have different ideas for how to make America better -- they are evil and I hate them!

One of the fundamental reasons that Democracy works so well in producing sensible policies is that we have such a free-wheeling marketplace of ideas. The political parties are certainly not the only sources of these competing ideas -- but in the public policy sphere they are major ones. Reducing the public debate to the level of schoolyard taunts does America itself a great disservice. Last year, Jon Stewart made waves appearing on CNN's Crossfire and calling on the hosts to "stop hurting America" by reducing public policy debate to the level of pro-wrestling -- will no one stand up and say this to Howard Dean?

** I've come to believe that this is actually a deliberate rhetorical technique -- if you're in the middle of doing something egregious, like making political hay out of a natural disaster, you must immediately accuse the other side of doing exactly that, no matter how ridiculous you sound doing it. This will defuse the power of their counter-accusation, despite any evidence.

(9/16) UPDATE: Howard Dean has now fleshed out his critique of Roberts in this op-ed. The message: John Roberts has no compassion, mercy or understanding.

The Greatest Modern Benefactors of Mankind

2005-09-13T08:39:00.000-07:00

In response to the recent political best-seller 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, a blogger-from-the-left recently posted on 1000 People Making the World a Better Place. This is a wonderful idea. But the more I read, the more I realized I wasn't going to like the list she was making -- high marks to activists protesting to get cheap AIDS drugs for the third world, but no credit to those who developed such drugs; high marks to Lance Armstrong for his inspirational victory over cancer, but no credit to the doctors who developed the drugs that made this possible; I could go on, but: Barbara Boxer, Michael Moore, and Cindy Sheehan really say it all.

Criteria and Eligibility -- It's tempting to limit the list to those alive and working right now, to avoid prolonged debates about whether Ghengis Khan should get credit for the Renaissance and Enlightenment (via opening the silk road to Marco Polo), and yet it's impossible to fairly judge how much future benefit will accrue from someone's actions now. Most public policy debates center around precisely this kind of disagreement, and there's no point in rehashing those here. So here are my (somewhat arbitrary) eligibility requirements: the work being credited must have taken place within the last fifty years, and not primarily within the last five. As to criteria, I'm looking for concrete benefits to mankind -- lives saved, people freed, disaster averted. And the benefit must already occurred (though it may be ongoing) and has to be demonstrably the consequence of the nominee's actions.

I open the floor to nominations of those producing such Great (concrete) Benefits to Mankind between 1955 and 2000.

A few nominees to "prime the pump":

Norman Borlaug- for improvements to wheat, primarily in the 1960's, saving hundreds of millions of people (at least) from starvation. Further reading: the Nobel Peace Prize, Reason Magazine, and his own Foundation.

Barnett Rosenberg- for the serendipitous (i.e. alert and diligent) discovery in 1965 of cis-platinum, perhaps the most successful chemotherapy drug in history; still saving many thousands of cancer victims every year in the U.S. alone. Further reading: American Urological Association.

Mikhail Gorbachev- for presiding over the fall of the Soviet Union without the massive explosion of violence which could easily have attended such an event.

In Defense of Sean Penn

2005-09-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

(or the post you never thought a conservative hawk would write.)

Sean Penn has been inserting himself into the national debate, again, by way of his ill-fated rescue efforts in New Orleans. The juggernauts of the right side of the blogosphere have been quick to mock - see John Hinderaker at Power Line, Michelle Malkin and Glen Reynolds of Instapundit. Mr. Penn's own words place his political views firmly in the camp of the actors of Team America's Film Actor's Guild, and yet his actions set him apart. Many of those around him rail against uncaring Republicans while sipping merlot on their multi-million dollar "ranches," claiming that it would be easy to save everyone, if W. would just make the effort. We can question his intelligence for buying into the sneering wisdom of his peers, but to his great credit, Sean Penn's first instinct is to jump in and do something.

Those who don't try
Never look foolish.
--from the musical, Wicked

Granted, Mr. Penn looks rather foolish, bailing out his boat with a red plastic mug. Sure, he brought a photographer. Sure his attempt to help was incredibly ill-conceived, ill-planned and poorly carried out... but it's still a thousand percent better than sitting on his couch b*tching about how other people are bungling the relief effort.

And who knows, perhaps he'll get back to his Hollywood mansion with a bit more respect for how well the rescue workers on the ground are actually doing in incredibly difficult circumstances.

* * *

Mr. Penn's trip to Iraq before the War received a great deal of attention, as did the New York Times ad he took out, in which to express his opposition to the War. His second visit to Iraq, a year later, deserves a closer look. Here's what he wrote about it for the San Francisco Chronicle. He does manage to credulously recycle nearly every canard of the anti-war left (depleted Uranium, troops targeting journalists and blood for oil) and yet, he writes things that most anti-war activists would recoil from in horror.

While others on the left pay lip-service to supporting the troops, while taunting them at their hospital beds, Penn seems to genuinely like them.

we spot U.S. soldiers guarding a sewage pumping station under repair. We approach on foot as a nearby school opens its doors for a lunch break and hundreds of children come out to engage the soldiers.

The commander of the unit is Lt. Col. Mark Coats. Coats' demeanor is confident and alert. He is accommodating of my request to photograph his soldiers and their interaction with the children. There is no question of politics here, and the warmth of these soldiers toward the children is genuine. I get the impression that such events occur daily here, and not only when journalists are present.

The sharp contrast between his imported view of the big picture and his first-hand experience of the small details is clear:

While many of the engagement policies and raid tactics of coalition forces are incendiary to the local population, the rank-and-file soldiers I meet behave with dignity and grace in their daily interactions with Iraqi people.

He visits a project compiling a list of Saddam's victims and writes:

It's a reminder that it wasn't only the Americans and coalition forces that "liberated" the country. There were tens of thousands of Iraqis who lost their lives opposing the regime as well.

Most tellingly, comparing his two visits, he writes:

They're used to war; they're used to gunshots. What's new is this tiny seed and taste of freedom. It is a compelling experience to have been in Baghdad just one year ago, where not a single Iraqi expressed to me opinions outside Baathist party lines, and just one year later, when so many express their opinions and so many opinions compete for attention. Where the debate is similar to that in the United States is over the way in which the business of war will administer the opportunity for peace and freedom, and the reasonable expectation of Iraqi self-rule.

Certainly Sean Penn is far to the left of mainstream America, but remember the examples of Bob Geldof and Bono. Because they actually devoted themselves to a real cause (rather than a superficial sentiment) -- and got directly involved with it, we now see them working together with President Bush on ameliorating African poverty, and discussing intelligent ways to deal with the problem without just throwing money at it. The difference between these two and the rest of the artists of Band Aid and We Are The World is not to be found in what they believed or even (at least, not in every case) in their relative intelligence -- but in what they were willing to do: to show up, see for themselves, and lend a hand.

Sean Penn may not be the brightest bulb, but his willingness to actually show up, see for himself, and lend a hand make it clear, he's really a Grey-tribe sheepdog at heart. Perhaps now we finally know what Madonna saw in him, all those years ago.

Contrarian Prediction of the Month

2005-09-07T09:19:00.000-07:00

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and the horrific images of destruction, pessimistic predictions of the recovery and reconstruction are perhaps inevitable. (Though one would have hoped that national leaders might have refrained from suggesting that we not rebuild at least until after everyone is safe.)

I will make this prediction: Past Mardi Gras celebrations have brought as many as half a million tourists streaming into New Orleans for a long weekend. Next Mardi Gras -- February 28th, 2006, less than six months from now -- will be the largest in New Orleans history.

UPDATE: An army reservist returning from New Orleans makes more detailed but similarly optimistic predictions (via PoliPundit).

Iraqi Constitution and Women's Rights

2005-08-31T18:35:00.000-07:00

There seems to be a new Talking Point on the Iraqi Constitution, part of the "Lowered Expectations" meme, that the Constitution is somehow a disappointment on "women's rights."

The always excellent Chrenkoff writes of the latest Iraqi poll in which 84% "support giving women full rights and benefits as men."

But it's also worth looking at the actual document, and seeing what it actually says.

Here is the AP's translation (via the New York Times).

Note Article 14 -- the first clause of the section on "Civil and Political Rights". It reads: "Iraqis are equal before the law without discrimination because of sex, ethnicity, nationality, origin, color, religion, sect, belief, opinion or social or economic status."

That seems quite clear.

It's worth noting that this is a far stronger protection for women's equal rights than appears explicitly anywhere in our own Constitution (Check it out here, if you don't believe me.) Sure, our 19th amendement guarantees women the vote, but the only other protection is implicit in the 14th amendment.

What would Robert Heinlein say about Blogs?

2005-06-08T00:22:00.000-07:00

I've recently been reminded again how important the books of Robert Heinlein were in my formative years. So when I came across this quote, it seemed quite appropriate to blogging. More on this below.

The frontier-libertopianism in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress ("There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.") helped set me on the path to a generally libertarian political philosophy. The character of Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love helped shape my idea of what it means to be a man ("A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.").

So, I was all set to write a post about blogging based on this quote: "It's an indulgence to sit in a room and discuss your beliefs as if they were a juicy piece of gossip." -- attributed to Heinlein not only here, but here, here, and here -- just to name a few. But when I ran a google search, a number of sites instead attributed the post to a playwright named Lilian Hellman.

I believe the crucial site is this one -- where the quote appears immediately following an actual Heinlein quote ("Belief gets in the way of learning.") -- with "Robert A. Heinlein" sandwiched in between them, so that it isn't obvious which quote is being attributed to which author, at first glance.

A good reminder that not everything you read on the internet is reliable.

So, since he probably never said that... what would Robert Heinlein say about Blogs, if he were alive today to be asked?

Perhaps, this:

"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards."
or
"A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits."

Ouch.

(Both quotes from Time Enough for Love.)

The Death of Investigative Journalism?

2005-06-07T22:46:00.000-07:00

Could it be that the hype surrounding Woodward and Bernstein's investigative of Watergate has over the years led directly to the decline in actual investigative reporting?

Don't get me wrong. I think what they actually did was a fine piece of investigative journalism complete with lots of hard 'legwork', an editor demanding confirmation and a lot of serious thought. The hype, however, has always surrounded the mysterious "Deep Throat" (who may have unmasked himself last week, as you've probably heard) --- perhaps leading to a belief in having "inside sources" (a.k.a. Washington gossip) as the gold standard of investigative journalism.

Thus, we come to the recent Newsweek scandal over a putative holy-text-in-toilet incident. Here, the authors met this new gold standard -- they had a confidential inside source who told them something; and they indirectly cobbled together a confirming second source, pro forma. What they didn't do was to actually investigate anything -- for example, find out the name of the soldier who supposedly mishandled the Word of Allah, and ask his side of the story; or call up anyone at Gitmo or the Pentagon to directly ask questions; or ... anything at all beyond hearing a juicy piece of gossip and then telling us about it.

Someone needs to tell Washington's press corps: passing on anonymous gossip can be fun, and can sell papers, but it isn't journalism. And we really need good journalism.

Memorial Day

2005-05-30T02:35:00.000-07:00

Happy Memorial Day, and a heartfelt thanks to all those who have served our country in uniform.

This year, I celebrated by watching HBO's Band of Brothers. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.

In passing, "On Demand" TV also gets high marks.

NAFTA Expansion?

2005-05-30T01:30:00.000-07:00

In the wake of France's rejection of the European Constitution, Austin Bay has the following exceptionally good suggestion:

If the Dutch reject the EU constitution, I see a potential Plan C. It’s more than an ultimate revenge for the dirty anti-American games Chirac and his pal, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, have played during the War on Terror– for Great Britain and Holland it may make a great deal of economic and political sense.

Several years ago Conrad Black suggested that Great Britain join NAFTA– the North American Free Trade Association. He thought Britain’s liberal economic tradition was a better fit with the US and Canada than with French and German statist economies. (Black wasn’t the first to make the suggestion, but he did so with more of a public splash than earlier advocates.)

The Dutch have an Anglophilic streak and a pro-US bent. (The Dutch put a battalion in Iraq. I met with Dutch officers in Baghdad several times– and was impressed.)

So let’s offer NAFTA membership to Holland and the United Kingdom. If you’re Dutch or British, why be stuck in the floundering lost cause of a Franco-centric Greater Europe? We’ll call it the North Atlantic Free Trade Association. Heck, we don’t even have to change the acronym.

Here, here.

America's strength has always been the power of freedom, including free trade. And, just possibly there are a number of countries in Europe which would rather throw their lots in with America than with the new Franco-German version of Europe. We could do alot worse than to forge strong economic ties with the few nations in the world whose traditions of freedom are as longstanding as our own -- on which criterion, I'd suggest adding Australia as well.

Oh, My.

2005-05-21T07:40:00.000-07:00

Paternalism Run Amok

2005-05-21T05:42:00.000-07:00

Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich (R) has vetoed legislation that would have granted some rights (such as hospital visitation and decision making) to same-sex couples who registered as life partners.

Bizarrely, he chose not to veto a law adding sexual orientation to the list of categories protected under Maryland's hate crimes law - a veto many gay conservatives would have understood and supported.

But what's particularly crazy about the veto was his reasoning:

In his veto message, Ehrlich said he is "sympathetic to the needs of mutually dependent couples and [wants] to support compassionate efforts to expedite health-related decisions for Marylanders in need."
He said, however, that the bill's requirement that couples register as life partners "will open the door to undermine the sanctity of traditional marriage."

This gets it spectacularly wrong. It sounds as though he'd prefer to see these rights granted to couples without requiring the couple to make any sort of a formal commitment to one another.

We've come a long way - the emotional threat is no longer the existence of gay people itself, now the threat is the suggestion that gay people might be capable of being held to the same standards as straight folks. It would seem, the Governor has no problem with gay people, so long as they stay in their place - two gay men in chaps hooking up in a bar are deserving of protection; two gay men in tuxedoes making a life-long commitment to care for one another feel threatening.

It is an insane society that tells its members that they are deserving of respect only so long as they do not behave like responsible adults.

"Cultural Supremacists"

2005-05-21T05:30:00.001-07:00

In much of the coverage post-faux-Koran-desecration-story-rioting… I'm reminded of a gripping scene from Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead. Two "xenologers" (alien anthropologists) have been studying a primitive alien race for decades, following the shocking ritualistic execution by the aliens of the first two xenologers to interact with them. The Speaker, Ender, confronts them on their technique:

"How condescending of you," said Ender.

"It's standard anthropological practice," said Miro.

"You're so busy pretending to believe them, that there isn't a chance in the world you could learn anything from them."

For a moment they lagged behind, so that he actually entered the forest alone. Then they ran to catch up with him. "We've devoted our lives to learning about them!" Miro said.

Ender stopped. "Not from them." They were just inside the trees; the spotty light through the leaves made their faces unreadable. But he knew what their faces would tell him. Annoyance, resentment, contempt -- how dare this unqualified stranger question their professional attitude? This is how: "You're cultural supremacists to the core. You'll perform your Questionable Activities to help out the poor little piggies, but there isn't a chance in the world you'll notice when they have something to teach you."

"Like what!" demanded Ouanda. "Like how to murder their greatest benefactor, torture him to death after he saved the lives of dozens of their wives and children?"

"So why do you tolerate it? Why are you here helping them after what they did?"

Miro slipped in between Ouanda and Ender. Protecting her, thought Ender, or else keeping her from revealing her weaknesses. "We're professionals. We understand that cultural differences, which we can't explain…"

"You understand that the piggies are animals, and you no more condemn them for murdering Libo and Pipo than you would condemn a [cow] for chewing up [grass]."

"That's right," said Miro.

Ender smiled. "And that's why you'll never learn anything from them. Because you think of them as animals."

"We think of them as [men]!" said Ouanda, pushing in front of Miro. Obviously she was not interested in being protected.

"You treat them as if they were not responsible for their own actions," said Ender. "[Men] are responsible for what they do."

Substitute "savage" for "animal" and this isn't so different from the sophisticated European view of the Middle East - that Arabs are too "savage" to be expected to govern themselves without a strong dictator telling them what to do - and that responsibility for the criminal acts of terrorists lie not with the terrorists themselves, but with those who are held to civilized standards - like Americans and Israelis.

"Cultural supremacists" indeed.

Political Categorization...

2005-05-16T16:32:00.000-07:00

Check out this on-line quiz from the folks at Pew. (via Mark at Decision '08)

Desecrating Symbols

2005-05-16T00:29:00.000-07:00

In regards to Newsweek's recent publication of unsupported allegations of Koran desecration by U.S. military personnel, and the international response...

What U.S. officials ought to say:

Decent people don't throw copies of the Koran into the toilet, immerse crosses in urine, or burn American flags. As always, we condemn such behavior in the strongest terms.

Earthquake!

2005-05-08T18:58:00.000-07:00

One of the more entertaining aspects of life in the Bay Area are the occasional earthquakes. I happened to be late last night for a very minor rumble. I immediately jumped online to the USGS's automated earthquake tracker -- which had the quake within a few minutes.

Check this out.

2005-03-24T07:54:00.000-08:00

The always excellent Iowahawk is in particularly fine form today, taking on anti-western academia and deconstructivism.

What Good's the First Amendment, Now?

2005-03-22T11:48:00.000-08:00

The British Courts have gone completely insane. It is hard to know how to respond to their bizarre overreaching -- if Britain weren't such an important ally I'd think laughing and pointing would be appropriate, but as the facts are... it's simply flabbergasting.

The latest (Editor & Publisher via Power Line) example is a Saudi billionaire suing for libel over claims that he funds terrorism. That seems fine -- even billionaires deserve a day in court. The insanity is that a British judge feels he has jurisdiction to hear a case by a Saudi against an American author for a book that's never even been published in Great Britain. The infamously low standards for libel cases in British courts -- especially the fact that the defendant has an obscenely high burden of proof, in which the mere truth of a statement may not be sufficient defense -- makes this jurisdictional assault also an assault on our First Amendment protections.

Think I'm exaggerating -- what about this case -- in which an American politician is being tried in British courts for statements during an American political campaign, in which his spokesman denied allegations made by a British citizen against him. This denial itself is said to have been defaming the British journalist's reputation for truthfulness. Now an American politician, by virtue of having denied an allegation in the middle of a political campaign, is being called on to show up in a foreign court and prove the allegations false.

See also Don King's suit, also over statements made by an American about an American in talking to the American press.

What good is the protection of the First Amendment if foreign courts can impose their own sanctions on that once-protected speech? Are American journalists and politicians -- reporting in American papers and running for American political office -- expected to adhere to British constraints on their speech? Why stop there? Why not haul them into court in China if they criticize Chinese officials? Why not haul church leaders into court in Saudi Arabia for blasphemy? In general, I'm wary of slippery-slope arguments. But in this case, we're already well down the slope.

Facts are Facts. Aren't they?

2005-03-21T15:55:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure whether this is actually a recent trend, or just something I've been noticing more recently, but it seems to me like people on the left and the right can no longer debate reasonably about anything -- not because they have different opinions and beliefs, but because they can't even agree on the basic facts involved.

Take the memo behind CBS's reporting on President Bush's service in the National Guard. It's been widely reported that the document couldn't have been produced on a '70's typewriter, that the secretary who would have typed them said they were fake, that they were provided by a clearly partisan source who said he had no idea where he got them from, and that they contained basic errors like ordering him to report on a weekend when the base would have been closed. And yet, the CBS report dodged the question, investigating only the narrower question of whether political bias influenced the reporting. Now, a new article in the New York Review of Books lays out the new liberal consensus -- there's no reason to think the documents were forged. (via TigerHawk via Power Line)

Take the tragic situation of Terri Schiavo and her family. Clinically, she's in a Persistent Vegetative State. CT scans show that much of her cerebral cortex is physically gone. Yet, proponents of ending her life routinely describe her as in a "coma" or even "brain-dead". Far worse, doctors opposing her death have made a number of misleading claims, culminating in this article for the Florida Baptist Witness: "“Terri’s not that bad,” Hammesfahr said. “She is like a child with cerebral palsy. She can speak. At least when I saw her, she would speak very slowly. She would sort of form words, she would move her arms and legs at command. She could understand questions in English.” If that were true, this truly would be a monstrous injustice.

These are just two examples, but just about any issue in the headlines provides a similar example. Once upon a time, the role of the press was to investigate and report and help to establish the facts. Then pundits and politicians would stake out positions and argue them on a mix of those facts and their values and beliefs. Now it seems like the debate never gets beyond the question of the facts. We don't discuss what Social Security should accomplish -- we argue about how much it will cost and when it will "go broke". We don't discuss who should make end-of-life decisions or how -- we argue about what the condition of one patient is. We don't discuss the circumstances under which military force can be justified -- we argue about whether the Iraq war was "unilateral" or whether Hussein had "WMD's". In short, we don't really discuss anything political anymore. And that's a shame.

I Suppose This Is How...

2005-03-20T23:33:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I rhetorically asked, of the death of terminal patients by slow starvation, "once we've concluded that (they) ought to die, how can anyone believe that this is the right way for it to happen?"

Today, the New York Times answers in an astounding news article (not even an Op-Ed) which describes dehydration as a peaceful and dignified death. (via Just One Minute)

I can certainly understand how this belief would bring comfort to the relatives of those we've consigned to this kind of death, or to doctors forced either by state law or their patient's wishes to preside over such a death. But why is it that I suspect the editors at the Times would be as horrified as the rest of us if they discovered a branch office of the American Humane Society that euthanized excess cats and dogs by denying them food and water?

Liberal Cyncicism

2005-03-20T12:13:00.000-08:00

The flip side of the rise in idealism on the right has been the increasing cynicism and visceral hatred on the left.

The problem has become so widespread, it's hard to know where to start. The new DNC chair is Howard Dean, who spent years mocking Bush's claim to be a "uniter, not a divider" and claimed in his campaign that he would actually be a "uniter not a divider", now gives us: "I hate Republicans and everything they stand for.". President Bush frames a world view in which America is called to be a force for the good of freedom against the evil of tyranny and oppression around the world. The new DNC head finally embraces the terms good and evil, but only to apply them to domestic politics -- in a world with genocide, a nuclear North Korea, and slavery, the evil Dean identifies is the Republican Party. While it's understandable that he's focussed on the struggle immediately before him, it's a very small vision.

But the problem seems endemic in the Democratic Party today. It's not just Howard Dean. It's hard to find more than a handful of prominent Democrats (perhaps Lieberman and Clinton?) who have managed to stand aside from the expressions of visceral hatred for Republicans, calling them evil or nazis. Victor Hansen's recent piece in the National Review (via Decision '08) surveying these expressions makes depressing reading for anyone hoping for a return to two-party politics at the federal level any time soon.

Scary thought for the day. Do you suppose that Democratic strategists take seriously the idea that the Republican leadership is pushing hatred and bigotry, and is responding to electoral defeat by trying to outdo them at it?

One China

2005-03-20T01:02:00.000-08:00

In the wake of China's new anti-secession law there's been much talk of Chinese intentions towards Taiwan:

The Dignified Rant (via Instapundit) last week noted China's rapid naval buildup, particularly in amphibious ships and escort submarines, and suggests that they might be preparing for a massive invasion just before the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Bill Roggio (via Arthur Chrenkoff) responds at length, citing a two-year-old article in the Naval War College Review.
Both sides seem at least interested in being ready for the possibility -- Bill Roggio reports on U.S. naval operations last summer practicing to oppose a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, and now the Dignified Rant has reports of a joint exercise between China and Russia in which China will be basically doing a dry run for the invasion.

For myself, I've no idea how capable the Taiwanese military is of repelling a significant Chinese beachhead, nor of how long it would take U.S. naval forces in the region to cut it off from supplies and reinforcements. The two points that stick with me are: (1) Even if it's true that China can't win militarily, that's no guarantee that they won't try very hard, and (2) China gets most of its oil by sea, and apparently has no significant strategic reserve to fall back on.
Even so, it's not hard to imagine China's leaders talking themselves into the belief, however ill-founded, that they could swamp Taiwan quickly and present the U.S. with a fait accompli.

UPDATE: From a brief reading of the NWCR paper, one of the factors the authors argue from is China's old and declining ambibious assault navy, predicted to fall by half by 2010. China's actual buildup of these forces since that article was written could cast matters in a different light.

When Lives End

2005-03-19T01:39:00.000-08:00

The AP (via Captain's Quarter) is now reporting that Terri Schiavo's feeding tube has been removed. Her slow death over the next couple of weeks can't possibly be the best we can do.

I hope that we can briefly draw our attention away from the entertaining spectacle of last-minute legal and political maneuvers to really think about what's happening.

I wrote earlier, here, about the strange moral exaltation of inaction. In this case, simply put, once we've concluded that she ought to die, how can anyone believe that this is the right way for it to happen? Perhaps in this case it's true that she can't suffer, but the same decision is made every day by and for people who can and do.

Some would refer to starvation or pneumonia as a "natural" death, as though that somehow makes it a good thing. Others would call it not interfering in "God's will," as though any human action is always wrong. Though the two might vehemently disagree on most issues, they both make the same deeply misanthropic mistake, fundamentally severing Man from what they hold sacred -- the first by denying that Man is a part of Nature, the second by denying that Man has a role to play in God's plan.

I don't claim to know whether death is the right choice for Terri Schiavo -- but if it is, I would hope we could show her the same decency we show to animals and serial killers and make the end quick and humane. With apologies to Eugene Volokh no one deserves less.

The Conservative Idealists II

2005-03-19T01:28:00.000-08:00

It may be about time to retire the overused, underdefined term "neo-conservative" and replace it with the more descriptive term "conservative idealist".

No doubt this is the George W. Bush our grandchildren will study in school. But when they study the transformation he underwent after our national tragedy a name that will surely come up will be that of the quintessential neo-con, Paul Wolfowitz. Two and a half years ago, Bill Keller wrote America's introduction to Paul Wolfowitz in the N.Y. Times magazine section. The article makes fascinating reading with the advantage of hindsight. Keller writes:

The third striking thing about Wolfowitz is an optimism about America's ability to build a better world. He has an almost missionary sense of America's role. In the current case, that means a vision of an Iraq not merely purged of cataclysmic weaponry, not merely a threat disarmed, but an Iraq that becomes a democratic cornerstone of an altogether new Middle East. Given the fatalism that prevails about this most flammable region of the world, that is an audacious optimism indeed.

Way back in September of 2002, six months before the Iraq War began in earnest, Paul Wolfowitz said:

I don't think it's unreasonable to think that Iraq, properly managed -- and it's going to take a lot of attention, and the stakes are enormous, much higher than Afghanistan -- that it really could turn out to be, I hesitate to say it, the first Arab democracy, or at least the first one except for Lebanon's brief history.

With delicious understatement, Keller notes, "This is a notion regarded with deep skepticism at the State Department."

One more last quote from Keller's article which seems apropos to Wolfowitz's potential new role at the World Bank:

"What I think distinguishes him, and it's very alarming to some people, is that there is this spirit in Washington that foreign policy consists of managing problems," said Charles H. Fairbanks, a Johns Hopkins political scientist who has known Wolfowitz since college. "Paul Wolfowitz is really free of that tendency."

I can't think of a better endorsement for the job.

The Conservative Idealists I

2005-03-19T00:14:00.000-08:00

It may be about time to retire the overused, underdefined term "neo-conservative" and replace it with the more descriptive term "conservative idealist".

In 1987, then Vice-President Bush famously derided "the vision thing." The words would haunt his presidency, a concise reminder of how he felt short of his predecessor. Apparently, the lesson was learned well. Since September 11th, the second President Bush has given a number of stirring, idealistic speeches displaying a new vision of America's role in the world -- as the most powerful of the free nations with the consequent moral responsibility to help spread that freedom to those less fortunate.

Our enemies send other people's children on missions of suicide and murder. They embrace tyranny and death as a cause and a creed. We stand for a different choice, made long ago, on the day of our founding. We affirm it again today. We choose freedom and the dignity of every life. (Applause.)

Steadfast in our purpose, we now press on. We have known freedom's price. We have shown freedom's power. And in this great conflict, my fellow Americans, we will see freedom's victory.
SOTU'02

Americans are a resolute people who have risen to every test of our time. Adversity has revealed the character of our country, to the world and to ourselves. America is a strong nation, and honorable in the use of our strength. We exercise power without conquest, and we sacrifice for the liberty of strangers.

Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity.
SOTU'03

Has any Democrat since Kennedy spoken like this on foreign policy and meant it?

The Seductive Vice of Inaction

2005-03-18T20:46:00.000-08:00

In honor of Paul Wolfowitz's recent nomination to head the world bank, I'd like to recall possibly his most important contribution to the national debate: considering the cost of inaction. You will still hear arguments about the Iraq War asking if the direct costs of the war (the lives of our soldiers and of Iraqis, the destruction of homes and infrastructure and the staggering monetary cost) are made worthwhile by the apparent benefits (a democratic Iraq, moves towards democracy throughout the Middle East). These arguments typically ignore the enormous toll exacted by the status quo (the cost of maintaining the "no fly" zones, the human and propaganda costs of the sanctions, the corrupting influence of Oil-for-Food kickbacks international organizations, payments to Palestinian suicide bombers, Baathist atrocities beyond counting) -- the cost of doing nothing.

I think this natural creep back towards ignoring the costs of inaction stems from the basic principle that we're responsible for the consequences of our actions, but that we get a pass when we stand aside and do nothing.

Occasionally, this principle itself is debated, as with "good Samaritan" laws, brought to national attention by the final episode of Seinfeld. But the corrupting influence of this principle, which seems to stem more from fear of blame (or legal liability?) than from any moral judgement, extends through every kind of issue.

On abortion, some find a negative responsibility not to interfere with even a fertilized egg in utero, but find no analogous positive responsibility with respect to "extra" embryos during IVF. In our prisons, we are properly outraged when a guard abuses a prisoner, but turn a blind eye to over a hundred thousand prisoners raped each year by other prisoners. We agonize over the death penalty, but see no problem when serial killers are murdered in prison in far less time than most prisoners spend on death row. Nowhere is this principle more deeply embedded than in our medical system: First, Do No Harm. We forbid assisted suicide, but permit terminal patients to refuse treatment (or have it refused on their behalf), resulting in horrible deaths and needless suffering. Letting a patient slowly drown from pneumonia or starve without a feeding tube is accepted practice, but a simple, painless injection is murder.

With power and with freedom come responsibility. The temptation to shirk that responsibility by casting our inaction as non-interference is as old as civilization -- Pilate washing his hands, the Priest and the Levite put to shame by the Good Samaritan -- but so are the moral injunctions to resist.

We seem to be approaching another national debate on euthanasia, between Million Dollar Baby and the Terri Schiavo case. Has the time come for a national discussion of the supposed virtue of doing nothing?

Whither Baseball?

2005-03-17T15:49:00.000-08:00

The latest “top story” on the cable news networks are now covering the Congressional hearings on steroid use in professional sports. In principle, there are all sorts of good topics here -- where to draw the line on acceptable "training" techniques; the moral responsibilities of role models; whether any of this is an appropriate topic for Congressional hearings and federal regulation at all -- but good luck finding any of that on the news channels. The main topic here is Canseco's tell-all book and the he-said/she-said denials of the other players, the bigger the celebrity the better. George Will is a notable exception. He can always be counted on to care passionately when baseball is involved: here and more recently here. The main difference, of course, is that he hasn't just discovered the issue this week, and won't forget about it in another twelve hours when there's a new revelation about Michael Jackson's pajamas.

Major League Baseball is now at a crossroads. Will major league baseball continue to be a part of our national pastime, part of a continuum with every little league program and weekend softball team in America, or will it become just another part of the entertainment industry, along with surgically enhanced supermodels and choreographed wrestling matches?

Countdown to the Filibuster Nuke...

2005-03-17T13:30:00.000-08:00

It's official. (here via Right Rainbow)

President Bush has picked one of his previously blocked judicial nominees, and renominated him: It's William Meyers.

The battle lines are drawn. The Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth and something called Earth Justice seem to be leading the charge against him. The accusation is that he's too anti-environment. Other organizations in the tent on the left like the NAACP and NARAL also oppose his nomination, but their arguments are based on the implications of his views on the environment to their own issues. A fascinating list of all the organizations opposing him, via the People for the American Way, here.

Meanwhile, Democrats decrying the hystrionically-titled "nuclear" option have finally made their threats concrete. The Washington Times reports: "Democrats yesterday said they will halt all Senate business except essential operations and national defense if Republicans use the "nuclear option" to unclog President Bush's judicial nominees.

Get a bucket of popcorn -- our elected representatives are about to earn their keep and provide us with some much needed entertainment. After all, our half dozen 24-hr "news" networks need something to cover after the Trial of the Millenium winds down.

Rebuild It, Don't Gild It?

2005-03-17T11:48:00.000-08:00

James Panero at Arma Virumque makes a very persuasive argument for rebuilding the Twin Towers. (See also Deroy Murdock's piece in the National Review. Money quote: "Had savages destroyed the Empire State Building, the Capitol, or the White House, the restoration of those icons surely would be underway." It certainly would.)

In the end it boils down to the difference between marring the greatest skyline in the world with a permament monument to terrorism -- a daily reminder to every commuter that they should be afraid to go to work -- and an obstinate refusal to let thugs with box cutters permanently change the landscape of a city we love.

On the other hand, I don't live in the NY area anymore. The sight of the radically changed skyline post-9/11 is dramatically shocking when I go back to visit my family, but I might feel profoundly different if I'd seen it every day for the last three and a half years.

So why doesn't someone ask New Yorkers what they think?

Another Cool Beirut Picture

2005-03-17T09:47:00.000-08:00

Check out this rotatable picture from the middle of the protest in Beirut. (via instapundit)

Filibuster Insanity.

2005-03-15T19:30:00.000-08:00

Apparently, it wasn't just Robert Byrd.

Power Line reports that in a recent mass-mailing from Howard Dean, again framing the filibuster as a "Free Speech" issue:

Today Harry Reid and the Democratic Senators asked us, the American people, to help them preserve the right of our elected representatives to speak their mind on the floor of the U.S. Senate. We have to act. Sign this petition, which we will deliver to every U.S. Senator, asking them to protect the right to free speech in the Senate.

All of this is entertaining enough. But here's a point that had slipped my mind (via Right Rainbow) -- except in episodes of the West Wing, Senators no longer stand up in the Senate and speak while exercising this "free speech" right. Thanks to a gentleman's agreement (dating back to the '70's?) they now merely inform the leadership of their intention to filibuster, and everyone politely accepts this.

Go back and read the quote from Howard Dean's letter again -- and remember, we're talking about the right of a Senator to nod his head at the leadership and prevent a vote from taking place, no debate required.

Why Do They Hate Us? Libertarians, that is.

2005-03-15T16:36:00.000-08:00

A guy could start to get a complex.

First there was this piece in the American Conservative, titled "Marxism of the Right". (Thanks to Mark Coffey at Decision '08 for pointing this one out.) Robert Locke presents an extreme parody of libertarians, defends it by claiming it's what every libertarian secretly believes, and then proceeds to pummel this strawman roundly about the head. For a good laugh, skip down to the last few paragraphs where he pokes fun at his strawman's naivete in not understanding the role of government in securing our rights.

One silly article lampooning the small-government contingent of the GOP's big tent isn't that shocking -- particularly coming in such a conservative rag. Republicans were returned to power last fall, and it's natural there'd be some jockeying between the different wings of the party. We can't do everything at once -- the government was deliberately set up that way.

But now we have this piece at Opinion Journal. It's playfully titled, "Party On! Do Libertarians have more fun?" Perhaps I'm just primed by Locke's piece a couple of weeks ago, but the relentless picture of the selfish, hedonistic b*stard painted in this piece seems rather extreme. Unlike Locke's piece, this one is clearly at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Nonetheless, I did a triple-take at the description of the libertarian as "A conservative with an unhealthy preoccupation with sex." I think most Americans given that description would expect a discussion of the religious right. Julia Gorin goes on with a few more descriptions: "A Republican with a wild side." -- "An amoral Republican" -- "Someone who thinks he should get a medal for being home in time for dinner and helping the kids with homework regardless of what the lower part of his anatomy was doing earlier in the day."

I don't want to read too much into what was certainly meant to be humorous (and at times, was), however, she goes on to cite several bloggers with similarly dismissive attitudes towards small-government conservatives.

So, finally, the question is: Is this just jockeying for position with the Big Tent, or could this be the beginning of a rightward lurch that could spell disaster for the GOP in the midterms next year?

Random Thought of the Day

2005-03-15T12:49:00.000-08:00

Little Green Footballs notes the convergence of American naval forces on the Middle East, including three carrier groups and half a dozen amphibious ships.

Speculation there is over the possibility of using them to keep the pressure on Syria, with respect to the Lebanese pullout, or on Iran, with respect to nuclear proliferation.

It's just a random thought, but, wouldn't it be interesting if they were actually headed for Sudan?

(This is just a random thought -- I don't really expect us to be invading anybody in the near future.)

Putting Numbers in Perspective

2005-03-15T11:32:00.000-08:00

In the era of trillion-dollar debts and million-man marches, sometimes big numbers can lose meaning in the absence of context.

I was elated yesterday at the unbelievably large crowds -- over a million people -- supporting democracy in Beiruit. Today, Arthur Chrenkoff puts this number into its proper context:

First off, we've had the Hizbollah, pro-Syrian, pro-government rally, which according to various estimates attracted somewhere between 500,000 and 1 million people to the center of Beirut.
Now, we have an opposition, anti-Syrian, anti-Government rally, with anywhere between 800,000 and 1.3 million people in the streets.
Lebanon's total population is 3.7 million.

And in the U.S. we were proud when 60% of our population managed to vote!

This also adds context to protesor Marwan Kayrouz's response to a reporter's concerns about possible civil war with: "Who is going to fight who? All the factions are here." (via GlennReynolds.com)

I had taken that to mean "All the factions are represented here." Perhaps he meant it literally.

Thoughts about Embryos, Part I

2005-03-14T20:06:00.000-08:00

In any moral issue, the question "what is this called" is never the Right Question, and a debate about what terms to use is equivalent to the part of foreign policy negotiations where we work out what size flags to put next to the seats. In contemporary politics, it's become a way to appear to take positions and debate issues, without having to actually do anything of the kind. This isn't what I thought I was getting into when I eagerly opened up Charles Krauthammer's recent column on the Washington Post's Op-Ed page. I've grown accustomed over the last year or two to agreeing with most of what he writes, or at least finding a well-thought-out position that I don't agree with - his pieces on foreign policy have become essential reading for me. This week, his topic is an amalgam of stem-cell research, cloning, embryos, and an apparent "gotcha" on congressional democrats.

Let's start with the gotcha -- during this year's State of the Union, President Bush reiterated his desire to "ensure that human embryos are not created for experimentation or for body parts." There was applause for this principle on both sides of the aisle. "Aha!" cries Krauthammer, but many congressional Democrats support exactly that. In research cloning, a somatic cell is returned to totipotence, effectively making it an embryonic cell. Therefore, he says, a human embryo has been created. And thus supporters of research cloning who applauded the no-new-embryo's line are hypocrites.(*)

Some readers will probably be nodding their heads at this logic and yelling "touché" at their pro-research-cloning friends. Others will be crying "foul!" at the notion that a single embryonic cell constitutes a human embryo. They will point out perfectly good terms like blastocyst and zygote, and claim that it's not an embryo until it's implanted, or until 14 days post-conception, or something like that. Behold the Orwellian arena of argument by redefining terms. Rather than make an argument against a moral distinction your opponent is making, just call the two things he wants to distinguish by the same term, call him a hypocrite and claim victory. ("But you already agreed that embryos shouldn't be used this way - and this is an embryo too!") This is just the flip side of the faux argument by defining different classes with science-based distinctions and claiming victory. ("That's not a baby, it's an eight-month fetus.") In both cases, the debater has sidestepped the part where he actually makes an argument supporting his position - that a single cell should be treated with the same respect as a complex organism or that an organism's rights are a matter of location (the only distinction between a one-month premature baby and an eight-month fetus).

So count me among those crying “Foul!” on Mr. Krauthammer - he knows perfectly well that these congressional Democrats aren't being hypocrites, they just have a different understanding of the issue than he does. He knows when they rose to applaud they didn't hear what he heard, when the president said "that human embryos are not created" they didn't hear "that no somatic cells are rendered totipotent." They see an important moral distinction between a half-dozen cells and a four-week embryo with the beginnings of a nervous system. He's welcome to disagree, even to believe that their view is incoherent -- he might even be right. But having a mistaken or different belief on an issue is absolutely not the same thing as coming to the debate in bad faith. There's been far too much use of the important and meaningful terms, "hypocrite" and "liar" in the past several years when what the speaker (or writer) really means is "someone who disagrees with me" or "someone who is wrong." And when the two sides in an important public policy debate refuse to understand what the words mean to those on the other side, nothing good can come of it.

(Coming soon, Parts II and III... in which I actually talk about the issue of research cloning and stem-cell research)

(*) In fairness, he actually writes, "The Democrats were oblivious to this contradiction." -- and never uses the word hypocrite, but he does simply assume that their applause indicates support for what he wants the declaration to mean, not what we all know they took it to mean.

UPDATE: Some discussion of the op-ed which spawned this at Of Cabbages and Kings. Note especially the piece it references from Slate, with reporting on the recent meeting of the President's Council on Bioethics which prompted Charles Krauthammer's piece.

Robert Byrd's remarks -- the Free Speech angle

2005-03-11T12:11:00.000-08:00

The blogosphere erupted last week over remarks by Senator Byrd (D-WV) comparing procedural changes in judicial appointments to the Nazi takeover of Germany.

The lunacy of this comparison, and it's rank hypocracy, as well as Byrd's most famous use of the filibuster have all been noted at length.

But it seems like one of the most dangerous parts of his speech has been ignored. Go back and read the speech again -- or check out how his own official web site characterizes the controversy:

Senator Byrd delivered the remarks below warning the Senate and the American people about a procedural effort being considered by some Senators to shut off debate and shut down minority voices and opinions. Byrd believes that such an effort strikes at the very heart of the Senate -- the freedom of speech and debate.

Did you get that? The right of 41 senators to block any action of Congress is a Freedom of Speech issue -- not one of constitutional powers.

Now on just this one reference, you might think I'm making this up -- that he was just talking about the freedom of debate on the floor of the Senate... so a few more quotes directly from his speech:

The uniquely American concept of the independent individual, asserting his or her own views, proclaiming personal dignity through the courage of free speech will, forever, have been blighted.
...
Generations of men and women have lived, fought and died for the right to map their own destiny, think their own thoughts, and speak their minds. If we start, here, in this Senate, to chip away at that essential mark of freedom...

In the eloquent, homespun words of that illustrious, obstructionist, Senator Smith, “ Liberty is too precious to get buried in books. Men ought to hold it up in front of them every day of their lives, and say, ‘I am free – – to think – – to speak. My ancestors couldn’t. I can. My children will."

He couldn't be clearer.

The relentless march of Orwellian redefinitions of the First Amendment's protection of free speech continues. We're routinely being told that free speech doesn't apply to things that are offensive (from the right if it's obscene or the left if it's bigoted), or to speech that costs money to produce (does a 7 cent photocopy count?) or most recently to political speech in general. Others stand logic on its head and claim that public criticism of their views is a violation of their right to free speech. But Senator Byrd's comments are the first I've heard of a new redefinition of what free speech is about.

We've all heard that the Second Amendment doesn't really mean individuals have a right to keep and bear arms -- it's about the government's right to maintain an armed national guard. Are we about to start hearing that the First Amendment doesn't really mean that individuals have a right to speak without government interference -- it's about the right of government officials to debate the issues? Can we imagine a day when a politician argues that the First Amendment protects his right to discuss the issues with other elected officials without having private citizens chiming in with their own opinions?

Okay, no, I don't really think Senator Byrd's comments were a conscious attempt to lay the groundwork for a claim that free speech was really intended to protect debate by elected officials, not discussion of issues and candidates by private citizens. But then I still have trouble believing that the Supreme Court actually ruled that first amendment protections for political speech are less stringent than those on non-political speech. I'm not advocating more stringent pornography laws -- but I always thought our society tolerated truly offensive speech because of the risk of a slippery slope toward restricting our national political debate. What ever happened to that notion?

UPDATE: via Power Line -- Apparently this wasn't just Robert Byrd. The Power Line crew has received an urgent action message from Howard Dean. Money quote:

Today Harry Reid and the Democratic Senators asked us, the American people, to help them preserve the right of our elected representatives to speak their mind on the floor of the U.S. Senate. We have to act. Sign this petition, which we will deliver to every U.S. Senator, asking them to protect the right to free speech in the Senate.

Good grief. I couldn't make this stuff up.

Defining Moments

2005-03-01T20:09:00.000-08:00

For my parent's generation, a defining political moment was the Kennedy Assassination. Ask any of them where he was when they heard that President Kennedy had been shot, and each will have a story for you -- not just of what they happened to be doing at the time, but of how it affected everyone, changed everything. September 11th was obviously another such moment, where for a moment nearly all of America was drawn together in a shared emotional experience of shock and grief. The political clarity of the moment was intense, putting the lunatic fringes at both extremes into harsh perspective as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson blamed "the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and lesbians" and Michael Moore commented that he couldn't understand why New York and D.C. were targeted when people there had voted against Bush.

For me, another such moment was the fall of the Berlin Wall, on November 9th, 1989. I can still remember where I was, and how I felt. It was my first year of college, and I was just beginning the slow shift from the unquestioning liberalism of my youth to the naïve libertarianism of my post-college years. I was back at my high school that week, hosting the return visit of a group of Russian exchange students. I can remember wondering what this moment meant to them -- raised with a very different understanding of the world, though I had neither the nerve nor the clarity to ask. For myself, I can recall playing over the sequence of events in my mind -- imagining what it must have felt like for a million East Germans packing up their lives in their station wagons and heading to Hungary, nominally on vacation, only to cross the now-open border into Austria and thence to West Germany. Recalling the peaceful surrender of the communist governments in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, I was in awe at the peaceful ending of a war that had always loomed over me. It had been an article of faith for me as a child that if The War came, I'd never even know it. It's hard to explain to someone even ten years younger how certain I was that I could be vaporized in a nuclear explosion at any time. Throughout the Gorbachev years, chinks of doubt began to work their way into that fear -- and when the Berlin wall fell and still the Russian tanks didn't roll in, that fear exploded.

Between the "orange revolution" we've just witnessed in the Ukraine, the miraculous events in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the revival of the democracy movement in Lebanon, these memories have been powerfully stirred recently. It's hard not to wonder if yet another certainty about the world is about to fall. Over my lifetime we've seen a world in which most people lived under oppression transformed into one in which a slim majority now live in free nations, and every indication is that the vast majority of the world will live in freedom within the turning of another generation.

Friends and family on the left often ask me how I can support President Bush's foreign policy. I have trouble understanding how anyone, especially anyone professing progressive liberal ideals, could oppose his policies. Looking back over the last fifteen years, I think that my beliefs -- my ideals -- have remained constant. It's just that I've lost some of my cynicism (while retaining my healthy skepticism -- hat tip to Penn and Teller for this useful distinction). In 1987 when Ronald Reagan stood in Berlin, pointed at Checkpoint Charlie and said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." I was right there with the political left -- I understood that Reagan was being childish, all this talk about "evil empires" and cartoonish black-and-white morality was risible. Today, hearing Bush speak passionately about freedom as the birthright of every human being in every nation, I am instead moved. We're living the progressive idealistic dream of my youth - now that the Cold War is over, America is proclaiming her support for freedom everywhere, and actually meaning it. It's a cliche that Democrats are idealists and Republicans are cynics -- my experience has been entirely the other way around. I didn't become a conservative by growing out of my idealism - I became a conservative by growing out of my faux-sophisticated cynicism.

The fall of the Berlin wall, the fall of communism, changed how I see the world and what I imagined to be possible. In my better moments, I imagine a multitude of cynical young idealists in this country with the image of a burkha-clad woman's ink-stained finger seared into their consciousness, just as the image of Germans with hammers pounding the Berlin wall into tourist souvenirs was seared into mine. I doubt we can even imagine what miracles the next twenty years may bring.

UPDATE: I think by now the images of ink-stained fingers have been overwhelmed by the image of the human tsunami in Beirut. This is beyond incredible.

What do I mean by the 'right question'?

2005-02-08T13:59:00.000-08:00

Let me start with a couple of quotes:

That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to the pertinent answer.

- John Bronowski

An approximate answer to the right question is worth a good deal more than the exact answer to an approximate problem.

- John Tukey

Too often today it seems like the great debates in politics focus on details that miss the essence of the issue. Perhaps this makes for better sound bites, perhaps in helps in fundraising, but it certainly doesn't help us as a society to make important decisions.

What I mean by the 'right question' is a question which focusses our attention back on the big picture. It's the antithesis of the 'zinger' -- of a question that either works to artificially constrain the issue or simply to generate emotion rather than thought.

The most important element of the 'right question' is that when we ask it, we don't already know the answer. It's the question of a scientist speculating over lunch, not the question of a lawyer cross-examining a witness. The right question should lead to thought and research, not to easy answers.

I'm sure my questions won't always live up to this standard, but it's good to have ambitious goals. I hope you'll join me in discussing the issues of the day and trying to ask the right questions.