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We Can’t Escape Ourselves
Need this be inevitable?
And maybe that’s a good thing. That the most basic of human needs — the need for acceptance, to feel a sense of belonging, to feel heard — is present in all interactions, from first dates, to senate confirmation hearings, to diplomatic negotiations should offer relative clarity to our dealings with one another.
It also adds a level of complexity, for how can we each ensure we don’t sacrifice our own needs when affording the same to an avowed enemy? That it’s “Hard to Say I’m Sorry” is no lie, but it might be exactly what is missing from Middle East peace negotiations.
An Op-Ed in the New York Times yesterday, presents interesting survey research supporting the notion that the Western approach to Arab-Israeli diplomacy — that the parties are akin to rival, rational (in the traditional economic sense) interests — is actually harming the negotiation process. Their research implies a better way to conceptualize the situation is as one between two estranged siblings, separated by a long-past wrong and kept separate by suspicion and isolation, where each party has been able to rationalize every injury as the responsibility of the other and where the only action that can begin to bring these two family members together is for one (and then the other) to offer to recognize and accept as valid the hurt each has suffered.
By no means do researchers Scott Atran and Jeremy Ginges suggest Middle East peace is possible through a group hug. Instead what they offer is a clue to what negotiations have missed all along (and most certainly during Neocon dominance in the U.S.): an understanding of human nature. Specifically:
Diplomats hope that peace and concrete progress on material and quality-of-life matters (electricity, water, agriculture, the economy and so on) will eventually make people forget the more heartfelt issues. But this is only a recipe for another Hundred Years’ War — progress on everyday material matters will simply heighten attention on value-laden issues of “who we are and want to be.”
….
Absolutists who violently rejected offers of money or peace for sacred land were considerably more inclined to accept deals that involved their enemies making symbolic but difficult gestures. For example, Palestinian hard-liners were more willing to consider recognizing the right of Israel to exist if the Israelis simply offered an official apology for Palestinian suffering in the 1948 war. Similarly, Israeli respondents said they could live with a partition of Jerusalem and borders very close to those that existed before the 1967 war if Hamas and the other major Palestinian groups explicitly recognized Israel’s right to exist.
After all, the unit of analysis isn’t the nation state. It isn’t the political party. It isn’t the religious sect.
It’s the human being … the human being who ultimately sits at the negotiation table … the human being who commands the army … the human being who wears the suicide belt …
Of course, Atran and Ginges’ research is also useful when considering the social and political issues that separate us (albeit with much less violence) here at home.
Bill Kristol is Seriously a Jerk
The first two times I tried to open Bill Kristol’s latest New York Times editorial, my Firefox client crashed, sending me back to the Mac desktop. I scratched my head then, but now I know why: apparently, Firefox can only handle so much stupid per second, and Kristol’s op-ed just overwhelmed it.
Even the title (“Will Obama Save Liberalism?”) lets you know that there’s trouble ahead. Post-Bush, post-Palin, conservatism has all but foundered on the rocks of anti-intellectualism, a vacuous, destructive, but blissfully recessive school of thought that led the movement to its own destruction. But liberalism’s in trouble? Come now.
But he’s just getting started: “Conservatives have been right more often than not — and more often than liberals — about most of the important issues of the day: about Communism and jihadism, crime and welfare, education and the family.” Please. Communism destroyed itself (it is not in the nature of dictatorships to survive); Bush’s policies towards “jihadism” have done nothing but inflame more struggles, drive the nation to bankrupcy, and bring about the reproach of the rest of the civilized world; and the only “family” that conservatism has benefited is the narrow concept of the white, upper-middle-class, heterosexual, Christian “family.”
Sadly, it’s downhill from there. Kristol goes on to explain how President Obama owes the high points of his inaugural address to a nascent embrace of conservatism:
We don’t really know how Barack Obama will govern. What we have so far, mainly, is an Inaugural Address, and it suggests that he may have learned more from Reagan than he has sometimes let on. Obama’s speech was unabashedly pro-American and implicitly conservative.
Obama appealed to the authority of “our forebears,” “our founding documents,” even — political correctness alert! — “our founding fathers.” He emphasized that “we will not apologize for our way of life nor will we waver in its defense.” He spoke almost not at all about rights (he had one mention of “the rights of man,” paired with “the rule of law” in the context of a discussion of the Constitution). He called for “a new era of responsibility.”
By feigning shock that Obama could ever be “pro-American,” or refer approvingly to America’s founding generation, Kristol seems to suggest that being patriotic and well-versed in the nation’s history are inherently “conservative” traits, owing much to Ronald Reagan and at cross-purposes with liberalism. Hey, Bill – jackass alert! – we’re all proud of our country, and we’re all pro-American. Conservatism has not now, nor will it ever have exclusive ownership over national pride. That said, you have to admire such bald attempts to assert sole ownership over American principles, especially when they come within sentences of an implication that “rights” are a detestable liberal concept, whose abscence from Obama’s speech proves the President’s nascent conservatism. When’s the last time Bill read his Declaration of Independence? ((“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”))
It’s almost embarrassing. We’ve just concluded a campaign season in which both presidential candidates took pains not to impugn the other’s patriotism. Such exhortations to unity and trans-partisan patriotism were practically a centerpiece of President Obama’s campaign. ((Recall his acceptance speech: “The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain.”)) And yet here’s Bill Kristol, arguing that Obama is only “patriotic” because he’s “implicitly conservative.” Where has this guy been?
The piece only really picks up, and starts to make sense, at the end: “This is William Kristol’s last column.” Huzzah! Change has come to America the New York Times!
To be sure, Bill’s overarching thesis – that America, liberalism, and the Democratic Party will stand or fall on Obama’s achievements – is right-on. But his snide, condescending method of delivery and obsession with labels are just what we’ve come to expect from Bush era “conservatives,” just what we don’t need, and precisely the reasons that conservatism is in trouble. Face it, Bill: while it’s within the realm of possibility that President Obama could fail, and destroy liberalism in the process, he’d be hard-pressed to do as thorough a job as you and yours have done with conservatism. So long, now.
Conservapedia: Breaking the Wall Between Parody & Reality Since 2006
Somedays, it’s particularly hard to tell whether Conservapedia is serious about itself, or whether it’s just a cruel, incredibly long-term, drawn-out parody of Christian fundamentalism. Pictures like this one (right) make it particularly difficult to tell: in case you can’t tell, yes, that’s a picture of Charles Darwin sitting on Hitler’s shoulder like a parrot, and it’s currently the headline of Conservapedia’s “article” on evolution. See what I mean?
Well, this past Friday, Wonkette discovered a real hidden gem on Conservapedia: a list of “Senate Democrats from States with Republican Governors,” containing a gentle reminder that if any of those Democrats were to *ahem* “disappear,” the Republican governors in charge of the state could promptly fill their seats with good, old-fashioned conservatives, and Obama’s Senate majority would be quickly subverted:
Yes, that’s right: Conservapedia, the “family friendly” encyclopedia, would like to gently encourage you to bump off your Senators. It’s the only way to stop that secret Muslim (“Obama may be the first Muslim president”) dead in his tracks!
Unfortunately Conservapedia has since pulled the article, referring to its creation as “the work of political terrorists, [] intent upon and dedicated to mocking our conservative, Christian-friendly encyclopedia.” The obvious inference that Conservapedia wants you to draw is that it’s against violence, political or otherwise, but the fact is that this article lasted on Conservapedia so long only because it fits within Conservapedia’s paradigm of politicizing some violence, and blaming it on liberals (“school shootings are the fault of liberal public schools”), and apologizing for other violence, where appropriate (“abortion clinic bombing is NOT ‘bigotry,’ it’s just misguided”). So don’t be fooled. This is only “parody” because Conservapedia’s administrators realized it might make them look bad – not because they don’t believe it.
Thanks to Oneiroi for the tip!
In Praise of Public Works: National Rail
The closest thing Texas has to a commuter rail. Mind the gap.
It’s no secret that President Obama takes more than a few pages from Franklin Delano Roosevelt – and as a progressive, Keynesian politician entering office in the middle of a financial maelstrom, he’s wise to do so. In an effort to create jobs, FDR embarked on massive public works projects, including the Tennessee Valley Authority, which electrified the South, jump-starting its economy and local standards of living. We can debate over whether this infusion of capital ended the Depression, but one undeniable fact is that its benefits continue to inure to the American public, sixty years later.
Now, Obama stands poised to emulate FDR with his own infrastructure plan, likely to include new bridges, roads, and (to a smaller degree) rail. If Obama’s aim is to create a lasting public works legacy for America, though, as well as create permanent jobs, he’d do well to think more ambitiously on the last point, and consider expanding the nation’s currently grim-to-nonexistent interstate commuter rail system. Although America is obviously bigger than our European counterparts, this size alone is insufficient to account for America’s abyssmal public rail system, a failing that relegates the traveling public (and especially regional businessmen) to either expensive and environmentally unfriendly air travel, or time-consuming and equally polluting road-trips. Thankfully, Obama thinks as I do on this point: he’s on record praising Europe’s rail system as an example to America. But let’s talk ideas to action.
When Bush’s Department of Transportation departed, they left plans on the table to develop up to eleven high-speed rail corridors nationwide – including two that, if completed, could knit the deep South to Texas’ financially flush eastern “triangle” (Dallas, Houston, Austin). Obama’s DoT should explore the potential of public/private partnerships to achieve this ambitious goal.
Any way you cut it, developing inter-state commuter rail in these regions is a winning idea. Southern/Texan companies and professional firms that succeed locally, or in their home states, face large transaction cost barriers to outward expansion, owing to the distances between major metropoles. Speaking from experience, executives and professionals in these companies are left to choose between foregoing expansion, squandering valuable time on the highway, or budgeting substantial amounts of money for air travel. Commuter rail systems would alleviate these burdens while encouraging expansion and competition between regional markets, enabling the kind of capital growth necessary for job creation while knitting diverse parts of our nation closer together (ask the Romans what ease of transit does for national unity). The Keynesian goal of public works – providing jobs in the creation and maintenance of utilities – would be quite secondary to the capital growth potential. What the Acela did for finance, a Southern/Texan rail system could do for any number of industries.
Don’t get me wrong. As a onetime resident of both Atlanta and Houston, I love my Dairy Queen-powered road trips as much as the next guy. But the prospect of a two-hour shot between Houston and Austin, freed from the responsibility and expense of driving myself, is rather intoxicating, and nations only benefit from accessibility.
EXCLUSIVE (?): Justice Thomas Asleep at Obama’s Inauguration!
Simply amazing. David Bergman, photographer extraordinare, managed to piece together a 1,474 megapixel image of President Barack Obama’s inaugural address, using some seriously high tech equipment, the result of which is an extremely complex & detailed image of the entire crowd. While I don’t know if you can download the whole thing – it would probably be huge if you could – you can “browse” the image at his website, zooming in on the crowd along the mall wherever you please. It’s a moment of history, frozen in time forever: with some hilarious results.
You see, if you zoom in on the President, it’s hard to miss the assembled Supreme Court immediately behind him: you’ll notice Scalia’s glowering visage immediately, along with the ever-cherubic Roberts, and – yes – the snoozing Associate Justice Clarence Thomas:
Clockwise from left: Roberts, C.J.; Breyer, J; Thomas, J; Ginsburg (?), J; Pres. Obama; Scalia, J.; Stevens, J.
Wow. That’s all I have to say. Then again, maybe he’s just resting his eyes? More pictures below the line: Continue reading
Gillibrand for Senate: Far Be It From Us
… to toot our own horns, but allow us to hearken back to our post in December, lamenting Caroline Kennedy’s bid for Hillary Clinton’s senate seat.
Certainly, if [Governor David Paterson] were to select [Representative Kirsten] Gillibrand for the post, he would send the message that substance is more important than image and that he understands there is a New York outside of the city, that can work in tandem with the city, with labor and natural resources critical for economic recovery and energy development.
Caroline Kennedy could withdraw her name from consideration with great aplomb and emerge with her thoughtful and gracious image intact and protected from the mudslinging of an aggressive campaign. She would be doing herself, the state, and the Democratic Party a huge service.
Well, guess what?
Kennedy withdrew her name from consideration with (somewhat less than) great aplomb, and Paterson selected Gillibrand to replace Clinton in the Senate.
Cults of personality permeate politics throughout this country … in every state government at some level and, certainly, in our federal government’s history. In fact, Obama has quite a challenge to manage the media in a way that focuses on the job of government rather than his celebrity. (He has already been quite adept at the task, considering the reportage of the work done on his first day in office.)
Similarly, Paterson came to office after Eliot Spitzer’s spectacular spontaneous combustion, and while Spitzer was definitely one of those personality cults, Paterson, on the other hand, has long been involved in making government work for the people of New York, no simple task, considering all of the other competing cults. (Joe Bruno, anyone? UPDATE: Bruno was JUST indicted on corruption charges.) Once again, Paterson substantiated the supremacy of New Yorkers’ well being on his list of priorities by selecting Gillibrand.
How strange the choice of Gillibrand, which offers the best advantages for New York State (thoughtful, moderate governance with transparency) is considered the bold move, when in actuality, it should be considered the natural move.
In any case: Bravo, Governor Paterson!
(Now if our prescience can hold out for the March Tourney …)
Jonah Goldberg is Seriously a Jerk
Portrait of the author.
On Wednesday’s edition of NPR’s Talk of the Nation, National Review columnist & editor-at-large Jonah Goldberg chastised the left for demonizing George W. Bush, and immaturely bashing Bush-era conservatives simply for the fun & sport of it (podcast @ 30:00).
This bully-pulpit moralism from the author of Liberal Fasicsm: the Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, the central thesis of which is that “liberals, from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton, have advocated policies and principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler and Mussolini” – a conclusion Goldberg won’t even defend on national television, disclaiming the clear implication of the book’s cover image (right). Real mature. Mr. Goldberg, if you’d presume to lecture the left on needless vitriol, I have someone you just have to meet first. Now, if you’ll only step into the bathroom, and look directly above the sink…
Pundits like Jonah Goldberg and Ann Coulter have built careers on childishly mocking Democrats & American liberals, with insults running the gamut from the inane (“libtards”) to the profoundly insulting (cf. attempts to equate Democratic policies & dissent with treason). How odd that the “family values” party is so uniquely incapable of “turning the other cheek.” But now, when the Democrats manage to take power, the same pundits expect Democrats & American liberals to play fair, abstain from name-calling, and offer the conservative minority the same respect that Bush’s flunkies denied to us for eight straight years. Why the Hell would we?!?
But here’s the thing: despite the far-right’s inability to reason reciprocally and conduct itself according to “the Golden Rule,” and even though we’re entitled to resond in kind, we won’t. We’ll rise above. The Jonah Goldbergs of the world may not be capable of treating their opposition respectfully, but Democratic governance, as President Obama’s actions bear out, is founded on principles of respect that require us to acknowledge and deal fairly with our political opponents, even and (to a point) especially when they endanger those very principles. This is good for us, because it validates our principles, and good for everyone else, because it brings America together, and reveals people like Goldberg as the petty, intellectually bankrupt, entertainers that they really and truly are.
Obama Delivers
On his first two days, President Barack Obama ordered the closure of Guantanamo Bay, halted sham trials at said military base pending a reevaluation of the detainees’ actual danger, and began high-level review of the case of Al Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, who Bush claimed he could detain indefinitely without charges. And, continuing a regulatory game of ping-pong, Obama rescinded the “Mexico City regulation,” which forbade recipients of foreign aid from even mentioning abortion in foreign clinics, and pledged to expend federal marriage benefits to same-sex civil unions. Dare we hope for an end to presidents who frame every little matter as a Manichean, unnuanced case of good versus evil?
Roe at Thirty-Six: the Accountability of Judicial Review, and Dispelling Gary Bauer’s Myths
Thirty-six years ago, the Supreme Court, per Justice Harry Blackmun, handed down its verdict in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), finding in the due process clause a right to privacy sufficient to partially withdraw from state or federal limitation a woman’s right to control her reproductive life. For the Justices and their clerks on that day, the decision was uncontroversial, a straightforward outgrowth of growing constitutional notions of privacy. Clearly, with seven of nine justices supporting the outcome, this was not a close case. Nor, in their minds, should it be.
In this judgment at least, the Justices were wrong: Roe provoked a movement that, to their surprise at the time, has gone farther to undermine the legitimacy of judicial review than any other Supreme Court case to date, and gave the religious right a new raison d’etre, much to my dismay. Nearly four decades later, this fervent opposition has pushed Roe nearly into nonexistence, making it more important than ever to truly understand what Roe means, and what it does not.
Enter Gary Bauer – chairman of “American Values” – who, in a seeming attempt to debunk “myths” about Roe, simply adds to the pile of lies already out there. Despite his law degree (Georgetown ’73), Bauer completely misconstrues the history, debate, and nature of Roe‘s constitutional foundation, adding confusion where there ought be none:
The first misconception is that the right to abortion has constitutional roots. But Roe’s justification actually derives from an abstract interpretation of the 14th Amendment’s premise of liberty and the malleable concept of a right to privacy found not in the actual text of the Constitution but rather in its “penumbras” and emanations. These foundations are so dubious that even leading lights on the left have criticized Roe’s legal reasoning. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for example, has called Roe “heavy-handed judicial intervention.”
Setting aside elementary legal errors – Blackmun’s analysis in fact explicitly disclaims sole reliance on Griswold‘s “penumbra” theory of privacy* – the modality of constitutional interpretation used in Roe is hardly as novel of a legal analysis as Bauer would have us believe. Because the Constitution is a forward-looking document that deliberately employed vague concepts and themes (what is “speech”?), judges are lawyers have to imply meanings from the documents structure and careful choice of words. Reading a right to privacy from the Constitution’s structure and intent is as plain as – to use an instance Bauer would likely approve of – reading a right to private gun usage. It’s just the way constitutional works. His citation to Justice Ginsburg’s critique is also misleading. While Ginsburg thinks Roe‘s reliance on due process is misplaced, it is only because she finds the right to choice in the Equal Protection Clause, not because she finds the Roe result insupportable. That Ginsburg so easily finds an alternative foundation for Roe is reason to credit the outcome Blackmun reached in Roe, if not the reasoning he used to reach that outcome. I’m sure Bauer knows better, which makes his argument all the more shocking.
Bauer’s next task is to argue that the American public dislikes “extreme” views on abortion, and thus ought to dislike Roe, because its “health exception” supposedly swallows any meaningful regulation. But Bauer’s only other options are to rush to the second extreme of banning all abortion (which the public roundly disfavors), or to let the states decide the matter, a solution that would result in an unsatisfying compromise that underprotects women’s rights while (as Bauer acknowledges) halting few abortions. If the solution is in the middle, Bauer is unable or unwilling to find it, and misleads his readers even more than his imagined opposition does.
There are reasons to be skeptical of Roe, and Bauer eventually manages to hit the most frequently cited one: namely, Roe withdraws the abortion debate from the political landscape, and thus is partially without democratic legitimacy.* Better minds than Bauer’s have contemplated the question of the democratic legitimacy of judicial review, especially in Roe’s case:* suffice it to say, though, that Gary Bauer is no Jeremy Waldron, and his failure to grapple meaningfully with the concept of judicial review ought to doom his critique of judicial review in this isolated case. Besides, as this debate ought to prove, Roe has hardly made the right to choose a foregone conclusion immune from political debate. Quite the opposite, in fact: at least the past three general elections have more or less turned upon the abortion question.
At least in general, though, Bauer gets one thing right: the abortion issue continues to divide America along cultural lines, nearly forty years after the Supreme Court initially considered the issue, and on Roe‘s anniversary, now is as good of a time as any to acknowledge that continued debate only further clouds the issue, especially with partisan hacks like Bauer earning a living by obscuring the debate. As Justice O’Connor famously said, “liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt.” Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992). The political spotlight has not been kind to groups on either side, and threatens even to erode public confidence in the rule of law. Thirty-six years later, it might be time to start maturely integrating Roe into a full-bodied regulatory scheme aimed at first reducing the desirability and necessity of abortions. Responsibly confronting family planning issues with a caduceus and not a Bible is a good start.* Thirty-six years later, Roe is still controversial: but it doesn’t have to be.
First Day in Review: Mr. Ex-President Bush, We’re Tearing Down Your Walls
Progressive doubters can put one fear to rest: as ACLU chief Anthony Romero acknowledged, the President “acted on day one,” formally putting into motion the steps necessary to dismantle the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and the CIA’s network of foreign prisons for “extraordinary rendition.” ((For those of you unaquainted with the practice, extraordinary rendition comprises the extralegal seizure of suspected terrorists who, without any protection of due process, are then “rendered” to nations who’ve kindly offered to do our torturing for us – like Syria. It’s basically like Elrond asking Sauron to interrogate Saruman for him. Hear Mehoud Arar, an innocent Canadian citizen designated for rendition by the U.S. despite the arresting country’s advice to the contrary (it was Spain), recount his tale of extralegal imprisonment.)) You can read his draft order at the ACLU’s main site.
This step is as momentous and laudable as it was inevitable. Guantanamo’s closure became a foregone conclusion when John McCain secured the Republican nomination: he’d promised to do the same, and then-candidates Hillary Clinton & Barack Obama disputed with him only the post-closure treatment of the detainees. And, at rougly the same time, the Supreme Court made Guantanamo’s closure legally inevitable in Boumediene v. Bush, which held that the writ of habeas corpus ought run to Guantanamo detainees, based upon both practicality and history. Guantanamo provided no benefit other than theoretically severing detainees from the protective coverage of the Great Writ: when Bush lost the ability to thusly evade basic constitutional rights, the base’s raison d’etre vanished into the dustbin of history. The only question was how quickly President Obama would accomplish this feat: pretty quickly, it turned out.
Critics should remember one thing: this does not mean that the Guantanamo detainees will go free. Per any and all plans being considered, they will, however, all be reviewed to determine the logic and legality of their confinement, a decision that for some has been five years in the making (the first appeal from Guantanamo’s military commissions was handed down this spring), and the resulting determination of probable guilt or innocence will then determine the detainee’s fate. No-one is going to be released on the Golden Gate Bridge with a bag of TNT and a match. At most, this move evinces the U.S.’s commitment to embrace – and not avoid – the rule of law. Is that so wrong?
One campaign promise already filled on day one: an auspicious start. Perhaps on day two, he can tackle Bush’s pending regulations (oops – check!) roll back Bush’s recent regulations…
