Will The Economist endorse George Bush? They sure weren't very impressed with Kerry's speech!

Mr Kerry ended his acceptance speech with this optimistic line: “The hope is there. The sun is rising. Our best days are yet to come.” But a cynic might have put it like this: Mr Bush is out there, his will to defeat the challenger is rising, and the toughest days are yet to come.

An indication, perhaps, of what The Economist is hoping for? The Economist, after all, can hardly endorse Kerry's protectionism (I enjoyed reading the disgust of the Anti-Bush Libertarian Hawks' blog.)

The Economist's endorsement would be very valuable, because it would force the intelligentsia to think twice.

BuzzMachine thinks that:

What bothers me about the speech -- besides the John-John moment with the silly salute -- is its American defensiveness. He leads with making America "respected in the world." As far as I am concerned, this should not be a primary goal of an administration; at most, it is a fringe benefit. We should do what we need to do and if the world respects that, fine; if France doesn't, I still don't give a damn.

Mostly agree. You don't get respect by wanting it. Remember junior high, the way so many kids tried so hard to be cool, but the really cool kids just did it by being themselves? Ironic, isn't it? But life is full of irony. You have to be aware of the irony, to laugh at yourself. Never be too earnest. (I have been.)

I WAS RIGHT
The Weekly Standard gives details on how Kerry is echoing Bush. Imitation is the highest form of flattery. Nice to see our great president is getting (tacit) respect from somebody.

I WAS WRONG

After watching the Kerry speech last night, maybe I was wrong when I insisted that (contrary to popular belief) America is on the right track...

What the Democrats did this week, I think, is to position themselves as the proper heirs to the Bush legacy. At the heart of this strategy, I'm satisfied that they neutralized the war issue, thanks in particular to Edwards. Edwards spoke of "heroes," and made the analogy to WWII that neocons love but that anti-war pundits and protesters have fiercely scorned for a year and a half. Kerry's noises about getting more allies involved and "going to war only when we have to" are really just a continuation of Bush strategy, and his talk of expanding the military was hawkish enough that I think the impression from Edwards' speech will linger. There was a mention of "bringing the boys home," almost with the implication that getting the allies involved will enable us to do that... if so, that could be a foretaste of some very incompetent policy... We'll see how it plays out.

The Democrats are the compassionate conservatives now. There was strong emphasis on patriotism, "duty," "values," and lots of programs to help out seniors, favorable mention of Head Start and (federally funded?) after-school programs... Oddly, Kerry proved Clinton right that Bush ruined his legacy. Because the Democrats (unfortunately!) are not building on the Clinton legacy. They're building on the Bush legacy.

Another Bush legacy: Kerry gave prominent mention to God. He knows the secularists are securely in his camp. It's "people of faith" he's got to appeal to. Another step forward for pious politics.

The reason the Democrats were able to position themselves as heirs to the Bush legacy was that the claims that Bush was ultra-right-wing were always myth. In policy terms, Bush bears a strong resemblance to John Kennedy: tax cuts and Keynesianism, a bold, forward-pushing foreign policy, a few more hand-outs at home. As Andrew Sullivan once said, Bush re-invented Cold War liberalism and branded it Republicanism.

What the Republicans have to do now is difficult and a bit counter-intuitive. They have to campaign, in part, against their own legacy. Or at any rate, they have to campaign against carrying their own legacy and further. They have to say, "We've expanded government spending quite a bit, and that's enough; now don't expand it anymore! No extra perks to veterans, though we're very grateful to them. No new after-school programs, though we value education. Deficits are a problem in the long run. We want to get the government off people's backs..."

I'm afraid now. Till yesterday, I thought the Democrats might win, but I thought the Bush legacy had too much traction, and a Democratic president would mostly be helpless against a fait accompli. Now I realize that's not the biggest danger: the danger is that the Democrats will embrace the Bush legacy and then reshape it for their own purposes. They'll get in the driver's seat, and not turn around, but make a left turn and keep going forward.

I don't want America to be "safer." There's a trade-off between freedom and security, and I want the freedom more than the security. I don't want America (i.e. the American federal government) to be "stronger at home," but rather, weaker. I find myself wistfully wishing for the good old days of gridlock between Clinton and the Contract with America Congress!

All of this makes me feel a bit silly for being so supportive of Bush up till now-- I don't like Cold War liberalism, so why did I buy into it with a Republican label? The tragedy here is that Clinton's reinvention of the Democratic Party failed. Now we have the Old Democrats to contend with, and Bush has given them all too many hostages.

THE TRUE COST OF THE WAR

I was just watching Kerry's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, and it hit me what the true cost of the war in Iraq will turn out to be.

War creates strong, big government. It inspires patriotism, unity, comradeship. Obedience, loyalty and security are emphasized; freethinking, diversity, playfulness, good relaxed fun are eclipsed. War encourages solidarity, and creates grand notions of what we can achieve together. For all these reasons, war creates a mentality that adapts easily into socialism.

After WWII, the English threw out Churchill and elected Labor in 1945. They built "homes for heroes," they offered free medical care, they maintained the WWII rations system. In the long run, it was a disaster: the British economy stagnated, fell behind its European neighbors, lost its empire and its great-power status, until Thatcher turned it around. It won't be that bad here. But listen to all the things Kerry promised! "Affordable" health care, and seemingly universal health care-- of the quality senators get! Better education, subsidies for university education. Independence from Middle East oil-- how is that going to come about? More jobs, more "investment." And a bigger military, and more special forces, more veterans' benefits. We'll preserve Social Security. And we'll get "real" prescription drugs for seniors, presumably meaning the Medicare bill will be expanded even further! How will this be paid for? Taxes on the middle class will be reduced, Kerry insists; the "wealthiest Americans" will pay more taxes, but I doubt that will be enough even to offset the tax cuts for the middle class. So we'll see a huge deficit and a considerable expansion of the federal government. Yet how convincing it all sounded, coming from a soldier amidst soldiers, echoing the emotions that Bush has aroused in the past two or three years...

From war to solidarity to socialism. The true cost of the war. I hadn't thought of that.

JUST BASIC DECENCY
Saddam Hussein was a murderer and an evil dictator and any genuine leftist has little choice but support his overthrow. Because he is a good, decent human being, Edwards offers robust support (in his speech to the DNC last night) for Operation Iraqi Freedom:

EDWARDS: John understands personally about fighting in a war. And he knows what our brave men and women are going through right now in another war, the war in Iraq.

The human cost and the extraordinary heroism of this war, it surrounds us. It surrounds us in our cities and our towns. And we'll win this war because of the strength and courage of our own people.

Some of our friends and neighbors, they saw their last images in Baghdad. Some took their last steps outside of Fallujah. Some buttoned their uniform for the last time before they went out and saved their unit.

Men and women who used to take care of themselves, they now count on others to see them through the day. They need their mother to tie their shoe, their husband to brush their hair, their wife's arm to help them across the room.

The stars and stripes wave for them. The word "hero" was made for them. They are the best and the bravest. And they will never be left behind...

Like all of those brave men and women, John put his life on the line for our country. He knows that when authority is given to a president, much is expected in return.

That's why we will strengthen and modernize our military. We will double our Special Forces. We will invest in the new equipment and technologies so that our military remains the best equipped and best prepared in the world. This will make our military stronger. It'll make sure that we can defeat any enemy in this new world.

But we can't do this alone. We have got to restore our respect in the world to bring our allies to us and with us.

(APPLAUSE)

It is how we won the Cold War. It is how we won two World Wars. And it is how we will build a stable Iraq.

(APPLAUSE)

With a new president who strengthens and leads our alliances, we can get NATO to help secure Iraq. We can ensure that Iraq's neighbors, like Syria and Iran, don't stand in the way of a democratic Iraq. We can help Iraq's economy by getting other countries to forgive their enormous debt and participate in the reconstruction.

EDWARDS: We can do this for the Iraqi people. We can do it for our own soldiers. And we will get this done right.

Brilliant. Except for the fantasy about help from NATO, I support every word. But But can Edwards can stop the slide of the Democrats into the Michael Moore mentality? And Kerry, after all, began his career by slandering the soldiers in Vietnam and telling the Senate about the "last man to die for a mistake."

AGAINST NEGATIVE POLITICS

Edwards' plea for decency in politics is much-needed and very welcome, but he forgets that so much of the negativity is coming from his side.

EDWARDS: But what have we seen? Relentless negative attacks against John. So in the weeks ahead, we know what's coming, don't we?

AUDIENCE: Yes.

EDWARDS: ... more negative attacks -- aren't you sick of it?

AUDIENCE: Yes.

EDWARDS: They are doing all they can to take the campaign for the highest office in the land down the lowest possible road.

But this is where you come in: Between now and November, you, the American people, you can reject the tired, old, hateful, negative politics of the past.

But the Democrats don't need attack ads, they got Michael Moore! Probably a lot more Americans have seen Fahrenheit 9-11 than have watched Bush's attack ads. John Kerry, who called for "regime change in the United States" during the Iraq war, and who is holding a fund-raising party in New York this summer called "The End of an Error," is also not innocent on this point. And the Democrats (Edwards aside, and maybe the Clintons) are not distancing themselves from the loony left. Americans might just heed Edwards' call and "reject the tired, old, hateful, negative politics of the past" by giving Michael Moore's party a bloody nose at the polls.

WHAT BINDS US TOGETHER

"Love seeketh not itself to please
Nor for itself hath any care
But for another gives its ease
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."

So sang a little Clod of Clay
Trodden beneath the Cattle's Feet
But a Pebble of the Brook
Warbled out these meters meet.

"Love seeketh only self to please
To bind another to its delight
Joys in another's loss of ease
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite."

--William Blake

I wonder what it would feel like to live through a civil war. Would it feel a bit like these last months in the US, with political polarization intensifying? It's hard to have a conversation with someone without thinking "which side are you on?" In DC, when I meet people and am seemingly assumed (because I am young, educated and in DC) to be a Democrat, I'm thinking, "how would this person treat me if they knew?"

That's why I wanted to quote that Blake poem: it's love that binds us together. Neither the Republican nor the Democratic platform can bring about paradise. If we love each other selflessly, like the Clod of Clay, we will build a heaven in hell's despair, but if love is tainted by pride, we will build a hell in heaven's despite. We mustn't let ourself be so seduced by the vanities of this civil war that we forget the mundane reality and deep necessity of love, the source of true joy in this vale of tears.

SALVADOR ALLENDE FOR VICE-PRESIDENT?
John Edward is a fascinating political phenomenon. In what is alleged to be prickly, anti-socialist America, a populist is making waves with dreamy rhetoric suggestive of a secular utopia presided over by a beneficent paternalistic state!

Salvador Allende was the first democratically elected Marxist president, a noble and gentle soul who came to power in Chile in 1970 and was murdered three years later during the bloody coup by Augusto Pinochet. For the left, Allende wears the halo of a martyr. He dispossessed the bourgeoisie peacefully without massacring them, Bolshevik-style. Workers owned the factories, became their own bosses. Allende promised more for everyone, except a few who could clearly afford to have less-- generous, good-hearted, an optimist, and gentle to the last. Edwards' speech reminds me of Salvador Allende. A few excerpts will illustrate:

John Kerry and I believe that we shouldn't have two different economies in America: one for people who are set for life, they know their kids and their grand-kids are going to be just fine; and then one for most Americans, people who live paycheck to paycheck. You don't need me to explain this to you do you?

AUDIENCE: No.

You know exactly what I'm talking about. Can't save any money, can you?

AUDIENCE: No.

Takes every dime you make just to pay your bills.

And you know what happens if something goes wrong, if you have a child that gets sick, a financial problem, a layoff in the family -- you go right off the cliff. And when that happens, what's the first thing that goes? Your dreams.

It doesn't have to be that way.

Yes, it does have to be that way. Life is hard. My theology professors at Notre Dame called this the "theodicy" problem-- why is there suffering, if God is good? An answer people have wrestled with since the dawn of time...

And yet I feel the pull of Edwards' rhetoric, don't you? I'm in $90,000 of student debt. I try to save, to pay a bit of that off. Last night I had borrowed a friend's car, I nicked (ever so slightly!) some Vietnamese immigrants' SUV, ended up paying him $300 not to report it (it being a friend's car) and realized that the little money I'd saved by not going to my good friend Andre's wedding (how sad I was to miss it) had been wasted. "It doesn't have to be that way," you say?

Ultimately, the reason that "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" does not appeal to us is that we want to give less than we're able in return for more than we need; and under capitalism, most of us can. So Edwards' form of populism does not stop at socialist austerity:

And we will invest in the jobs of the future and in the technologies and innovation to ensure that America stays ahead of the competition. And we're going to do this because John and I understand that a job is about more than a paycheck; it's about dignity and self- respect.

Hard work should be valued in this country, so we're going to reward work, not just wealth.

(APPLAUSE)

We don't want people to just get by; we want people to get ahead.

What does this have to do with politics? Does Edwards think the government "invests in the jobs of the future?" The 1990s boom came almost entirely from the private sector, and that's as it should be. But these distinctions are swept aside in the majestic upward sweep of Edwards' hopeful eloquence. Or is Edwards even talking about the government?

EDWARDS: You taught me the values that I carry in my heart: faith, family, responsibility, opportunity for everyone. You taught me that there's dignity and honor in a hard day's work. You taught me to always look out for our neighbors, to never look down on anybody, and treat everybody with respect.

Those are the values that John Kerry and I believe in. And nothing makes me prouder than standing with him in this campaign. I am so humbled to be your candidate for vice president of the United States.

I agree with the hard work and respect part... but what does it have to do with policy or politics? What Edwards wants to do, it seems, is not just to win election but a national transformation, a Great Awakening of some sort. To put it in terms familiar to my Notre Dame theology professors, he wants to solve the theodicy problem. Grand, beautiful, inspiring, but deluded and dangerous.

Allende's plans were economically disastrous, producing first inflation, then recession, and were leading into chaos before the interruption of the coup. During the Pinochet years, unions and dissent were brutally crushed, as the right-wing general implemented the free-market austerity policies endorsed by scholars from the University of Chicago, "lost Chicago boys." Thirty years later Chile has developed a track record as Latin America's best-performing economy, achieving a buoyancy that is downright weird by regional standards. Chile is immune to the intractable problems that plague other countries in the region. Because we would rather not condone Pinochet's methods, there are a number of arguments that this is not thanks to Pinochet, which work well as placebos for simple consciences, but... Anyway, when confronted with this new populism, the lessons of history (and theology) should make us wary.

A FIRST LADY FROM MOZAMBIQUE?
Did you know Theresa Heinz Kerry was from Mozambique? I found out on Tuesday night. Cool! Would she be our first-ever foreign first lady?

FOREIGN AID AND IRAQ

One way to think about the Iraq war was pioneering a new model of foreign aid. This NYT column (hat tip: Andrew Beath) describes the problem with the old foreign aid:

Wealthy nations and international organizations, including the World Bank, spend more than $55 billion annually to better the lot of the world's 2.7 billion poor people. Yet they have scant evidence that the myriad projects they finance have made any real difference, many economists say.

My old prof Lant Pritchett, author of a brilliant call for (more) freedom of migration (go to the link and click "The Future of Migration"), is quoted offering one reason why:

Mr. Pritchett, a veteran bank economist, tried to explain why rigorous evaluations were such a rarity in the culture of the bank. Its highly trained, well-meaning professionals too often think they know the solutions. "They have too little doubt,'' he said.

I wonder if Lant also mentioned (during an interview which was quote selectively) that governance is a big problem in many poor countries. My biggest takeaway from two years of MPAID training is that foreign aid can't substitute for good governance. Aid agencies are not in charge, so if crooks are in power, they're basically helpless to stop the crooks keeping the money. "Conditionality" is the latest not-very-successful attempt to square this circle.

Iraq is, to cite the hope expressed by one Iraqi blogger (Iraq the Model), a "model" for an alternative form of development assistance: instead of letting bad regimes take your money and make a chump of you for the notional sake of the poor, remove the bad regime, then pour in lots of money.

Based on my study of development, as well as a lot of my own thought rooted in my knowledge of history, economic and political theory, I take a favorable view of this new model-- provided that the precedent of Iraq ferments in the next years into something more like law (but not quite law, since law implies government, and I am not advocating a world government, at any rate not now). We could have a rule, for example, that unelected regimes that allow no civil or political rights are designated "totalitarian" and have no legitimacy in international law. We could have a rule that regimes that come to power through murder, or that gas their own people, permanently forfeit their legitimacy.

"Donor fatigue" has long been eroding the older form of foreign aid. At the Democrats' convention in Boston, we see once again that foreign-policy idealism quickly provokes donor fatigue-- people (not me, but a lot of people) tire all too quickly of helping damn foreigners.

Still, it's quite possible to envision Iraq, ten years from now, embodying civil and political liberties, democratic stability and economic prosperity that will excel, not only the Saddam era, but Saudi Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and other comparable Arab countries-- a shining model for Islamic, Arab democratic capitalism. If so, the world will have to consider wider application of the Iraq model.

RIGHT AND LEFT
I got an e-mail today that said:

"i love debating with people like you. i can't believe people can be as passionately right as I am left. damn!"

To tell the truth, I'm not actually comfortable with this characterization. "Right" and "left" have been re-defined so much by the Iraq war that I feel like a fraud when I join in using the terms this way. Quite literally, I don't know what I'm talking about.

I'll explain. Historically, the terms "right" and "left" emerged in the context of the French Revolution, and derived from the physical location within the Chamber of Deputies of the different political groupings.

Those who sat on the right were inclined towards the absolute monarchy of Louis XVI. They believed that God and religion should have a prominent place in public life. They felt that opening the door to civil and political rights would lead to chaos in France. They were suspicious of free thought. They were strong believers in "legitimacy" in foreign relations, respecting the powers that be, including mostly monarchies ruling by divine right, and in peace.

Those who sat on the left believed in freedom and rights, in republican and democratic forms of government. They were willing to dismiss the reigning "legitimacy" as rotten and sweep it away. In foreign policy, they were ready to proclaim themselves "for all peoples and against all kings" and plunge into revolutionary wars.

In 2003, the "left" wanted to maintain in power the absolutist dictatorship of Saddam Hussein for the sake of "legitimacy." They wanted to preserve order, and were afraid that bringing civil and political rights to the Middle East would bring chaos. They wanted "peace." The "right" meanwhile, proclaimed itself in favor of the Iraqi people but against the ruler; they found the reigning "legitimacy" rotten and were willing to sweep it away. They brought to Iraq freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free thought; they strove to erect a democratic and republican form of government there. For these objectives, they were willing to go to war.

Why have the right and left switched places?

In the case of the right, the reason is that this is the American Right we're talking about, and America is a liberal society to the core, right and left (in different ways). Still, the right is pretty conflicted about the war in Iraq.

In the case of the left, the story is stranger. For over a century, the left was always upping the ante. Liberal democracy became passe in the late 19th century, socialism and Marxism took over the "left" role, downplaying and discarding the liberty objective as the revolutionary idea increasingly obsessed new generations of leftists. This trend reached its climax in Soviet Russia, and Soviet communism retained its grip for three or four decades after the revolution of 1917-- after that, disillusion set in, but a strand in human character assures that some among the intelligentsia still lust after violent revolution, so the "hard left" is quite alive today. On the other hand, Eduard Bernstein in the late 10th century launched a different, nonrevolutionary trend, by which workers tried (with much success) to improve their lot within the system. This led to the social-democratic welfare state, a different kind of "left." After about the 1970s, though, neoliberal and free-market ideas made a comeback, especially in the US and the UK, and eventually the Labor Party and the Democrats were ratcheted to the right and largely embraced them, creating a third "left," or "center-left," represented by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. These three "lefts" seems so divergent that a reconciliation or coalition seems scarcely possible, but the Iraq war had the strange effect of bringing about just that. The communist far left opposed it in the spirit of its perennial paranoia and America-hatred; the social-democratic left opposed it from a muddle-headed semi-pacifism; and the pragmatic left (not Blair, of course, but many otherwise like-minded people) opposed it for international-law reasons and because a compelling national interest was lacking. So the divergent streams of the "left" flowed together again-- but very far from where they had begun, for they were now opposing everything that the "left" had originally defined itself by supporting, and supported everything the "left" had defined itself by opposing.

It seems time, then, to retire the term "left," because its meaning is so tangled that it sinks under the weight of its own contradictions. But what are we to call this real anti-war "left" coalition then, when the menagerie of ideas that cohabit in it can't be articulated into a coherent stream of thought, and only one issue (Iraq) and an ultimate ancestry in the left unites them? My suggestion: the "post-left."

The transformed right has a somewhat clearer unifying theme: freedom. Free markets, free Iraq, and so on.

So when I read this reader's letter, this is what it sounded like to me:

i love debating with people like you. i can't believe people can be as passionate for freedom as I am for the post-left. damn!

Maybe that helps you to see where I'm coming from?

"CRUSADERS"
I've been reading a history of the Crusades lately, and one passage struck me as having reverberations of relevance:

The disillusion in Europe that followed the fiasco of the Second Crusade obliged the Latins in the Holy Land to reach the kind of accommodation with the infidel that would have seemed sacrilegious to the previous generation of crusaders. This was also the consequence of a process of cultural acclimatisation that had occurred over half a century of living in the East. The early crusaders had expected to encounter wild savages and depraved pagans in Syria and Palestine: but those who had remained in the Middle East had been obliged to recognise that the culture of Arab Palestine-- Muslim, Christian and Jewish-- was more evolved and sophisticated than at home.

Some had quickly adopted Eastern customs. Baldwin of Le Bourg, having married an Armenian wife, took to wearing an Eastern kaftan and dined squatting on a carpet; while the coins minted by Tancred showed him with the head-dress of an Arab...

Not only were the Franks softened by the style of life they encountered in Syria and Palestine; they were also obliged to reach a modus vivendi with the Muslims who remained a majority of the population. As long as they paid their taxes, the Frankish overlords were prepared to permit the Muslim communities to choose their own administration. As in the reconquered territories in Spain, there were insufficient Christian immigrants to replace the Muslims; it was therefore important for the fief-holders to persuade them to stay. A baron's wealth depended upon their prosperity. Nor did his principal revenue come from the land, as in Europe. 'The Holy Land was an urbanised area par excellence' and a baron's income came from rents on properties, tolls, licenses for public baths, oven and markets, port dues and levies on goods.

By the standards of the day-- and even by those of today-- these charges and exactions were not severe: the tax on a peasant's produce (terrage) was fixed at around one-third. Although the Muslims' first loyalty was always to Islam, there is evidence that they were not dissatisfied with Latin rule. The rule of Frankish overlords was in fact lighter than in the former period of Muslim domination. The Franks' respect for feudal law contrasted favorably with the capricious demands of Muslim princes. Certainly, Muslims were second-class citizens; they were forbidden to wear Frankish dress; but they had their own courts and officials. Conversion to Christianity brought with it full civil rights and led to assimilation into the Christian Syrian population. Among the Franks themselves there were no serfs, a fact that distinguished it from the feudal societies in western Europe. (Piers Paul Read, The Templars, Da Capo Press 1999, p. 128-9)

Though the analogy is sometimes made, the American war in Iraq is very different from the Crusades. The Crusaders' objective was to occupy the land (to protect their holy sites and win salvation), or perhaps to convert the locals to Christianity, which they did not want; we don't want the land (our intention to leave, and soon, has always been clear) and we're trying to convert them to democracy, which they do want. I have no intention to whitewash the Crusades, by the way: though there are many noble and chivalrous episodes in the history of the Crusades (Richard the Lionheart was recognized as an admirable specimen of the Crusader species even by his enemy Saladin), there are too many cases of indiscriminate slaughter, from the massacre of the Muslim and Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem when they first took Jerusalem on 13 July 1099, to the gory sack of fellow-Christian Byzantium during the Fourth Crusade of 1204. And yet the Crusades were a mind-opening experience for the Europeans. Iraq has broadened the horizons of a lot of Americans, particularly but not only those who fought in Iraq, and will continue to be a fruitful source of inspiring stories, stimulus to difficult and fascinating thoughts, and window on a different world-- provided we draw the right conclusions.

By the way, given my evangelical enthusiasm for Operation Iraqi Freedom, some may be wanting to ask: "Why don't you join the army yourself, if you love it so much?" The answer: I want to. And I went in and talked to Sargeant Pressley of the DC Office about joining the Reserves last spring. But then the World Bank sent me on a mission to Africa, which served as an opportunity to invite my (Russian) ex-fiancee to visit and give her the second chance she had asked me for. We're getting married now, and I figure she should have a say in it. So I've promised not to join the Reserves without her permission... and in the meantime, to "keep begging." (If Kerry's elected, though, my freedom-fighting zeal will start to seem a bit obsolete...)

A BUSH REBOUND?
This poll, link via Mickey Kaus, was a pleasant surprise! What most warmed my heart is the evidence that character assassination against Bush is failing. More people view Bush as honest (46%), and fewer Kerry (40%), than a month ago (40% Bush, 52% Kerry). Good. The worst reason that Bush could lose the election is a (false) belief on the part of the public that he lied about Iraq.

THE PLOT THICKENS
Lest anyone think the Sudan crisis is simple (government bad, blacks good, US-UN should intervene, save lives, stop genocide) The Economist provides a useful reminder of complexity. First, the rebels are not blameless:

The peace talks between the Khartoum government and Darfur’s main rebel groups broke up last week after the rebels accused the government of breaching a ceasefire agreed earlier this year. International observers worry that the rebels are being deliberately intransigent, in the hope that the dire humanitarian crisis will force the world powers to send troops to the region. It seems clear that unless the rebels come back to the negotiating table and both sides honour the ceasefire, the job of restraining the janjaweed will be much harder.

People respond to incentives. Never forget the law of unintended consequences. Meanwhile, a humanitarian crisis is underway in neighboring Uganda too:

This in turn might lead the Sudanese government to renew its support for the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a bizarre cross between a religious cult and a rebel movement based across the border in northern Uganda, which abducts children and makes them attack Ugandan government forces and civilians. There are already signs of this happening: on Tuesday, church leaders and southern Sudanese rebels said at least 40 civilians had been killed as the rebels fought to regain a village that the LRA had captured, allegedly with the help of Sudanese government forces. In Uganda itself, perhaps 1.8m have fled from the LRA. The resulting humanitarian crisis merits perhaps as much international concern as is now beginning to be expressed over the plight of the Darfuris.

In Africa, most of the population is children. Children are sometimes called "innocent." I would say rather that their behavior is less regulated, less fixed by experience into steady, predictable channels: they can be more generous, more frank, more good-hearted, more wonderful but also more violent and superstitious, more prone to evil influences. Africa is a world at subsistence level, like the European Middle Ages, and the Middle Ages are in some respects a Westerner's best cultural lens on Africa: hunger, illiteracy, and superstitious religion make people on-edge; fealty and vassalage and the cult of hot-headed courage have their place; a weapon turns a nobody into a somebody. In such a context, not only our actions and inactions but our threats and our deliberations create a ripple effect, and are victims of a much-amplified law of unintended consequences.

I wonder if the US is fated (ironically) to misunderstand the world comprehensively precisely because our influence in it is so great, and it is so difficult to be impartial about oneself and one's own works.

WHY BOB DYLAN IS A REPUBLICAN
I love Bob Dylan, and in particular one of the songs that the Democrats played tonight at the convention. "Blowing in the Wind" is the classic anti-war song... or is it? I was conflicted about liking the song, until I took another look at the lyrics:

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes and how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes and how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they are forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind
The answer is blowing in the wind.

We walked down one more road in Iraq, and a lot of boys, born and raised in the mall, became men there. Was the white dove sleeping in the sand before the war-- with the sanctions in place, living in fear under Saddam's murderous tyranny? No, they still had, and still have, many seas to sail. We went into Iraq to disarm a brutal dictator, to move one step closer to the day when the cannonballs are forever banned. We don't know how far there is still to go. But we have walked one more of those roads these past three years.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
Yes and how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free?
Yes and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn't see?...

The answer to at least one of those questions is no longer blowing in the wind: it's "thirty-five years." Thirty-five years the mountain of Saddamist totalitarianism existed before it was washed to the sea. Thirty-five years the Iraqi people lived under tyranny before they were allowed to be free. And yes, the people turned their heads and pretended they just didn't see. Two people changed that, reached out to the opressed and made a change: George W. Bush and Tony Blair.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes and how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?

Can we hear the people cry? The victims of tyranny, of AIDS, the destitute and the poor of this world? Will we reach out, by sending jobs overseas to people who need them more than we do, by opening our borders to let people come and get a better life through hard work, by sending aid to ameliorate the AIDS crisis, and by sending troops to war-torn countries and evil dictatorships, to give people freedom and make dignity possible? Will we realize that too many people have died? Will we step in to prevent genocide in Sudan, or to help make peace in Israel-Palestine? (Give credit where it's due: I was a big fan of Carter's mentioning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; we shouldn't let this drop off the radar. And he was right to emphasize the suffering of the Palestinian people, too.) And when we look up, do we see the sky? What are our dreams, our ideals? What kind of world do we want, and are we willing, if necessary, to fight for? Do we value the freedom of people of all races and religions, or do we put America first? Do we look with envy on the rich and want more for ourselves, or are we grateful for what is in truth the great bounty that all Americans already enjoy?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

Yes, it is. And the Bard is as relevant and as wise as ever.

BLOGGING THE CONVENTION

Best part-- the music, oh yeah!!! "Georgia, Georgia... on my mind..." And much more. "Johnny B. Good." I'm lovin' it...

The bad part... well, that will take longer.

"BUSH LIED"
No, I don't think Carter ever said those words. But he did everything but. This is just plain untenable. Every investigaton says the same thing. The CIA thought he had WMDs. So did the French, the British, everybody. It is extremely sinister that this is a major theme of the Democrats' campaign. There should be some honor in politics. A certain chivalry, a certain willingness to give public servants the benefits of the doubt. When I heard this wicked calumny coming out of Carter's mouth... I swear I wish I could challenge him to a duel. Fifty paces, pistols ready, may the best man win.

He talked about "human rights," too. The nerve! In Afghanistan and Iraq, millions of people now have freedom of speech and freedom of the press, thanks to Bush. People can celebrate their beliefs after decades of repression. This is what human rights means, Carter. Carter is one to talk: he undermined the shah's regime and paved the way for the Iranian Revolution, which violated human rights far worse than the shah ever did. I salute Carter's work on hunger in Africa, but this mindless sanctimony would wreak terrible damage in the world if it gained the White House.

THE AMERICA FIRST PARTY
Bush has taken to talking in terms of universal ideals. He believes that even Muslims deserve and desire freedom. Why does he do that? Doesn't he know that it's Americans who vote in elections? The Democrats do. "America, we're listening." "That's not the American way." And whose interests are Americans' interests opposed to. "We don't want to lose one more American job overseas." "If we can provide health care for all Iraqis, we can provide health care for all Americans."

"WAR OF CHOICE"
Every war is a war of choice. There is no such thing as a "necessary war," full stop. There is only a war necessary to... where the "to" is followed by a phrasal verb describing the war's goals. To prevent a country from being conquered. To prevent a genocide. To preserve the independence of our ally. And so forth. The question is always, are we willing to tolerate the alternative to war. World War II was not a necessary war. Yes, Japan attacked us. Hitler didn't. We could have ignored Hitler's declaration of war. We could have sued for peace; the Japanese would have probably even have let us keep Hawaii. We weren't willing to do that. We made that choice. Choice. Choice. I wasn't willing to tolerate the starvation of Iraqi children because of sanctions as the price of our security. I was disgusted, ashamed that this was going on. I didn't want to run our foreign policy because Iraqis are our fellow human beings, our brethren in the community of mankind, with desires for freedom, freedom for oppression, freedom from fear. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Some people disagree with that; fine, state you would have left Saddam Hussein in power and be done with. But can we get rid of this nonsense about "necessary wars" and "wars of choice?"

MARXISM
It's legitimate for corporations to make profits. But it's hard for people to understand this. Politicians chronically demonize corporations that make profits. There's a lot of this at the convention, particularly on the health care issue. I would be very afraid if I were working for a pharmaceutical company right now. It is also considered illegitimate now to export jobs overseas, even though studies show this benefits the US economy. Wake up, America. Clinton is gone. The old left is back.

Will America see through the Democrats now? Please please please please please please please please...

VOTING AND TRUTH

Nato and I have been engaged in a dispute about the teaching of evolution in schools, which he argues should be imposed by the state regardless of the popular will because "we don't get to vote on what truth is." In reaction to an earlier post of mine, he writes:

the truth or falsity of evolution is apparently not at issue. Nathan says that to override the popular will on an issue of scientific fact is 'not worth it'. Could we apply this to geography? If we vote that, say, the continent of Asia is imaginary, should it be taught in schools? How about if only one school district votes to teach that, in an area where a sect predominates whose holy text says there is no continent but North America?

What's interesting, and typical, about this counter-argument is that his hypothetical situations are completely implausible, and Nato, like others who take this line, does not seem to care. Does any sect deny the existence of other continents? How likely is it that some sect would gain a democratic majority in some district and impose this curriculum on the schools? My answer is, yes, if people vote that way, that's what should be taught; moreover, if we somehow get majorities of people believing in such ridiculous and factually disprovable things, we will be in pretty bad shape, and screwy school curriculums will be the least of our worries. Fortunately, though, I'm quite confident that no such fantastic scenarios will actually come to pass. The alternative is to hand power to an elite of "experts," who are just as likely to be misguided as the public is, I think.

But I also introduced an argument about evolution:

When I said I thought evolution is "full of holes," the phrase was a stand-in for a much bigger argument that I didn't want to get into just then. My evolution-skepticism derives from the book Darwin on Trial and other work by Philip Johnson. I am NOT a Biblical literalist, seven-day creationist, let it be emphasized. I would sooner cut off my hand than believe a thing just because the Bible said so. It is on scientific grounds that I think evolution falls short.

A brief summary will not do justice to Johnson's comprehensive challenge to the evidence for evolution, but I should say a word, just because people are brainwashed enough on this issue that people will probably dismiss me as crazy otherwise. (I know from experience that it's an uphill battle to get people even remotely to consider alternatives on this issue, but you've got to try.)

Think of the theory of evolution as two theses: 1) a process of natural selection yields higher survival rates for specimens with advantageous traits for a particular environment, allowing them to reproduce more, and causing those traits to become more common, potentially leading to gradual change in a species (though equilibrium is also possible), 2) natural selection explains how life on earth in all its complexity came into being from a pre-historic chemical sludge. I am not doubting the process of natural selection. To prove that natural selection must take place does not even require observation or experiment, it can be achieved through simple logic, starting with the propositions that a) organisms pass traits on to their offspring, b) some organisms survive and some do not, c) the organisms' traits affect the likelihood of survival. But from thesis (1) to thesis (2) is a huge gulf, which I do not think evolution science comes even close to bridging.

Now think about an eye. No one doubts that organisms with eyes are better off with those without, and natural selection would favor them. But how would a creature get an eye in the first place. An eye is an extremely complex organ, and to imagine that an eye would appear all at once by a mutation is risibly improbable. But it's hard to imagine how an eye could have evolved gradually, because part of an eye is no use, since you're blind anyway. A race of probabilities starts to come in here: that an eye, or parts or functions of an eye with any value, could appear by mutation is extremely improbable, but then we are talking about billions of years over which all this took place, and maybe the very improbable could still happen a few times in all that time. It's hard to quantify such things and give them an up or down. My own judgment is that the gulf is too wide to be bridged, but anyway that evolutionists are far from having bridged it, and yet they insist with fundamentalist zeal that evolution is "FACT!!!" Don't take my word for it. Read Philip Johnson.

Bear in mind, too, that the nature of evidence and knowledge in evolution is in no way comparable to other sciences. Neither experiment nor direct observation is available. The analogy to geography is bogus. Actually I think a more skeptical attitude towards geography might be useful-- veteran traveling journalist Robert Kaplan asserts of Africa that "maps lie"-- but at the end of the day, if you don't believe that New Delhi or Kilimanjaro or Cape Horn exists, you can go there and see them. If you don't believe that gravity accelerates objects at 9.8 meters per second squared, we can drop something off a building, pull out a stop watch, do the calculations. If you don't believe that planets move in elliptical orbits around the sun, the telescopes are there to prove you wrong. We can't go back to the Jurassic Age.

If I'm doubting evolution, what's my alternative? That's the trick: I don't have one. I think that we just don't know how the world and all life in it came into being. The triumph of evolution is aesthetic and psychological. Aesthetic, because the emergence of such wonderful and beautiful complexity from chemical sludge through such a simple and intelligible process is enchantingly pleasurable to contemplate, and it also flattered the Victorian view of history, in which civilization had evolved from primitive society, through ancient Rome and Greece, through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment to culminate in... Victorian England. Psychological, because people, and especially scientists, hate not knowing. If we haven't sailed to the corners of the map, we draw dragons and sea monsters in the far-away oceans rather than leaving them blank. Furthermore, evolution plays a key role in legitimizing the materialist worldview.

Despite my skepticism, I would want my children to learn evolution in schools. If there were a referendum, "Should the schools in [town I lived in] teach evolution?" I would vote yes, not just because my children need to know what other people think, but also because understanding evolution requires analytical sharpness and would build their skills, and because evolution theory is so beautiful, and would help them to appreciate a lot of great artwork, from sci-fi books and movies to natural history museums. But there should be a referendum.

It turns out that Nato has read Philip Johnson and some others and still thinks that "evolution can actually be confirmed today (in the broad sense)
by anyone who wants to follow the trail of evidence." Maybe, but let's let the people decide.

A COMPROMISE ON GAY MARRIAGE
A gay conservative Andrew Sullivan reader sent in an interesting letter a little while back (can't find it now, sorry) in which he said that he didn't support gay marriage because marriage is only for the protection of children. This principle, it seems to me, represents the best available compromise between those who insist on a "civil right" to gay marriage and the traditionalist majority.

I would turn this principle into a policy as follows. There are two categories of recognized one-to-one relationships: civil unions and marriages. A "civil union" may be between two men, two women, or a man and a woman. A state of "marriage" is created when children are born to a couple (straight, of course, by biological necessity) who are in a "civil union."

Of course, we don't know, when a man and a woman get married, whether they'll have kids or not. So it would be odd and gratuitous to overturn tradition and strip straight newlyweds of the "marriage" label, and then insert another legal ceremony of marriage if and when pregnancy occurs. We can say, however, that civil unions between gays and childless "marriages" between straights are legally equivalent, and marriages with children are distinct. We can then drop the charges of discrimination, beyond what "discrimination" is fixed by nature (that only men and women can have children together.)

I realize I haven't addressed the adoption issue. And I'm not sure this gets to the essence of marriage, but for policy purposes it's good enough for me. It makes sense. Why should people commit their whole lives to each other? I know what I want now, but I don't know what I will want 10 years from now. Why tie my hands? It makes sense if you have a child, and two parents will create the best environment for that child to grow up in. Otherwise, why? This definition also harmonizes well, at least arguably, with tradition, unlike gay marriage, which clearly rejects it. What do you say, Tom? Satisfied?

Don't miss Tom Reasoner's hilarious parody of this blog. :)

AGAINST ACADEMIA
I found this argument in Tech Central long overdue. Arnold Kling argues that large-scale state subisidies to college and universities are not justified. More specifically, he argues that:

- the large income gap between college and high school graduates probably owes mostly to signalling (you don't become more talented, employers merely see that you are more talented) and to the fact that people who go to good schools are smarter and would earn more under any circumstances.

- subsidies to state schools largely subsidized life-style improvements for already affluent students

- if college really makes people so much more productive workers, they should be willing to invest in those skills on their own, without encouragement from subsidies

- it's a "puzzle" that tuitions have been rising so much, and his explanation is a "segregation equilibrium," by which rich parents send their kids where they will be with other rich kids

- barriers to entry and exit allow faculty to accumulate salaries and benefits far exceeding their "opportunity cost," i.e. what they could earn outside academia

- subsidies to colleges are regressive, helping the middle classes and the rich more than the poor.

Kling is right about all this, but he ignores the one truly plausible raison d'etre of America's Big Academia: to conduct research, to expand knowledge, to serve Truth and "speak truth to power" (also a journalist's raison d'etre this one). Knowledge is a public good, and therefore deserves public subsidy. That's the theory anyway. And yet in many branches of academia, this argument would seem so quixotic as to be almost risible.

A suggestion for the agenda of a new populism to emerge sometime in the near future. Roosevelt's populism was against Big Business. Reagan's populism was against Big Government. The new populism-- against Big Academia and Big Media, these ostensibly truth-seeking industries which have betrayed their callings and grown corrupt, arrogant, and obese. Possible policies for the new populism: 1) Prohibit price discrimination, forbid universities from looking at private financial records to determine financial aid allocations. 2) Large campaigns of student debt forgiveness that will wreck the system by which colleges fund themselves by massive indebtedness. 3) Develop large federally-funded training and testing programs which will allow people to develop good job skills outside of (and much more efficiently and quickly than in) college. If this reduces the supply of students, and professors feel the pinch, we can help them out by distributing large amounts of grants to academics to start blogs. The grants will depend on getting readership as well as on approval by fellow academics. Thus the ostensible higher purpose of the universities-- to create the public good of knowledge for all our benefit-- will be served much more directly: instead of having to pay tens of thousands of dollars to be enlightened by America's finest minds, we can all click a website and get it in a frequently-updated free format from these minds, forced to work hard by skinflint legislators. (hehehe :)) These, in turn, would undermine Big Media, forcing them to retreat to their comparative advantage, reporting in the narrow sense.

As a toiling student slave (they put me $90,000 into debt for getting a degree in how to help the poor!!!) I would pick up a pitchfork and march against Big Academia behind any firebrand who comes along. On the other hand, I'd like to be a professor at some point, too. But there's no contradiction here, I think. Big business and big government were not permanently damaged by the populist campaigns against them. The fierce critical spotlight had a salutary effect on these institutions. I anticipate that a populist fight against Big Academia and Big Media would have the same impact.

THE RISE OF BLOG
An interesting dispatch on the blog phenomenon from a print-newspaper editor venturing into blog. By the tone of the piece, you can tell he's a bit annoyed by the new competition:

Those perched on the political fringes have found a home on the Internet. True believers of one stripe or another, no longer content to merely bore spouses and neighbors with their nutty opinions, can now spew forth on their own blogs, thereby playing a pivotal role in creating the polarized climate that dominates debate on nearly every national issue. There are blogs devoted to the right, blogs devoted to the left, blogs devoted to exposing the vast and devious media conspiracy, blogs defending and attacking, well, almost anything that mirrors one individual's view of the world.

If Hitler were alive today, he'd have his own blog.

Some of the big bloggers got mad about the Hitler line but I think it's fair. A new medium can spread evil ideas as well as good ones, and it's up to individual readers and bloggers to sort them out in their own consciences and move things in the right direction.

But the editor is wrong to emphasize "those perched on the political fringes." Certainly there are such blogs. But the most successful bloggers are usually 1) more or less "centrist" or "moderate," and 2) adopt "mix-and-match" positions, both because a) that's what they think, and b) it shows their readers that they're independent. Andrew Sullivan is a foreign-policy hawk and a true believer in limited government, but he supports gay marriage; Glenn Reynolds is a libertarian who enjoys mocking Bush-bashers but dislikes the far right, and whose real political orientation is techno-futuristic; Mickey Kaus is a Democrat who endlessly derides his party, and hilariously Kerryphobic; Josh Marshall runs a "center-left" blog, efficiently drawing attention to the Bush Administration's dirty laundry but not venturing into people-vs.-the-powerful populism or left-liberal big-government paternalism.

Dan Drezner's academic paper on blogs is more balanced.

PAINTING HIMSELF INTO A CORNER

Andrew Sullivan rages at Bush on the gay issue, but he's not too impressed with Kerry either.

So assume that Kerry is elected president this November. Now fast forward to November 2006. In Massachusetts, the one state where our equality now exists, there will be a referendum on an amendment to the state constitution. The referendum proposes that marriage rights be removed from gay couples and replaced with "civil unions," institutions that grant all the same rights as marriage - in so far as the state can bestow them. And Kerry is publicly in support of that amendment. And he is from Massachusetts. And he is president. Connect the dots: He could be critical in taking away civil rights in the one state where we now have them. And, by his obvious comfort with gay people, he would help to legitimize the notion that it's ok to shepherd us into the "separate but equal" category of civil unions. The Human Rights Campaign, long leery of supporting marriage rights, will likely give him cover. So will many gay Democrats.

The trouble, Andrew, is that we live in a majoritarian democracy, and a majority of people do not support gay marriage. So politicians tack towards the center, and in this case, the "center" is just not where you want it to be. It's not surprising that a majority of people do not support gay marriage, since this has been the case throughout human history. Can you accept that?

LIBERAL MEDIA, OUT IN THE OPEN

Has the NYT come out of the closet? The ombudsman admits:

Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?

Of course it is.

Any questions?

CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRATS

I was intrigued by the title of Andrew Sullivan's essay "The Conservative Party", but was disappointed to discover how far he and I have diverged. Sullivan argues that

Whatever else [Bush's] policies might be called, they have very little to do with traditional conservative themes of federalism, small government, the free market, the separation of church and state, and a strong, independent judiciary.

and goes on to argue:

So where is conservatism to be found?

Maybe you should cast a glance at Boston, where next week, the Democrats will anoint one John Forbes Kerry, a Northeastern patrician who is fast becoming the Eastern establishment's favorite son. Yes, Kerry's record on spending, defense and social policy has been liberal. But that is not the theme of his campaign so far. Kerry is as rhetorically dedicated to seeing through nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan as Bush is. But where Bush has scrapped America's longstanding military doctrine of only attacking when attacked, Kerry prefers the old, strictly defensive doctrine. Where Bush has clearly placed American national interest above any international concern, Kerry insists that the old alliances - even with old Europe - need to be strengthened and reaffirmed. Kerry insists that he is a fiscal conservative, aiming to reduce the deficit by tax increases. He has argued that stability in some parts of the world should take precedence over democracy or human rights. He opposes amending the Constitution and supports legal abortion, the status quo Bush wants to reverse. He has spent decades in the Senate, quietly building an undistinguished and constantly nuanced record. He is a war veteran, who plays up his record of public service every chance he gets. He's a church-going Catholic who finds discussion of religious faith unseemly in public. In the primaries, he was the safe, establishment bore compared to the radical pyrotechnics of Howard Dean and the populist charm of John Edwards.

His basic message to Americans is: let's return to normalcy. The radicalism of the past four years needs tempering. We need to consolidate the nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan, before any new adventures against, say, Iran. We need to return to the old diplomatic obeisance to the United Nations. We should stop referring to a "war" on terror, and return to pre-9/11 notions of terrorism as a discrete phenomenon best dealt with by police work in coordination with our democratic allies. At home, we need to restrain the unruly theocratic impulses now unleashed by the Republicans. We must balance the budget again. We need to redress some of the social and economic inequality that has so intensified these past few years. Kerry's biggest proposal - and one sure to be modified considerably by the Congress - is an incremental increase in the number of people with health insurance. It's far more modest than that proposed by Bill and Hillary Clinton a decade ago.

Since when has "separation of church and state" been a conservative position? Or a "strong, independent judiciary"-- at least, since Warren launched the saga of judicial usurpation in the 1950s? Since when has support for the UN been "conservative?" I think Sullivan is right that the Democrats are the conservative party now, but the reasons for this are deeper and require more conceptual work for their elucidation. A conservative looks to the status quo and the recent past, to the self-interest of well-established interest groups, and regards change with more fear than hope. A radical looks to novel trends and to the future, is ecumenical and motivated by generous ideas, dreams of a better world and tries to make it be, and regards change with more hope than fear. In this sense, the Democrats are conservative: they want to preserve the heritage of the New Deal and the Great Society; they defend the interests of teachers' unions, labor unions, trial lawyers, seniors, workers in industries threatened by international trade; they are frightened by globalization, by the "forward strategy of freedom" and its perils, and by the transformative effects of the New Economy. Republicans are radical: they envision a democratic transformation of the Middle East, they preach that freedom is "God's gift to everyone," reform of Social Security and of the tax code, pouring money into drug innovation, "transformation" of the military (at least, Rumsfeld envisions this), they want more aid to stop AIDS in Africa, they want to roll back usurping courts and give power to the people. A very radical agenda.

WHAT THE MILITARY THINKS

I asked Nato about what the military thinks in this election, and he sent me an interesting letter. I was interested because the "forward strategy of freedom" depends heavily on our soldiers risking the ultimate sacrifice, so in moral terms I think one's appraisal of it depends a lot on whether those soldiers are proud to get this opportunity to spread freedom, or whether they feel ill-used, like "this is not what I signed up for." Now the military has to behave in a politically neutral way. It's good for our democracy that our military is reliably subordinate to civilian authority, so it's probably a good thing that the Army and its soldiers (though they vote of course) don't lobby for certain policies or support certain candidates, because they would compromise the authority of elected leaders in foreign policy. And yet when our new foreign policy idealism depends so much on the soldiers, I almost feel soldiers ought to have extra votes (five or ten, say) in recognition of soldiers' disproportional contribution. That's unconstitutional, but I think a lot of people in the public might be proxy voters for the soldiers, voting for Bush if and only if the soldiers believed in him, if they knew what soldiers thought. With that in mind, here's Nato's letter:

The military is not the method of service most chosen by left-leaning
people, as you know. Before I joined the Army, I had two friends in the
Peace Corps (which is, I think, far more arduous, more hazardous, and less
well-remunerated than the military), two friends in Americorps, one working
in a Guatemalan free clinic under the auspices of an American NGO, one who
worked part time for Planned Parenthood, and one who worked for Lambda Legal
Defense. My brother had been in the military as had my father, my
grandfather and my grandmother plus both uncles and a cousin, but all of
them are more conservative than I am*.

Generally speaking, I think the military tends to support Republican
presidents because they tend to share values in a broad sense. The modern
military is far more political than it was twenty years ago and military
officers are about twice as likely to identify themselves as conservative as
the general population of college graduates.

That said, soldiers tend to trust other soldiers. When General Shinseki
said we'd need "hundreds of thousands" of troops to pacify and rebuild Iraq,
we took that seriously. And he got canned for saying it - apparently
because this contradicted Rumsfeld. Also, we know our leaders care. When
my regiment had a ceremony for the soldiers who died in Iraq, no few
commanders and sergeants major shed tears openly and had difficulty reading
the names. Meanwhile, Wolfowitz, when asked to estimate how many troops had
died in Iraq, underestimated by more than two hundred. Clearly he's
either a liar or just doesn't care enough to know. That's unacceptable,
totally. When soldiers hear things like that... Well, it's not good for
morale.

At this point the friction between the military and its civilian leadership
is mostly confined to Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, but I also hear a surprising
amount of griping about Bush himself. I'd say that about 45% of my platoon
loathes Bush, and about 30% support him utterly, with another 25% being
pretty out of it. I wouldn't take this as indicative of the Army, however,
since it's a military intelligence unit and thus has a pretty different
demographic than the rest of the Army. Army-wide, I'd say a small majority
still support Bush.

This is different from supporting the war in Iraq, of course, but from a
certain perspective *I* support the war in Iraq, despite feeling the way it
was executed was inexcusable. I'd say only a minority actually oppose the
war in Iraq, and generally for not-very-good reasons. Many, many more feel
they were ill-used, but by whom is a good question. Some right-wingers
still try to blame things on Clinton, which seems bizarre to me but might
make more sense to you.

I knew there was a conflict between Rumsfeld and the military hierarchy about "transformation," with Rumsfeld having lots of new ideas that the military resisted, and generally I thought the events had proved Rumsfeld right, and all the predictions of disaster humiliatingly wrong. I was stunned by the three-week victory. Weren't you? But then, if Shinseki's reason for wanting "hundreds of thousands" of troops was not to defeat Saddam but to "pacify and rebuild" the country afterwards-- to prevent terrorism and insurgency-- maybe events have vindicated him somewhat. (It sounds to me suspiciously like a self-serving reinterpretation of one's remarks after the fact, but maybe that was what he meant.) The trouble is that we don't know the counter-factual. Would more troops have prevented the security problems, allowing us to establish a strong regime which could then be passed to elected Iraqis sooner? Or would more troops have made the occupation weigh heavier on the Iraqis and provoked more resistance, becoming targets for suicide bombers? From this distance, it's hard to know.

The point about "our leaders care" is well-taken. Another military friend of mine said the military was "like an ethnic group." It has its own culture, its own ceremonies, its own dialect its own bonds of mutual affection. Colin Powell is an admirable representative of that culture. I'd like to see him installed at the Pentagon for the soldiers' sake, even if he's a lot less neocon than I'd like.

It had never occurred to me to blame "the way [the Iraq war] was executed on Clinton! Nor am I a Clinton-hater, in fact I am pretty supportive of his domestic policies, though I consider his foreign policy in large part misguided and amoral. What I do blame Clinton for is the Iraqi sanctions. Faced with a defiant, WMD-armed Saddam, Clinton preferred to sacrifice the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children rather than a few hundred US troops. Bush, unlike Clinton or Kerry, is a man whom I have come to trust not to make such moral lapses; I think a mscular conscience is at work in him, guiding him on just paths, and when there are no well-trodden just paths for him to take, he blazes his own trail towards justice. America under Bush won't do anything that I'll need to do penance for when I meet my Maker. Clinton was a salesman, led astray because his conscience was weaker than his desire to please and convince, who could change his beliefs like he could change his shirt, but Kerry is something scarier: a moral relativist. That's why he flip-flops: he says what people want to hear for the sake of his own ambition, but he doesn't believe it, and he doesn't sound like he believes it. His flip-flops make people wonder who he really is, what is "Kerryism," but I think the answer may not be far to seek after all. It's right there in his well-publicized biography: he went to Vietnam to fight for freedom, and was disillusioned. Kerryism is disillusionment with the fight for freedom. He doesn't support Bush II's "forward strategy of freedom," he doesn't support Clinton's talk of the "indispensable nation," he doesn't believe in the "axis of evil," he believes in leaving each nation to its own devices, its own values, its own culture, and in not meddling with it or bothering about it. This is the Kerryism that people will vote for in November, and that he will observe while he's in office. It is this quiet apostasy from the brotherhood of man that will break my heart if Kerry is elected, but that just shows my quixotic eccentricity, I guess.

DEATH SPIRAL FOR THE PAPER OF RECORD?
Even Slate is ridiculing the New York Times now! How long can this go on? No, my headline was wishful thinking, I don't think the NYT will be unseated as the Paper of Record just yet, because there's still a critical mass of people who think you have to read it to know what other NYT readers are reading; so the NYT continues to dump its distortions on our heads, as if by divine right. In finance, this phenomenon is called a "bubble." (I support the dump-Cheney position, btw, but that's beside the point.)

Why the dividend tax cut makes capitalism more honest and efficient. Once again, the brainiest online magazine throws light on why we're on the right track. Meanwhile, Kerry's role was characteristically craven:

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry used the latter point to push for abolishing the double taxation of dividends during a speech in December 2002. Kerry told the Cleveland Economic Club, "And we should encourage the measurement of the real value of companies by ending the double taxation of dividends." President Bush followed one month later with a proposal to abolish the double tax but Kerry reversed course, quickly denouncing the proposal as a give away to the rich for partisan purposes. Kerry then proceeded to vote against the legislation at least 7 times in 2003.

ON ABORTION
An e-mail from a reader and fellow protestor against the Sudan genocide. My comments after, except for these two: 1) I didn't compare large-scale abortion to genocide, I merely said that some people would (not necessarily me) and 2) we all know the line about Bush being "pro-bombing innocent children in Iraq" is beneath contempt (does she imagine that genocide in Sudan could somehow be stopped with NO collateral damage?!) but let it pass, keep reading.

Well... i read your blog and politically we're on very different pages! Still, I love a good debate and I want to set the record straight. I am not angry with you but I must say that I didn't like your comparison of my organization to the Sudanese government. We SAVE lives everyday by providing people with prevention (contraceptives, STD tests, mammograms, comprehensive, medically accurate sex ed (including abstinence education)), and many other services. Actually, 80% of what we do is prevention based and has nothing to do with abortion. (About 2/3 of this health care service goes to low-income women)

I support abortion because it is important to keep it safe, legal, and RARE. Since conservative legislators find it necessary to preach ineffective abstinence only sex ed instead of comprehensive, medically accurate, age-appropriate sex ed, more people are contracting STD's and having unplanned pregnancies that they may need to terminate. Additionally many people need to terminate their pregnancies because they are unable to afford to have children, their lives might be endangered by carrying a pregnancy to term, and or they are survivors of rape. I have a cousin who had to carry a pregnancy to term after she was raped. She chose not to terminate the pregnancy but she said she would have been devastated if that choice had been made for her.

We all know that many conservatives don't support universal health care, increasing education funding, or any other social welfare programs for that matter. I always also argue that the minute every American citizen is entitled to universal health-care, adequate education, affordable and safe housing, equality under the law and in practice, safe and clean water and food, clean air, and a foster care/adoption system that doesn't discriminate there might be a minute argument people could use to justify restricting choice... and STILL it would be wrong because it is not fair for the church or unscientific ideologies to take priority over a woman's HUMAN right to make her own decisions about her fertility.

I find it ironic that our president is anti-choice but he is pro-death penalty, and pro-bombing innocent children in Iraq. Bush's government doesn't even want to allow exceptions for saving the life of the mother. This shows me that women who are living, conscious, and breathing are viewed as less important than fetuses that haven't even been born.

In my opinion, it is offensive to connect slavery, genocide, and the holocaust to abortion. As a person of color I am offended by his distortion of the argument. Genocide is the systemic killing of entire ethnic and or religious groups. Abortion is a choice that women make. It is only a choice and we give women all of their options. Our organization provides women and men with adoption information and neonatal health information if they want to carry the pregnancy to term. We believe that every child should be a wanted child and we don't make moral decisions for women. Women are autonomous beings who should be able to make their own decisions about their fertility.

I don’t believe in placing ideology over science.It is not the government's place to interfere with our personal and private affairs. It is between a woman, her God, and her physician. Making abortion illegal will not rid the world of abortion. It will cause more people to die because people will not be accessing safe health care. We can never go back to back alley abortions. We must provide people with accurate sex-ed, a sex positive culture, and options for protecting themselves from HIV and AIDS and unwanted pregnancy.

Interesting perspective. My reaction:

1. I can't understand the "safe, legal and RARE" line. If the fetus is a person, abortion is killing a person, so presumably it should be illegal. But if the fetus is NOT a person, why should we want abortion to be rare? It's morally neutral, just another form of birth control! Maybe all they mean is that it's more expensive and involved than, say, wearing a condom, so we should avoid it if we can, in which case the point is uncontroversial-- though even then I actually disagree with it: if some girl just wants to have lots of unprotected sex and doesn't mind the frequent abortions, and IF THE FETUS IS NOT A PERSON, what's wrong with that? Anyway, the "rare" seems to me to be a mock concession, like "we think it's bad too, but we're not so extreme as to outlaw it altogether, see how reasonable we are!" But just because you make centrist noises doesn't mean your position is coherent. Some of the other phrases are even more baffling. "A woman's right to make decisions about her own fertility" sounds nice, but how could it possibly trump a human life. I support "a woman's right to make decisions about her own parenthood" too, but not if it means that she can kill her child if she decides she doesn't like parenthood after all. Likewise, we all wish that "every child is a wanted child," but not if that means that when some particular child happens to be unwanted by anyone, we should kill her. The same with "it is not the government's place to interfere with our personal and private affairs"-- does this apply to child abuse too? All these arguments fall short if what we are doing is trying to justify the killing of a human being; if the fetus is not yet a human being, on the other hand, all these arguments are unnecessary. It seems to me that the only morally serious pro-choice argument is basically: "The fetus is not a person, abortion is not murder." It does seem to me a bit odd that someone would be certain that the fetus is not a person, but since I can't make head or tail of that question myself, I won't gainsay them if they do. And while I would love to see Roe vs. Wade overturned, that case being one of the greatest mockeries of constitutional interpretation ever (eclipsed only by Planned Parenthood vs. Casey), that would just leave abortion to the states, many of which would allow it, so I realize it's not feasible to make abortion illegal, and I prefer not to follow my thoughts any further.

2. The liberal laundry list was interesting. "Safe and clean water and food" are to be guaranteed-- my sister got food poisoning from Taco Bell once, so I guess I'll have to give up my bean burritos. "Safe and affordable housing" for all, too. Affordable on what wage? Any wage? And if the housing is affordable, what about the food? If the food is going to be safer and cleaner (I wasn't aware that it was dirty or dangerous, but oh well) then it will cost more, won't it? No doubt they will be making that affordable too next. With subsidies, I suppose. What I wonder is, how far towards socialism does this feel-good agenda really point? After all these years liberals still haven't come to terms with the problem of scarcity. On "universal health care," though, although I oppose it, I admit she has a point: while government-run health care systems are inefficient and quash innovation, a free-market health care system is beset by so many problems of adverse selection and moral hazard that it's not clear it works any better. It's worth keeping an open mind on this point.

BOUND TO ACT IN DARFUR?
Nato claims in an e-mail that

International law that the US accepts as binding (insofar as it ever does) requires intervention in the case of genocide, so Congress is comitting
itself to supporting intervention.

Good, I guess. But what does that mean? Does it mean boots on the ground, or does it mean talk? To me, law implies a government, government implies a monopoly of force, force still runs fast and loose all over the world, so "international law" is either a complete chimera or mostly a chimera, for better or worse. But the topic confuses me.

SECRETARY OF STATE... BREMER?

The Weekly Standard has me convinced that Paul Bremer did a great job in Iraq. Key quote:

In Iraq, the center held. The country didn't fracture into three separate rump states, Kurdish, Sunni, and Shia. Neither civil war nor warlordism broke out (though terrorism did). Mass killings of former officials and collaborators with Saddam Hussein's regime never occurred, unlike the bloody reprisals in France and Italy after World War II.

A suggestion for the second Bush Administration: Bremer for Secretary of State, Colin Powell for Secretary of Defense (and ditch Rumsfeld.) Bremer's intimate knowledge of the problems of terror, state-formation, and (by extension, though thanks to him it didn't happen in Iraq) state failure, which are probably the world's most important problems. Putting Powell in Rumsfeld's shoes would end the State-Defense feud if anything would, wouldn't it?

This case for Dick Cheney is also pretty strong-- but I'm still not convinced. I disdain run-of-the-mill Cheney-bashing, and the Halliburton stuff is phony-baloney. But 1) Cheney is strongly identified with a muscular foreign policy, whereas I think the US should aim for a low profile for a while (to let the Bush revolution in foreign affairs gain traction) and 2) Cheney is not likely to be Bush's successor as president, and isn't that half the point of the vice-presidency? I'd like to see some bright young free-marketeer governor get the veep spot... but this is academic anyway, since Cheney's sure to stay.

DEMOCRACY AND THE GUARDIAN STATE
My last immigration link was courtesy of "Nato", who has also posted some remarks about democracy provoked by a reader e-mail of mine:

How is it that scientific truths that most laymen do not accept get taught in schools? It's because we live in the original democratic technocracy - the republic. Almost all our laws are made by lawmakers. That's pretty much the entire job - making laws. Now, most of them are politicians (as opposed to statesmen) as well, but it's a de facto not de jure requirement.

Why don't we just vote on things ourselves? Well, the truth, is, we're not very informed. I consider myself very well informed compared to the average person, but you can guarantee that lawmakers know lawmaking a whole lot better than I ever will. I might be able to bend a certain portion of my free time to studying the crafting, arguing, and negotiation of laws, but it's their whole profession (at least ostensibly).

"Nato" eventually admits that "technocracy is no panacea." I'm not satisfied with that disclaimer. There's a confusion here between representative government, on the one hand-- by which expertise enjoys power only to the extent that it is, and only by virtue of being, accepted by the people and supported by the will of the majority-- and, on the other hand, cases where courts or other unelected institutions enjoy power regardless of the popular will. In the latter case, who guards the guardians?

I do not think it's a good thing that "scientific truths that most laymen do not accept are taught in schools." Even if evolution is true (and I think the theory is full of holes) to override the popular will on this issue is not a price worth paying: millions of people whom the elite considers barbarians and ignores are marginalized and alienated by such undemocratic norms. (If the Founders were alive today, they would be more distrustful of state-run public education than they ever were of standing armies.)

In other news, the protest I attended yesterday is in the news. Call it genocide, we said, and it seems Congress just did. Not much of a triumph though, the newly-christened genocide is still going on. It will probably play itself out like the ones before it.

The Economist finally gets the point about John Kerry...

The suspicion is that there is something robotic about Mr Kerry: that he is programmed to say what he thinks most people want to hear.

BUSH CHOKES IMMIGRATION BILL

A reader sent me this link to a column reporting that the White House is trying to muffle the guest-worker issue this year.

Mr. Frist denies acting at the request of the administration, but after the president's own immigration proposals provoked a backlash from the right earlier this year, the White House appears reluctant to embrace the farm-workers bill even after top aides encouraged the proponents to proceed last year. "Is the leadership going to push back on issues that the White House would prefer not to deal with? I think that could have happened," said Sen. Larry Craig (R., Idaho), who confirmed that the administration did ask him not to offer the proposal last week. Rep. Howard Berman (D., Calif.), a chief sponsor of a companion bill in the House, is more blunt. "The White House told Frist, 'Don't let this come up,' " Mr. Berman said. " 'Not that we're against it. Not that we're for it. Just don't let it come up for a vote.' "

My hopeful interpretation of these moves. Bush supports immigration, but he knows the issue alienates his base. So he wants to keep it quiet in an election year; but he has mentioned it, so if he pushes hard for immigration in his second term, he can claim that people knew that's what he wanted and that it was part of his mandate. Very hopeful of me to think so, I admit.

I spent an evening volunteering at the Bush Campaign Headquarters a couple of weeks ago, and they had me sorting mail. Most of it was junk, but when there was a message we filed it. I remember two of them. "When Bush closes the borders then I'll send him some money." Another one was more succinct: "CLOSE THE BORDERS," it read, in huge, angry capital letters. I believe a Republican president will have to be the mover and shaker on this one, because the nativists to face down are in his party, just as a Democratic president had to tackle welfare in the 1990s, and civil rights in the 1960s.

I could be wrong. This is the best thing I have ever read about John Kerry:

Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee, told a Hispanic audience in Phoenix recently that he would sign the legislation within minutes, if elected president.

Great!... unless he proves as brave and steadfast in supporting this as in his support for the war.

I should add that I disagree with the premises of this debate. We shouldn't let immigrants in because we need their cheap labor in the fields, or because it's useful for "law and order" to have them registered, or because it will get the Hispanics to vote for us. We should let them in because it is wrong to chain people in the borders of the country where they were born, because there is no moral basis for seizing a certain territory for a certain population and forbidding others to peaceably enter it, because migration should be recognized as a fundamental human right. Not legislation but civil disobedience will have to be the road to this goal, I think, just as it was in the pre-1960s South. I have a dream that this new liberty will come into being, not through the calculations of political consultants weighing this and that constituency, but through ordinary men and women who refuse to treat their fellow men and women differently because they crossed an invisible lines that can be described only in the language of violence, ordinary men and women who will hire, do business with and be friends with all who have come to this country by whatever means, who will do so openly, and who will have no fear of being jailed in the name of unjust laws; these ordinary men and women will tempt the powers that be, upheld by the majority, to do their worst; with their bodies and the lives they will put the question to we the people of the United States of America in order to form a more perfect union: what crimes are you willing to commit to perpetuate this injustice? And they will awaken the conscience of the nation, and we the people will remember that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, whatever their race, their creed, their color, their language, and their place of birth. As long as lawmakers are still talking about "amnesty," as if trying to better one's lot through peaceable migration were a crime, we have a long way to go.

PROTEST ABOUT SUDAN

I went to a protest today in front of the White House against the genocide in Darfur.  I was quite impressed.  The black speakers there reminded me of good ol' Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church.  I like black people.  (Is that somehow offensive?)  I made a couple of my own signs.  Here there are, with an attempt to convey the format:

GENOCIDE
WORKS
BECAUSE
THE WORLD DOESN'T CARE

PROVE ME WRONG

and on the flip side:

HEY WAR PRESIDENT
Let's see what you're REALLY fighting for
FREE DARFUR

I met a girl who worked for Planned Parenthood (attending on her own, not on behalf of her organization), and was immediately struck by the irony: here she is protesting against genocide in Sudan, while working for the #1 defender of what many people consider the abortion genocide here in the United States.  I guess she doesn't think so though.  She was nice.

We lay on the ground, symbolically-- a "die-in"-- and it was uncomfortable because the sun got very hot.  Made me think of the greater discomfort of starvation and death that so many black Sudanese are suffering.

You know, this is a great chance for America to come together-- white and black, Republican and Democrat, and, more to the point, pro-Bush and anti-Bush.  By now the case for war against Saddam has been whittled down to the good guys' case: liberation from a totalitarian murderocracy.  If Iraq, why not Sudan?

If you don't know what's going on in Darfur, the Washington Post sums it up pretty well.

READER'S QUESTION
A reader asked me whether I was "waxing hyperbolic" when I said Saddam was the greatest threat to world peace.  My response:

Not hyperbolic exactly. Let's put it this way: I don't think it would be possible to pin down who or what is "the greatest threat to world peace." For many reasons.

Define peace. Does peace mean that no organized armies are fighting each other? Or does it mean that people can do what they want without fear of violence? Is it peace if a dictator has the right to kill anyone he likes at will, and is inclined to do so quite readily, but his subjects are so abject that they never give him the slightest occasion for it? What if he starves them instead of shooting them-- is that a famine, but still "peaceful"? Is it peace if there is a high crime rate? If crime is not a breach of the peace, where is the line between terrorism and crime?

Define world peace, then. Does world peace mean the absence of world war, or an absence of war all over the world? If there is a civil war in the Congo killing millions of people, but people in rich countries who write and read and comprise "public opinion" don't know about it, is that world peace? If countries arm against each other and are on the very brink of war perpetually, yet are held in check by a balance of mutual fear, is that world peace?

Furthermore, is world peace a good thing? To clarify, unless we adopt an unreasonably idealistic definition of world peace, there are presumably many versions of it, ranging from a world of robust civic freedom governed by strong, effective, honest and peace-loving governments, to a world in which dictators maintain the subjection of their cowering populaces through a low but persistent level of arbitrary violence while maintaining stability among themselves by mutual fear. Are some forms of world peace (much) better than others? If so, are certain states of war better than certain states of world peace? If so, to go further, does the phrase "world peace" have inescapably positive connotations in our discourse, and are these connotations perhaps question-begging and harmful?

In my post, I was talking about the economy, and suggesting that the extraordinary boom in world economic growth in the past year (the fastest worldwide economic growth in 20 years, if I'm not mistaken) owes a good deal to the fact that people were no longer worrying about the looming war between the US and Iraq. For those purposes, it doesn't matter whether Saddam or the US was the "greatest threat to world peace"; my point was more that the situation was the greatest threat to world peace, which I think is surely true, however the blame for the situation be distributed between Saddam and the coalition.

Blog can push you in philosophic directions that traditional journalism is immune to.  Some say it's the wave of the future.  I hope so.