Attached to MSNBC's report of Governor Sanford's confession of an extramarital affair is a poll question: should Sanford resign? So far, the overwhelming majority of readers say yes, but I voted "Maybe." In my opinion, adultery itself isn't reason enough for an elected official to quit his office. Nor, despite the renewed gloating of Democrats, is hypocrisy sufficient reason for Sanford to resign. It is noted that Sanford supported the impeachment and removal of President Clinton, but it should be understood by now that the impeachers did not seek his removal merely for having an affair, but for lying under oath and suborning perjury -- and because they hated his guts and were perfectly happy to find an extra-electoral means of eliminating him. In any event, it doesn't follow that a politician who demands that another politician pay a penalty for a moral offense should pay the penalty himself as long as I don't think that either man should pay the penalty.
The reason I don't come out entirely for Sanford keeping his office is the matter of his deceiving his staff and, by extension, the people of his state. It was bad enough that his whereabouts were officially unknown for a number of days, but to mislead the state into believing he was somewhere he wasn't ought to be censurable, at least. But punishment enough for Sanford is the realization that any higher political ambitions he may have had are gone. That may not even be fair, to the extent that it's because of the affair rather than the deception, but that's the price he pays for the partisan company he keeps.
24 June 2009
23 June 2009
Who Killed Capitalism?
Jonah Goldberg is a slow learner, but he deserves credit for persistence. The Republican columnist reports this week that "big business" has delivered the coup de grace to the good old capitalist system while admitting that "The absence of free markets isn't necessarily Bolshevism, or even socialism." He doesn't quite find a word to describe the particular absence he perceives in the United States, but he ascribes it to the realization that some corporations are "too big to fail" and will therefore be preserved at all costs through government intervention.
"Everywhere we look we see the great and once-great beneficiaries of free markets running to the state for protection from the cruel bullying of competition," Goldberg writes sarcastically. On the government side, he continues, "The basic idea is that big firms -- giant banks, insurance companies, etc. -- cannot be allowed to fail if their failure threatens something called 'stability.'" To Goldberg this is the usual arrogant naivete of liberals who think they can master business cycles, but worse for all is big business's discovery that they can exploit the liberal environment.
The problem, asserts, "is that big companies will understand the surest way to attain immortality is to become too big to fail. Once they've achieved that privileged status, these companies will become de facto wards of the state, insured for life at taxpayer expense like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and in exchange they will do whatever Uncle Sam asks."
This approach violates Goldberg's sense that "real freedom means the freedom to fail as well as to succeed" because "Big business wants to be protected from the former and deny competitors the latter." It's Goldberg who's naive, of course, if he thinks this is a new development in corporate America. There has always been a temptation to seek monopolies among corporations. What's new now, Goldberg might argue, is that government, by guaranteeing companies against destabilizing failure, may prevent the normal transfer of capital to new, presumably productive investments that follows business failures. This violates the "freedom" sensibility that requires government to cultivate "opportunity" rather than actual well-being. It's no surprise that someone like Goldberg seems indifferent or contemptuous toward any concern for "stability." It's the belief of such people that "instability" is when you pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again. Their ethos of perpetual competition offers no remedy for the dislocating shocks of creative destruction apart from, "If at first you don't succeed..." What happens if ordinary people, the workers dependent on companies that might be TBTF, never succeed is of no concern to them.
I think the government understands that a company is TBTF in part because so many working people depend on it for income and insurance. This particular government may err in confusing the people who own and run the structures on which so many workers depend with the structures themselves. Government should want to keep people working in factories, but it probably shouldn't be so concerned with keeping the same people in charge of them. Is competition desirable? Then let some genius submit his proposal to Washington on how to run GM better while keeping everyone at work. Let's have a bunch of proposals, and let the best one win. We can honor the beneficial aspects of competition without sacrificing multitudes on its altar, as people like Goldberg seem to want. His metaphorical cries for blood belie his own claim that capitalism is dead.
"Everywhere we look we see the great and once-great beneficiaries of free markets running to the state for protection from the cruel bullying of competition," Goldberg writes sarcastically. On the government side, he continues, "The basic idea is that big firms -- giant banks, insurance companies, etc. -- cannot be allowed to fail if their failure threatens something called 'stability.'" To Goldberg this is the usual arrogant naivete of liberals who think they can master business cycles, but worse for all is big business's discovery that they can exploit the liberal environment.
The problem, asserts, "is that big companies will understand the surest way to attain immortality is to become too big to fail. Once they've achieved that privileged status, these companies will become de facto wards of the state, insured for life at taxpayer expense like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and in exchange they will do whatever Uncle Sam asks."
This approach violates Goldberg's sense that "real freedom means the freedom to fail as well as to succeed" because "Big business wants to be protected from the former and deny competitors the latter." It's Goldberg who's naive, of course, if he thinks this is a new development in corporate America. There has always been a temptation to seek monopolies among corporations. What's new now, Goldberg might argue, is that government, by guaranteeing companies against destabilizing failure, may prevent the normal transfer of capital to new, presumably productive investments that follows business failures. This violates the "freedom" sensibility that requires government to cultivate "opportunity" rather than actual well-being. It's no surprise that someone like Goldberg seems indifferent or contemptuous toward any concern for "stability." It's the belief of such people that "instability" is when you pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again. Their ethos of perpetual competition offers no remedy for the dislocating shocks of creative destruction apart from, "If at first you don't succeed..." What happens if ordinary people, the workers dependent on companies that might be TBTF, never succeed is of no concern to them.
I think the government understands that a company is TBTF in part because so many working people depend on it for income and insurance. This particular government may err in confusing the people who own and run the structures on which so many workers depend with the structures themselves. Government should want to keep people working in factories, but it probably shouldn't be so concerned with keeping the same people in charge of them. Is competition desirable? Then let some genius submit his proposal to Washington on how to run GM better while keeping everyone at work. Let's have a bunch of proposals, and let the best one win. We can honor the beneficial aspects of competition without sacrificing multitudes on its altar, as people like Goldberg seem to want. His metaphorical cries for blood belie his own claim that capitalism is dead.
Obama on Iran
The President climbed aboard his rhetorical high horse to survey the Iranian situation for the benefit of the press today. After a superficial acknowledgment of Iranian sovereignty, he basically spoke as if assuming that which remains to be proven: that the past week's demonstrations in Tehran were a legitimate demonstration against a stolen election. His statements may still seem tame by neocon standards, but identifying the protesters with "those who stand up for justice" pretty much rules out the possibility that they might just be a disaffected faction that happens to be concentrated in a large city. Other utterances were more vague. When he spoke of a "remarkable opening within Iranian society," did he mean the election or the demonstrations? It's easy for him to deplore the "brutality and threats" faced by the demonstrators, but how different, perhaps from the body count, would an American response have been to a similar demonstration following a similarly disputed vote? It would have been amusing had someone asked Obama whether he would have supported Tehran-style demonstrations in this country in 2000 or 2004, when large numbers of people contended that presidential elections had been stolen.
I'm being hard on the President because I insist on an objective perspective on Iran. It seems to me that there is evidence, despite the Guardian Council's disclaimers, of some kind of vote-rigging. But there is no evidence that I am aware of to prove that Mir Hossein Mousavi was the actual winner of the election. Mobs are not evidence for anything but their own biases. Mobs in the streets of Washington in 2000 would no more have proven that George W. Bush had stolen the presidential election than actual mobs in the streets of New York in 2003 proved that the country opposed the invasion of Iraq. But the paradigm of "people power" has led many Americans to believe that mobs in the streets of reputedly repressive countries represent the true will of all the people -- except if they say such things as "Death to America" or "Death to Israel." We'd do well to remember our Founders' reservations about mob rule before cheering on mobs unconditionally in other places. But the President's nod to the Neda cult suggests that we can expect no better from him, and worse from the opposition.
I'm being hard on the President because I insist on an objective perspective on Iran. It seems to me that there is evidence, despite the Guardian Council's disclaimers, of some kind of vote-rigging. But there is no evidence that I am aware of to prove that Mir Hossein Mousavi was the actual winner of the election. Mobs are not evidence for anything but their own biases. Mobs in the streets of Washington in 2000 would no more have proven that George W. Bush had stolen the presidential election than actual mobs in the streets of New York in 2003 proved that the country opposed the invasion of Iraq. But the paradigm of "people power" has led many Americans to believe that mobs in the streets of reputedly repressive countries represent the true will of all the people -- except if they say such things as "Death to America" or "Death to Israel." We'd do well to remember our Founders' reservations about mob rule before cheering on mobs unconditionally in other places. But the President's nod to the Neda cult suggests that we can expect no better from him, and worse from the opposition.
Iran: Don't Hold Your Breath
The Iranian opposition now appeals to diminished expectations, since it's become apparent that they don't have the manpower or the guts to keep up the street fighting of the weekend. Now we're supposed to look for odd car lights and other subtleties as signs of resistance. Good luck with that. Meanwhile, the Russian government has reiterated its superfluous endorsement of the election, as if Putin's people had any credibility of the subject. It amounts to a personal endorsement of President Ahmadinejad and the Supreme Leader, with whom Putin and Medvedev would apparently prefer to deal regardless of how they hold or keep power.
Leaders like these have a good racket going, since they can appeal to the struggle against "hegemony" to partly justify increasingly authoritarian rule at home. It's almost as if the only way you can prove that you'll stand up to the U.S. is to affront blatantly the (admittedly inconsistent) American sense of fair play in politics. This is a kind of argument against American aspirations toward hegemony, since renouncing all claims to be "sole superpower" would strip the likes of Ahmadinejad/Khamenei, Putin/Medvedev, Hugo Chavez et al of some of the extra-legitimating rationalizations they offer for every new power grab. I'm not saying that they don't have purely domestic motives for power-grabbing, but they clearly present themselves as a group as a resistance to American hegemony or "arrogance," and without perceived U.S. interference as a common point of reference they might have less reason to reach out to one another for mutual reinforcement. Having said all this, I can't reproach the Russians for taking the stance they have. It is no more their business than it is Americans' how the Iranians conduct their elections, and I'm sure they have good, pragmatically strategic reasons for cultivating good relations with Iran. Maybe they felt they'd win brownie points by putting in a good word now, but it insults the intelligence of the rest of the world.
The latest from the Guardian Council is that the irregularities reported yesterday do not count as fraud and are insufficient cause to annul the election. Their view, apparently, is that all the over-voting that happened in the 50 electoral districts resulted from technical errors. This is an unsurprising conclusion. For all the show their making about investigating and discovering irregularities, if their motive is simply to confirm Ahmadinejad's reelection they really can't give an inch on the question of fraud. Acknowledging that fraud might have happened in the disputed districts forces the possibility that it happened elsewhere. Rather like Republicans in the winter of 2000-1, the ruling faction would like to nip such speculation in the bud. Technical errors can't be ruled out absolutely, but I need to know more about how Iranians voted before I can judge the possibility of honest mistakes. All we know is that we've seen the equivalent of "Gestapo tactics on the streets of Chicago" in the streets of Tehran. If those alone can discredit a political process, history requires Americans to take a long look in the mirror before assuming moral superiority.
Leaders like these have a good racket going, since they can appeal to the struggle against "hegemony" to partly justify increasingly authoritarian rule at home. It's almost as if the only way you can prove that you'll stand up to the U.S. is to affront blatantly the (admittedly inconsistent) American sense of fair play in politics. This is a kind of argument against American aspirations toward hegemony, since renouncing all claims to be "sole superpower" would strip the likes of Ahmadinejad/Khamenei, Putin/Medvedev, Hugo Chavez et al of some of the extra-legitimating rationalizations they offer for every new power grab. I'm not saying that they don't have purely domestic motives for power-grabbing, but they clearly present themselves as a group as a resistance to American hegemony or "arrogance," and without perceived U.S. interference as a common point of reference they might have less reason to reach out to one another for mutual reinforcement. Having said all this, I can't reproach the Russians for taking the stance they have. It is no more their business than it is Americans' how the Iranians conduct their elections, and I'm sure they have good, pragmatically strategic reasons for cultivating good relations with Iran. Maybe they felt they'd win brownie points by putting in a good word now, but it insults the intelligence of the rest of the world.
The latest from the Guardian Council is that the irregularities reported yesterday do not count as fraud and are insufficient cause to annul the election. Their view, apparently, is that all the over-voting that happened in the 50 electoral districts resulted from technical errors. This is an unsurprising conclusion. For all the show their making about investigating and discovering irregularities, if their motive is simply to confirm Ahmadinejad's reelection they really can't give an inch on the question of fraud. Acknowledging that fraud might have happened in the disputed districts forces the possibility that it happened elsewhere. Rather like Republicans in the winter of 2000-1, the ruling faction would like to nip such speculation in the bud. Technical errors can't be ruled out absolutely, but I need to know more about how Iranians voted before I can judge the possibility of honest mistakes. All we know is that we've seen the equivalent of "Gestapo tactics on the streets of Chicago" in the streets of Tehran. If those alone can discredit a political process, history requires Americans to take a long look in the mirror before assuming moral superiority.
22 June 2009
Another Defender of Faith
Terry Eagleton is an English literary critic with a Marxist bent. From what I recall, he got involved in the debate over today's "militant atheism" a couple of years ago when he published a contemptuous attack on Richard Dawkins's God Delusion in the London Review of Books. Eagleton's opinion seemed to me to be besides the point. He knocked Dawkins for being ignorant of theology, claiming that the scientist had no credibility as a critic of religion without some familiarity with the subtleties of that discipline. My thought was: why should Dawkins bother with subtle speculations about the nature of a being whose existence he denies in the first place? The answer has something to do with the fact that Dawkins was commenting as much on religion as on God, and that religion, in Eagleton's view, is a more complex affair than Dawkins and his fellow authors acknowledge. Eagleton puts it this way in his new book Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, a lecture series he delivered at Yale last year:
Now as then, Eagleton argues that the atheists' willful ignorance of theology blinds them to what religion is really all about. He ascribes to Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens (often amalgamated for his purposes as "Ditchkins") and their peers a "primitive" understanding of religion and of God.
Does this sound like Christianity to you? It did to me, so what is Eagleton talking about? Among other things, he takes the now-familiar apologetic position that religion is not a pseudo-science and doesn't aspire to a factual explanation of how the world came to be, and therefore shouldn't be condemned for failing at what it doesn't attempt. Eagleton sticks with a less anthropomorphic sense of God as that which sustains the universe and its natural law and explains why there is something rather than nothing. No dogmatic believer himself, he likes the idea of there being something the existence of which inherently limits human claims to mastery, that forces an acknowledgment from everyone that some things are not in their control or theirs to control. He also likes the Christian idea of a loving God that created life as a gratuitous act of love; he sees this as a model of every ideal of social justice (including his own socialism), all of which, at their best, express a compassionate love of mankind and of every person as an end unto itself. He fears that the materialism allegedly espoused by the modern atheists encourages an extreme rationalism that aspires to absolute inhuman or inhumane mastery, as expressed in everything from Stalinism to neoconservatism.
Eagleton isn't recommending religion to non-believers, but is defending his kind of believers from attack. He rejects Hitchens's argument that the best qualities of believers aren't based on their beliefs. To Eagleton, Hitchens's view is "rather like arguing that any advances made by feminists are due entirely to the benign influence of their fathers (97)." That glib line doesn't really refute Hitchens, however, if we understand him to mean that the benevolence of someone like Martin Luther King does not follow necessarily from Christian dogma, nor does it require acceptance of that dogma to be reproduced. Because Eagleton isn't really concerned with the tenets of conventional religion as most of us understand and encounter it, he doesn't attempt to prove that King's good works required him to believe in the Resurrection. His real agenda is to remind people that religion has motivated people to acts of good will and social justice, at least in their own accounts, and that people who still aspire to social justice should not want to cut off a source of sympathy and support in the form of religious faith.Anticipating the argument that the style of religion he idealizes is practiced by only a small minority of believers, he offers faith-based social justice movements of the past as proof to the contrary.
Eagleton belongs to that division of the "Left" that has discovered the usefulness of faith. He makes a plausible argument that some kind of faith, in people at least, is necessary for just about all social, cultural or scientific activity. He also argues that you can't really distinguish that kind of faith from the "substance of things unseen" in religious faith. He clearly believes that people need to adopt some sort of unconditional love for mankind, most likely founded on some form of faith, if his socialist ideal is ever to be realized. Again, he isn't saying that we'll have to believe in God or gods, but that we'll have to adopt something like the mentality that the atheists affect to despise. Reason, Faith, and Revolution is a plea for tolerance of humanity wrapped in a plea for tolerance of religion -- or vice versa, if you prefer. It is a warning that there's a precious baby in danger of being thrown out with the bathwater of dogmatic fundamentalist religion. It succeeds or fails depending on whether you finally accept his definition of religion. I'll offer my own verdict in a later post.
It is, in fact, entirely logical that those who see religion as nothing but false consciousness should so often get it wrong, since what profit is to be reaped from the meticulous study of a belief system you hold to be as pernicious as it is foolish? Who is likely to launch a time-consuming investigation of what Kabbalists, occultists, or Rosicrucians actually hold, when there is still War and Peace to read and the children to be put to bed? So it is that those who
polemicize most ferociously against religion regularly turn out to be the least qualified to do so ... It is as though when it comes to religion -- the single most powerful, pervasive, persistent form of popular culture human history has ever witnessed, as well as in many respects the most obnoxious -- any old travesty will do (50-1).
Now as then, Eagleton argues that the atheists' willful ignorance of theology blinds them to what religion is really all about. He ascribes to Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens (often amalgamated for his purposes as "Ditchkins") and their peers a "primitive" understanding of religion and of God.
These intellectuals claim as Christian doctrine the idea that God is some sort of superentity outside the universe; that he created the world rather as a carpenter might fashion a stool; that faith in this God means above all subscribing to the proposition that he exists; that there is a real me inside me called the soul, which a wrathful God may consign to hell if I am not
egregiously well-behaved; that our utter dependency on this deity is what stops thinking and acting for ourselves; that this God cares deeply about whether we are sinful or not, because if we are then he demands to be placated, and other such secular fantasies (50).
Does this sound like Christianity to you? It did to me, so what is Eagleton talking about? Among other things, he takes the now-familiar apologetic position that religion is not a pseudo-science and doesn't aspire to a factual explanation of how the world came to be, and therefore shouldn't be condemned for failing at what it doesn't attempt. Eagleton sticks with a less anthropomorphic sense of God as that which sustains the universe and its natural law and explains why there is something rather than nothing. No dogmatic believer himself, he likes the idea of there being something the existence of which inherently limits human claims to mastery, that forces an acknowledgment from everyone that some things are not in their control or theirs to control. He also likes the Christian idea of a loving God that created life as a gratuitous act of love; he sees this as a model of every ideal of social justice (including his own socialism), all of which, at their best, express a compassionate love of mankind and of every person as an end unto itself. He fears that the materialism allegedly espoused by the modern atheists encourages an extreme rationalism that aspires to absolute inhuman or inhumane mastery, as expressed in everything from Stalinism to neoconservatism.
Eagleton isn't recommending religion to non-believers, but is defending his kind of believers from attack. He rejects Hitchens's argument that the best qualities of believers aren't based on their beliefs. To Eagleton, Hitchens's view is "rather like arguing that any advances made by feminists are due entirely to the benign influence of their fathers (97)." That glib line doesn't really refute Hitchens, however, if we understand him to mean that the benevolence of someone like Martin Luther King does not follow necessarily from Christian dogma, nor does it require acceptance of that dogma to be reproduced. Because Eagleton isn't really concerned with the tenets of conventional religion as most of us understand and encounter it, he doesn't attempt to prove that King's good works required him to believe in the Resurrection. His real agenda is to remind people that religion has motivated people to acts of good will and social justice, at least in their own accounts, and that people who still aspire to social justice should not want to cut off a source of sympathy and support in the form of religious faith.Anticipating the argument that the style of religion he idealizes is practiced by only a small minority of believers, he offers faith-based social justice movements of the past as proof to the contrary.
Eagleton belongs to that division of the "Left" that has discovered the usefulness of faith. He makes a plausible argument that some kind of faith, in people at least, is necessary for just about all social, cultural or scientific activity. He also argues that you can't really distinguish that kind of faith from the "substance of things unseen" in religious faith. He clearly believes that people need to adopt some sort of unconditional love for mankind, most likely founded on some form of faith, if his socialist ideal is ever to be realized. Again, he isn't saying that we'll have to believe in God or gods, but that we'll have to adopt something like the mentality that the atheists affect to despise. Reason, Faith, and Revolution is a plea for tolerance of humanity wrapped in a plea for tolerance of religion -- or vice versa, if you prefer. It is a warning that there's a precious baby in danger of being thrown out with the bathwater of dogmatic fundamentalist religion. It succeeds or fails depending on whether you finally accept his definition of religion. I'll offer my own verdict in a later post.
Iran: Mistakes Were Made
The Islamic Republic's Guardian Council is walking a tightrope during its inquiry into irregularities in last week's presidential election. They report today that irregularities have been found in 50 of the nation's 366 electoral districts, though it's unclear how high a percentage this is of the districts they investigated. The Mousavi faction claims irregularities, mostly along the lines of ballot stuffing from what I can tell, in as many as 170 districts. The Guardians, while owning up to errors, to say the least, insist that the irregularities discovered so far aren't enough to reverse the outcome of the election. In this they follow Supreme Leader Khamenei in the belief that President Ahmadinejad's margin of victory was somehow too big to be faked.
Meanwhile, after a quiet Sunday, some protesters hit the streets of Tehran today, only to be beaten down by an army of police, basij and Revolutionary Guards. Western reports count the demonstrators in the hundreds, suggesting that many more dissidents were either cowed by the violence of Saturday or have simply said their piece already. Elsewhere, exiles and their Western friends still accept fraud as a foregone conclusion, deduced pretty much automatically from their perception of the nature of their regime. That regime certainly didn't show a pretty face over the weekend. While I repeat that Americans are hypocritical for embracing the election protesters when they wouldn't have accepted such protests on their own streets in 2000, I have to admit that American authorities are far less likely to have shed blood on the streets had those protests happened. Too many Iranians remain too close to their own revolution to tolerate anything that even hints at counterrevolution. Revolutionaries are by their nature intolerant or else they would never have forced an issue anywhere. Iran can't be singled out as an "evil" regime in this case unless you want to declare all revolutionary regimes illegitimate -- though at a certain point you can question whether revolutionary necessity is a fair excuse for perpetual repression.
In any event, a detail that further amuses me is Americans' sudden adoption of what might be called the Iranian or the Tehran "street" as the legitimate tribune of public opinion. This comes after years of disparaging the "street" of Muslim nations as a mass of irrational mobs. A rule of appraisal is implicit: if they denounce the U.S., they can be ignored, but if they denounce or otherwise discomfit an "evil" regime than they are the authentic voice of the people. Pundits here are desperate to see in Tehran a popular base for the overthrow of the entire Islamic Republic, but there is still little proof that the protesters represent the nation as a whole. Neocons might argue that the rest of the country has been more thoroughly repressed, but it's more likely that no side in Iran is entitled to the benefit of the doubt -- and neocon presumptions are especially unentitled. The American government would be wise to deal with Iran on a business-as-usual basis -- not that that's been exactly businesslike, but you get the idea.
Meanwhile, after a quiet Sunday, some protesters hit the streets of Tehran today, only to be beaten down by an army of police, basij and Revolutionary Guards. Western reports count the demonstrators in the hundreds, suggesting that many more dissidents were either cowed by the violence of Saturday or have simply said their piece already. Elsewhere, exiles and their Western friends still accept fraud as a foregone conclusion, deduced pretty much automatically from their perception of the nature of their regime. That regime certainly didn't show a pretty face over the weekend. While I repeat that Americans are hypocritical for embracing the election protesters when they wouldn't have accepted such protests on their own streets in 2000, I have to admit that American authorities are far less likely to have shed blood on the streets had those protests happened. Too many Iranians remain too close to their own revolution to tolerate anything that even hints at counterrevolution. Revolutionaries are by their nature intolerant or else they would never have forced an issue anywhere. Iran can't be singled out as an "evil" regime in this case unless you want to declare all revolutionary regimes illegitimate -- though at a certain point you can question whether revolutionary necessity is a fair excuse for perpetual repression.
In any event, a detail that further amuses me is Americans' sudden adoption of what might be called the Iranian or the Tehran "street" as the legitimate tribune of public opinion. This comes after years of disparaging the "street" of Muslim nations as a mass of irrational mobs. A rule of appraisal is implicit: if they denounce the U.S., they can be ignored, but if they denounce or otherwise discomfit an "evil" regime than they are the authentic voice of the people. Pundits here are desperate to see in Tehran a popular base for the overthrow of the entire Islamic Republic, but there is still little proof that the protesters represent the nation as a whole. Neocons might argue that the rest of the country has been more thoroughly repressed, but it's more likely that no side in Iran is entitled to the benefit of the doubt -- and neocon presumptions are especially unentitled. The American government would be wise to deal with Iran on a business-as-usual basis -- not that that's been exactly businesslike, but you get the idea.
19 June 2009
The Crusaders
Military chaplains are allegedly abusing their position to proselytize for evangelical Christianity in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to this report. They seem to think they can get away with it in spite of the First Amendment by stating that they are not "the government." This is just the news everyone needed to hear, don't you think? I'd like to believe that the most inflammable Muslims were aware of this already, but that probably won't stop the report from inflaming more people. They're not likely to appreciate the nuance of the story, which makes clear that these chaplains are doing their thing without U.S. authorization. For some Americans, that might be an argument for suppressing the report, but I'd rather have Muslims inflamed than Americans left ignorant. In any event, this looks like a job for the Commander-in-Chief.
The Supreme Leader's Lesson for the Day
As an unelected head of state, the "Supreme Leader" of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, ideally should stand above the partisan fray of elected offices. However, the Islamic Republic of Iran remains a self-consciously revolutionary state. With revolutionary consciousness comes a hypersensitivity to "counter-revolution," a slippery slope of sensibility that tempts one to treat any dissent from leadership as fraught with treason. Revolutionaries distrust liberalism because liberalism values dissent as an end unto itself. To the extent that Mir Hossein Mousavi and his party were the "liberals" in the Iranian presidential election, the Supreme Leader may be presumed to be biased against them and in favor of the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This is as far as I'll go to establish a motive for Khamenei or the Guardian Council to rig the vote in favor of Ahmadinejad.
Khamenei delivered a rare Friday sermon in Tehran today, with Ahmadinejad in attendance. Someone has posted a transcript of the sermon, leaving out some religious matter at the start of it.The transcript isn't inconsistent with summations of the speech that have appeared in the American news media. The Supreme Leader made some gestures of conciliation toward the opposition without conceding any doubt in the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad's victory. He emphasized, correctly as far as I know, that all the candidates, Mousavi included, support the fundamental idea of the Islamic Republic. He chided excesses of negative campaigning on all sides, criticizing alleged slanders against Ahamadinejad as well as slanders from Ahmadinejad's side against certain prominent Iranians who supported Mousavi. But he emphasized that the nation had seen a free exchange of views. As far as I know, having seen clips of televised debates between the two leading candidates, this is correct.
But Khamenei's attempt to refute the stolen-election charge was pretty feeble. His view is that Ahmadinejad's victory margin is too big to be faked. Had he won by only a million or so votes, the ayatollah suggested, then we could ask questions. That may have been a dig at the 2000 and 2004 U.S. elections, though he didn't cite those specifically. Since Ahmadinejad is said to have won by 11,000,000 votes, Khamenei says that could only reflect overwhelming support for the incumbent at the grass roots. While the Supreme Leader is correct to observe that the Western media have been predicting in bad faith for weeks ahead of time that the election would be stolen, his numerical reasoning will do little to calm sincere Western observers who question the result. After all, the most blatantly stolen elections in the world are those in which the leader and his party claim mandates of 90% or greater. Granting that those elections (as practiced in Baathist Iraq, for instance) didn't exactly follow the same rules that prevailed in Iran, they still show that the size of the victory doesn't prove jack about the democratic legitimacy of a regime whose commitment to liberal principles is in other respects greatly open to question.
When Khamenei says that disputes about vote counting shouldn't be settled in the streets, he's only saying exactly what leaders in any country would say after a similarly-disputed election. If supporters of Al Gore had hit the streets, as some wanted but Gore did not, in the winter of 2000-1, we can guess what Republicans and many in Gore's own party would say. But because Americans have assigned Iran to the category of "evil" regimes, and American politicians and pundits have assumed for themselves the right to question the legitimacy of all such regimes, they demand that Mousavi's supporters keep up the "people power" pressure in the desperate hope that the entire edifice of the Islamic Republic will come crashing down Berlin-Wall style. As Khamenei put it, the Americans, the British and the Zionists want Iran to go the way of the Republic of Georgia, where "people power" put in a pro-Western, anti-Russian government, -- one which the Supreme Leader probably sees as a puppet state of the U.S. He makes quite clear that he won't allow that to happen, even as the Mousavi faction announces plans for another demonstration to take place tomorrow.
Leaving aside the question of Americans' right to judge what happens in Iran, let's ask an objective question: what if Mousavi's supporters have or find irrefutable evidence that Ahamdinejad or Khamenei stole an election that was rightfully Mousavi's? What do they do then? Common sense suggests that if the rulers won't play by the rules, neither should the opposition. But what are their options. The regime has fanatic supporters; imagine talk-radio listeners who actually have the courage to fight for their beliefs, albeit backed up by the government. The basij, for starters, has already proven its readiness to beat down dissent that it equates with treason or immorality. I'm not sure that Iran is the kind of environment where Gandhi's approach could prevail. If the opposition decides that the government is no longer legitimate, it had better be prepared to use more than people power unless they're only interested in a suicidal form of moral exhibitionism. It's alleged that Mousavi has powerful supporters within the higher ranks of the regime. Depending on how powerful they are, the only practical means of rectifying the situation might be a coup d'etat, which isn't exactly a ratification of democracy itself. The only real options may be grudging acquiescence or a civil war that the opposition most likely isn't prepared to win. That's the sort of situation in which some would say the Iranians need outside help, but the situation next door in Iraq has shown that foreign intervention is no substitute for the people taking responsibility for their own freedom at whatever cost they're willing to pay. It's time for the Iranians to do the math.
Khamenei delivered a rare Friday sermon in Tehran today, with Ahmadinejad in attendance. Someone has posted a transcript of the sermon, leaving out some religious matter at the start of it.The transcript isn't inconsistent with summations of the speech that have appeared in the American news media. The Supreme Leader made some gestures of conciliation toward the opposition without conceding any doubt in the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad's victory. He emphasized, correctly as far as I know, that all the candidates, Mousavi included, support the fundamental idea of the Islamic Republic. He chided excesses of negative campaigning on all sides, criticizing alleged slanders against Ahamadinejad as well as slanders from Ahmadinejad's side against certain prominent Iranians who supported Mousavi. But he emphasized that the nation had seen a free exchange of views. As far as I know, having seen clips of televised debates between the two leading candidates, this is correct.
But Khamenei's attempt to refute the stolen-election charge was pretty feeble. His view is that Ahmadinejad's victory margin is too big to be faked. Had he won by only a million or so votes, the ayatollah suggested, then we could ask questions. That may have been a dig at the 2000 and 2004 U.S. elections, though he didn't cite those specifically. Since Ahmadinejad is said to have won by 11,000,000 votes, Khamenei says that could only reflect overwhelming support for the incumbent at the grass roots. While the Supreme Leader is correct to observe that the Western media have been predicting in bad faith for weeks ahead of time that the election would be stolen, his numerical reasoning will do little to calm sincere Western observers who question the result. After all, the most blatantly stolen elections in the world are those in which the leader and his party claim mandates of 90% or greater. Granting that those elections (as practiced in Baathist Iraq, for instance) didn't exactly follow the same rules that prevailed in Iran, they still show that the size of the victory doesn't prove jack about the democratic legitimacy of a regime whose commitment to liberal principles is in other respects greatly open to question.
When Khamenei says that disputes about vote counting shouldn't be settled in the streets, he's only saying exactly what leaders in any country would say after a similarly-disputed election. If supporters of Al Gore had hit the streets, as some wanted but Gore did not, in the winter of 2000-1, we can guess what Republicans and many in Gore's own party would say. But because Americans have assigned Iran to the category of "evil" regimes, and American politicians and pundits have assumed for themselves the right to question the legitimacy of all such regimes, they demand that Mousavi's supporters keep up the "people power" pressure in the desperate hope that the entire edifice of the Islamic Republic will come crashing down Berlin-Wall style. As Khamenei put it, the Americans, the British and the Zionists want Iran to go the way of the Republic of Georgia, where "people power" put in a pro-Western, anti-Russian government, -- one which the Supreme Leader probably sees as a puppet state of the U.S. He makes quite clear that he won't allow that to happen, even as the Mousavi faction announces plans for another demonstration to take place tomorrow.
Leaving aside the question of Americans' right to judge what happens in Iran, let's ask an objective question: what if Mousavi's supporters have or find irrefutable evidence that Ahamdinejad or Khamenei stole an election that was rightfully Mousavi's? What do they do then? Common sense suggests that if the rulers won't play by the rules, neither should the opposition. But what are their options. The regime has fanatic supporters; imagine talk-radio listeners who actually have the courage to fight for their beliefs, albeit backed up by the government. The basij, for starters, has already proven its readiness to beat down dissent that it equates with treason or immorality. I'm not sure that Iran is the kind of environment where Gandhi's approach could prevail. If the opposition decides that the government is no longer legitimate, it had better be prepared to use more than people power unless they're only interested in a suicidal form of moral exhibitionism. It's alleged that Mousavi has powerful supporters within the higher ranks of the regime. Depending on how powerful they are, the only practical means of rectifying the situation might be a coup d'etat, which isn't exactly a ratification of democracy itself. The only real options may be grudging acquiescence or a civil war that the opposition most likely isn't prepared to win. That's the sort of situation in which some would say the Iranians need outside help, but the situation next door in Iraq has shown that foreign intervention is no substitute for the people taking responsibility for their own freedom at whatever cost they're willing to pay. It's time for the Iranians to do the math.
17 June 2009
Birth of the Bipolarchy?
Lynn Hudson Parson's The Birth of Modern Politics identifies the time of birth as the 1828 presidential election in which Andrew Jackson defeated the incumbent, John Quincy Adams. Parsons, a SUNY professor, has written a brief book, barely 200 pages of text, that doesn't even reach 1828 until more than halfway through. The buildup is necessary, though, to contrast what happened in that year with what came before. 1828 was Jackson's revenge for losing the Presidency to Adams in the House of Representatives through the alleged "corrupt bargain" between his rival and House Speaker Henry Clay. It was also the year that Jackson hooked up with Martin Van Buren, who turned Old Hickory's personal following into a disciplined political party. That discipline, extending to a concerted media campaign by partisan newspapers, defines 1828's modernity for Parsons.
What I've gotten from the book so far is a sense that the American Bipolarchy as it would eventually develop may have been the price Americans paid for rejecting the election system the Framers had set up for them. To this day, if any third party shows signs of popularity, whether it was George Wallace's movement in 1968 or Ross Perot's in 1992, pundits spook the public by predicting a repeat of the infamous 1824 scenario, when the failure of any candidate to win a majority in the Electoral College left the decision in the hands of the House. This is the implicit worst-case scenario, though one might ask why, if it was so bad, the Framers set it up in the first place.
To bring people up to speed, 1824 was the end of the "Era of Good Feeling" that followed the post(1812)war collapse of the Federalists. James Monroe had run for reelection unopposed in 1820, but three members of his Cabinet were soon seeking to succeed him. By the fall of 1824 there were four credible candidates: Adams, Jackson, Clay and William Crawford. Clay finished fourth and dropped out by virtue of the 12th Amendment. As Speaker of the House, he had influence over many congressmen. He considered Adams the best remaining candidate even though Jackson had a plurality of both the electoral and popular vote. When Adams appointed Clay Secretary of State after his election, their opponents assumed that this was a quid-pro-quo, though history has never confirmed this. 1824 had been a campaign of personalities. Historians have disparaged this phenomenon retroactively because it seemed that personalities had been emphasized at the expense of concrete issues. Parsons makes one very interesting observation, however. Unlike the next campaign, 1824 was not marred by negative campaigning. That, the author suggests, was because all the candidates assumed that the election would go to the House, and no one wanted to alienate his rival's supporters by attacking their candidates.
It became obvious pretty quickly that 1828 would be a two-man race, as all opponents of Adams (including his Vice President, John C. Calhoun) rallied behind Jackson (who would make Calhoun his own running mate). Parsons stresses, however, that a two-man campaign didn't automatically mean a two-party or bipolarchic campaign. That's where Martin Van Buren comes in. He believed a disciplined party system as a necessary alternative to rule by elite celebrities. Jackson could well have won the 1828 election entirely on the strength of his personality and the perception that Clay had screwed him. But how could Jackson be trusted to govern? A President who depended only on his own charisma could well govern as he pleased, within constitutional limits. But by incorporating the grass-roots Jackson movement into a disciplined, ideological party, Van Buren and his allies, many of them slaveholders (like Jackson himself), hoped to steer popular enthusiasm into the service of their Jeffersonian limited-government ideology. Not coincidentally, a party hierarchy created a seemingly meritocratic path for personal advancement for politicians like Van Buren who came from relatively humble backgrounds or hadn't become military heroes like Jackson. By 1837 he was President of the United States.
By perpetuating the "corrupt bargain" conspiracy theory against Adams and Clay, Van Buren encouraged the implicit corollary notion that there was something inherently corrupt about the constitutional process for resolving elections without majority winners. For American history, the lesson of 1824 seemed to be that it was desirable if not imperative to have a majority winner in the Electoral College. Anything short of that threatened to thwart the will of the American people, even though any such scenario would mean that the people had thwarted themselves. The easiest way to ensure a majority winner is to have only two candidates. There had been two-man and even two-party elections before 1828, but to the extent that 1824 became the negative exemplar to be avoided at all costs, you could well argue that the American Bipolarchy as we know it began at that moment. We might break the spell of 1824 if we, the people, were not so jealous of our right to choose the President, and we might break the spell of the Presidency if chief executives had more humble origins, so to speak, and could not call themselves sole representatives of the entire American people. If the Bipolarchy is a product of democratization, we might want to rethink our impulse to democratize every aspect of our political system.
What I've gotten from the book so far is a sense that the American Bipolarchy as it would eventually develop may have been the price Americans paid for rejecting the election system the Framers had set up for them. To this day, if any third party shows signs of popularity, whether it was George Wallace's movement in 1968 or Ross Perot's in 1992, pundits spook the public by predicting a repeat of the infamous 1824 scenario, when the failure of any candidate to win a majority in the Electoral College left the decision in the hands of the House. This is the implicit worst-case scenario, though one might ask why, if it was so bad, the Framers set it up in the first place.
To bring people up to speed, 1824 was the end of the "Era of Good Feeling" that followed the post(1812)war collapse of the Federalists. James Monroe had run for reelection unopposed in 1820, but three members of his Cabinet were soon seeking to succeed him. By the fall of 1824 there were four credible candidates: Adams, Jackson, Clay and William Crawford. Clay finished fourth and dropped out by virtue of the 12th Amendment. As Speaker of the House, he had influence over many congressmen. He considered Adams the best remaining candidate even though Jackson had a plurality of both the electoral and popular vote. When Adams appointed Clay Secretary of State after his election, their opponents assumed that this was a quid-pro-quo, though history has never confirmed this. 1824 had been a campaign of personalities. Historians have disparaged this phenomenon retroactively because it seemed that personalities had been emphasized at the expense of concrete issues. Parsons makes one very interesting observation, however. Unlike the next campaign, 1824 was not marred by negative campaigning. That, the author suggests, was because all the candidates assumed that the election would go to the House, and no one wanted to alienate his rival's supporters by attacking their candidates.
It became obvious pretty quickly that 1828 would be a two-man race, as all opponents of Adams (including his Vice President, John C. Calhoun) rallied behind Jackson (who would make Calhoun his own running mate). Parsons stresses, however, that a two-man campaign didn't automatically mean a two-party or bipolarchic campaign. That's where Martin Van Buren comes in. He believed a disciplined party system as a necessary alternative to rule by elite celebrities. Jackson could well have won the 1828 election entirely on the strength of his personality and the perception that Clay had screwed him. But how could Jackson be trusted to govern? A President who depended only on his own charisma could well govern as he pleased, within constitutional limits. But by incorporating the grass-roots Jackson movement into a disciplined, ideological party, Van Buren and his allies, many of them slaveholders (like Jackson himself), hoped to steer popular enthusiasm into the service of their Jeffersonian limited-government ideology. Not coincidentally, a party hierarchy created a seemingly meritocratic path for personal advancement for politicians like Van Buren who came from relatively humble backgrounds or hadn't become military heroes like Jackson. By 1837 he was President of the United States.
By perpetuating the "corrupt bargain" conspiracy theory against Adams and Clay, Van Buren encouraged the implicit corollary notion that there was something inherently corrupt about the constitutional process for resolving elections without majority winners. For American history, the lesson of 1824 seemed to be that it was desirable if not imperative to have a majority winner in the Electoral College. Anything short of that threatened to thwart the will of the American people, even though any such scenario would mean that the people had thwarted themselves. The easiest way to ensure a majority winner is to have only two candidates. There had been two-man and even two-party elections before 1828, but to the extent that 1824 became the negative exemplar to be avoided at all costs, you could well argue that the American Bipolarchy as we know it began at that moment. We might break the spell of 1824 if we, the people, were not so jealous of our right to choose the President, and we might break the spell of the Presidency if chief executives had more humble origins, so to speak, and could not call themselves sole representatives of the entire American people. If the Bipolarchy is a product of democratization, we might want to rethink our impulse to democratize every aspect of our political system.
"Repeal the 17th Amendment"
My mention of this slogan on a sign carried at yesterday's "tea party" event in Albany has created some confusion among readers, and I wasn't exactly certain myself if the protester knew, symbolically speaking, what he was talking about. But believe it or not, there is a movement to repeal the Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the one that stripped state legislatures of the power to elect U.S. Senators and gave it to the people of the states. Googling the slogan revealed a blog dedicated to the idea, and numerous other websites besides. The motive seems to be to protect states' rights, the perception being that Senators are failing in their obligation to represent the states and serving their own partisan interests instead. This site summarizes the arguments for repeal, offering term limits for legislators and senators alike as the remedy for the corruption that provoked the amendment's ratification in the first place. The idea has been rattling around for a while and has been endorsed occasionally by conservative Republicans who happen not to hold elective offices, though it seems to be beyond the mainstream Republican agenda. I still say it was an odd sign for someone to carry at an anti-government rally in Albany, where the legislature is the body people might least want to grant additional power.
Iran Divided
From the ayatollahs to the national soccer team, Iranians are split over the disputed presidential election. A senior cleric has said that no sensible person can accept the reported result of a landslide victory for the incumbent. Members of the soccer team were wearing opposition colors for at least part of their nationally televised game yesterday. Unverified reports claim that at least one pair of legislators came to blows over the issue. Preliminary reports from the selected recounts suggest ballot stuffing, with more votes cast than voters to cast them in several places. This story sums up much of the latest news.
Adding to the confusion for outside observers is some ambiguity regarding "the government" of Iran. If convincing evidence of a stolen election emerges, it will be necessary to ask whether the theft was perpetrated by the Supreme Leader, the president, or both. It may not be impossible that Ahmadinejad's people tried to pull something without Ayatollah Khamenei's connivance. I don't have a full understanding of the relative powers of the two leaders, or who commands whom at lower levels. Worse, we have to ask to what extent entities like the Revolutionary Guard, which is warning internet writers against creating "tension," are acting on their own initiative. At the same time, the Guard has to be distinguished from the paramilitary basij, the entity generally held responsible for Monday's killings, which seems to be personally loyal to Ahmadinejad.
However things sort out, no one should expect the West's dream scenario of some kind of people-power overthrow of the Islamic Republic. Still unlikely but more possible is that Khamenei might decide to throw Ahmandinejad under the bus, especially if it emerges that a presidential faction acted on its own in stealing the election. It would be within the Guardian Council's power to call a new election, I presume, and to exclude Ahmadinejad from the revote if they determine that he'd been up to no good. As far as I know, while Mousavi has criticized the Guardians for doing little or nothing to rectify the situation, he has no desire to do away with the Islamic Republic format or the vilayat-e-faqih principle of supervisory power for the nation's spiritual leader. Nor are there likely to be more than cosmetic changes to Iran's foreign policy, no matter how things turn out.
Given all that, the President of the United States is taking the right course by limiting himself to expressing reservations over the situation, while blowhards like Senator McCain are only setting Mousavi's faction up for the slaughter by insisting that the U.S. endorse them. All Republicans should recall how they feel when anyone on earth questions the correctness of the 2000 or 2004 presidential elections here before blowing their stacks over the Iranian imbroglio. Of course, for suggesting this I might be accused of asserting "moral equivalence" between the Iranian and American political systems, but for the moment I'm not. What I am asserting is a principle of etiquette and a little bit of common sense that might keep the people you support from losing any chance they have of prevailing or even surviving.
Adding to the confusion for outside observers is some ambiguity regarding "the government" of Iran. If convincing evidence of a stolen election emerges, it will be necessary to ask whether the theft was perpetrated by the Supreme Leader, the president, or both. It may not be impossible that Ahmadinejad's people tried to pull something without Ayatollah Khamenei's connivance. I don't have a full understanding of the relative powers of the two leaders, or who commands whom at lower levels. Worse, we have to ask to what extent entities like the Revolutionary Guard, which is warning internet writers against creating "tension," are acting on their own initiative. At the same time, the Guard has to be distinguished from the paramilitary basij, the entity generally held responsible for Monday's killings, which seems to be personally loyal to Ahmadinejad.
However things sort out, no one should expect the West's dream scenario of some kind of people-power overthrow of the Islamic Republic. Still unlikely but more possible is that Khamenei might decide to throw Ahmandinejad under the bus, especially if it emerges that a presidential faction acted on its own in stealing the election. It would be within the Guardian Council's power to call a new election, I presume, and to exclude Ahmadinejad from the revote if they determine that he'd been up to no good. As far as I know, while Mousavi has criticized the Guardians for doing little or nothing to rectify the situation, he has no desire to do away with the Islamic Republic format or the vilayat-e-faqih principle of supervisory power for the nation's spiritual leader. Nor are there likely to be more than cosmetic changes to Iran's foreign policy, no matter how things turn out.
Given all that, the President of the United States is taking the right course by limiting himself to expressing reservations over the situation, while blowhards like Senator McCain are only setting Mousavi's faction up for the slaughter by insisting that the U.S. endorse them. All Republicans should recall how they feel when anyone on earth questions the correctness of the 2000 or 2004 presidential elections here before blowing their stacks over the Iranian imbroglio. Of course, for suggesting this I might be accused of asserting "moral equivalence" between the Iranian and American political systems, but for the moment I'm not. What I am asserting is a principle of etiquette and a little bit of common sense that might keep the people you support from losing any chance they have of prevailing or even surviving.
16 June 2009
Albany Tea Party No. 2
Here's an early report of the second "tea party" event to take place in Albany this year. The location this time was the State Capitol itself rather than the riverfront Corning Preserve. The event was scheduled before last week's state senate debacle, but that still-unfolding storyline may have swelled the ranks of today's protesters. Organizers were hoping for thousands, but this report puts turnout at hundreds, though more might appear during the afternoon depending on lunch hours and other details of scheduling. Again, organizers declare themselves non-partisan, but there is a decidedly anti-government slant to the right from what I've seen in photos brought back to the office. People are carrying signs calling for repeal of the 17th Amendment, for instance, or declaring that "Global Warming is a Fraud." I'm hoping that there might be video footage of the event for me to consult tonight. If any of it is worth embedding, I'll post it later.
Barack Obama: Hypocrite
Back when the Bush Administration wouldn't let the news media see the White House visitor logs, Senator Obama was among the multitudes demanding greater transparency from the Executive Branch. As a successful presidential candidate, he was ideally positioned to implement the necessary reforms, yet people still find themselves having to sue to even have a chance of seeing the logs. The Obama Administration has explicitly asserted the President's right to hold secret meetings in the White House, offering such examples as someone interviewing for an administrative position or foreign diplomats discussing sensitive international issues. This looks like another case where Republicans and neocons will credit Obama with wising up to the requirements of power while chiding liberals and others who still don't get it. What many of us "don't get" is the notion that, in a democratic republic, our elected leaders are apparently accountable to us only on Election Day, and that between elections they have some sort of exemption from public scrutiny of their meetings and discussions. To some observers, I suppose, this is only a matter of common sense. They believe that each election is a complete delegation of sovereignty by citizens to officeholders, so that citizens don't need to know who the President sees and what he discusses with them until it all comes up for review, in vaguest terms, at the next election. That view doesn't prevail everywhere. Those states that have recall provisions for elected officials, for instance, take a different approach. The idea that elected officials are accountable to the people at all times ought to be adopted nationwide. If that makes life more difficult for leaders, that's only as it should be, and I'd expect "left" and "right" alike to agree with me on that.
15 June 2009
New York: Senatorial Counter-coup
In the latest maneuver in the struggle to control the New York state senate, Hiram Monserrate, one of the two Democrats who defected to make a Republican the majority leader, now says he will resume caucusing with the Democrats, creating an even 31-31 deadlock in the upper house. His co-conspirator of last week says that Monserrate's decision does not reverse the result of last week's vote, which made him (Senator Espada) the president of the senate.
I wonder whether the real motive for last week's stunt, at least as far as the two senators were concerned (moneybags B. Thomas Golisano having his own motives) was to depose Senator Malcolm Smith as the majority leader, in the first place, and the leader of the Democratic caucus in the next. They have apparently disliked his leadership since the party took over the upper house, for whatever reason, and the upheaval seems likely to force a vote on Smith's standing within the party, which Monserrate is now in a position to influence. Smith seems to have few friends at this point, and it looks like no one will regret his fall from power. I would hate to think that race is at the base of this tempest, with Hispanic senators rebelling against a black leader, but one never knows. One might tell, however, from how the caucus conducts itself hereafter.
I'm also curious to see how partisans will respond to the apparent repentance and return to the fold of a man they had denounced as a despicable traitor last week, and who remains an alleged criminal. The conscientious approach might be to make Monseratte a man without a party and bar him from the caucus, but that probably isn't an option so long as his vote can make the difference on any bill. That's what partisanship reduces us to in New York State. It makes you wonder whether there's some other way that representative government can work to make scenes like those of the past week impossible or at least less likely. Politicians aren't going to help us with this one, so we'll have to figure it out ourselves.
I wonder whether the real motive for last week's stunt, at least as far as the two senators were concerned (moneybags B. Thomas Golisano having his own motives) was to depose Senator Malcolm Smith as the majority leader, in the first place, and the leader of the Democratic caucus in the next. They have apparently disliked his leadership since the party took over the upper house, for whatever reason, and the upheaval seems likely to force a vote on Smith's standing within the party, which Monserrate is now in a position to influence. Smith seems to have few friends at this point, and it looks like no one will regret his fall from power. I would hate to think that race is at the base of this tempest, with Hispanic senators rebelling against a black leader, but one never knows. One might tell, however, from how the caucus conducts itself hereafter.
I'm also curious to see how partisans will respond to the apparent repentance and return to the fold of a man they had denounced as a despicable traitor last week, and who remains an alleged criminal. The conscientious approach might be to make Monseratte a man without a party and bar him from the caucus, but that probably isn't an option so long as his vote can make the difference on any bill. That's what partisanship reduces us to in New York State. It makes you wonder whether there's some other way that representative government can work to make scenes like those of the past week impossible or at least less likely. Politicians aren't going to help us with this one, so we'll have to figure it out ourselves.
The Iranian Crisis
Likely emboldened by the Guardian Council's decision to probe charges of election improprieties, Mir Hossein Mousavi and an estimated 100,000 supporters defied a ban on protest demonstrations to show their strength in Tehran today. The event was marred when members of what is called a "pro-government militia" fired into the crowd, reportedly killing at least one person. President Ahmadinejad has cancelled a scheduled trip to Russia in order to remain in the country, which is probably a smart move by the presumptive winner.
From the MSNBC account, the gunmen may have been members of the basij, which is a student paramilitary group with reactionary leanings. The "pro-government" label should be used with care because of the distinction between Ahmadinejad as head of government and Ayatollah Khamanei as head of state. The basij, from what I've read about them, are mainly pro-Ahmadinejad, though I doubt whether they see any conflict between that and loyalty to the Supreme Leader or the Guardian Council. The president has reportedly encouraged the growth of the basij during his first term, and they seem like the people most inclined to get rough in his defense. They could have acted on their own initiative, or with Ahmadinejad's connivance, or with approval from the very top level. This is the sort of scenario, however, where conspiracy theorists are most likely to cry "agent provocateur!" and suggest that the basij, Ahmadinejad, or the government as a whole are being framed.
Whether the Guardian Council's inquiry into the election can be taken seriously depends on how tight Ahmadinejad is with Khamenei. The election was fought mostly over domestic economic issues, and I don't know if the ayatollah has a preference here. The other main issue was Ahmadinejad himself as the image of Iran to the rest of the world. Mousavi portrayed him as an embarrassment, but supporters endorsed the president's confrontational stance as a way to stick it to The Man, i.e. the Great Satan and his pals. It's not clear whether Mousavi would offer more than cosmetic changes when it comes to foreign relations. The question is whether the Guardians would have any reason to screw Mousavi, but that question itself assumes that Ahmadinejad has already screwed his opponent. American observers may be inclined to believe that Khamenei is automatically complicit in any Election Day screw-job, but just as we shouldn't assume that Mousavi has been screwed, we shouldn't assume that the Supreme Leader was in on a conspiracy against the opposition, or that he would do nothing about it. The proof of a free election is not that the good guys win, or that all the candidates are good guys. Iran may end up an enemy of the U.S. despite all democracy, but that possibility shouldn't lead us to assume that the Islamic Republic is more of a tyranny than it probably is -- which is bad enough for many people.
From the MSNBC account, the gunmen may have been members of the basij, which is a student paramilitary group with reactionary leanings. The "pro-government" label should be used with care because of the distinction between Ahmadinejad as head of government and Ayatollah Khamanei as head of state. The basij, from what I've read about them, are mainly pro-Ahmadinejad, though I doubt whether they see any conflict between that and loyalty to the Supreme Leader or the Guardian Council. The president has reportedly encouraged the growth of the basij during his first term, and they seem like the people most inclined to get rough in his defense. They could have acted on their own initiative, or with Ahmadinejad's connivance, or with approval from the very top level. This is the sort of scenario, however, where conspiracy theorists are most likely to cry "agent provocateur!" and suggest that the basij, Ahmadinejad, or the government as a whole are being framed.
Whether the Guardian Council's inquiry into the election can be taken seriously depends on how tight Ahmadinejad is with Khamenei. The election was fought mostly over domestic economic issues, and I don't know if the ayatollah has a preference here. The other main issue was Ahmadinejad himself as the image of Iran to the rest of the world. Mousavi portrayed him as an embarrassment, but supporters endorsed the president's confrontational stance as a way to stick it to The Man, i.e. the Great Satan and his pals. It's not clear whether Mousavi would offer more than cosmetic changes when it comes to foreign relations. The question is whether the Guardians would have any reason to screw Mousavi, but that question itself assumes that Ahmadinejad has already screwed his opponent. American observers may be inclined to believe that Khamenei is automatically complicit in any Election Day screw-job, but just as we shouldn't assume that Mousavi has been screwed, we shouldn't assume that the Supreme Leader was in on a conspiracy against the opposition, or that he would do nothing about it. The proof of a free election is not that the good guys win, or that all the candidates are good guys. Iran may end up an enemy of the U.S. despite all democracy, but that possibility shouldn't lead us to assume that the Islamic Republic is more of a tyranny than it probably is -- which is bad enough for many people.
13 June 2009
Iran: Righteous Indignation or Sore Loserism
Raw footage from today in the Iranian capital. These are supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the leading opposition candidate in yesterday's presidential election. They are outraged that President Ahmadinejad has won what appears to be a landslide victory despite reports before the vote that the race had been neck-and-neck. Encouraged to believe that power was within their reach, they now assume the fix was in.
American observers will likely jump to the same conclusion, even though it's unclear whether there was any sound scientific basis for believing that the race was as close as the global media claimed. All we know for certain is that Mousavi has a large and loud following in the big cities. But in the United States you can have a huge march for some cause in New York City and that wouldn't mean that the country as a whole feels the same way.
I'm trying to be neither naive nor contrarian on this subject. An Iranian election can be stolen just like any country's. I just don't want everyone jumping to that conclusion just because they dislike the idea of the Islamic Republic or hate Ahmadinejad's guts -- no matter how he's earned it. Let's hear from independent observers if any were in the country, or from non-partisan Iranians. Let's not hear from Americans who think they know what's happened because they "know" that Iran is a tyranny.
On the other hand, I suppose this is how people should behave if they think their election was stolen. But if Americans had done anything like this back in 2000, you know how other Americans would have reacted. Our final judgment on these Iranians must depend on whether their anger has any basis in facts. This remains to be seen.
American observers will likely jump to the same conclusion, even though it's unclear whether there was any sound scientific basis for believing that the race was as close as the global media claimed. All we know for certain is that Mousavi has a large and loud following in the big cities. But in the United States you can have a huge march for some cause in New York City and that wouldn't mean that the country as a whole feels the same way.
I'm trying to be neither naive nor contrarian on this subject. An Iranian election can be stolen just like any country's. I just don't want everyone jumping to that conclusion just because they dislike the idea of the Islamic Republic or hate Ahmadinejad's guts -- no matter how he's earned it. Let's hear from independent observers if any were in the country, or from non-partisan Iranians. Let's not hear from Americans who think they know what's happened because they "know" that Iran is a tyranny.
On the other hand, I suppose this is how people should behave if they think their election was stolen. But if Americans had done anything like this back in 2000, you know how other Americans would have reacted. Our final judgment on these Iranians must depend on whether their anger has any basis in facts. This remains to be seen.
12 June 2009
Democracy in Iran, Part II
The state-controlled media has called the Iranian presidential election for the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on the basis of early returns. Even before the polls closed, however, Mr. Mousavi, the leading opposition candidate, declared himself the winner, warning that any deviation from that prediction would result from fraud by the incumbent's party. Many Americans will give Mousavi the benefit of the doubt based on their hatred of Ahmadinejad, but they ought to acknowledge that an American candidate -- Republican, Democratic or other -- who pre-emptively declared himself the winner of an election before the polls closed would universally be deemed guilty of bad form. Mousavi may be the good guy in the race from our perspective, but he should be judged the same way for his little stunt.
If the final result bears out the official call, I'm sure there'll be millions of Iranians who'll feel just like millions of Americans did following the 2004 election. That would be a mix of despair plus guilt on behalf of the whole country. Ahmadinejad is the Iranian equivalent of George W. Bush in many respects -- there's even a slight facial resemblance if you imagine the Iranian clean shaven -- and he clearly stirs up the same pro and con passions among Iranians as Dubya did here. His re-election would force the same questions as Bush's. Was every Ahmadinejad voter voting for Holocaust denial and The Bomb, or were there other reasons to stick with the incumbent? Just as Bush's win over Kerry was blamed on socio-cultural divides in America, similar ones may exist in Iran that don't necessarily have much bearing on the country's foreign policy. We know that Ahmadinejad is a kind of populist who ran originally and again this time against an alleged class of political fat cats, so it's quite possible that an Iranian voted for him as much to stick it to some imagined domestic oppressor as to stick it to the U.S. or Israel. That doesn't mean that no Iranian voted to send a message abroad, however. If you can imagine an American yahoo rallying to Dubya precisely because he was so despised outside the U.S., then it ought to be easy to imagine his counterpart Iranian yahoo interpreting international condemnation of Ahmadinejad as the perfect endorsement. However these factors balance out, we ought to be careful about declaring the Iranian electorate to be complicit by virtue of their votes in all Ahmadinejad's schemes. Collective guilt, after all, is how terrorists see things.
If the final result bears out the official call, I'm sure there'll be millions of Iranians who'll feel just like millions of Americans did following the 2004 election. That would be a mix of despair plus guilt on behalf of the whole country. Ahmadinejad is the Iranian equivalent of George W. Bush in many respects -- there's even a slight facial resemblance if you imagine the Iranian clean shaven -- and he clearly stirs up the same pro and con passions among Iranians as Dubya did here. His re-election would force the same questions as Bush's. Was every Ahmadinejad voter voting for Holocaust denial and The Bomb, or were there other reasons to stick with the incumbent? Just as Bush's win over Kerry was blamed on socio-cultural divides in America, similar ones may exist in Iran that don't necessarily have much bearing on the country's foreign policy. We know that Ahmadinejad is a kind of populist who ran originally and again this time against an alleged class of political fat cats, so it's quite possible that an Iranian voted for him as much to stick it to some imagined domestic oppressor as to stick it to the U.S. or Israel. That doesn't mean that no Iranian voted to send a message abroad, however. If you can imagine an American yahoo rallying to Dubya precisely because he was so despised outside the U.S., then it ought to be easy to imagine his counterpart Iranian yahoo interpreting international condemnation of Ahmadinejad as the perfect endorsement. However these factors balance out, we ought to be careful about declaring the Iranian electorate to be complicit by virtue of their votes in all Ahmadinejad's schemes. Collective guilt, after all, is how terrorists see things.
* * *
Would it surprise you to learn that at least one American neocon is rooting for Ahmadinejad to win? Daniel Pipes's logic is that, so long as Iran continues to develop nuclear power regardless of who wins the presidency, the country ought to have a creep in office to remind us that they should never be allowed to get The Bomb. I don't like to use Hitler analogies as a rule, but this attitude reminds me of those German Communists who preferred the Nazis over the Social Democrats back in the 1930s because they thought they'd benefit from his misrule. I am not equating Ahmadinejad to Hitler, but I am equating stupidity to stupidity through history. I leave it to you to choose between Pipes and Rev. Wright for Idiot of the Week.
11 June 2009
Idiot of the Week Nominee: Jeremiah Wright
We were apparently mistaken in believing that Rev. Wright's fifteen minutes of fame had expired once Republicans proved themselves unable to disqualify Barack Obama from the White House by association with his onetime pastor. The Rev. himself has not kept track of the time, however; nor could he pick a worse time to have his remarks to a Newport News paper publicized nationally than in the aftermath of the Holocaust Museum attack. He's still in a snit because Obama won't talk to him anymore, though he predicts that the President will turn to him when he's out of power or reduced to political duck lameness. While he repeats his charge that Obama himself is consciously ducking him because he is a politician, Wright found it necessary to assert that "them Jews" are keeping him from the President. He also made critical remarks about the Israeli occupation in Gaza that aren't themselves objectionable, as far as I'm concerned. The idiocy of his interview lies in his suspicion that only Jews would try to keep him away from Obama, when in fact anyone with common political sense would treat his approach to the White House as the late security guard treated Herr von Brunn's visit to the museum yesterday. The illiteracy of "them Jews" is only icing on the idiocy cake.
In case the national media are distorting the story or Wright's comments, here's a link to the Newport News Daily Press, the original source of the story, along with the video interview the paper did with Wright.
In case the national media are distorting the story or Wright's comments, here's a link to the Newport News Daily Press, the original source of the story, along with the video interview the paper did with Wright.
10 June 2009
Amoklauf zum Museum: A Scumbag's Last Stand
James Von Brunn might think he scored a bonus today, having killed a black security guard in his attempt to blast his way into the Holocaust Museum in Washington. He may not know what he's done, since I understand he took a head shot in the exchange. Despite the low body count I feel justified in calling this an amoklauf because I presume that he meant to kill people inside the museum in some sort of last stand against "ZOG" or whatever he calls the Jewish master of his imagination. While he may have resemblances to the cranks of today (a violent hostility toward the Federal Reserve, for instance, that he acted upon years ago), his age alone suggests that today's crime was the closing act of a slow burn rather than an outburst provoked by any recent upsurge in anti-government or right-wing extremism. He's old enough to be the dad of most of the people who might be scapegoated for his antics. Indeed, when Homeland Security warned earlier this year about veterans' susceptibility to right-wing extremism, I don't think they meant veterans of World War II. And when we get to people like this suspect, I think the "right-wing" label becomes irrelevant. I doubt this guy was much motivated by economics or thoughts on the proper size and scope of government. I also wouldn't want to dignify his psychoses with the label of ideology. He was a mad dog and was treated as such, but not before he could do awful damage that we should all regret.
Democracy in Iran
From all appearances, President Ahmadinejad is in a fight for his political life in Iran against substantial opposition in a four-way race that has focused as much on internal economic issues as on foreign relations. The incumbent has been slammed for embarrassing the nation through his indulgence in Holocaust skepticism, and he's been caught in a sizable error about the country's inflation rate. He has had to confront at least his most popular opponent in a televised debate. But he still has huge support for his populist domestic agenda and his tough-guy attitude toward the rest of the world.
Enemies of Iran will blow it all off. It's all a sham, they'll say, as long as the ayatollahs have the power to keep whomever they want off the ballot. If there isn't a candidate calling for the abolition of the Islamic Republic or unconditional reconciliation with the U.S., that absence must prove that Iran is a tyranny despite appearances. Isn't it awful, after all? That accursed nation has an electoral structure that winnows out the most insurgent candidates and limits effective choices to a narrow range of establishment-approved politicians. Americans are inclined to see this as "evil" because they see the will of wicked men behind it. But doesn't the American Bipolarchy work to the same basic effect? There may be no obvious malign will behind the curtain, but a system has evolved that marginalizes anyone who doesn't want to deal with the two giant fundraising machines which, we must recall, do not owe their place in the system to any design by the Founders and Framers. There's still room for genuine choice in each country's system, but the range of choices is limited in either case by seemingly arbitrary forces.
The American case seems more democratic to us because the American people are, in a way, complicit in it because of their complacency and their habits of brand-name loyalty. Americans can tell themselves that we have chosen the Bipolarchy and regularly reaffirm our choice, and that all objections to it are only "sour grapes" carping. They look at Iran and can't see when or how the Iranian people chose their electoral system, so they conclude that Iran isn't free. We had better not sugarcoat things: for many people, leaving elections aside, Iran definitely isn't a free country. But if we're going to question the freedom of their elections because of the impediments that exist for ambitious dissidents, I wonder if we'll find a truly free country anywhere on earth.
Enemies of Iran will blow it all off. It's all a sham, they'll say, as long as the ayatollahs have the power to keep whomever they want off the ballot. If there isn't a candidate calling for the abolition of the Islamic Republic or unconditional reconciliation with the U.S., that absence must prove that Iran is a tyranny despite appearances. Isn't it awful, after all? That accursed nation has an electoral structure that winnows out the most insurgent candidates and limits effective choices to a narrow range of establishment-approved politicians. Americans are inclined to see this as "evil" because they see the will of wicked men behind it. But doesn't the American Bipolarchy work to the same basic effect? There may be no obvious malign will behind the curtain, but a system has evolved that marginalizes anyone who doesn't want to deal with the two giant fundraising machines which, we must recall, do not owe their place in the system to any design by the Founders and Framers. There's still room for genuine choice in each country's system, but the range of choices is limited in either case by seemingly arbitrary forces.
The American case seems more democratic to us because the American people are, in a way, complicit in it because of their complacency and their habits of brand-name loyalty. Americans can tell themselves that we have chosen the Bipolarchy and regularly reaffirm our choice, and that all objections to it are only "sour grapes" carping. They look at Iran and can't see when or how the Iranian people chose their electoral system, so they conclude that Iran isn't free. We had better not sugarcoat things: for many people, leaving elections aside, Iran definitely isn't a free country. But if we're going to question the freedom of their elections because of the impediments that exist for ambitious dissidents, I wonder if we'll find a truly free country anywhere on earth.
09 June 2009
Golisano: The Shadow Governor of New York
B. Thomas "Tom" Golisano is a self-made millionaire of the sort that think that the world is made for them to reap as much from as they can earn. Believing that the state of New York needed to be made safe for the likes of him, but not caring to kowtow to party hacks, he ran three times for governor as an independent candidate. His best performance was in 2002, when he earned 14% of the vote. Bearing in mind my reservations about the brand-name loyalty of most voters which perpetuates the American Bipolarchy, I think I can still say safely that the voters of New York State have thrice rejected Golisano by decisive margins. Yet now, more than six years after he last exposed himself to electoral scrutiny, this unelected person has emerged as the mastermind of the "coup" in which two defectors from the Democratic party gave control of the state senate to the Republican party. This news comes weeks after Golisano had announced his intention to quit the state as a protest against high taxes.I would have thought that quitting the state meant taking no role in its political life, particularly since his right to such influence as he has apparently demonstrated is questionable, to say the least. So what does his orchestration of the "coup" consist of? The people of New York have a right to know, and the elected officials of New York have a duty to ask, especially if the answer involves any subsidies for the two senators' legal or electoral expenses. If the state assembly has any power to summon Golisano for questioning, the majority, being vengeful Democrats, should do so. I have no sympathy for them as Democrats, and I'm not about to claim that they're the good guys of New York politics. But Golisano's ability to alter the balance of power from the shadows should be just as alarming to Americans as the persistence of the Bipolarchy, if not more so. Let's get to the bottom of this.
08 June 2009
"Coup" in New York State
Two New York state senators today switched their party affiliation from Democratic to Republican and joined the GOP members in an impromptu vote to replace the upper house's Democratic leadership with Republicans. In an obvious condition of the deal, one of the defectors has been given a share in the new power by being made president of the senate. The two senators are downstate Hispanics who had threatened to switch affiliation late last year in an attempted power play. They are opponents of gay marriage, legislation for which was pending, and both are in legal peril, though it isn't clear how changing sides can help them. The Democrats claim that today's action was illegal, but so far they've offered no basis for thinking so apart from accusing the two senators of betraying the people's will as expressed last November when the Democrats won the majority.
While I dislike the Republican agenda, I have to say that the senators owed nothing to the Democratic party. They are entitled to believe that their constituents voted for them personally, whether that's true or not. The law of the Bipolarchy is that since people literally vote a party line on the ballot, any given seat belongs to the party as much as to the person. Fortunately, there's no statutory law saying so, and in the absence of any recall mechanism there's no way to punish renegade legislators until the next election comes along. But that doesn't make the senators any kind of heroes. Rather than challenge the Bipolarchy, they've perpetuated it, since they've affirmed that the only effective way to express their dissatisfaction with their old party is to join the other. That's effective because they can deny their old leaders the ability to fill majorities on committees. It would cease to be effective if committees weren't filled on a partisan basis.
What should the senators' constituents make of what's happened? They ought to reserve judgment until they see how the men vote. All legislators' first responsibility is to their constituents, not to their parties, and in theory, at least, a senator might betray his party without betraying the people. If they suddenly start voting the opposite of how they did before, constituents could well cry foul. But the constituents themselves should make sure not to confuse their interests with those of parties. If we grant that any constituency, no matter how small, has distinct interests, than there can't be a perfect match between those interests and the platform of any party. In these particular cases, voters apparently thought the Democratic candidates offered a closer match. They are the same men today. It may turn out that they are just as the presumably-deposed majority leader has described them: unprincipled and completely self-interested. But that's for their constituents, not Senator Smith, to judge, and they should judge by the senators' acts. It remains to be proven whether or not today's actions are in the constituents' best interests, and only subsequent action can prove that one way or the other.
While I dislike the Republican agenda, I have to say that the senators owed nothing to the Democratic party. They are entitled to believe that their constituents voted for them personally, whether that's true or not. The law of the Bipolarchy is that since people literally vote a party line on the ballot, any given seat belongs to the party as much as to the person. Fortunately, there's no statutory law saying so, and in the absence of any recall mechanism there's no way to punish renegade legislators until the next election comes along. But that doesn't make the senators any kind of heroes. Rather than challenge the Bipolarchy, they've perpetuated it, since they've affirmed that the only effective way to express their dissatisfaction with their old party is to join the other. That's effective because they can deny their old leaders the ability to fill majorities on committees. It would cease to be effective if committees weren't filled on a partisan basis.
What should the senators' constituents make of what's happened? They ought to reserve judgment until they see how the men vote. All legislators' first responsibility is to their constituents, not to their parties, and in theory, at least, a senator might betray his party without betraying the people. If they suddenly start voting the opposite of how they did before, constituents could well cry foul. But the constituents themselves should make sure not to confuse their interests with those of parties. If we grant that any constituency, no matter how small, has distinct interests, than there can't be a perfect match between those interests and the platform of any party. In these particular cases, voters apparently thought the Democratic candidates offered a closer match. They are the same men today. It may turn out that they are just as the presumably-deposed majority leader has described them: unprincipled and completely self-interested. But that's for their constituents, not Senator Smith, to judge, and they should judge by the senators' acts. It remains to be proven whether or not today's actions are in the constituents' best interests, and only subsequent action can prove that one way or the other.
Reporters Free or Kim Dead?
I've heard some people say that Americans once upon a time wouldn't have stood for the way North Korea has dealt with the two Korean-American reporters who allegedly strayed across the border into the Communist autocracy. The women have just been sentenced to twelve years in a labor camp for what is vaguely described as a "grave crime" or "hostility toward the North Korean people." Observers suspect that the women are, in effect, hostages to be offered their freedom in return for concessions to the Kim Jong Il regime by the U.S. government or the international community. If so, that's bound to make their plight even less acceptable to our more bellicose citizens.
By now, many Americans probably hold Kim Jong Il in no higher regard than Teddy Roosevelt held the Moroccan Raisuli (of Wind and the Lion fame) who kidnapped an American family in the early 1900s. Then, the demand was "Pedicaris alive or Raisuli dead." Such talk might still be permissible today to the extent that the Raisuli was a bandit, but Americans have too often extended the principle to the effect that they deny fellow citizens' accountability to some foreign governments. In the days of imperialism, the great powers exacted concessions from weaker states requiring that nationals from the powers not be tried in the weaker states' courts for crimes allegedly committed in those countries. The accountability of American soldiers in countries where the U.S. has bases is still a subject of controversy. An international rule of law should leave no ambiguity. Offenders should be accountable to the countries whose laws they violated. Any deviance from that standard is unjustified privilege. Except for the dubious vagueness of the charges against the American reporters, I would say that the same standard should apply even in North Korea. In any event, Kim Jong Il should not be allowed to enjoy the benefit of hostages. President Obama has expressed growing frustration with Kim's atomic antics, and goes so far as to say that George W. "Axis of Evil" Bush was too soft on the tyrant. If he plans to play hardball with Kim, however, he had better prepare his people to regard those two reporters as dead already.
By now, many Americans probably hold Kim Jong Il in no higher regard than Teddy Roosevelt held the Moroccan Raisuli (of Wind and the Lion fame) who kidnapped an American family in the early 1900s. Then, the demand was "Pedicaris alive or Raisuli dead." Such talk might still be permissible today to the extent that the Raisuli was a bandit, but Americans have too often extended the principle to the effect that they deny fellow citizens' accountability to some foreign governments. In the days of imperialism, the great powers exacted concessions from weaker states requiring that nationals from the powers not be tried in the weaker states' courts for crimes allegedly committed in those countries. The accountability of American soldiers in countries where the U.S. has bases is still a subject of controversy. An international rule of law should leave no ambiguity. Offenders should be accountable to the countries whose laws they violated. Any deviance from that standard is unjustified privilege. Except for the dubious vagueness of the charges against the American reporters, I would say that the same standard should apply even in North Korea. In any event, Kim Jong Il should not be allowed to enjoy the benefit of hostages. President Obama has expressed growing frustration with Kim's atomic antics, and goes so far as to say that George W. "Axis of Evil" Bush was too soft on the tyrant. If he plans to play hardball with Kim, however, he had better prepare his people to regard those two reporters as dead already.
A Balanced Court
The current issue of The New Yorker has a "Talk of the Town" comment by Jeffrey Toobin that puts Judge Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court in historical perspective. He reminds readers that Presidents have been conscious of diversity when picking justices almost from the beginning. In the past, for instance, regional diversity was the goal: "Presidents came to honor an informal tradition of preserving a New England seat, a Virginia seat, a Pennsylvania seat, and a New York seat on the Court." That seemed appropriate when different states had clear economic interests that seemed to need representation and were still jealous of the sovereignty and relative standing in the Union. Maintaining geographic balance was how Presidents created a Court that "looked like America," but as Toobin observes, this diversity did nothing to prevent the Civil War, the ultimate expression of regional diversity in American history. Religious consciousness dates back to Andrew Jackson, who appointed the first Catholic justice in 1836. Race consciousness came, depending on your own racial consciousness, either with the appointment of Louis Brandeis in 1916 or the appointment of Thurgood Marshall in 1967, while gender consciousness manifested in the appointment of Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981.
Some forms of diversity become irrelevant over time. Toobin notes that two Arizonans served together for more than two decades recently (O'Connor and Rehnquist) without anyone worrying that that state had acquired too much influence in the Court. Also, no one seems to be greatly troubled (in the mainstream, at least) by the fact that, if confirmed, Sotomayor will be the sixth Catholic in the current Court. That lack of distress seems reasonable when you realize that the Catholic justices traverse the entire ideological spectrum. Fresh emphasis on new forms of diversity becomes necessary at certain moments of history, Toobin suggests. President Obama, for instance, "need not be reluctant to acknowledge that Hispanics, the nation's fastest growing ethnic group, who by 2050 will represent a third of the American people, deserve a place at this most exclusive table for nine....As [he] knows better than most, it is a sign of a mature and healthy society when the best of formerly excluded groups have the opportunity to earn their way to the top."
This view can be taken to its absurd extreme -- how many Americans are mentally retarded, one might ask, and when would their numbers entitle them to a seat at the table of power? The idea that one from a certain group must be given a position of power just because there are lots of people in that group rankles my meritocratic conscience. But Toobin does us a service by pointing out that there is nothing new about the practice, and that it doesn't just go back to those nutty Sixties radicals, even when his invocation of the Civil War might remind us that diversity for its own sake might lack practical value. We're left with the paradox at the heart of any kind of "affirmative action" policy. Our ideal is "blind" Justice that respects principles, not persons. It should be colorblind, creed-blind, region-blind. But if Justice has not been blind to persons in the past, if it has discriminated on sight or for any other region, it cannot prove itself truly blind in the good sense unless it somehow acknowledges those to whom it had been willfully blind in the past. Some people can't accept that necessity because it violates their own sense of blind justice, which they want to be blind to the past for some reason. But even if Justice is blind, it isn't deaf. It can listen to reason, and sometimes reason trumps metaphors.
Some forms of diversity become irrelevant over time. Toobin notes that two Arizonans served together for more than two decades recently (O'Connor and Rehnquist) without anyone worrying that that state had acquired too much influence in the Court. Also, no one seems to be greatly troubled (in the mainstream, at least) by the fact that, if confirmed, Sotomayor will be the sixth Catholic in the current Court. That lack of distress seems reasonable when you realize that the Catholic justices traverse the entire ideological spectrum. Fresh emphasis on new forms of diversity becomes necessary at certain moments of history, Toobin suggests. President Obama, for instance, "need not be reluctant to acknowledge that Hispanics, the nation's fastest growing ethnic group, who by 2050 will represent a third of the American people, deserve a place at this most exclusive table for nine....As [he] knows better than most, it is a sign of a mature and healthy society when the best of formerly excluded groups have the opportunity to earn their way to the top."
This view can be taken to its absurd extreme -- how many Americans are mentally retarded, one might ask, and when would their numbers entitle them to a seat at the table of power? The idea that one from a certain group must be given a position of power just because there are lots of people in that group rankles my meritocratic conscience. But Toobin does us a service by pointing out that there is nothing new about the practice, and that it doesn't just go back to those nutty Sixties radicals, even when his invocation of the Civil War might remind us that diversity for its own sake might lack practical value. We're left with the paradox at the heart of any kind of "affirmative action" policy. Our ideal is "blind" Justice that respects principles, not persons. It should be colorblind, creed-blind, region-blind. But if Justice has not been blind to persons in the past, if it has discriminated on sight or for any other region, it cannot prove itself truly blind in the good sense unless it somehow acknowledges those to whom it had been willfully blind in the past. Some people can't accept that necessity because it violates their own sense of blind justice, which they want to be blind to the past for some reason. But even if Justice is blind, it isn't deaf. It can listen to reason, and sometimes reason trumps metaphors.
04 June 2009
Gun Nut of the Week
Pastor Ken Pagano of Louisville KY has come up with a different way to celebrate Independence Day. He's invited his congregation to celebrate at his church -- and bring their guns. Believing that the nation owes its independence to firearms (which in itself is no argument for private arsenals), Pastor Ken considers it fitting for people to display their guns in a house of worship, and for one lucky worshipper to win a handgun in a raffle. He also sees his stunt as an occasion to educate parishioners on safe gun ownership, a subject of some concern to him given recent publicized shootings in churches. There's just one problem with his affirmative approach to guns. Pastor Ken insists that your guns be unloaded and that they be checked by security at the door -- the Nazi!!!
03 June 2009
More Religious Terrorism?
Since this seems like the week to pile on, may I suggest that the apparent arson that destroyed Maine's infamous yet legal topless coffee shop might have been a faith-based crime? If anything, religion was even more likely to be the motive in this case than it was in the murder of Dr. Tiller, as I can't imagine atheists getting so worked up over the notion of bare breasts that they'd burn a building down. The proprietor, who says he didn't have the place insured, accuses some folks of gloating over its destruction as they drove past the scene. Did he get their license plates? On analogy with the media's response to people who refused to mourn Dr. Tiller (I mourn him to the extent that I deplore murder, but I respect other people's refusal), we should hear calls to have those drive-by hecklers rounded up and questioned about the possible existence of an anti-toplessness network of Christian arsonists. I'll have more on this investigation as it develops.
The fate of Steve Lonegan
Readers may recall that Steve Lonegan sent me a letter last month asking for money to finance his campaign for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in New Jersey. Yesterday was primary day in the Garden State, and I learned this morning that Lonegan lost badly. He at least improved on his fourth-place performance in the last primary, but second place in a three-man field isn't that good, especially when the winner is beating you 55% to 42%. New Jersey Republicans preferred Chris Christie, apparently a sound social conservative who reportedly refused to be specific on how he'd cut the state budget if elected. He was conservative enough for voters despite Lonegan's protest that he should have led the countercharge against the President and Governor Corzine's creeping socialism. Of course, I didn't give any money to poor Lonegan, but I hope he doesn't hold that against me.
Terrorist Watch
The reputed voice of Osama bin Laden was heard again on al Jazeera and other media outlets warning Americans that they would reap the consequences of President Obama's anti-Islamic policies. He blames Obama for the failure of the truce between the Pakistani government and the Islamists of Swat province, accusing the President of refusing to let the people of Swat govern themselves according to Islamic law. He's vague about the consequences we're to suffer, as usual, but I can't help thinking this week that if he'd been bold enough to threaten abortion clinics during his tantrum, some people in this country would have us declare war on Pakistan just on the suspicion that he's there. Those are the same people who sound ready to have a new Patriot Act set up specifically for the anti-abortion movement -- which may just go to show that some people's sensibility on civil liberties depends on whose ox they think is being gored, and by whom.
02 June 2009
"Sotomayor tells senators she'd follow the law"
That's a headline over at the MSNBC website. It shows you how much the radio talkers are shaping the debate, because otherwise such a commonplace utterance from a Supreme Court nominee wouldn't be headline news. The story also continues the unhappy trend of other people reporting what Judge Sotomayor said to them rather hearing any of it straight from the judge. I suppose that's only proper before the confirmation hearings, but it gives the sense of people putting words in her mouth, or of an administration afraid to let her speak for herself. At least this time we're hearing accounts of her remarks that aren't just administration propaganda. Senator Sessions, for instance, who is expected to question her sharply as the leading Republican on the judiciary committee, told reporters that she had told him she meant to "follow the law," but he implied to reporters that her attempted reassurance only begged the question, which was how one knew what the law was. Republicans and "strict constructionists" worry that she'll follow what she might call the spirit rather than the letter of the law, and that the spirit will really be the ghost of her own life experiences -- while they themselves think they can hear the ghosts of the Framers by reading the Constitution very carefully and reverently.
The confirmation hearings won't take place until September. That means we have a whole summer of this stuff to look forward to. Aren't you excited?
The confirmation hearings won't take place until September. That means we have a whole summer of this stuff to look forward to. Aren't you excited?
Homophobes: "History absolves us!"
Pastor Bud Davis of East Berne doesn't like being called a bigot. He wrote a letter saying so to the Albany Times Union after an earlier correspondent characterized opponents of gay marriage as bigots.
"My dictionary defines a bigot as someone who is intolerant of any creed, belief or race that is not his own," Davis writes, "I am a fundamentalist minister. My positions are the positions I take not because of politics or emotions, but of what I read in the Bible." Why that matters is unclear, since Davis's dictionary didn't say that bigots took their positions "because of politics or emotions."
"I cannot teach other than the things the Bible teaches," he elaborates, "I cannot wink at homosexuality and pass it off as an alternate lifestyle. I cannot go against God's word. That does not make me a bigot." But would he similarly absolve someone who denounces Jews because he read about them in a book like say, Mein Kampf or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Yes, I'm going to compare the Bible to those books, not on the basis of historical or literary value, but because, like these texts, the Bible encourages behaviors and policies that are essentially hateful, no matter how conscientious believers feel about it all. Since I am under no obligation to regard the Bible as a book of law, I don't accept that believers can't be bigots.
"[D]on't call me a bigot because I follow what the word of God and 2,000 years of Christianity teaches," Davis pleads. Here he implies that prejudices of a certain age don't qualify as bigotry, but tell that to women fighting against millennia of sexism all over the world. For that matter, for how long in history did people own other people as slaves? Were their rationalizations justified by time? Does history absolve bigotry? Or is 2,000 or 3,000 year old bigotry still bigotry? But please don't tell me that bigotry justified by superstition isn't bigotry, or can't be. The most I'd concede in compromise is that Pastor Bud's homophobia is simply superstition.
"My dictionary defines a bigot as someone who is intolerant of any creed, belief or race that is not his own," Davis writes, "I am a fundamentalist minister. My positions are the positions I take not because of politics or emotions, but of what I read in the Bible." Why that matters is unclear, since Davis's dictionary didn't say that bigots took their positions "because of politics or emotions."
"I cannot teach other than the things the Bible teaches," he elaborates, "I cannot wink at homosexuality and pass it off as an alternate lifestyle. I cannot go against God's word. That does not make me a bigot." But would he similarly absolve someone who denounces Jews because he read about them in a book like say, Mein Kampf or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Yes, I'm going to compare the Bible to those books, not on the basis of historical or literary value, but because, like these texts, the Bible encourages behaviors and policies that are essentially hateful, no matter how conscientious believers feel about it all. Since I am under no obligation to regard the Bible as a book of law, I don't accept that believers can't be bigots.
"[D]on't call me a bigot because I follow what the word of God and 2,000 years of Christianity teaches," Davis pleads. Here he implies that prejudices of a certain age don't qualify as bigotry, but tell that to women fighting against millennia of sexism all over the world. For that matter, for how long in history did people own other people as slaves? Were their rationalizations justified by time? Does history absolve bigotry? Or is 2,000 or 3,000 year old bigotry still bigotry? But please don't tell me that bigotry justified by superstition isn't bigotry, or can't be. The most I'd concede in compromise is that Pastor Bud's homophobia is simply superstition.
A Cure for the Bipolarchy?
d. eris at the Poli-Tea blog has called my attention to an impressive article at another anti-Bipolarchy blog, Last Free Voice, which is Rhys M. Blavier's detailed program of constitutional amendments aimed at changing the rules of congressional elections, apportionment, etc. in order to discourage both the development of a permanent political class and the kind of party system that the Framers did not intend. Leaving aside the question of practicality, since nothing short of a rogue constitutional convention on the Philadelphia 1787 model could pull off these changes against the will of the current Bipolarchs, most of the proposals look promising. A particularly interesting idea is to do away with having the entire House of Representatives elected in the same year, Blavier preferring a staggered system that would have one-third of the House up for election every two years. Representatives would serve for single six-year terms, but would be eligible to run again after six years more. They would also not be allowed to run for another office while serving in the House or Senate. Congress would grow in numbers (the current 435-person limit exists by virtue of legislation only, not amendment) while states would be divided into districts on a more rational basis to prevent gerrymandering, though Blavier proposes a rather arbitrary limit on Representatives of 10 times the number of states. The only proposal I really dislike is the last one on the list, which would make the Vice-President the Speaker of the Senate with similar powers to the Speaker of the House. This strikes me as blurring the separation of powers so long as the V.P is elected as part of a ticket including the President. I would rather do away with the Speaker of the House unless that office can be kept from imposing partisan rule. This article is only part of a series, so further proposals or some already made may address my objections. To repeat, I fear that it's all impractical under the current Bipolarchy, but that doesn't mean we can't use our imaginations.
Republicans, Race and Sotomayor
There's a debate going on among Republicans over how to deal with the nomination of Judge Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. Some GOP politicians resent efforts by Rush Limbaugh and others (many of whom, Senator Cornyn notes, hold no elected offices) to goad them into opposing Sotomayor's confirmation. Senator Hatch, the ranking Republican in the Judiciary Committee, has said that Sotomayor will probably be confirmed handily barring an unexpected scandal.
This sort of talk simply won't do for the die-hard Rushites who still want revenge for the Senate's rejection of Robert Bork more than twenty years ago. They won't be satisfied until they bring down a Democrat's pick for the Court, and they feel entirely justified in opposing Sotomayor because her Berkeley speech of 2001 proves her a "racist" in their eyes.
Mr. Right is one of this group. He thinks that the infamous sentence about the "wise Latina woman" alone is sufficient to disqualify Sotomayor from the Court, and he claims that those who don't consider her a racist are using the usual liberal double-standard approach. If a white man had ever said that his life experience would lead him to make a better decision than someone from any other background, he says, that man would never have been nominated. This is no doubt true, but it doesn't discredit the "life experiences" argument. If you accept its full implications, then there must be occasions when the white man's particular experience may give him the right solution to a quandary that others won't understand fully. What Sotomayor didn't say is what Mr. Right infers from her speech; that the WLW will always reach better decisions than the theoretical white male. I still think the Judiciary Committee should press Sotomayor to clarify her views, but I'm pretty sure they won't end up resembling Mr. Right's caricature.
Realizing that many Republicans are reluctant to challenge Sotomayor because they fear alienating Hispanic voters, Mr. Right says they shouldn't worry. He suggests that Hispanics won't hold opposition to Sotomayor against the GOP. After all, he notes, they didn't punish Democrats at the polls when they opposed the previous President's nomination of Hispanic conservative Miguel Estrada to the D.C. Court of Appeals and the nomination of Alberto Gonzalez for Attorney General. Nor did blacks punish Democrats for opposing the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown, a black conservative, to the same D.C. court.
I'm not sure if he means this as a serious argument. For one thing, there might have been more minority interest in these judges if the Republicans and the Rushites had done more to publicize their aspirations. I get little impression that they did this, since that would probably seem to many of them like some sort of affirmative action program. Don't get me wrong. I think they're happy to see conservatives appear in minority groups, but their aversion to multiculturalism constrains them from making as big a deal about these people as they could. They would rather blame the "liberal media" for ignoring the existence of minority conservatives. But this whole line of argument depends on the assumption that minority groups would have an ethnic-pride stake in any judge who rises from their ranks. That assumption falters against the more likely fact that underprivileged minority groups are still likely to see people who come from their midst espousing Reagan-style conservatism as "sell-outs" of some sort. I don't get any sense of unconditional love for Justice Thomas from the black community, after all. But if Hispanics see Sotomayor as having their interests at heart, rather than some ideology, then they could well resent Republicans for opposing her for having exactly those interests. If it comes to that, I suspect Mr. Right will shrug it off as another case of "selective outrage" based on partisanship, but I don't know whether other Republicans could shrug it off so easily. That's one reason why I'm hoping for a confirmation fight, the other major reason being my desire to see Sotomayor defend her principles under some serious scrutiny.
This sort of talk simply won't do for the die-hard Rushites who still want revenge for the Senate's rejection of Robert Bork more than twenty years ago. They won't be satisfied until they bring down a Democrat's pick for the Court, and they feel entirely justified in opposing Sotomayor because her Berkeley speech of 2001 proves her a "racist" in their eyes.
Mr. Right is one of this group. He thinks that the infamous sentence about the "wise Latina woman" alone is sufficient to disqualify Sotomayor from the Court, and he claims that those who don't consider her a racist are using the usual liberal double-standard approach. If a white man had ever said that his life experience would lead him to make a better decision than someone from any other background, he says, that man would never have been nominated. This is no doubt true, but it doesn't discredit the "life experiences" argument. If you accept its full implications, then there must be occasions when the white man's particular experience may give him the right solution to a quandary that others won't understand fully. What Sotomayor didn't say is what Mr. Right infers from her speech; that the WLW will always reach better decisions than the theoretical white male. I still think the Judiciary Committee should press Sotomayor to clarify her views, but I'm pretty sure they won't end up resembling Mr. Right's caricature.
Realizing that many Republicans are reluctant to challenge Sotomayor because they fear alienating Hispanic voters, Mr. Right says they shouldn't worry. He suggests that Hispanics won't hold opposition to Sotomayor against the GOP. After all, he notes, they didn't punish Democrats at the polls when they opposed the previous President's nomination of Hispanic conservative Miguel Estrada to the D.C. Court of Appeals and the nomination of Alberto Gonzalez for Attorney General. Nor did blacks punish Democrats for opposing the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown, a black conservative, to the same D.C. court.
I'm not sure if he means this as a serious argument. For one thing, there might have been more minority interest in these judges if the Republicans and the Rushites had done more to publicize their aspirations. I get little impression that they did this, since that would probably seem to many of them like some sort of affirmative action program. Don't get me wrong. I think they're happy to see conservatives appear in minority groups, but their aversion to multiculturalism constrains them from making as big a deal about these people as they could. They would rather blame the "liberal media" for ignoring the existence of minority conservatives. But this whole line of argument depends on the assumption that minority groups would have an ethnic-pride stake in any judge who rises from their ranks. That assumption falters against the more likely fact that underprivileged minority groups are still likely to see people who come from their midst espousing Reagan-style conservatism as "sell-outs" of some sort. I don't get any sense of unconditional love for Justice Thomas from the black community, after all. But if Hispanics see Sotomayor as having their interests at heart, rather than some ideology, then they could well resent Republicans for opposing her for having exactly those interests. If it comes to that, I suspect Mr. Right will shrug it off as another case of "selective outrage" based on partisanship, but I don't know whether other Republicans could shrug it off so easily. That's one reason why I'm hoping for a confirmation fight, the other major reason being my desire to see Sotomayor defend her principles under some serious scrutiny.
01 June 2009
Are Rights Human?
Lawrence Rosen wraps up Varieties of Muslim Experience: Encounters with Arab Political and Cultural Life with a discussion of the prospects for the acceptance by Arab cultures of the notion of "universal human rights." He expresses some skepticism toward the universality of any culture's conception of human rights, though he isn't as cynically dismissive toward the idea as some postmodern writers. He also notes that the idea of human rights isn't even "universal," even in the West.
Rosen also notes the obvious critique from non-Western cultures that the prevailing notion of "universal human rights" only reflects the particular values of "Western civilization." He acknowledges a number of evolutionary processes, however, through which cultures may influence one another, preferring the diffusion of ideas through trade relations to the imposition of values by imperial power. Overall, he seems to think it unlikely that a truly universal standard can be established. He prefers setting looser standards that allow different cultures to recognize a rough equivalence of rights that reflects each culture's distinctive values. This will still be a difficult process, he concludes, and unsatisfactory for anyone who thinks that everyone on earth should have the same package of rights..
I can imagine many Americans rejecting Rosen's book as an apologia for cultural relativism. But I can also understand why many Westerners bristle at the notion that universal human rights is just one of "their" beliefs rather than a self-evident truth. Simply put, while outsiders see the idea as a mere expression of Western or American culture, true believers don't see it that way. That's not just because they may be wearing historical or ethnocentrist blinkers, but because their own understanding of history tells them that the Enlightenment, for instance, wasn't some simple indigenous European specimen. Their own narrative tells them that the vanguard of the Enlightenment (or the Renaissance) fought against indigenous traditions throughout Europe every step of the way. They see themselves of heirs of a genuine transnational culture (the "republic of letters," for instance) rooted in reason and philosophy rather than blood and soil. They expect to find counterparts everywhere, and tend to lionize such exemplars as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch freethinker who now consorts with the likes of the Heritage Institute, who in turn end up criticized elsewhere as collaborators with imperialism. Just as the Renaissance and Enlightenment crossed traditional European borders, many moderns consider themselves entitled to offer aid and comfort to like-minded people in more benighted nations, and are no more likely to respect governments' claims that internal affairs are none of their business than their precursors would have accepted some duke or bishop's right to block the spread of learning. On the other hand, no one in Europe waged war for Galileo's sake, so their was a limit back then, just as there must be now. Defining it today is no simple thing, but we still have to try.
Is it a violation of equal human rights when men have access to religious practices or properties that are denied to women, when male circumcision is not child abuse but female genital cutting is, when only the state religion can be the subject of blasphemy, or when any level of corporal punishment is denied custodial parents? What agreement can there be about universal human rights when a Native American tribe may deny membership to the children of women who marry outsiders while granting it to descendants of men who marry abroad? What consensus is possible when one-third of American states regard first-cousin marriage as incest while two-thirds do not, or when private colleges rationalize gender exclusivity as not inimical to fostering equality? (p.171)
Rosen also notes the obvious critique from non-Western cultures that the prevailing notion of "universal human rights" only reflects the particular values of "Western civilization." He acknowledges a number of evolutionary processes, however, through which cultures may influence one another, preferring the diffusion of ideas through trade relations to the imposition of values by imperial power. Overall, he seems to think it unlikely that a truly universal standard can be established. He prefers setting looser standards that allow different cultures to recognize a rough equivalence of rights that reflects each culture's distinctive values. This will still be a difficult process, he concludes, and unsatisfactory for anyone who thinks that everyone on earth should have the same package of rights..
I can imagine many Americans rejecting Rosen's book as an apologia for cultural relativism. But I can also understand why many Westerners bristle at the notion that universal human rights is just one of "their" beliefs rather than a self-evident truth. Simply put, while outsiders see the idea as a mere expression of Western or American culture, true believers don't see it that way. That's not just because they may be wearing historical or ethnocentrist blinkers, but because their own understanding of history tells them that the Enlightenment, for instance, wasn't some simple indigenous European specimen. Their own narrative tells them that the vanguard of the Enlightenment (or the Renaissance) fought against indigenous traditions throughout Europe every step of the way. They see themselves of heirs of a genuine transnational culture (the "republic of letters," for instance) rooted in reason and philosophy rather than blood and soil. They expect to find counterparts everywhere, and tend to lionize such exemplars as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch freethinker who now consorts with the likes of the Heritage Institute, who in turn end up criticized elsewhere as collaborators with imperialism. Just as the Renaissance and Enlightenment crossed traditional European borders, many moderns consider themselves entitled to offer aid and comfort to like-minded people in more benighted nations, and are no more likely to respect governments' claims that internal affairs are none of their business than their precursors would have accepted some duke or bishop's right to block the spread of learning. On the other hand, no one in Europe waged war for Galileo's sake, so their was a limit back then, just as there must be now. Defining it today is no simple thing, but we still have to try.
Terror in Zahedan
Iran appears to be under siege by terrorists. In the past week there's been a mosque bombing, a bank arson and more in the town of Zahedan, part of a Sunni area near the country's border with Afghanistan. Authorities are inclined to blame al-Qaeda or some related group, though I suppose there are Iranian bloggers and others who'll jump to the conclusion that these have all been "false flag" attacks orchestrated by President Ahmadinejad to create an environment of fear as Election Day approaches. Since Americans consider their enemies to be automatically so evil as to be capable of anything, it wouldn't surprise me if some people over here jump to the same conclusion. It is a fact, however, that the default relationship between Shiite Iran and the hardcore Sunnis of al-Qaeda is enmity, and there might be a group out there that thinks these attacks will undermine Ahmadinejad on security issues and cost him an election which, as far as I know, he's favored to win. There may also be a currently unacknowledged Iranian role in the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan that could provoke militant Sunnis into making revenge attacks. In any event, this terror campaign bears watching, if only as a demonstration to Americans that there simply isn't some monolithic front of "Islamist" forces united against us. Just as Communist countries like China and Vietnam warred on each other decades ago, so countries supposedly linked by obsession with the sharia can oppose each other -- a fact which a wise outside power might discreetly exploit.
31 May 2009
American Terrorism?
It's important to reserve judgment until we know more about the suspect reportedly in custody, but it's not unreasonable to presume that the killing in a church lobby of a Kansas doctor who performed abortions was a politically-related crime, done with the intent to prevent him from performing further abortions and possibly to deter others from continuing to perform them. If so, that is terrorism. It's not a matter of body count or method, or even about religion. It's all about motive, and unless it emerges that the suspect had a purely personal grudge, it is fit and proper to call him a terrorist. That might make things less clear to some people on other fronts, but maybe it'll clarify matters for others.
29 May 2009
Speaking of Sotomayor
The White House is doing an almost desperate job of putting words in the mouth of Justice-designate Sotomayor today. The President's spokesman told the press that the judge admitted to making a poor word choice in her 2001 speech, excerpts from which I posted yesterday. The spokesman had only second-hand knowledge of her reflections, however, since he had only spoken to friends who claimed to have heard her latest views on the subject. I doubt such an apology, if authentic, will placate critics of her or her speech, since the controversial sentence about the "wise Latina woman" is not exactly at odds with the rest of the text.
The President himself conveyed the judge's reputed regrets while appearing to endorse her position that life experience enhances constitutional jurisprudence. That's even more unlikely to appease those people who take such talk as heresy against the justice-is-blind principle. But if this is going to be controversial we ought to discuss it as a question of fact as well as principle. Idealists can debate whether life experience should inform jurisprudence, but whether it has or not is less debatable. Let's ask why Dred Scott v. Sandford or Plessy v. Ferguson were decided wrong. Was it only because the justices of the age were imbeciles? Or did it have at least something to do with who they were (or who they weren't) and how that influenced their perceptions on subjects of citizenship and equality? Admitting the possibility is little comfort to those who take Sotomayor's view, however, since these cases demonstrate that life experience is a two way street. It can lead one to decide questions of justice wrongly sometimes. That has to be true for everybody. If particular experience gives the wise Latina superior understanding of certain issues, it may cloud her understanding of others, perhaps inevitably. A clever Senator might concede the argument of the judge's speech, yet ask her if she can envision a case in which the white man has superior insight by virtue of life experience. Should she say no, then we should worry about her.
The President himself conveyed the judge's reputed regrets while appearing to endorse her position that life experience enhances constitutional jurisprudence. That's even more unlikely to appease those people who take such talk as heresy against the justice-is-blind principle. But if this is going to be controversial we ought to discuss it as a question of fact as well as principle. Idealists can debate whether life experience should inform jurisprudence, but whether it has or not is less debatable. Let's ask why Dred Scott v. Sandford or Plessy v. Ferguson were decided wrong. Was it only because the justices of the age were imbeciles? Or did it have at least something to do with who they were (or who they weren't) and how that influenced their perceptions on subjects of citizenship and equality? Admitting the possibility is little comfort to those who take Sotomayor's view, however, since these cases demonstrate that life experience is a two way street. It can lead one to decide questions of justice wrongly sometimes. That has to be true for everybody. If particular experience gives the wise Latina superior understanding of certain issues, it may cloud her understanding of others, perhaps inevitably. A clever Senator might concede the argument of the judge's speech, yet ask her if she can envision a case in which the white man has superior insight by virtue of life experience. Should she say no, then we should worry about her.
28 May 2009
A "Wise Latina Woman"
The charge that Justice-designate Sotomayor is a racist or bigot of some sort, as aired by such accusers as Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, has been based largely on a speech she made to a Hispanic law students' group at the University of California at Berkeley in 2001. The New York Times has put the entire text online for us to examine. I want to highlight some of the significant parts.
But for those who infer from the speech that Sotomayor has prejudged certain cases as a matter of identity politics, here's one more quote as a caution.
I might add that the deliberative process of jurisprudence goes both ways, and that Sotomayor should be as open to the perspective of others with different experiences as she would hope they will be to her perspective. I hope she'll clarify her beliefs on these points at the hearings, but that would require Senators smart enough to ask the right questions without deferring to her as a matter of party discipline. Let's see who steps up to the plate.
Judge [Miriam] Cedarbaum expresses concern with any analysis of women and presumably again people of color on the bench, which begins and presumably ends with the conclusion that women or minorities are different from men generally. She sees danger in presuming that judging should be gender or anything else based. She rightly points out that the perception of the differences between men and women is what led to many paternalistic laws and to the denial to women of the right to vote because we were described then "as not capable of reasoning or thinking logically" but instead of "acting intuitively."The last sentence is the one most commonly quoted, though some people have ended the quote with the words "white male" without finishing the sentence. Frankly, I worry more about the sentence that comes before. If "there can never be a universal definition of wise," I'm not sure if constitutional government based upon a rule of law is possible. Would it mean that no common understanding of what the Constitution means is possible? If so, then how is anyone to know which is the "better conclusion" between that of the "wise Latina woman" and the allegedly inexperienced white male? Merely saying it depends on the case and the context doesn't suffice. This would be an interesting line of inquiry at the judge's confirmation hearing.
While recognizing the potential effect of individual experiences on perception, Judge Cedarbaum nevertheless believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law. Although I agree with and attempt to work toward Judge Cedarbaum's aspiration, I wonder whether achieving
that goal is possible in all or even in most cases. And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society. Whatever the reasons why we may have different perspectives, either as some theorists suggest because of our cultural experiences or as others postulate because we have basic differences in logic and reasoning, are
in many respects a small part of a larger practical question we as women and minority judges in society in general must address....
[B]ecause I accept the proposition that, as Judge [Judith] Resnik describes it, "to judge is an exercise of power" and because as, another former law school classmate, Professor Martha Minnow of Harvard Law School, states "there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives - no neutrality, no escape from choice in judging," I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that--it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others. Not all women or people of color, in all or some circumstances or indeed in any particular case or circumstance but enough people of color in enough cases, will make a difference in the process of judging....
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life....
But for those who infer from the speech that Sotomayor has prejudged certain cases as a matter of identity politics, here's one more quote as a caution.
I, like Professor [Stephen L.] Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many
issues including Brown[ v.Board of Education].However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the
bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.
I might add that the deliberative process of jurisprudence goes both ways, and that Sotomayor should be as open to the perspective of others with different experiences as she would hope they will be to her perspective. I hope she'll clarify her beliefs on these points at the hearings, but that would require Senators smart enough to ask the right questions without deferring to her as a matter of party discipline. Let's see who steps up to the plate.
Globalization of Poor Sportsmanship
If I understand the news reports correctly, a Nigerian man whose favorite team is Manchester United from Great Britain got enraged when he saw fellow Nigerians in his town celebrating yesterday's victory over his team by their favorite team, Barcelona, in the European Champions League final, and drove his vehicle into the crowd, killing at least four people. I want to ask, "what's wrong with this picture?" but there are so many answers I could offer that I don't know where to begin. I'll trust you to figure it out for yourselves.
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