Thursday, July 15, 2010

Gabriel Schoenfield, the Pentagon Papers and democratic self-governance

Gabriel Schoenfield, writing in the summer issue of National Affairs, revisits the Pentagon Papers incident and makes an extraordinary claim: Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers leaker, undermined democracy by showing the American public how their government worked.

No really:
Whatever one thinks of Ellsberg's motives — and however one might appraise the harm his actions inflicted on American foreign policy — the fact is that, at its root, Ellsberg's leak was not just an assault on orderly government. In a polity with an elected president and elected representatives, it was an assault on democratic self-governance itself.

For better or worse, the American people in the Vietnam years had elected Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon; they had acted at the ballot box to make their leadership and policy preferences clear. Yet here was a mid-level bureaucrat, elected by no one and representing no one, entrusted with secrets he had pledged to the American people to protect, abusing that trust to force his own policy preferences upon a government chosen by the people.
Here's the problem. Earlier in the piece, Schoenfield admits that the "government chosen by the people" was elected by lying to the people.
Given its size and complexity, the (Pentagon Papers) collection defies easy summary. But it did show, among other things, that officials throughout the 1960s presented the public a much rosier picture of events in Vietnam than was justified by the intelligence policymakers were receiving. The papers demonstrated, for instance, that President Johnson had every intention of beginning a bombing campaign against North Vietnam before the 1964 election, even though he strenuously denied it during the election season. They showed that American intelligence officials told the Johnson administration in advance of its 1965 escalation of the war effort that the move was not likely to succeed. And they documented how the internal justification for the war shifted over time from the containment of communism to the protection of America's own prestige abroad.
A couple of thoughts:

* Seems to me our Constitution recognizes, through creation of the judicial branch, that democratic self-governance cannot rely entirely upon elected officials to safeguard democratic self-governance. Elected officials are to be given substantial deference, of course, but that deference isn't unlimited.

* If democratic self-governance is to mean anything at all, though, it must be informed governance. The people must have a reasonable idea of what it is that elected officials are doing on their behalf. I won't argue that there's no need at all for state secrets -- but there's probably substantially less a need than what's usually invoked. Democratic self-governance does not mean, however, that people elect officials to go do the job and then close their eyes and hope for the best. As the Pentagon Papers case proves, sometimes the White House will classify information precisely in order to avoid being held accountable by voters.

It's silly to argue that Ellsburg was "forcing" a policy outcome through his leaks: As Schoenfield notes, Ellsburg wasn't an elected official -- he had no power at all to change American policy. But Ellsberg did give Americans insight into how the policy had been made, and how what they'd been told by their leaders differed from the reality of the war in Vietnam. Daniel Ellsberg, then, enabled real democratic self-governance -- he didn't short-circuit it.

The logic of our Constitution is that we can't always depend on elected officials to make correct decisions. It's up to citizens to hold them accountable. Schoenfield claims to be upholding democratic self-government, but it's hard to see how his critique does anything but enable Nixonian lawbreakers to govern in ways the people who elected them never intended.

On the value of low-skill, low-wage labor

Believe it or not, there's a lot to recommend about John Derbyshire's column today at National Review. It's ostensibly about how Obama Administration policies are drying up the number of unpaid summer internships for teenagers, but it drifts into a meditation on how -- even in these recession days -- American elites don't seem to value manual labor the way they once did. The whole thing should be read, even if you don't agree with everything. But some of Derbyshire's anecdotes rang true for me.
I have noticed that if, among 30-something colleagues, I mention one of my own school or college summer jobs — factory or construction work, dishwashing, retail sales, bartending — my colleagues will look amused, and a bit baffled. How come a guy as well-educated as Derb was shoveling concrete? Boy, he’s a real eccentric! No, I’m not. Those experiences were perfectly normal for a person of my generation. They’re just not normal any more, not for children of the American middle and upper classes.

Well, I don’t suppose anybody ever did drudge work if better options were available. Until recently, though, a great many people reconciled themselves to it: as a means to support a family, as a pathway to as much independence as their abilities would permit, and even as something in which satisfactions might be found. Remember Luke in The Thorn Birds boasting of his prowess as a sheep-shearer and sugarcane-cutter?

Nor was physical labor always thought shameful. In the older American ideal, which is now as dead as the one-room schoolhouse, physical labor was held to have a dignity to it. Even elites believed their youngsters would benefit from a taste of it. Calvin Coolidge put his 15-year-old son to work in the tobacco fields of Hatfield, Mass., as a vacation job. (When the lad happened to mention who he was, one of his co-workers said: “Gee, if the president was my father, I wouldn’t be working here.” Cal Jr.: “You would, if your father were my father.” For a comparison with the “conservative” sensibility of our own time, recall Karl Rove’s remark: “I don’t want my 17-year-old son to have to pick tomatoes.” Good heavens, Karl, of course you don’t: The poor lad might break a fingernail.)
Now Derbyshire, because he's Derbyshire, uses all this to build a case against letting immigrants into the United States to do low-wage low-skill work. I'm not entirely on board with that, but I don't think that lessens the power of these observations.

A few years ago, I became convinced that one of the problems with journalism -- and I know, there are many -- is that there are few practitioners left who have ever done anything besides journalism. The went to J-school, got an internship, got a job at a newspaper and never ever worked or had much life experience that didn't involve the business. And that opinion was confirmed in the person of Mike Shields -- probably the best of a string of great editors I've worked for. He was -- is -- a hell of a journalist, but before he got into the business he'd worked in the Navy, construction and truck-driving. (Probably more, but I'm working from memory.) He had some college under his belt, but I think he got his actual degree somewhat later in life. I don't think it's a coincidence that he had a gift for shmoozing lots of "regular folks" on his beats: farmer-legislators from western Kansas, cops hanging out at the bar, that kind of thing. He could relate to working stiffs better than the average reporter because, unlike most of them, he had been a working stiff.

That said: There's a danger in romanticizing the "dignity" of low-skill, low-wage labor too much. As noted before: I'm between full-time gigs right now. I've taken on a part-time job at a nearby coffee shop here in Philadelphia. Before I started it, I think it's fair to say I'd romanticized the idea in my head: I'll work as a barista, and have plenty of headspace left over to pursue other income and creative endeavours. But it's not like that. It's harder work than I'd realized, for one thing. And I come home from most shifts with with sore feet and an aching back. There are benefits: We're not as poor as we might be. And I've gotten to know my neighborhood much better in the last two months than I did in the nearly two years previous. What's more: It doesn't seem very "low skill" to me -- there's a million small things to know and do to keep the shop running smoothly. But: It's hard work. For pay that won't, on its own, sustain my family. I do it now because it's the right thing to do, but there's not much that's ennobling about it. That's ok. The value of work isn't and can't always about self-fulfillment. It's about survival, first.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Matt Labash, Justin Krebs and "living liberally"

Because he's Matt Labash, the new Weekly Standard cover story in which he attempts "living liberally" -- as defined by Justin Krebs' new book, "538 Ways to Live Work and Play Like a Liberal" -- is at least moderately entertaining until it stretches into tedium. In a bit of stunt journalism, Labash attempts to "live liberally" for 10 days, exploring the ways that Krebs' book contains contradictions and/or reaches into the furthest corners of your life.

Get it? It's comically tiresome to live every single aspect of your life through the prism of politics.

Which, no kidding. If you haven't given up somewhere by page 12 or so, though, it seems to me the real story comes when Labash puts down the book and goes to a "Drinking Liberally" meetup to hang out with some real liberals.
The group arrives one by one—about a dozen in all. I haven’t told them in advance I was coming, so when I break the news that I’m a reporter for a conservative magazine and pull my tape recorder out, I expect them to tell me to get bent. But they generously welcome me. One of the group leaders, Michelle Elliot, a software engineer, even tells me that her life-partner works for Firedoglake. But if she thinks I’m a douche-nozzle, she keeps it to herself, as we tuck in for a completely agreeable evening of interrogation and polite sparring.

I chide them a bit for convening at a corporatist chain restaurant, even if Ruby Tuesdays does have an impressive salad bar, with all manner of fresh ingredients and a stunning array of croutons. They give me the business for drinking too liberally after I order a third Maker’s (child’s play, I assure them, I’m a professional journalist after all), suggesting I might be the first member of their group that they have to drive home.

Because of my machine-gun questioning, we cover the waterfront, everything from their thoughts on BP to whether to avoid Wal-Mart to whether it’s okay to meet at chain restaurants to the evils of Ann Coulter and Meghan McCain’s political viability (one gay-activist type mentions her as being one of the only Republicans he likes, though hearing the words “Meghan’s platform” nearly makes me do a spit-take).

It’s a pleasant conversation. I lapse back into my conservative nature as a result of a liberal intake of my liberal whiskey, but there are no hostilities. Nobody changes anybody’s mind. It’s not life or death. It bears little resemblance to television screech-matches, which as one of my drinking mates, Aaron Oesterle, says, “is not about discussion, it’s about finding everybody who agrees with me, and shouting the loudest.” We encounter each other as individuals, leaving room for complexities and ambiguities, instead of assuming a mere set of prefab conclusions. Oesterle, who works at a space-related consultancy, says, “It’s easy to assume large-scale. But when you engage one-on-one, it’s more difficult to make assumptions on a smaller scale.”

Another of my drinking companions, Claiborn Booker, recasts F. Scott Fitzgerald’s notion that the rich are different than you and me. “So are the very political,” he says. “They have a different sort of calculus that goes on in their minds, and as a result, we see some of that manifesting itself in the polarization of political debate.”

The group tells me that they often don’t discuss politics very much at their political gatherings. “Most of us live in the middle muddle,” Booker says. “We have certain tendencies in some directions. But we’re by and large caring people, have a kindly disposition toward our fellow sufferers, so we want socially to have kindness or gentleness be a part of our character. But at the same time, we want to make sure that we get to keep what we earn and we want to have a strong defense. So finding that right balance is a perennial problem.”

After making a night of it, I like these people.
Once Labash puts away the books, in other words, he finds that the liberals he sets out to mock aren't too different from, well, everybody else: Trying to live a life informed by values and running up against the contradictions, ambiguities, nuance and even obstacles that real life imposes upon us all. That means, of course, that there are as many ways to "live liberally" as there are, well, actual liberals. Putting that at the front of an interminably long story -- instead of at the end -- wouldn't be quite as sexy or as stereotype-confirming to the Weekly Standard's readership.

More on marriage: Josh Rosenau

Science blogger -- and fellow former Lawrencian -- Josh Rosenau takes note of my marriage post, and adds his own two cents:

Let's talk about my grandmother. Her husband died in his fifties, before I was born. Quite some time later, well after menopause, she remarried, and the man she married was the only grandfather on that side of the family that I ever knew. Both had adult children from previous marriages, and some of their grandchildren attended the wedding. They knew they wouldn't have children of their own, but that didn't change their desire to marry. Again, if conservatives cannot understand why senior citizens choose to marry and stay married past menopause… well, I'm still glad I'm not marrying a conservative.

When people make this argument that marriage is about procreation, it insults the memory of my grandmother and grandfather, people who could not have legally married if this standard were applied consistently. It insults people who are infertile for any reason, including voluntary sterilization, congenital conditions, or side effects of other medical treatments. And it insults anyone who takes marriage seriously – as an institution focused on bringing together loving couples and recognizing the special ties that they've formed.

Victor Davis Hanson: Conservatives are destroying capitalism

National Review's Victor Davis Hanson reports his frustration with a business-owning friend who won't buy equipment or expand his business. It deserves quoting at length:

I asked a businessman two weeks ago why he said that he was neither hiring nor buying new equipment. He started in on “rising taxes.”

“But wait,” I interrupted. I pointed out that income-tax hikes haven’t taken effect. The old FICA income caps are also still applicable. Health-care surcharges haven’t hit us yet.

He countered with “regulations” and “bailouts.” I said, “Come on, get specific.” He offered up “cap and trade” and “the Chrysler creditors.” I parried with more demands that he tell me exactly how the federal government has suddenly curbed his profit margins, or how his electric bill had gone up since January 2009, or whether he had lost money on any investment because the government had violated a contract.

Exasperated, he talked now instead of more cosmic issues — the astronomical borrowing, the staggering national debt, and the new protectionism. I pressed again, “But aren’t interest rates historically low? Inflation is almost non-existent, isn’t it? New products are still comparatively cheap? Rents and new business property are at bargain-basement prices?”

This give-and-take went on for ten minutes; but you get the picture. Private enterprise is wary, hesitant, even frightened, but nevertheless hard pressed to demonstrate in concrete fashion how Obama has quite ruined them in just 18 months.

So why are a lot of cash-solvent financial firms, banks, and manufacturing companies not hiring, not expanding, and not buying new operating equipment as they did in past bottoming-out recessions?

In a word, fear. Remember that capitalism is in large part psychologically driven. Confidence, optimism, and a sense of calm about the future foster risk and investment, while worry, pessimism, and a sense of foreboding ensure timidity and stasis.

Barack Obama — who is mostly a creature of the university and the dependable government payroll — does not seem to grasp that fact.

Hanson goes on to say that Obama has created a climate of fear through the hiring of appointees -- like Van Jones -- with radical pasts, or through insufficient worship of free markets. But if there really is a climate of fear in the business community, who really has created it?

Conservatives, that's who.

They've devoted considerable time and resources to proclaiming the Obama Administration an era of "socialism" and "tyranny" -- even though, as Hanson admits, the actual rules and taxes on business right now should be encouraging growth and expansion. The country has been force-fed a diet of Glenn Beck and Tea Parties over the last 18 months, all of them making the case against Democratic policies in the most dire terms possible. Is it any wonder that some people actually take it seriously?

I don't think Victor Davis Hanson or other conservatives should refrain from criticizing Obama in order to revive the economy. But I do think a constant stream of hyperbole can have consequences. Hanson's column, though, shows how Republicans all-too-easily win: They get to create a climate of fear -- and blame it on the victim. It's cynical stuff, and in this case -- if Hanson is to be believed -- it has demonstrable harm.

Marriage is about kids. And nothing else.

National Review blasts last week's federal court ruling knocking down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The editors offer up -- once again -- a familiar argument for traditional marriage that, while much-debated the last few years, always is very bracing to me.

The actual motive for having governments recognize the union of a man and a woman (and only such a union) as a marriage is to encourage, in a gentle and non-coercive way, the formation and maintenance of a stable environment in which children can naturally come to be. If heterosexual coupling did not regularly produce children there would be no reason for the institution of marriage to exist, let alone for governments to recognize it.

What a depressingly -- implausibly -- narrow view of marriage.

No doubt, children are a common byproduct of heterosexual marriage. That's certainly been the case in my marriage, and I'm glad of it. But the pairing instinct -- one that predated any government recognition of the "institution" of marriage -- far exceeds simple propigation of the species. People, as a general rule, want company. They want sex, they want economic partnerships, they want somebody to hang out with.

To reduce marriage to merely a mechanism of natural child-creation -- as National Review and other conservatives regularly do, because it's pretty much the one thing that heterosexual marriage offers that same-sex partnerships can't -- is, when you think about it, a surprisingly Darwinian argument coming from a movement that is largely theology-minded. It aggressively ignores that humans are social, spiritual creatures and that they express those characteristics, often but not exclusively, through marriage. The conservative case against same-sex marriage reduces the "institution" to simple biology. It's a point of view that reduces humanity to the level of beasts, with a bureaucracy.

Friday, July 9, 2010

The Yankees are about to acquire CLIFF LEE!?!?!


Cliff Lee Who Cares Catch - Watch today’s top amazing videos here

One of the best things about the Phillies' run to the World Series last year was the performance of pitcher Cliff Lee. And he cemented his place in my heart with a pair of catches -- one amazing, one amusing (see above)-- in a sterling Game One performance against the Yankees.

And I was very disappointed when the Phillies traded Lee away. I understood, but I was disappointed.

Now there's news that the Yankees themselves are about to acquire Cliff Lee from the Seattle Mariners. I already hate the Yankees. And the Phillies don't look like they're making another postseason run this year. But still: BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

UPDATE: He went to the Rangers. I can live with that.

Why is Andrew Klavan proud of his sexism?

This Andrew Klavan blog post, I think, expresses a certain kind of conservative mindset about as succinctly as possible. To sum it up: the dangerous sexism of the Muslim world makes the sexism of American-Christian conservatives charming, benign and even desirable.

Let's break it down.
I am a sexist. I believe men and women are inherently different and that it’s therefore appropriate to treat them differently. I continue to open doors for women, curb my occasionally profane tongue around them and stand when they leave the table. Feminists have occasionally berated me for this, believing such manners display a patriarchal and protective attitude toward them.
I'm not going to begrudge Klavan's door-opening for women. But.

Even if one accepted, broadly, that "men" and "women" were different, that in no way accounts for all the millions of individuals who might not fit those norms and who deserve to be treated on the basis of their own individual qualities instead of consigned to a broader group. Sexism is just lazy. In Klavan's hands, we can see pretty quickly, it's lazy and smug.

And in any case, it's a pretty short trip from "men and women are inherently different" to "men and women are unequal, and thus men deserve to have the power." Which leads us to...
They’re right: a protective patriarch is exactly the kind of patriarch I am.
Um, that's swell? Let's move on -- this sentence will be important in later context.
Compare our Muslim friends. In his book What Went Wrong, Bernard Lewis reports that a Turkish visitor to Vienna in 1665 was flabbergasted by the “extraordinary spectacle” of the emperor tipping his hat to a lady. He speculated this bizarre behavior might derive from Christian respect for the Virgin Mary. Maybe so. It's certainly true that the local rules of politeness bear within them the deepest attitudes of the culture. Which is something to consider in light of the imminent stoning of Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani in Iran, an Islamic horror story which inspires in me the very impolite desire to slug somebody, preferably with a clawhammer.
I'm glad that Klavan -- along with many of his fellow conservatives -- is so angry about the the imminent stoning in Iran. Let's get to the final statement, though.
I can’t help thinking that when feminists attack gentlemanly manners (and the Christianity behind them) they are threatening the very wellspring of their most basic rights.
And there we have it: My sexism is ok, because I'm not going to kill you! Be grateful, women!

Maybe that's unfair. But let me rebut Klavan in a manner I think conservatives will understand: I'll use the Cold War as an analogy.

Everybody agrees that the Soviet Union was a horrible, awful place: No personal or economic freedom, millions of people died because of Joseph Stalin's cruelty and tyranny. But the Soviet Union was also powerful, if despised. After World War II, the United States helped create the system of "social democracy" in Western Europe -- a hybrid of capitalism with a very, very thick social safety net -- in order to keep Soviet-style socialism from being too tempting to the masses and preserving a rough balance of power between superpowers.

Now: Stalin-era Soviet Union was about exploiting the people. Social democracies were about, for lack of a better word, comforting them. These days, though, there's lots of folks who see the social democracy of Western Europe -- with its high taxes, heavy regulations and monthlong vacations for workers -- as a way station to tyranny. Sure the people of Western Europe are and were more free than citizens of the old Soviet Union. But that's not free enough for many of today's American conservatives.

So it is with sexism. The choice isn't really between an Iran-style tyranny that kills its women or a "protective patriarchy" that uses less overtly coercive methods to still keep women in their place. The alternative is to recognize women as full human beings, possessing the same rights as all of us -- not "granted" to them by dudes -- and worthy of respect as a result.

(Hat tip: Julie Ponzi)

Thursday, July 8, 2010

On torture and stoning: National Review's Andrew McCarthy is as dumb as a rock

Here's how Andy McCarthy begins a National Review column that, ostensibly, about lambasting Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan:
I wonder if Elena Kagan knows about Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani.

Ms. Ashtiani is about to be stoned. That’s where they bury you up to your chest and hurl rocks at you until you die. The rocks can’t be too big. You see, this is real torture, religion-of-peace torture. It’s the kind that happens every day but that Democrats prefer not to talk about.
First: The last sentence. Huffington Post is promoting a petition to save Ashtiani's life. Feminist blogs like Shakesville are raising a ruckus. There's lots more examples of this. Ten seconds perusing Google could tell you that Andy McCarthy is wrong.

And probably lying. But maybe he's as dumb as a rock

But let's focus on the "real torture" part of McCarthy's statement -- with its implication that American treatment of Gitmo prisoners was relatively benign. Because here's what Andy McCarthy says about the Ashtiani case just one paragraph later.

The stoning of this 43-year-old mother of two has been ordered by a court in her native Iran, where the only legal code is Allah’s law, sharia. It is the Islamic sentence for adultery, the crime to which Ashtiani confessed after serial beatings by her interrogators.

Well: Andy McCarthy's right to be angry about this. A "confession" elicited under physical duress is -- at the very least -- unfair, and probably even suspect and tainted. Who knows what pain Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani decided to avoid by confessing? Maybe she lied to make the beatings stop. He doesn't come right out and say it, but McCarthy's construction of that sentence certainly seems to indicate that he disapproves of how the confession was elicited. And rightly so.

Only problem: Subjecting suspects to physical duress in order to elicit information is precisely what America did to terror suspects at Gitmo! It wasn't just waterboarding: It was sleep deprivation and beatings!

Andy McCarthy, seeking to snort at liberals' anger over torture, ends up vindicating their vision! He's probably just a moral relativist -- if Iran does it, it's wrong; if we do it, it's noble -- but it's possible that he's also just as dumb as a rock.*

I try, I really do, not to be in the business of name-calling. Andy McCarthy is one of my exceptions.

Do unemployment benefits "spoil" Americans for real work?

That's the topic of this week's column with Ben Boychuk for Scripps Howard News Service -- inspired by Sharron Angle's comments in Nevada. My take:
Let's forget political philosophy for a moment and focus only on math: At the moment, there is exactly one open job in America for every five people trying to find work. Even if every available spot were filled, 80 percent of the unemployed -- millions of Americans -- would still be unemployed. That's not because they're spoiled or lazy or intentionally unproductive. They're just unlucky.

Today's critics of unemployment insurance suggest the system takes money from productive citizens and gives it to the unproductive.

Perhaps. But those "productive" citizens should understand that they're not just throwing money down a rat hole -- they're buying civilization.

Look back at the origins of unemployment insurance. The Great Depression hit America in 1929, and unemployment rates soared far beyond the current crisis. In 1932, a "Bonus Army" of 17,000 unemployed World War I veterans marched on Washington D.C. -- and were dispersed with deadly force. Capitalism and the American system stood at the brink.

The Social Security Act of 1935 -- which created our modern unemployment insurance system -- helped change that. Workers and their families suddenly had breathing room when work disappeared. They were able to pay their mortgages, buy food and keep participating in the economy. That made them less inclined to act desperately -- and the "trickle up" effect helped keep other merchants in business.

Capitalism survived and thrived.

Our 21st-century economy isn't quite as dire, but the lessons from that era are still true. And it's reprehensible that Republicans like Sharron Angle treat hard-luck Americans like they're parasites.

Full disclosure: I've been collecting unemployment benefits while seeking a full-time job. I've also found part-time work and freelance writing gigs to supplement that income. So I certainly don't feel spoiled or lazy. I have, however, learned the value of a strong safety net.
I wasn't thrilled to disclose my job status in the column -- the thing gets printed around the nation and even, on occasion, internationally -- but I felt duty-bound to share that I have a personal stake in this debate. I assure you, though, that my opinions would've been the same either way.

Victor Davis Hanson: Higher taxes are part of restoring American greatness

At National Review, Victor Davis Hanson warns against those who see America in decline. Things could easily  get better, quickly, he says, and offers up a list of reasons why. And one of those reasons is rather extraordinary:

We are soon to revert to the Clinton income-tax rates last used in 2000, when we ran budget surpluses. If likewise we were to cut the budget, or just hold federal spending to the rate of inflation, America would soon run surpluses as it did a decade ago. For all our problems, the United States is still the largest economy in the world, its 300 million residents producing more goods and services than the more than 1 billion in either China or India.
But... but... conservatives at National Review and elsewhere have been stomping their feet for the last 18 months about the restoration of Clinton-era marginal tax rates! Along with spending on TARP, the stimulus bill and health care bill, letting Bush-era tax cuts expire has been a central tenet of the Tea Party/conservative case that President Obama is spreading creeping socialism across this once-great land! The tax increases, in other words, are supposedly one reason for the sense of American decline.

Realistically, though, getting deficits and debts under control will take some combination of higher taxes and reined-in spending. Republicans generally offer only the second of that equation -- and then usually (but not only) rhetorically. (It can be argued Democrats have precisely the opposite problem.) Victor Hanson Davis -- in a rare non-Dowdian moment -- actually seems somewhat realistic today. Does he know what he just did? Do National Review's editors?

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

AP Stylebook, Feministing and the language of illegal immigration

I'm on record saying that the Arizona immigrant-profiling law is wrong, and I've used my forum with Scripps Howard to argue that America would be better off with a sensible immigration policy that allows vastly more guest workers and other entrants into the United States legally. I think my lefty bona fides are established on the topic.

But this Feministing blog post blasting AP Stylebook -- which guides the language standards in many, if not most, newsrooms through the country -- is just so much tedious sanctimony that I can barely stand it. Let's quote at length:



Screw you AP Style Book.
The AP Style Book is a resource for journalists on language, spelling, pronunciation and proper word usage. I'm not clear how the AP Style Book makes decisions, but it is widely regarded and highly used by journalists.
This explains why most of the mainstream media still uses the term "illegal immigrant." I find the term offensive and disrespectful, as do most immigration activists. People are not illegal, actions are. The advocate community uses the term "undocumented immigrant" which the Stylebook clearly disagrees with.
Thankfully, they don't advocate using the term "alien." But illegal needs to go.
But it's not the sensibilities of the "advocate community" that AP should worry about serving: It's the readers. And while Feministing makes the case that "undocumented immigrant" is somehow more accurate than "illegal immigrant," Feministing is ... wrong.

I get it: There's a desire to use language to create dignity for people by separating humanity's inherent characteristics from the conditions that afflict them and the actions they take. So there's no more "disabled person." It's now "person with disabilities." The emphasis is on personhood. And that's nice. Laudable. But it does clutter the language: Two words become three. (Similarly, I know from painful experience that there's any number of neutered-but-nice terms for "homeless people.") Pile up enough similar examples, and over time, the cluttering of language tends to obscure more than it reveals. 

Which is the case with Feministing's snit: "Undocumented" reduces the issues at play to nothing more than a paperwork problem. (And it's not necessarily more accurate as shorthand; surely many if not most of these folks have, say, birth certificates or driver's licenses or whatnot in their home countries. What kind of documentation are we talking about?) "Illegal" more immediately conveys the sum and substance of the controversy -- and references to illegal immigration are almost always a reference to the controversy -- many people (and their American employers) have chosen to break the laws of this country by crossing the borders to work here. I think those laws should change; I don't think playing games with the language is the way to do it.

As I suggested, any kind of shorthand -- whether it's "undocumented immigrant" or "illegal immigrant" -- is always going to be overly reductive and, in the end, at least somewhat imprecise. Some shorthand phrases, though, are more imprecise and convey less information than others. And those phrases should generally be avoided.

Innocence, justice, and Antonin Scalia: Why I'm rooting for Elena Kagan

Radley Balko notes that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is refusing to hear the habeas corpus petition of a man who has established his innocence in the sex crimes for which he was convicted. Why the rejection? Because the dude filed his petition after the deadline.

Balko:
By the panel’s reckoning, adherence to an arbitrary deadline created by legislators is a higher value than not continuing to imprison people we know to be innocent.
The circuit court's decision is horrifying -- but its logic isn't that surprising. Why? Because that's the exact same logic that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has used. Remember this?
This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is "actually" innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged "actual innocence" is constitutionally cognizable.
And this is why I'd rather see Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor or any other "empathetic" judge on the court than some Scalia wannabes who are faithful to a very narrow interpretation of the Constitution. Fidelity to the law is important; fidelity to justice, while perhaps more abstract, is also important. Antonin Scalia's jurisprudence is one that easily lets people be executed or rot in jail for crimes they didn't commit. And Republicans regularly name him the justice they love most. Horrifying.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Republicans would rather be Cobra Kai than turn up the thermostat



In perhaps the clearest-ever expression of the Republican id, Victorino Matus responds with disgust to a scene in the new "Karate Kid" movie that features Jackie Chan urging apartment tenants to only heat water for a shower when they're about to take a shower -- instead of having hot water constantly on demand. Chan's line: "Put in a (hot water) switch and save the planet.)

Matus' response:
It's enough to make you want to join the Cobra Kai, show no mercy, and put 'em in a body bag.
I've said before that one reason I knew that torture is bad is because during the 1980s, "Rambo" showed it being done by Communist Russians and Vietnamese. I know Matus is joking here -- kind of -- but it does seem as though Republicans are journeying to the dark side by embracing every villain and villainous deed from the most popular movies of the Reagan Decade. At this rate, the GOP will soon be defending its foreign policy ideas by invoking "diplomatic immunity."

Dear Citizens United: What does "Stop Iran Now" mean?

I bet you can't guess which 20th century historical analogy is used in this Citizens United ad urging President Obama to "Stop Iran Now."

Oh wait. I bet you can.



Put aside the self-parodying hilarity of the right's ability to see every single foreign policy challenge as 1938 revisited. Here's a question for Citizens United:

What the heck does "Stop Iran Now" mean?

I've got a guess. It probably doesn't -- judging from the D-Day footage used in the ad above -- involve sanctions and diplomacy. It probably involves bombs and destruction and, well, war.

But try as I might, I can't find any statement on the Citizens United site -- or on any of the StopIranNow.com feeds -- that suggests explicitly calls for a precise course of action. There's nothing at the StopIranNow.com site, as of this writing, except this video.

Why so coy?

Such vague apparent but plausibly denied warmongering leaves me believe one of two possibilities: The "Stop Iran Now" folks don't have the courage of their convictions, which is why they remain somewhat murky. Or the ad isn't really about Iran at all -- it's purely about trying to make the president look weak and, well, Neville Chamberlainish. It's aggressive passive aggression, but despite being promoted by outlets like The Weekly Standard -- or maybe because of that -- it shouldn't be taken seriously as anything ther than politics.

Monday, July 5, 2010

Hello, Paro: I for one, welcome our new robot caregiver overlords

The New York Times has a fascinating story today about how robots are increasingly being used for caregiver functions -- "Paro," a robot critter that looks like a baby seal, is used to provide comfort and friendship to the elderly in nursing homes -- and raises an interesting ethical dilemma:
Some social critics see the use of robots with such patients as a sign of the low status of the elderly, especially those with dementia. As the technology improves, argues Sherry Turkle, a psychologist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it will only grow more tempting to substitute Paro and its ilk for a family member, friend — or actual pet — in an ever-widening number of situations.

“Paro is the beginning,” she said. “It’s allowing us to say, ‘A robot makes sense in this situation.’ But does it really? And then what? What about a robot that reads to your kid? A robot you tell your troubles to? Who among us will eventually be deserving enough to deserve people?”
What's fascinating about Paro, to me, is that the rise of technology has increasingly made our world less organic -- most of us are, of course, sealed up in air-conditioned bubbles for the vast majority of our lives, cut off from the realm of, well, experience. But as Paro demonstrates, the aim of much technological research is to duplicate (using circuitry) that which already exists in the realm of flesh, blood and bone.

Turkle's question -- who will deserve people? -- raises another. Why not people? Why not pets? Why spend $1,000 on a fake baby seal when there's somebody's grandson who could come in for free?

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Deborah Solomon and George Schultz

Here, finally, is the problem with Deborah Solomon's Sunday interviews: I always learn more about what's going on in Deborah Solomon's head than I ever do about the person she's interviewing. In her continuing attempts to provoke, wheedle and generally make an interview subject uncomfortable, Solomon has done far more to reveal her inner workings than to show us anything new about the often-familiar people she interviews.

So it goes this week in her interview with former Secretary of State George P. Schultz. We learn that Ms. Solomon is still very, very angry about the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I don't blame her. But: She doesn't do much of a job in this interview in laying the groundwork for her apparent belief that Schultz -- motivated by his job with the Bechtel Group -- was a mover and shaker behind the scenes, prompting America to invade. Instead, her eight questions on the topic are a series of j'accuse! that culminates in the following exchange:

It’s been seven years since we invaded Iraq, and there is so much sorrow in the world. I don’t see things getting a lot better.

You ought to come out to California. We have problems out here; but the sun is shining, and it’s pleasant here on the Stanford campus.
Having paid attention to Solomon's work, I can tell you what she cares about: Art, feminism, money -- in the last month, only one interview didn't involve questions about cash -- and, generally, the liberal side of most political questions. What I can't tell you is a single memorable fact I've ever learned about the people she interviews. This is almost performance art -- it's the questioner who reveals everything! -- but it's kind of lousy journalism.

Friday, July 2, 2010

Ben and Joel Podcast: Lyle Denniston and the Supreme Court

Lyle Denniston has been covering the Supreme Court for a half-century -- first as a newspaperman in Baltimore and Boston, and now for the invaluable SCOTUSblog. He joins the podcast this week to give an overview of the Supreme Court's term, a look at the Elena Kagan confirmation hearings, and a preview of what hot topics the court will be wrestling with next.


Click here to play the podcast.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Scientific proof that Kathleen Parker's sexism is dumb

Via Andrew Sullivan, linguist Mark Lieberman gets into the Kathleen Parker "Obama is a woman" column that got me so irritated yesterday. Parker suggested that the number of "passive voice" sentence constructions during his big oil speech were proof that he lacked a certain "rhetorical testosterone."

Lieberman makes an observation similar to one I made:
The first thing to say is that there isn't the slightest evidence that passive-voice constructions are "feminine".
Right. But if Parker does want to play that game, well, there's some unsettling evidence:
Women don't use the passive voice more than men, and among male writers, number of passive-voice constructions doesn't appear to have any relationship at all to real or perceived manliness. The "passive is girly" prejudice seems to be purely due to the connotations of (other senses of) the term passive, misinterpreted by people who in any case mostly wouldn't recognize the grammatical passive voice if it bit them on the leg. ...

But I did just make a quick analysis of president George W. Bush's post-Katrina address to the nation. I count 142 sentences, 25 of which contained one or more passive-voice tensed verb constructions. That's 17.6%. Doing the same thing with Barack Obama's post-oil-spill address, I count 135 sentences, 15 of which contain one or more passive-voice tensed verb constructions. That's 11.1%.
I don't think Kathleen Parker will get another Pulitzer Prize for this column.

And in any case, it's worth noting that even if Barack Obama has a "feminine" communication style, that doesn't make him a bad leader. That was the point of Parker's column -- an insult both the the president's manhood and, well, to women.

Elena Kagan, John Roberts and the "balls and strikes" theory of the judiciary

Ben Boychuk and I discuss the role of the Supreme Court in this week's column for Scripps Howard. My take:
John Roberts' "balls and strikes" analogy is appealing, but it also has very little to do with how the Supreme Court works, or its role in American life.

The Supreme Court, after all, only takes the hard cases -- the ones where questions of Constitutional law are still unsettled. The easy questions -- the ones where the bright lines of the law make it relatively simple to determine the "right" results of cases -- are left to the lower courts.

But it's the Supreme Court's job to draw the bright lines. It must do so within the parameters of the Constitution, of course, but the job is still largely one of interpretation.

"The Constitution is a pantheon of values, and a lot of hard cases are hard because the Constitution gives no simple rule of decision for the cases in which one of the values is truly at odds with another," retired Justice David Souter said in a recent commencement speech.

"Judges have to choose between the good things that the Constitution approves, and when they do, they have to choose, not on the basis of measurement, but of meaning."

Elena Kagan this week said, "it ought to be Congress and the president that do the policy-making. And the courts ought to respect and ought to defer to that." That should comfort conservatives worried about "activist judging." The Supreme Court, however, has a difficult job.

Simple analogies don't make it any simpler.