Month: December 2004

“The liberal elite think their superior wisdom, and their control of education and the media, should convince us to become a bunch of pagans. They fantasize we will give up our guns, values, morals, and Constitution. They romanticize we will embrace socialized medicine, tolerate failing schools, and become mindless socialist whimps eager to be euthanized before becoming a burden on society.” – Donald R. May, Townhall.com.
— Andrew

About a month ago, William Stuntz wrote this piece about political common ground between red-state evangelicals and blue-state liberals: “Helping the poor is supposed to be the left’s central commitment, going back to the days of FDR and the New Deal. In practice, the commitment has all but disappeared from national politics… I can’t prove it, but I think there is a large, latent pro-redistribution evangelical vote, ready to get behind the first politician to tap into it.”

Today, Nicholas Kristof observes that the most indefatigable advocates of liberal humanitarianism are now found on the Christian right:

Members of the Christian right…are the new internationalists, increasingly engaged in humanitarian causes abroad — thus creating opportunities for common ground between left and right on issues we all care about… Liberals traditionally were the bleeding hearts, while conservatives regarded foreign aid, in the words of Jesse Helms, as “money down a rat hole.” That’s changing. “One cannot understand international relations today without comprehending the new faith-based movement,” Allen Hertzke writes in “Freeing God’s Children,” a book about evangelicals leaping into human rights causes.

Hertzke, in a recent interview, noted that evangelicals’ human-rights advocacy has led to tensions with “business conservatives” and “proponents of realpolitik.” It seems that a religious revival wouldn’t necessarily be a gift to the political right, if only the left were not so resolutely secularist.
— Steven

John Lewis Gaddis suggests that the Bush administration needs to shift from “flaunting U.S. power to explaining its purpose,” as presidents did during the Cold War. He sees common ground between America and the rest of the West:

The terrorists of September 11 exposed vulnerabilities in the defenses of all states. Unless these are repaired, and unless those who would exploit them are killed, captured, or dissuaded, the survival of the state system itself could be at stake. Here lies common ground, for unless that multinational interest is secured, few other national interests — convergent or divergent — can be. Securing the state will not be possible without the option of pre-emptive military action to prevent terrorism from taking root. It is a failure of both language and vision that the United States has yet to make its case for pre-emption in these terms.

But this is a distinctly American perspective on the lesson of 9/11. As Francis Fukuyama notes, America and Europe don’t perceive the same threats:

Americans tend to believe that September 11 represents only the beginning of a new age of nihilistic, mass-casualty terrorism, while Europeans tend to think of it as a single lucky shot, of a kind familiar to them through their experience with the IRA or the Baader-Meinhoff gang. In campaigning for the presidency, John Kerry said he looked forward to the day when terrorism would be a nuisance rather than a mortal threat. Many Europeans believe it is nothing more than a nuisance now – even though, given the large Muslim populations in countries like France and Holland, they are more threatened by Islamist radicalism than are Americans.

Says Fukuyama: “One cannot simply will into existence a set of common interests on a scale sufficient to replace the once-overwhelming Soviet threat.” Tod Lindberg, meanwhile, is more optimistic. To him, Europe and America represent two poles of opinion within a common Atlanticist community, one marked by agreement on fundamental principles. There’s no doubt that Europe and America agree on norms governing relations with each other (for all their tensions, who can imagine war breaking out between France and America?) and even share a vision of a better world, about which both Americans and Europeans speak of universal human rights, freedom, equality, and so on. “So the difference is not over ends but over how to arrive at them.” But if arriving at these ends involves determining which threats are most important, and whether preemption is necessary to address them, Europe and America might find themselves moving in different directions, even if inadvertently.
— Steven

Tony Judt thinks Israel is to blame for widespread anti-Semitism in Europe and elsewhere. “Its leaders purport to speak for Jews everywhere,” Judt writes. “They can hardly be surprised when their own behavior provokes a backlash against…Jews. Thus Israel itself has made a significant contribution to the resurgence of the anti-Semitism.” But in its ethnic-national identity, Israel is like other nation-states. Jacques Chirac, for example, speaks routinely “on behalf of the French people.” As one can see from this collection of statements by heads of state, that’s the norm. Jiang Zemin purports to represent not only the Chinese government, but also the Chinese people. As Time has reported, Vicente Fox “has said that he intends to be President to ‘all Mexicans’ – at home and abroad.”

But does anyone think that attacks on ethnic Chinese or Mexicans living in America or Europe would be a sensible response to political controversies in their home countries? Of course not. Tibetans living abroad may have their grievances against China, but it hasn’t led to violence against their Chinese neighbors — no matter who Chinese leaders claim to speak for. Indeed, the Palestine Liberation Organization has long held itself out as the “sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.” Yet attacks on Palestinians living in Europe or America remain hate crimes rather than expressions of opposition to the PLO. As Ran Halevi, in an essay on Tony Judt and the nation-state, has written, “When one burns down a synagogue or attacks a Jew in the street for sins attributed to other Jews, these are not ‘misdirected’ acts (to employ Mr. Judt’s euphemism) but the very essence of anti-Semitism.”
— Steven

“America is the greatest force that God has ever allowed to exist on his footstool. As such, it is up to us to lead this world to a peaceful and secure existence.” Is that any way for an American president to speak? David Adesnik asks the question.
— Steven

The only thing more annoying than the annual “ten best” movie lists that critics start churning out around this time of year (and I’ll admit that I devour them, and would gladly write one myself if someone only asked) are the ever-so-pretentious lists of “the best movies that only I, the critic, was wise enough or privileged enough to see this year.” Here’s one such top ten, for instance, that offers up nine films I haven’t seen and one I have — and that one, Spartan, doesn’t exactly recommend the author’s taste in cinema.

Here’s his take: “In a year when fiction films were conspicuously silent about the political moment, David Mamet’s conspiracy thriller about a kidnapped first daughter was a bracing dose of studio-backed subversiveness.” (It’s true — the anti-Bush subtext in these two summer tentpole flicks was pretty well hidden, wasn’t it? God knows it was barely noticeable here.) The review goes on to praise Spartan as “a strange, existential meditation on duty, militarism, and moral choice,” and notes that while “the strange cadence of Mametese and the hermetic staginess can be alienating . . . they are crucial to the director’s efforts to push his movie into the abstract.”

Here’s my rule of thumb: Anytime a critic praises a director for pushing any movie — let alone a low-budget thriller — “into the abstract,” you know you’ve entered the realm of the lousy-but-pretentious, which is not a particularly fun place to spend a Saturday night. I promise you, folks, Spartan is bad — both in the way that only David Mamet can be bad and in a heap of others. The only thing that raises it to the level of “interesting pop culture artifact” is the sheer strangeness of its central conceit, which is almost bizarre enough to merit the price of the Blockbuster rental. I won’t spoil it — but suffice to say, David Mamet thinks Jenna and Barbara should be keeping a weather eye on their Dad . . .

Fortunately, TNR Online also has Chris Orr, my soon-to-be-former Atlantic superior (no conflicts of interest here, sir!), whose DVD reviews are diamonds in the online rough. (I’ve lauded his anti-Spiderman 2 sentiments elsewhere.) Why the deeply mediocre Manohla Dargis got the Times‘s critic gig when there was someone of Chris’s talents available, I’ll never understand. (If only his name were Ma-noh-laaaaaaa . . . light of my life, fire of my . . . whoops, sorry, tangent.)
— Ross

In mulling over the Social Security crisis-unlike a few folks I admire, I’m convinced that there is one-it occurred to me that conservatism is deeply unpopular. This might sound odd in light of President Bush’s reelection, the endless hand wringing among liberals, and the obliteration of the Democratic Party in the white South. I can imagine liberals thinking, “That’s a kind of unpopularity I could handle.” Well, you’ll soon find out. Republicans are already overreaching, and the stench of corruption will soon lead to electoral gains for Democrats, civil wars, backbiting, and a largely talentless political bench notwithstanding.

But it goes deeper than that. It’s not just that Republican partisans are unpopular. They’re not, or at least not yet. It’s that conservatism, understood loosely as an “ideology of self-reliance,” has failed to make serious inroads since the mid-’90s. It’s still nowhere near a popular majority. This is why conservative politicians are often forced to use deception to advance conservative policy proposals. Take tax cuts, the heart and soul of President Bush’s meager domestic policy. When Bush first came to office, tax cuts were not a particularly high priority for the public. Neverthless, Bush pressed ahead, and the size and distribution of the tax cuts he proposed were, as Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson have argued, “radically at odds with majority views.” “Crafted language” does the work that ought to be done by argument and persuasion. I don’t agree with Hacker and Pierson on much, but I’m a partisan of majoritarian democracy (part of why I dislike activist judges of all persuasions) and I find this unsettling. Had the administration paid heed to public opinion, not out of slavish deference but out of respect, we would’ve seen a different tax cut, and, with any luck, a sustainable popular majority for conservatism. (McCain, incidentally, could’ve pulled it off, but you already knew that.)

SOCIAL SECURITY AND SELF-RELIANCE: Which leads us to Social Security. It’s not that I agree with Paul Krugman-that the Bush administration’s true intention is to destroy a successful government program precisely because it represents an ideological affront-but, well, Social Security is an affront to the “ideology of self-reliance,” and it fosters dependency. Worse yet, the system, as Laurence Kotlikoff, Kent Smetters and Jagadeesh Gokhale, and others maintain, is badly broken. Consider the following passage from Krugman’s 7 December column:

My favorite example of their three-card-monte logic goes like this: first, they insist that the Social Security system’s current surplus and the trust fund it has been accumulating with that surplus are meaningless. Social Security, they say, isn’t really an independent entity — it’s just part of the federal government.

If the trust fund is meaningless, by the way, that Greenspan-sponsored tax increase in the 1980’s was nothing but an exercise in class warfare: taxes on working-class Americans went up, taxes on the affluent went down, and the workers have nothing to show for their sacrifice.

But never mind: the same people who claim that Social Security isn’t an independent entity when it runs surpluses also insist that late next decade, when the benefit payments start to exceed the payroll tax receipts, this will represent a crisis — you see, Social Security has its own dedicated financing, and therefore must stand on its own.

There’s another way of reading this. (1) This part is true. (2) Yes, the Greenspan-sponsored tax increase was an exercise in class warfare, and that’s a bad thing. (3) No, it’s still not an independent entity. Social Security, and Medicare, will represent an ever-increasing share of the federal budget, thus stymieing efforts to address unforeseen social calamities (a zombie plague, for example) and crowding out private investment and other good stuff.

A fully funded Social Security system, like the one proposed by Edward Prescott, has tremendous conservative appeal. So does the Smetters/Gokhale proposal. Neither proposal will ever see the light of day. Kotlikoff might be best on the merits, but it’s also a longshot. Phillip Longman floated my favorite reform-which looks politically viable to boot-last month. Predictably, the Bush administration is contemplating a series of half-assed “reforms” that are likely to make matters worse. In doing so, the administration will yet again discredit the “ideology of self-reliance.” One wonders if Bush is a sleeper agent for the Socialist International.

SO WHAT NEXT?:
To set this right, we need Menashi in the White House, with Daniel Drezner as USTR. We also need a new ideological synthesis. (Call me Commissar.) Start with “demand-side conservatism” as described by Rauch. Then throw in a dash of Longmanian natalism and Douthatian social conservatism, leavened by Sullivanian–Oakeshottian sympathies, Muellerian fiscal “Reaganism,” and a healthy dose of Gerechtian pax Americana. Before you know it, you’ll have an earth-shatteringly excellent governing philosophy that would restore American greatness and make the world a better place for the children.

Never forget that Wu-Tang is for the children. R.I.P.

‘OW, FEET FEET FEET FEET’: I just wanted to mention that few things in life are more entertaining than listening to “Get Low” (Clean Version). It’s literally incomprehensible nonsense, and I mean
that in the best sense.
— Reihan

Steve’s post has led me to brood. Back in December 2000, Henry Siegman made the following observation about the Palestinian negotiating position:

Palestinian insistence on Israel’s withdrawal from the entire West Bank and Gaza is not evidence of Palestinian irrationality or diabolism. The withdrawal they ask for, even if fully accommodated by Israel, would leave Palestinians with about 20 percent of the original mandate divided by the United Nations in 1947; Israel would have about 80 percent. The popular Israeli notion that Israel is expected ”to give and give” while Palestinians only ”take and take” is a self-serving distortion of reality.

Observers continue to believe that “Israel’s withdrawal from the entire West Bank and Gaza” is the end-state envisioned by the mainstream Palestinian leadership. That is almost certainly false. There’s a reason the Palestinian Authority hasn’t explicitly defined its territorial redlines. If a Palestinian state is in fact established in the entire West Bank and Gaza, Palestinian political entrepreneurs, like the articulate and ambitious Michael Tarazi, will see it as an opening gambit in a bid for a binational state. And any imaginable binational state, at least for the next few decades, would represent a repudiation of the Zionist project-to create a refuge and homeland for the Jewish people.

HAS THE WINDOW CLOSED?: Why is that? As Siegman suggests, the sense that an 80-20 split would represent a grave injustice will not vanish into thin air. Ironically enough, Siegman, in this passage, is offering solace to hawkish elements in Israel who oppose any territorial concessions. Those hawkish elements, in turn, have rendered a viable two-state solution impossible through support for the settler movement. Under conditions of liberal democracy, disentangling Arab and Jewish communities in the West Bank is unimaginable. It would require the sustained use of armed force against either Israeli citizens or the mass expulsion of Palestinians, or both in varying degrees of intensity. If the Palestinians ever reject terrorist violence, the moral-ethical claim to citizenship in a binational democratic state will be virtually unanswerable, whether friends of Israel (myself included) like it or not. In such a state, the right of return, long Israel’s raison d’etre, will be scrapped, or it will be enshrined alongside a right of return for Palestinian refugees. A populist Palestinian political culture, spines stiffened by political “victory,” will revolt against perceived economic and social inequalities. Finally, Israeli Jews will find themselves strangers in their own country.

This is not to say I oppose efforts in the direction of a two-state solution. It would, to my mind, be vastly preferable to a binational state. But I worry that the window has closed. Maybe it was possible twenty years ago, or even ten years ago. Not now. When Siegman and others try to convince you that if only Israel would make reasonable concessions everything would work itself out, think again.

I seriously hope I’m wrong. I wish those of you who think so the best of luck. Funnily enough, there’s a town in southern Lebanon called “Reihan,” and I think it was some kind of terrorist den. Not sure what to make of that. I have also heard that my name means “Sweet Basil,” which would be a good name for an R&B album. (Or an R&G album, in which case I’d use the moniker “Hash Brown.”)
— Reihan

“The danger that people feel here is coming from terrorists and insurgents who are trying to destroy the possibility of this country becoming a democracy. Now where do we stand in that fight? We stand on the side of the democrats against the terrorists. And so when people say to me, ‘Well look at the difficulties, look at the challenges,’ I say, ‘Well, what’s the source of that challenge?’ The source of that challenge is a wicked, destructive attempt to stop this man, this lady, all these people from Iraq, who want to decide their own future in a democratic way, having that opportunity. And where should the rest of the world stand? To say, ‘Well, that’s your problem, go and look after it,’ or, ‘You’re better off with Saddam Hussein running the country’ – as if the only choice they should have in the world is a choice between a brutal dictator killing hundreds of thousands of people or terrorists and insurgents. There is another choice for Iraq – the choice is democracy, the choice is freedom – and our job is to help them get there because that’s what they want. Sometimes when I see some of the reporting of what’s happening in Iraq in the rest of the world, I just feel that people should understand how precious what has been created here is.” – Tony Blair, telling it like it is.
— Andrew

Rich Lowry’s latest column, I think, offers the best round-up yet of the strange abortion-related knots the press has tied itself into while reporting the horrible Kansas murder/kidnapping. (Or fetusnapping, if you prefer.)

Money passage:

During the coverage of the crime, the status of the Bobbie Jo Stinnett’s unborn girl steadily changed. All at once on AOL News during the weekend, there were headlines tracking events in the case: “Woman Slain, Fetus Stolen”; “Woman Arrested, Baby Returned in Bizarre Murder”; “Infant in Good Health.” Note how a “fetus” — something for which American law and culture has very little respect — was somehow instantly transformed into a “baby” and “infant” — for which we have the highest respect. By what strange alchemy does that happen?

An AP story effected this magic transition all in one sentence: “Authorities said Montgomery, 36, confessed to strangling Bobbie Jo Stinnett of Skidmore, Mo., on Thursday, cutting out the fetus and taking the baby back to Kansas.” At one point, when Montgomery was still at large, an Amber Alert went out about the Stinnett girl, putting news organizations in the strange position of reporting such an alert for what many of them were still calling a “fetus.”

Given that fetuses are routinely destroyed in America (and legally can be destroyed up to the point of delivery), it was odd to see such an uproar about the welfare of one. Indeed, it is tempting to say that from a pure legal point of view, Lisa Montgomery simply killed the wrong victim, taking the life of the mom instead of the fetus . . .

Incidentally, the headline of the three-days-old Times story linked to above reads: “Baby Found in Kansas Is Thought to Be That of Slain Woman.” Yesterday, the Times ran a story about similar crimes around the country. It’s headline? “Fetus Cases Show Signs of Similarity.”

Then again, as we all know, at the heart of the freedom of the press lies the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Or something like that.

— Ross Douthat