Month: February 2007

These Quinipiac numbers are stunning. Giuliani has more Republican support than McCain, Gingrich and Romney put together.

Maybe I’m biased, but I think Obama is easily the winner. (I’m with Bill Kristol and Mickey Kaus on this. Mickey had exactly the same reponse to Adamnag’s piece as I did.) Obama’s prised Hollywood off the Clinton teat; he got the Clinton campaign to throw the first stone (there’s no evidence Obama knew of Geffen’s deliberate gaffe in advance); and revealed how scared the Clintonistas are of the star they have to obliterate.

But whoever you think got the upper hand, there’s one aspect to the incident that merits more notice. This was a classic political A-list dust-up. It got national attention. It was the first real skirmish in the presidential campaign. And no straight white men were central players. This was an openly gay man dishing to a female reporter about a black man’s threat to another woman’s campaign. Yes, the mud flew. But look who was throwing it.

Wallhalla, Michigan, 8.30 am.

The magazine I once edited is going bi-weekly and has some serious new investors. JPod worries that a fortnightly changes TNR’s DNA irreparably. So would its disappearance – and I fear that the weekly magazine is simply defunct in the age of the web. (The New Yorker and the Economist are the exceptions that prove the rule.) The bottom line is that TNR’s future looks a lot brighter than it did recently. That’s a very good thing, if you care, as I do, about the magazine, its history, its legacy and its continued capacity to attract real talent. Frank Foer understands the need to make some trouble at a political mag – it’s already far livelier; Ryan Lizza and Mike Crowley are great reporters; Jon Chait, who’s taking over TRB, is an astringent, witty man of the left; Leon Wieseltier, although we’ve had deep personal conflicts, is an indisputably great literary editor. I love TNR, understand its need to reassert its liberal identity (I had a good time pushing at that envelope for a few years), and hope it flourishes as an out bi publication. Good luck, guys.

A prison expert visits the new facility for innocent as well as guilty prisoners. Hey, this is the Bush administration. What’s the difference? Money quote:

Camp 6 includes detainees who have been cleared for transfer because the military has determined that they are no longer considered to be a danger to the United States or its allies, that they no longer have any intelligence value and that there is no other reason to keep them locked up. They remain only until they can be repatriated to their country of origin, or another country willing to accept them. Can there be any justification for a civilized country to hold any of this group of approximately 100 men, in conditions worse than maximum security? The answer is surely no. Yet we do …

The men imprisoned in Camp 6 are alone in cells with walls, floors and ceilings of solid metal 22 hours a day. There is no natural light or air and no windows except strips of glass next to the solid metal door that allow only a view of an interior corridor. During cell time, the men have no contact with any human beings other than guards.

‘Rec time’ consists of a transfer in shackles to a ‘pod’ of five pens separated by chain-link fences. Each detainee is placed alone in a 12- by 9-foot pen for two hours and allowed to communicate with others should there be men in adjacent pens.

Somwhere, Cheney smiles.

Here’s a strange paragraph in an otherwise sensible essay:

One of the most important contributions a scientist can make is to successfully question opinions that seem self-evident and obvious to the public. Once it was commonly accepted in the West that the world was flat and that the heart was the residence of the soul.

And here’s a good response:

Where’s the evidence that the soul does not reside in the heart?

The debate continues here.

A reader writes:

I felt compelled to write about this Vlahos article. Every diplomat should read it. As an officer who worked in public diplomacy for two years in a developing country, I was torn by the end of the article. I saw people who desperately wanted democracy. I also saw people who were scared as hell by the chaos and change that democracy and free markets bring. They all wanted to know more about America, wanted to get a visa, wanted to see our grand experiment for themselves — but they knew we were not infallible and had provoked something big in Iraq. They could sense the blood in the water, yet they still basically wanted to be just like us.

I supported the war and now feel depressed; as a diplomat you almost have to buy into our ‘city on the hill’ narrative or you will wonder what the hell we are doing out there in places where our strategic interest is almost non-existent. Yet we have totally embarrassed ourselves. I don’t buy everything in the article, but Vlahos certainly made me think about the very nature of what I do.

Another reader comments:

I would suggest that Vlahos’ historically-recurring ‘imperial narrative‘ shares the characteristics of the pathological fundamentalisms you’ve discussed in the Harris debate: fear of change and instability, a desire for transcendence, and a disconnect from reality that both sustains the pathology and results in its downfall. In the post ‘The Dangers of Fake Faith,’ you reference not only Islamist and Christianist pseudo-religions, but the atheistic alternatives of Soviet Marxism and German Nazism, of which imperial narratives are a central part of the meme. As you suggested in one of your epistles to Sam Harris, his narrative of triumphant science would result in imperialism as well, since it would grant the institution of science the same supremacy of authority as a sole hegemon or a fundamentalist religion. I also think it’s fair to say that the fundamental, authoritarian, or imperial aspects of the Bush administration (and its resultant hubris and decadence) have been its defining characteristics.

What are the consequences? Vlahos argues that this is at least the end of the Pax Americana, if not a setback for modernity and civilization itself. He seems to think that the narrative is now locked into place like a Chinese finger-trap. That’s where I disagree with him. The same rhythms of history that validate his initial argument undermine his conclusion. To wit: from the battles of Lexington and Concord to the secession of the southern states is 85 years, and from there to Pearl Harbor is another 81.  From Pearl Harbor to 9/11 is only 60.  The last phase of this narrative drama is still playing out before us, so let’s not jump the gun on defining our era in history.

I am 21. I am coming-of-age in the climactic phase of this historical cycle, like the Sons of Liberty, the Yanks and Rebs, and the Greatest Generation. I am not ‘the D-list to the Greatest Generation,’ I am its rightful successor. The future does look grim, and we face many challenges. But I refuse to accept the proposition that I cannot make a difference.

I feel the same way. The original essay – it’s long and needed more editing – is here.

An inquiry.

The contretemps that began with Alan Wolfe’s review of Dinesh D’Souza continues.