Month: October 2007

Yeah, I know the headline is Huckabee’s near-victory in the Christianist straw-poll. It’s also pretty amazing how poorly Giuliani did. But it’s staggering to me that Ron Paul did so well:

1.  Mitt Romney  … 27.62 %
2.  Mike Huckabee … 27.10 %
3.  Ron Paul                … 14.98%
4.  Fred Thompson … 9.77 %
5.  Sam Brownback … 5.14 %
6.  Duncan Hunter … 2.42 %
7.  Tom Tancredo … 2.30 %
8.  Rudy Giuliani  … 1.85 %
9.  John McCain … 1.40 %

I’d say that these results show that the Christianists are far less concerned about the war on terror than the culture war. If Thompson can’t beat Huckabee, the entire point of his candidacy is moot. You need a Southern Christianist? You’ve already got one, guys. Oh, and: They really hate McCain, don’t they?

Soren Dayton:

The news tomorrow is going to be that social conservatives are split. When the social conservative leaders meet tomorrow for their post-mortem, they will not be able to push people into supporting Romney.

The split continues. And Rudy is less unacceptable than people thought.

"The obituary of Doolittle Raider Nolan A. Herndon in Monday’s California section gave his nickname as Sue. In fact, he was known only as Nolan Anderson Herndon. In addition, his sons were listed as Nolan A. "Sue" Herndon Jr. and James M. "Debbie" Herndon. Neither son goes by those nicknames; Sue and Debbie are the names of their wives," – Los Angeles Times, October 18.

Do the fruits of Rove include the death of bipartisan internationalism in American foreign policy? Charles Kupchan and Peter Trubowitz fear so:

The Bush administration’s brand of international engagement, far from being an aberration, represents a turning point in the historical trajectory of U.S. foreign policy. It is a symptom, as much as a cause, of the unraveling of the liberal internationalist compact that guided the United States for much of the second half of the twentieth century.

The polarization of the United States has dealt a severe blow to the bipartisan compact between power and cooperation. Instead of adhering to the vital center, the country’s elected officials, along with the public, are backing away from the liberal internationalist compact, supporting either U.S. power or international cooperation, but rarely both. … Prominent voices from across the political spectrum have called for the restoration of a robust bipartisan center that can put U.S. grand strategy back on track. … These exhortations are in vain. The halcyon era of liberal internationalism is over; the bipartisan compact between power and partnership has been effectively dismantled.

In retrospect, this may have been a goal of some of the more hard-core neoconservatives all along: to destroy the bipartisan consensus of using force for internationalist ends in the world, and to replace it with raw power, one-party rule at home, and American militarist unipolarity abroad. Today’s Republicans have palpable disdain for sharing power with another party – and almost as much discomfort for allies abroad. The Rove project was an attempt not just to defeat but to destroy the Democratic party at home, by cultural polarization, gerry-mandering, a K-Street monopoly and even abuse of the Justice Department. And the neoconservative project is close to degenerating into a program of constant war-making abroad that can be used in turn to polarize the country still further.

(Photo: Brendan Smialowski/Getty.)

It’s what Oakeshott called "the pursuit of intimations" or what others call dumb luck. Human progress often comes about by accident, improvisation, random confluences, and unintended consequences. Science is often just as prone to this serendipity as other fields of inquiry. Which is good news for America, at least the America that has so far resisted governmental attempts to regulate and control and rationalize it:

It is not just that hypertension drugs led to Viagra or that angiogenesis drugs led to the treatment of macular degeneration, but that even discoveries we claim come from research are themselves highly accidental. They are the result of undirected tinkering narrated after the fact, when it is dressed up as controlled research. The high rate of failure in scientific research should be sufficient to convince us of the lack of effectiveness in its design. … America’s primary export, it appears, is trial and error, and the innovative knowledge attained in such a way. Trial and error has error in it; and most top-down traditional rational and academic environments do not like the fallibility of "error" and the embarrassment of not quite knowing where they’re going. The U.S. fosters entrepreneurs and creators, not exam-takers, bureaucrats or, worse, deluded economists. So the perceived weakness of the American pupil in conventional studies is where his or her very strength may lie.

Let’s run the gay-check, shall we? No known female companion ever. Brilliant in school. Befriends a despised classmate. Childhood crush on another boy. Morally unsparing. Extremely attuned to and horrified by cruelty. Then this:

Characters in the books often remark that his greatest weakness is his willingness to trust those who may otherwise be considered untrustworthy. This trust is often criticised by those around him but is rarely questioned. He is frequently shown to have a great sense of humour, and often has a whimsical sense about him, especially during conflict, which can often infuriate those who are at odds with him. He is hardly ever impatient, and makes a point of politeness, even to those whom one would consider his enemies. He is a great lover of music, calling it "A magic beyond all we do [at Hogwarts]."

Oh: and he "did things with a wand [the examiner had] never seen before". Ahem.

A reader writes:

It seems to me that your chief purpose in life is to quarrel with the rest of the conservative community – not to end torture. If that latter was your aim (and a much more worthy aim it is) then you wouldn’t cherry-pick quotations the way you did with Jonah Goldberg. Why not show your readers the whole thing:

Sullivan might look to his absolutism on torture for guidance. He takes the principled stand that anything that smacks of torture must be absolutely taboo, even though his assertions on what is and isn’t torture ultimately boil down to his own subjective judgments. In fact, with some caveats, I’ve basically moved to that basic position myself

Jonah is agreeing with you, you jackass. If you were the least bit charitable, you might acknowledge this fact. He is merely noting that different people have different points at which they would personally draw the line and classify something as torture – so he wants to ban any interrogation method that "smacks of torture". Don’t you realize that a united front of conservatives who expressed this opinion forcefully – say in an open letter to the President – might actually make a difference. This is why conservatives like me have been so incensed by your approach to this issue. So far, you have used it for the purpose of moral preening, as a wedge issue to divide conservatives.

I don’t actually think the issue is that complicated.  Whether or not you think X is torture or not and whether you think it may yield useful intelligence or not is irrelevant.  The use of torture or even the apparent use of torture is hurting the image and honour of the United States and thus hurting the war effort on the diplomatic and ideological fronts. It just isn’t worth it. If you would concentrate on getting this message across, I don’t think you would find too many people who would disagree with it.

Well, I have used this argument repeatedly. And I have used others. I think in retrospect that I should have acknowledged Jonah’s concession with a lot more grace than I did. If my work has served to alienate people I need to persuade, then I need an attitude adjustment. I can only offer in defense that no issue has, in my view, hurt the US or the ability to maintain both an international and national consensus on the core morality of the war against Islamist terrorism than America’s embrace of torture. And the ways in which conservatives have sought to deny, obscure or even defend this have appalled and, yes, angered me.

Perhaps if I didn’t believe in conservatism’s core decency I would not be as angered by its slide into indecency. That’s where the bad attitude comes from. But it shouldn’t cloud the effort to stop this evil, with as many allies as we can muster.

"We’ve got to find a way to be more inclusive. Christianity is all about inclusiveness. It’s built around the most profound act of love in human history, isn’t it" – Rudy Giuliani, among the Christianists this morning.

Chicago, Illinois, 5.48 pm.