Month: October 2007

I hesitate to re-enter an area of discussion which, given my own intrepid experience of trying to foment a sane discussion of The Bell Curve over a decade ago, you’d think I’d know to avoid by now. But I find it fascinating, and one of the areas in which science is, I believe, going to challenge many assumptions of right-thinking liberalism. The comments of Richard Watson have revived discussion of the subject and you can find the conventional left-liberal view here, echoed by Crooked Timber. In general, when I read scientific accounts that include passages like the following, my eyes roll when they don’t glaze over:

While acknowledging that science is often used for positive purposes, including ones that benefit communities of color, social justice advocates must remain vigilant. All technologies, including new genetic technologies, develop in a political, economic and social context, says Patricia Berne of the Center for Genetics and Society, a public affairs nonprofit based in Oakland, California. "The broader political left has not really grappled with the ways these technologies affect our claim to resources, our claim to rights, and the well-being of our communities," she notes.

Vigilance? Against science? Who knew? Left-liberals, of course, like the use of DNA to exonerate innocent suspects but they’re not so happy when this kind of thing happens:

DNA led to the 2004 conviction of an African American suspected of multiple serial murders in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Initially, police sought a white suspect, based on eyewitness testimony and the assumption that most serial killers are Caucasian. But the case took a turn when a technology firm, DNA Print Genomics, offered to analyze the sample from the crime scene. Their test concluded that the suspect was "85 percent sub-Saharan African and 15 percent Native American" and therefore medium- to dark-skinned black, not white.

Hold on a minute. If race is entirely a social construct, how can DNA reveal it? The answer, of course, is that it isn’t just a social construct all the way down. Our DNA is inherited; and that inheritance has complex patterns. You can, of course, define these patterns any way you like. And crude racial categories are not in any way supported by the data. But sophisticated, subtle DNA differences that can indeed reflect a constellation of factors in a human being can be seen in some respects as a racial category. And we can tell someone’s genealogy from their DNA. The best layman’s guide to this I’ve read recently is in a NYT piece two years ago. Check it out. The critical bottom line:

A 2002 study by scientists at the University of Southern California and Stanford showed that if a sample of people from around the world are sorted by computer into five groups on the basis of genetic similarity, the groups that emerge are native to Europe, East Asia, Africa, America and Australasia – more or less the major races of traditional anthropology… The billion or so of the world’s people of largely European descent have a set of genetic variants in common that are collectively rare in everyone else; they are a race. At a smaller scale, three million Basques do as well; so they are a race as well. Race is merely a shorthand that enables us to speak sensibly, though with no great precision, about genetic rather than cultural or political differences.

As I’ve noted, the variations within some of these groups are larger than many of the variations between them. But that race does in some way exist as an essential fact of human nature – that these differences render the assumption of an utterly homogeneous human race bogus – seems to me indisputable. The social and political ramifications of this deserve a different and deeper treatment – as does the IQ discussion as it relates to this. But that race exists in nature seems to me to be as obvious as the fact that genealogy exists in nature. We need vigilance against abuse of the truth, not against the truth itself.

Clive Crook provides some sobering analysis:

The dollar’s gradual decline — welcome in itself, as part of a needed adjustment of international economic imbalances — creates a background of steady inflationary pressure. The currency’s slide threatens at any moment to become a sudden plunge, and if that happens the Fed’s duty to guard against inflation will conflict with its desire to stabilize output and employment. An oil price that now stands at nearly $90 a barrel does nothing to ease the Fed’s inflation worries. And another big complication is the risk that what may start as a mild recession will reinforce itself — again through the housing market. Distressed debtors and foreclosures are already on the rise and the economy is still strong. What would a downturn do to those housing market numbers, and how would they then feed back on the broader economy?

If the economy slides, the prospects for the Republicans next November seem to me to come close to dire.

"When the story of humankind and its intellect has gone to its end, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no additional mission which would lead it beyond human life. Rather, it is human, and only its possessor and begetter takes it seriously–as though the world’s axis turned in its midst. But if we could communicate with the gnat, we would learn that he likewise flies through the air with the same solemnity, that he feels the flying center of the universe within himself. There is nothing so reprehensible and unimportant in nature that it would not immediately swell up like a balloon at the slightest puff of this power of knowing. And just as every porter wants to have an admirer, so even the proudest of men, the philosopher, supposes that he sees on all sides the eyes of the universe telescopically focused upon his action and thought," – Friedrich Nietzsche.

A liberal quandary: do I like my craft beers cheap or do I want to increase production of ethanol?

This statement is about as misleading and as false as Jonah’s distortions of the arguments in The Conservative Soul:

[Sullivan’s] assertions on what is and isn’t torture ultimately boil down to his own subjective judgments.

What to say about this, except that it is either a function of complete ignorance of my work on the subject or deliberate misrepresentation? My view of what torture is is grounded in the plain language of US law, in the plain English of what torture has always meant, and in the clear precedents of American legal and military judgment. It is based on the Geneva Conventions, American law, American history and the consensus of the entire civilized world for a very long time. And it is grounded in what conservatives themselves used to say about the subject – when waterboarding was used by the Khmer Rouge, when hypothermia, sleep deprivation and stress positions were used by the KGB and when the exact techniques used by Bush were deployed by the frigging Gestapo.

In fact, my own objective view of this matter was utterly conventional wisdom among conservatives and neoconservatives for my entire lifetime … until the Bush administration. The idea that this is somehow now a purely subjective judgment – an assertion Goldberg makes without ever addressing the many historical and legal arguments I have made – is simply a smear, not an argument.

He aims to please – and Ambinder thinks he is making real progress:

When doctrinally sensitive Southern Baptist leaders start to support Romney (over former Southern Baptist ministers), Fred Thompson has, at most, a few weeks to prevent his cup from runnething over.

The notion that "torture" has never meant forms of coercive interrogation short of electrocuting someone’s balls or tearing their fingernails out (this seems to be Bush’s and Bret Stephens’ comic book position) is simply disproved by history. I’ve proved beyond any doubt or rebuttal that the United States itself treated Bush’s torture techniques as torture and prosecuted them as war crimes during the Second World War. But the understanding that torture is indeed the precise term for hypothermia, stress positions, confinement, extreme isolation and the like goes back a long, long way. A reader writes:

I’ve been doing some research on Elizabethan torture warrants lately (don’t ask). Elizabeth I was the most prolific user of royal torture warrants in English history, issuing (or having issued) 53 of the 81 warrants that have survived. (There were almost certainly more, though not that many, but the details of that story don’t affect the point. If you want to check it out, Torture and the Law of Proof by John H. Langbein has all you need to know.)

Among the things John Yoo would not have considered torture but the Elizabethan torture commissioners at the tower did include confinement in a dungeon with rats (Thomas Sherwood, 17  Nov. 1577, during an investigation of one of the plots against Elizabeth); manacles — essentially a stress position, as the manacled prisoner is lifted to the point where his feet do not support his weight, all of which pulls on the suspended wrists of the victim (several times through Elizabeth’s reign); whipping (Humfrey "a boy" for burglary in 1580 —  note that Jesus too would have had some knowledge of Humfrey’s suffering) and "Little Ease" — confinement in a cell so small that the inhabitant could not sit, nor stand, nor move.  This was used on several occasions including the case of George Beesley, a priest in violation of the Anglican acts in 1591.

The most common techniques in the warrants are either the rack, or else simply "torture" unspecified — once "such torture as is usual,"  a chilling legal statement if ever there was one.

But the key to all this litany of pain is that the English stopped torturing, at least officially.  The last torture warrant dates from 1642, just before the start of the Civil War.  Several reasons have been advanced for the forgoing of torture as a tool of investigation or the discovery of evidence.  But the two most pertinent were the recognition that information under torture was not reliable, and even more significant, that the English jury system allowed for juries to find fact, thus eliminating the need to have a confession to prove guilt.  In other words:  if you trust the rule of law, you don’t need to act in ways that would make Jesus weep.

The Onion homes in on what the voters really care about. I love this quote about Clinton "not just talking bullshit but living it":

Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

Swearing in the office can make sense sometimes:

Banning swear words and reprimanding staff might represent strong leadership, but could remove key links between staff and impact on morale and motivation, he said.

"We hope that this study will serve not only to acknowledge the part that swearing plays in our work and our lives, but also to indicate that leaders sometimes need to ‘think differently’ and be open to intriguing ideas.