Month: December 2008

The Christianists are concerned about Michael Steele heading up the RNC. He’s not fanatical enough on abortion:

The Republican National Coalition for Life and the Rev. Donald Wildmon’s American Family Association both have came out against Mr. Steele because he and former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman were co-chairmen of the centrist Republican Leadership Council and because of his unclear comments about abortion on "Meet the Press."

He’s soft on the gays too, apparently. The Washington Times, defending Steele, gets a little testy:

Republicans who are questioning Mr. Steele’s credentials need to ask themselves why they find him so "threatening" and let his actual words speak for themselves.

One of the great advantages of blogging is that reading a debate online can be a far more clarifying and informative way to understand the world than absorbing one long article or a book. It’s just the way we’re wired. We can be engaged in conversation more easily than being forced to concentrate on a monologue alone. All of which is a roundabout way of saying: read Manzi on McArdle on Yglesias. Serious blog-power on one of most fascinating policy conundrums we have. 

Jeffrey Rosen has helped expose how creepy a prospect it would be if Google rigged its algorithm. Frank Pasquale considers the legal implications.

Saletan reviews Barry Popkin’s new book:

If you’re like me, you grew up worrying about people starving in other countries. Your mom would tell you things like, "Eat your food. There are kids going hungry tonight." But hunger, as a global threat, is now dwarfed by overweight. According to Popkin, the population of obese and overweight people worldwide—1.6 billion—is now twice as large as the population of malnourished people.

Listen to Jeffrey Rosen, a law professor, find so many ways to say that acts of torture, when perpetrated by political leaders, should have no legal consequence. Just censure from the Congress, or if we must enforce the rule of law, do it on a few low-level grunts. Jeff actually appears to defend Bush for ordering up the Yoo memos – because the president – the poor guy – feared future prosecution for war crimes! Then Jeff actually – I’m not making this up – analogizes Bush’s torture and abuse regime with Jefferson’s machinations against John Adams. I’m unaware of dozens of individuals tortured to death under Jefferson. But perhaps Jeff has some historical data unavailable to me.

(Cartoon by James MacLeod.)

Freddie DeBoer on the limits of language:

When we are presented with a grief so enormous and incomprehensible, we who have made language our business feel a desperate desire to use that language to make some sense of what we’ve confronting. We want to be heard, and we express ourselves out of the conviction that we must. That’s natural. But the temptation, which we have to work to avoid, is to believe that there is some utility in merely piling up adjectives to express our frustration. The temptation is to believe that if one person is saying "awful," the second says something more in using "terrible". The sad truth is that using "unconscionable" does little more than using "bad". The important question is what we advocate, and with an event like Mumbai, what language could match the event? The desire to express more is admirable. The notion that scolding others for not using stronger language is somehow doing something is lamentable. Poetry makes nothing happen.

Brilliant:

He stood and adjusted his suit jacket so that his body didn’t betray his shameful weakness. He walked toward her and sat informally on the edge of her desk. "Why make a product when you can make dollars? Right this second, I’m earning millions in interest off money I don’t even have."

He gestured to his floor-to-ceiling windows, a symbol of his productive ability and goodness.

(Hat tip: Dylan Matthews)

A reader writes:

Obama won’t pursue war crimes. This is just based on my reading of the man, so obviously I could be completely wrong, but I don’t believe that Obama will legally pursue anyone from the Bush administration for war crimes. And I think this comes out of some very deeply held beliefs on Obama’s part.  I don’t think it’s because he doesn’t understand the problem, or that he just wants to do what’s expedient.

Obama is all about building bridges, and building up ties. When Obama’s white grandmother made racial comments, Obama didn’t write her off, or think of her as a terrible person. I think that instead he saw it as a kind of misunderstanding, or a rupture that had to be healed. Something that came out of ignorance. And that doesn’t happen if you denounce people.

I believe that Obama is going to have a very strong instinct toward decency in our policies, and that he’s going to try to rebuild the American polity so that it is more decent. Part of that will mean a rejection of torture; part of it will be more compassion for the poor and the working poor; and part of it will be about reaching out to people who disagree with him, and trying to bring them on board. I’m pretty confident that Obama is going to try to justify his new strategy in the war on terror by getting results. He’ll do things the right way, and work hard to bring the consensus around so that people in both parties believe in what he’s done.

Biden has said that he wants to prosecute, and I’m sure Rahm would want to as well. But I’ll be amazed if Obama does it. Honestly, I want to prosecute them as well. I’m angry, and I want vengeance. But I think that’s one of the reasons Obama is a better man than I am. Remember what Lincoln said:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

We need to remember that refraining from punishing someone who does wrong doesn’t mean we don’t know right from wrong. It’s possible to have "firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right" and to have "charity for all". They’re not contradictory. Those two things are, in fact, Christlike. And think about the context in which Lincoln made that speech — all of the things that had happened, and how reasonable vengeance must have seemed. It was harder for Lincoln to be charitable than it is for us to do it now, in our present circumstances.

Dreher nominates Ron Paul:

The same GOP establishment that mocked and reviled Dr. Paul now lies shattered. Who believes in this Republican Party anymore? The party destroyed itself with its own unprincipled recklessness, both in foreign and fiscal policy. And it has ruined its reputation among the young – the most ardent of Dr. Paul’s supporters, incidentally – who are far more likely to identify with the Democrats.

Out of this destruction, some creative young conservatives may rise up and decide to take back the Republican Party. Perhaps they’ll run against the overweening power of the federal government and in favor of decentralizing power (but unlike today’s Republicans, they’ll actually mean it). Maybe they’ll fight for an America that lives responsibly, within its natural limits both overseas and at home. And maybe, just maybe, they might make the Republican Party worth following again.

If that day comes, it will be thanks to the lifelong labors of Ron Paul and his 2008 campaign based on ideas. If those ideas germinate into genuine reform and restoration of sanity in our government, America will look back on Dr. Paul as a gift from Texas and a worthy nominee as Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year.