Month: October 2009

Shanghai, China, 5.54 pm

The quotes from the Carville-Greenberg focus groups that I posted last night prompted one reader to raid his copy of Hoftstadter's classic "The Paranoid Style In American Politics." Everything old is new again: 

"The Manichean conception of life as a struggle between absolute good and absolute evil and the idea of an irresistible Armageddon have been thinly secularized and transferred to the cold war. People who share this outlook have a disposition to interpret issues of secular politics as though they were solely moral and spiritual struggles." 

"Those who look at the world in this way see their fundamental battle as one to be conducted against other Americans at home, and they respond eagerly to the notion, so pervasive in the right wing, that the worst enemy of American liberties is to be found in Washington." 

"Most conservatives are mainly concerned with maintaining a tissue of institutions for whose stability and effectiveness they believe the country's business and political elites hold responsibility. Goldwater thinks of conservatism as a system of eternal and unchanging ideas and ideals, whose claims upon us must be constantly asserted and honored in full. The difference between conservatism as a set of doctrines whose validity is to be established by polemics, and conservatism as a set of rules whose validity is to be established by their usability in government, is not a difference of nuance, but of fundamental substance." 

"When [pseudo-conservatism] argues that we are governed largely by means of near-hypnotic manipulation (brainwashing), wholesale corruption, and betrayal, it is indulging in something more significant than the fantasies of indignant patriots: it is questioning the legitimacy of the political order itself. 

The two-party system as it has developed … hangs on the common recognition of loyal opposition: each side accepts the ultimate good intentions of the other. The opponent's judgment may be held to be consistently execrable, but the legitimacy of his intent is not … his Americanism is not questioned. One of the unspoken assumptions of presidential campaigns is that the leaders of both parties are patriots who, however serious their mistakes, must be accorded the right to govern. But an essential point in the pseudo-conservative world view is that our recent Presidents, being men of wholly evil intent, have conspired against the public good. This does more than discredit them: it calls into question the validity of the political system …" 

"Goldwater's zealots were moved more by the desire to dominate the party than to win the country, concerned more to express resentments and punish 'traitors,' to justify a set of values and assert grandiose, militant visions, than to solve actual problems of state." 

"The pseudo-conservative [is convinced that those] who place a greater stress on negotiation and accommodation are either engaged in treasonable conspiracy … or are guilty of well-nigh criminal failings in moral and intellectual fiber" 

"Pseudo-conservatives believe that] [t]he goal of our policies cannot be limited to peace, security, and the extension of our influence, but must go on to ultimate total victory, the idealogical and political extermination of the enemy." 

"[T]he far right has become a permanent force in the political order because the things upon which it feeds are also permanent: the chronic and ineluctable frustrations of our foreign policy, the opposition to the movement for racial equality, the discontents that come with affluence, the fevers of the culturally alienate who practice … 'the politics of cultural despair.' As a movement, ironically enough, the far right flourishes to a striking degree on what it has learned from the radicals. Their forces have … been bolshevised – staffed with small, quietly efficient cadres of zealots who on short notice can whip up a show of political strength greatly disproportionate to their numbers."

Plus ca change, non?

Over on Richard Dawkin's blog, Michael Shermer types an open letter to Bill Maher on vaccinations:

Vaccination is one of science’s greatest discoveries. It is with considerable irony, then, that as a full-throated opponent of the nonsense that calls itself Intelligent Design, your anti-vaccination stance makes you something of an anti-evolutionist. Since you have been so vocal in your defense of the theory of evolution, I implore you to be consistent in your support of the theory across all domains and to please reconsider your position on vaccinations. It was not unreasonable to be a vaccination skeptic in the 1880s, which the co-discovered of natural selection—Alfred Russel Wallace—was, but we’ve learned a lot over the past century. Evolution explains why vaccinations work. Please stop denying evolution in this special case. 

Maybe Bill should invite Michael Specter on some time soon.

A reader writes:

I enjoyed your piece on Obama's "Mushy Steel".  It made me start thinking about the historical leader that I think he resembles most:  Elizabeth I of England.

I am not by any means, anything other than an interested reader of history, but for some reason this comparison keeps rattling around my brain. Now, I am sure there are historians much more infromed about the politics of the 15th century than I, but the overarching personality traits that made her a successful monarch, are demonstrated by Obama. Elizabeth was intelligent, cautious, and patient. She hated war for war's sake and surrounded herself with politicians that were, by the standards of the day, quite loyal to her. 

She was serious and conservative in her leadership style, and was not afraid to change a policy if it was unpopular. She hated religious extremism in all forms, and for the most part, encouraged religious tolerance. She inherited a country torn apart by endless war and constrained by a severely stressed treasury, and by the time she died, England was a prosperous, stable state. 

Obviously, Obama doesn't have 50-something years to act, but as your piece suggests, he's done more than he's given credit for. Many of his initiatives have an air of inevitability about them, such as health care. These changes ARE going to happen and paradoxically, because he's been both intimately involved and hands-off!

Another offers:

I think you've nailed Obama's strategical mastery when it comes to political management. His ability to wait for a political wave or blunder by his opponents to provide an opening reminds me Asquith piloting the Parliament bill in 1911 or Baldwin and his India bill in thirties. He's also helped of course by the fact that southern strategies and polarisation have more or less put all the liberals and the liberal leaning in the broadest sense in the democratic camp and all the conservatives with the Republicans.

History is only written retroactively. My judgment is provisional. So is my readers'. But it will be fascinating to watch if we're right.

A reader writes:

In 1998 I was the XO of a Marine artillery battery. One of our Marines, LCpl Parker (name has been changed), had been discovered as gay, admitted it, and was slated for administrative discharge, even though he was a model Marine in all other respects. However, about this time, Secretary (of Defense) Cohen had found out that more people were being discharged under DADT than before the policy and ordered a full review. He also canceled all open cases and instructed all services to place the personnel in question back in the same units they had come from, as if nothing had happened. In essence they got a

reprieve.
Well, in LCpl Parker's case, it was well known what has happening to him and why by every other Marine in the unit. So we, the leadership, had the same concerns expressed by many who advocate continuing DADT today.

We feared

reprisals.

But our higher leadership also warned us that we had better make damn sure we allowed no such thing. So the commander of the unit got all the Marines together, spoke openly about the whole matter, and told them that we were under orders to receive this Marine back into the unit, and would follow orders. He also explicitly warned them that any Marine who hazed or assaulted the returning LCpl would be fully prosecuted under the UCMJ.

A few weeks went by without incident. And we were so busy that I actually forgot about it. Then one day out in the field I remembered that I hadn't heard anything from Parker's gun section leader, so I went down and asked him about it. I got the Staff Sergeant in charge of the section aside and asked if he had any problems with the Marine or within his section in connection to this matter. The Staff Sergeant piped up, "No sir, no problems at all. He's King of the Gun!" Which basically meant he had beat down all the other members of the section, thereby winning their respect. There was an unofficial wrestling/fighting contest that went on in each gun section whereby the "King" could be challenged and dethroned at anytime. Of course, the whole tradition was not endorsed or allowed by the officers, but I knew that these things went on. And it appeared that our Marine, who we found later was a kickboxing champion, had challenged and beat the reigning "king" as soon as he checked back into the unit. The Marine successfully served out his enlistment (even got promoted to NCO) and left with an honorable discharge.

So, at least in our small case of DADT repeal, there were no reprisals or other issues of concern.

Stephen Dubner defends himself and his book. Joe Romm does appear to have partaken in some misrepresentation, but Paul Krugman and Brad Delong (among others) are having none of it. Here's Yglesias:

[It] would be one thing if Levitt and Dubner wanted to make the argument that they have reason to believe that most scientists are mistaken about the climate change situation. But instead they make the claim that most environmentalists are mistaken about the climate change situation and that it’s Levitt & Dubner who are channeling the views of the scientific community. But according to the Union of Concerned Scientists “the fifth chapter of the book, ‘Global Cooling,’ repeats a large number of easily discredited arguments regarding climate science, energy production, and geoengineering.””

Earlier coverage of the controversy here.

A reader emailed me last night, saying he'd just seen the CSPAN Booknotes interview from way back in 1995. They re-broadcast it. If you want to see what I looked like a decade and a half ago, sans beard and with hair, it's here. It was the first major book to advocate marriage equality and military service as the core issues at the heart of the gay rights movement – hugely controversial at the time. It's still in print. I still stand by all of it.

Bruce Bartlett notices a classic sign of panic: error-ridden propaganda.

Mr Bennet is one critical reason I came to the Atlantic (Mr Bradley was the other). I’ve known James for over twenty years when we worked together and had a blast at TNR. It’s extremely rare that such a decent person and under-stated personality gets prizes – because prizes tend to go to the brash and self-promoting. But Ad Age has just named James Editor Of The Year for what he has accomplished in such a short period of time in his job. His team – Scott, James, Maria, Don – shares the honor, but he largely picked his team. I’m proud and extremely lucky to be on it. Fallows led the tributes. I have one word to say: Subscribe!

Greenwald follows the latest twist in the Binyam Mohamed case, where the British High Court has ordered the full details of Mohamed's torture released. What we may soon find out:

The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed's genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, "is very far down the list of things they did," the official said. Another source familiar with the case said: "British intelligence officers knew about the torture and didn't do anything about it. They supplied information to the Americans and the Moroccans. They supplied questions, they supplied photographs. There is evidence of all of that." 

Greenwald has a thorough, must-read account of the case:

All of this highlights two vital points: (1) the extent to which the Obama administration has been willing to go to cover up evidence of the Bush administration's torture regime; 

when I interviewed Mohamed's lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, in April, he made clear that these threats were part of a joint cover-up between the U.S. and Britain; and (2) the way in which American citizens are forced to rely on the institutions in foreign countries — British courts and Spanish prosecutors — to learn about what our own government has done. War crimes can never stay hidden for long. It's only a matter of time before all of this evidence comes out one way or the other, and when it does, those who worked so vigorously to keep it concealed will be rightly judged to have been complicit in its cover-up.

I guess you could argue that by letting the courts reveal all this, while acting as a good faith defender of the Bush policy, Obama gets the evidence out there while minimizing the political fall-out for him. More of that mushy steel I was talking about. But on torture, mushy steel can mean retroactive complicity.