Month: December 2009

Upon quoting Truman – "We all have to recognize – no matter how great our strength – that we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please" – Peter Beinart says of the Nobel speech:

[Obama] showed that he understands just what Truman meant. Because he understands, in a way Cheney and Palin never will, that true moral universalism requires recognizing that Americans are just as capable of evil as anyone else. And that means recognizing that we are in just as much need of restraint. For Obama and Truman, the paradox of American exceptionalism is that only by recognizing that we are not inherently better than anyone else, and thus must bind our power within a framework of law, can we distinguish ourselves from the predatory powers of the past.

He didn’t just condemn human rights horrors in Congo, Burma, Zimbabwe and Iran; he acknowledged that an unfettered America is capable of moral horror itself—which is why we must ban torture and submit to the Geneva Conventions. He didn’t just praise US soldiers; he praised the peacekeepers of the United Nations, thus acknowledging that military force can occur within a framework of international institutions and international law.

Andrew Sprung  has a smart reading of one part of Obama's Nobel speech:

Osama's favorite label for U.S. and western forces is "crusaders." Obama pointedly puts the European Crusaders of old on the same side of the ledger as Islamic extremists.  No holy war can ever be a just war.  One rule lies at the heart of all religions.  Obama is simultaneously taking on the militant understanding of jihad and denying any fundamental clash of civilizations. Mullahs of the world, mull that.

Bruce Bartlett feels that Obama's first stimulus was a special case:

The poor success rate of fiscal measures in counteracting economic downturns, and the likelihood that they will even sow the seeds of subsequent downturns, led a number of prominent economists to reject the Obama administration's stimulus proposal in February. Where I think those economists erred was in not recognizing that the current downturn was exceptional in its severity. Nor did they appreciate the fact that Fed policy was essentially impotent owing to the presence of deflation–the economy would have needed something like a negative 5% nominal Fed funds rate for monetary policy to be effective. But it is impossible for the rate to go below zero, thus hamstringing the Fed and creating a liquidity trap that brought the economy to a standstill.

Therefore, fiscal stimulus was justified in this instance, even though the general case against countercyclical policy remains valid. To use a cliché, it was the exception that proves the rule. However, now that the recession is over–economist Robert Hall of the NBER's business cycle dating committee believes it ended last summer–the case for emergency measures can no longer be justified. We are, I believe, slowly returning to normal economic conditions, and the normal rules should again apply.

A reader writes:

The photo of the Iranian men wearing green hijabs to honor Majid Tavakoli made me think of the great Middle English epic Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

During his quest, Gawain broke his promise to share everything he acquired in Sir Bertilak's castle in order to conceal and keep a lady's green girdle, which he was told had the magical power to save his life. For that very human and understandable lapse in chivalry, the Green Knight nicked Gawain's neck slightly with his axe, when he would otherwise have spared him entirely. Ashamed of his partial failure, Gawain wore the girdle as a baldric and told the whole court at Camelot of his shame. Impressed by his bravery and humility, all the Knights of the Round Table decided from that day forth to wear green baldrics in fellowship with Gawain, to honor him.

They are very different stories from very different times and cultures, but the parallels — a hunted man wearing a woman's garment to escape mortal danger, that fact being held up as a mark of shame, and his peers wearing similar garments (green, even) to turn them into a badge of honor — are fascinating to me.  I wonder if the Gawain story once had some basis in fact, and if the heroes of the Green Revolution will one day be the subject of Persian epic poetry.

A reader writes:

I think your reader who said the “Greatest Generation” weren’t superheroes because they sat idly by as the war in Europe – and in the Far East, too – had been raging for two years misses a key point. The “Greatest Generation” who fought and died (like my uncle) were not the politicians, opinion makers, power brokers and celebrities of the day who demanded isolation. In fact, I doubt most of those men ever saw a battlefield. They were too old. The “Greatest Generation” were kids. Many of them weren’t even old enough to vote in the 1940 presidential election. These young men – and women – were very much superheroes in just the same way the volunteers of today are.

An AIDS
(Hat tip: Flowing Data)

Free Exchange joins the debate:

Focus on the small business analogy. Like a home, a small business is an illiquid, undiversified, highly leveraged investment, the performance of which is likely to be highly correlated with the owner's personal economic welfare. And we encourage small business investments, do we not? With good reason! But the risk inherent in entrepreneurialism is widely understood.

Everyone knows the factoid that half of all businesses fail within the first four years (this statistic is not necessarily accurate, but people understand the risk involved). Starting a small business—even just buying an investment property to operate as a landlord—is not part of the standard advice given to people looking to save for retirement. No one is looking to make three-fourths of the American population small business owners

Josh Marshall has a sensible take on climate science:

I can't say that I really have any sophisticated understanding of the science of climate change. I don't think that most people I know who are pro-cap and trade do either. For me, the fact that the vast majority of people with specialized knowledge in the field think there's a problem is good enough for me.

Put baldly like that, perhaps it suggests a certain incuriousness. But I can't be knowledgeable about everything. And I'm comfortable with the modern system in which the opinions of really knowledgeable people with expertise counts more in cases like this than people who know nothing at all.

I would not be terribly shocked if the predictions we're getting today about the climate turned out to be dramatically off. (Of course, it could be dramatically worse as well as dramatically better.) For political reasons, because there's so much nonsense in the air, you're not supposed to say that I guess. But there's inevitable uncertainty about how such a complex system as the global climate functions. But in our own lives, in the real world, we live in a science based world.

Today on the Dish we had a small reax of the president's Nobel speech.  Social conservatives Rick Warren and Tom Coburn came out against the Uganda bill, and Andrew wondered when the pope would do the same.  A reader thought they took too long.  Another social conservative helped gay rights by moving marriage equality along in New Jersey.  Meanwhile, Iranians dressed in drag out of solidarity for a leading dissident, and a reader flagged another inspiring video of dissent.

In other coverage, Sam Roggeveen called for bribing the North Koreans, Chait knocked the new plan for fixing the budget, Editor and Publisher bit the dust, Alberto Gonzales reinserted his foot in mouth, Friedersdorf chided Continetti over Palin coverage, Frum fumed over Republican strategy, Weigel sighed over the same, Boaz called out Santorum's anti-liberty M.O., Clive Davis discussed Churchill, and Andrew took a shot at HRC.

Reader discussion of climate change continued here, here, here, here, here, and here. Our thread on the Greatest Generation continued here and here. Today's MHB and VFYW were particularly great.

— C.B.