Month: March 2010

Eric Lawrence, John Sides, and Henry Farrell have put out a new study:

We examine deliberation, polarization, and political participation among blog readers.We find that blog readers gravitate toward blogs that accord with their political beliefs. Few read blogs on both the left and right of the ideological spectrum. Furthermore, those who read left-wing blogs and those who read right-wing blogs are ideologically far apart. Blog readers are more polarized than either non-blog-readers or consumers of various television news programs, and roughly as polarized as US senators.

E.D. Kain mulls over a tragic and bizarre story.

A revealing paragraph in Bob Kaplan's superb piece on Afghanistan in the new Atlantic:

The very prospect of some success by July 2011 increases the likelihood that U.S. forces will be in Afghanistan in substantial numbers for years. In effect, the proficiency of the American military causes it to be overextended. British Major General Richard Barrons, a veteran of the Balkans and Iraq now serving in Afghanistan, told me he learned during the most depressing days in Baghdad that “the long view is the primary weapon against fate.” If you are willing to stay, you can turn any situation around for the good. But that is an imperial mind-set, with its assumption of a near-permanent presence, which today’s Washington cannot abide, even as its own strategy drives toward that outcome.

DiA counters Mead:

[C]riticism of Israel's human-rights record has less to do with anti-Semitism than it does with the opposite. Western countries hold Israel to a different standard than they do Congo because they see in Israel a rich, Western-like, European-descended country. We in Europe and America judge Israel harshly not because Israelis are the Other, but because they're unusually like us. Does Israel really want to be judged by the same standard we use to judge Omar al-Bashir? Now that would be anti-Semitism.

Today on the Dish, Andrew tried to read Netanyahu, Biden bit back, and we compiled commentary over the latter's embarrassment. More debate over Israel here. And we heard some good news out of Iran. Friedersdorf continued the exposure of McCarthyism, Chris Blattman assessed the scene in Uganda, and we rounded up reaction to Paul Ryan's budget. Megan defended Rasmussen and Andrew countered Megan. Alex Koppelman exposed the emptiness of Kucinich.

More cannabis commentary here. Dissent of the day here (Greenwald backlash here). Video of the day here (reader response here). And this ad was cool.

— C.B.

"When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that a "drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall." So with men.

If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great high road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause really be a just one.

On the contrary, assume to dictate to his judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart; and tho’ your cause be naked truth itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel, and sharper than steel can be made, and tho’ you throw it with more than Herculean force and precision, you shall no more be able to pierce him, than to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw.

Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his own best interest," – Abraham Lincoln, address to the Washington Temperance Society in 1842.

(Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty.)

Douthat defends the plan and proposes a few modifications. Ambinder notices few Republicans are willing to officially attach their names to the plan:

This isn't a non-serious plan. But Republicans don't seem to be ready to risk the accusation that they want to end Medicare (a very popular program), privatize Social Security (a non-starter), raise taxes on the middle class (by proxy) — by affixing their name to a specific plan that does just that. So the question for Republicans is: yes, Paul Ryan has a plan. But if you don't support it, then what, specifically, would you do to reduce the deficit over the long-term?

A U.S. Marine sits in a cargo helicopter while being transported March 9, 2010 over southern Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Operations are ongoing in the nearby town of Marjah to restore stability after a month-long offensive to oust Taliban militants. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

Israel edition.

Matt Steinglass finds an article by Philip Jenkins:

It sounds as though Mr Jenkins's focus has evolved a bit over the past few years; when he wrote this article in the New Republic, he wasn't exactly saying that Western evangelicals were irrelevant to Ugandan homophobia. It was more that such influence had been over-emphasised. He situated African homophobia in the rising tide of evangelical Christianity in Africa, and noted that first- and second-generation converts to any faith tend to be more literal in their interpretations of its holy texts.

He did argue that competition between Christianity and Islam helps drive homophobia, but he did so in a way that highlights how values are shaped dynamically by the discourse generated in religious competition, including missionary discourse. He also placed African antipathy to homosexuality in historical context, recalling a fascinating angle to the history of Uganda's 19th-century Catholic martyrs. (Apparently some of them were Christian pages who refused to take part in the pederasty adopted by the Arab-influenced Muslim king of Buganda.) "For many Africans," Mr Jenkins wrote, "sexual unorthodoxy has implications that are at once un-Christian, anti-national, and oppressive."