Month: August 2010

The wrong house; two orphans.

Michael Scherer takes the time to rebut Thiessen:

To be clear, Assange's crime, according to Thiessen, is intentionally receiving and republishing classified information, something that is done with some regularity in the United States by respectable and responsible reporters working for top flight news organizations. To adopt Thiessen's view, one would effectively have to reject the Supreme Court's opinion in New York Times Co. v. United States, the so-called Pentagon Papers case from 1971.

"Now, look. I am not exactly an apologist for J Street. But put the merits of J Street aside. Rubin's charge is that the group is a front for "pro-Muslims." Why? Because it favors religious freedom for American Muslims. Rubin does not charge the group with advancing some objectionable principle — Jihad, America-hatred, or whatnot. She accuses J Street of favoring an objectionable group, Muslims. In her mind, you are either for us or you are for them. The notion that certain principles — say, religious freedom — might be good for both us and for them is beyond the scope of her consideration. Indeed, the notion that Americans of all backgrounds deserve equal consideration is utterly foreign to her. In this sense, the current Commentary writers are fitting heirs to the legacy of Podhoretz's descent," – Jon Chait.

It has always seemed to me that this war against al Qaeda is a war for religious freedom, and ultimately for the separation of church and state. It is al Qaeda's psychotic conflation of politics and religion that we fight, not their religion itself. But these are very abstract things for anyone to fight for, to identify with emotionally and viscerally. And so, even when we start with good intentions and clear minds – we are fighting not Islam but Islamism, not religion but theocracy – we can soon simply drift and degenerate into more primitive associations.

What we've been watching from Palin to Gingrich is an exploitation of this human degeneracy, or in the ADL's case, sheer liberal cowardice in the face of tribalism. Even now, Gingrich and Palin fail to understand that rhetorical polarization may be good politics but it is terrible statesmanship in a war of ideas as well as physical combat. It's a long war that will only be won in the minds of most Muslims, which is why how we act remains of importance. Yes, the human psyche will make easy and common and hard-to-resist associations between a religion and an act of war by the most deranged and nihilist members of that religion.

But resisting it is what makes us decent. And to be, at a minimum, decent is, to my mind, the core aspiration of Anglo-American political morality.

In a piece reported from Turkey, Claire Berlinski changes her mind about a prohibition against a type of Islamic dress, arguing that to ban the burqa "is an offense to liberty; not to do so is a greater one." I disagree; but I have to say her piece is one of those rare moments when you see both sides in extreme clarity.

Jim ably dispatches some salient challenges. But there is a concept in this crucial conservative distinction between theoretical and practical wisdom that has been missing so far: individual judgment. A social change can never be proven in advance to be the right answer to a pressing problem. We can try to understand previous examples; we can examine large randomized trials; but in the end, we have to make a judgment about the timeliness and effectiveness of certain changes. It is the ability to sense when such a moment is ripe that we used to call statesmanship. It is that quality that no wonkery can ever replace.

It is why we elect people and not algorithms.

The Guardian documents it:

Batty writes that it took Twitter four years to see its first 10 billion Tweets but just the past five months to see the next 10 billion.

Read Write Web is a little underwhelmed:

It would be nice to know what percentage of those Tweets were sent by humans, and what percentage by robots, RSS feeds, Tweeting houseplants in need of watering and marketing sleazebags who re-Tweet reputable blogs’ feeds automatically to give credence and cover to their occasionally original in-stream advertisements.

The tweet itself was a little incomprehensible, if not eerily instructive of the entire medium:

“So that means the barrage might come back later all at once.”

Words for the ages.

TNC compares bans on interracial marriage to prohibitions against same-sex marriage:

Banning interracial marriage meant that most black people could not marry outside of their race. This was morally indefensible, but very different than a total exclusion of gays from the institution of marriage. Throughout much of America, gays are effectively banned from marrying, not simply certain types of people, but any another compatible partner period. …

A more compelling analogy would be a law barring blacks, not from marrying other whites, but effectively from marrying anyone at all. In fact we have just such an analogy. In the antebellum South, the marriages of the vast majority of African-Americans, much like gays today, held no legal standing. Slavery is obviously, itself, a problem–but abolitionists often, and accurately, noted that among its most heinous features was its utter disrespect for the families of the enslaved. Likewise, systemic homophobia is, itself, a problem–but among its most heinous features is its utter disrespect for the families formed by gays and lesbians. Of course African-Americans, gay and straight, in 1810 lacked many other rights that gays, of all colors, today enjoy. Thus, to state the obvious, being born gay is not the same as being born a slave. But the fact is that in 1810, the vast majority of African-Americans–much like the vast majority of gays in 2010–lacked the ability to legally marry.

(Image by Justin Sullivan/Getty)

"I think you're on to why the 'Tea Party' was created, i.e. to give conservatives a way to rally with the Republican brand name in ruins, nothing more. They're the Altria of politics," – A commenter at TPM.

Because, regardless of whether you agree or disagree, he's being intellectually honest about the debt and entitlements, even if he is far too utopian in seeing a viable political majority for his vision. And because he seems unafraid to put real, adult fiscal conservatism to the people:

Ryan said he does not think that voters would punish the GOP for shunning attack politics and for speaking plainly about the country's problems. He notes his own political success: He won reelection in 2008 with 62 percent of the vote despite coming from a district and a state that voted for Obama.

"It's really important, I think, not to run campaigns on some vague platitudes and rip down the other party, to hopefully win an election by default," he said. "You have to win an election by acclamation, by aspiration, by telling people who you are and what you are going to do, and then go do it once you get there."

If the GOP wins the House, as I assume they will, Ryan really will become a critical figure, it seems to me. He'll be the Chairman of the Budget Committee – and one of six members of the president's Debt Commission. If he can resist the enormous partisan pressure against bipartisan compromise and intellectual honesty, he will be the unlikely hinge in one of the most critical moments in American economic and fiscal history.

Can Ryan keep his nerve?

And does Obama have the integrity to force the Democrats to get real on Medicare as well?

And can they form an alliance against the reactionary wings in both parties?

(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty.)