Month: September 2010

A reader writes:

I don’t buy that a backlash is waiting in the wings if Prop 19 passes.  For starters, if polling is at 44% in favor of a prohibition-type issue, there’s likely a Bradley Effect that makes it a near coin-toss.  As for the 54% opposed, that doesn’t mean 54% that would take to the streets with signs and pitchforks.  Many of those opposed are likely stating a simple preference when asked, but in the end would just go about their days and lives if marijuana was legalized. Furthermore, a lot of conservatives would find themselves in a trap.  How can the Tea Party crowd make noise about an issue of increased liberty and state sovereignty without appearing like complete hypocrites? 

If they take the side of prohibition it will split their ranks.  If they accept it (or support it), you will find that Boehner and company will just want to avoid the issue altogether.  I suppose the religious right would perhaps mobilize a bit, but it really isn’t a God issue and my hunch is they feel they have bigger battles to fight.

I’m very interested to see it play out, because a lot of conservative libertarians are going to have to walk the walk.  I live near Atlanta, in Neal Boortz country, and he has claimed a pro-legalization stance for years.  By proxy, my otherwise conservative Republican in-laws have claimed the same.  I’m curious to see if it’s a position they’re actually willing to see carried out, or if it was just a stance of association.  I think for a lot of people this will be a moment of rubber meeting the road, and like the increase in support for gay marriage after Iowa, New Hampshire, et al, people will come to the realization that frogs will not rain from the sky.

I was struck by this sentence in D'Souza's Forbes piece because it seemed, well, not very Tocquevillian to me:

 A half-century [after the Founders] Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of America as creating "a distinct species of mankind." This is known as American exceptionalism.

Did Tocqueville actually claim that America created "a distinct species of mankind," a new and different "species" of human being, superior to those who had come before? Here is the passage D'Souza is referring to, from Democracy In America:

[Americans] have all a lively faith in the perfectibility of man; they judge that the diffusion of knowledge must necessarily be advantageous, and the consequences of ignorance fatal; they all consider society as a body in a state of improvement, humanity as a changing scene, in which nothing is, or ought to be, permanent; and they admit that what appears to them to-day to be good, may be superseded by something better to-morrow. I do not give all these opinions as true, but as American opinions.

The Anglo-Americans are not only united by these common opinions, but they are separated from all other nations by a feeling of pride. For the last fifty years, no pains have been spared to convince the inhabitants of the United States that they are the only religious, enlightened, and free people. They perceive that, for the present, their own democratic institutions prosper, whilst those of other countries fail; hence they conceive a high opinion of their superiority, and are not very remote from believing themselves to be a distinct species of mankind. Thus, the dangers which threaten the American Union do not originate in diversity of interests or of opinions; but in the various characters and passions of the Americans.

My italics. You will notice that, pace d'Souza, far from Tocqueville asserting that Americans were a "distinct species of mankind", he was saying that Americans

are not very remote from believing themselves to be a distinct species of mankind.

And it is clear that this is, for him, if anything, a moral criticism – the gentle sarcasm of the passage above is unmissable – not an endorsement of a fact.

De Tocqueville was an educated and wise man who deeply admired and was fascinated by many aspects of American culture and democracy. But he was under no illusions that human nature had somehow changed across the Atlantic, and was a critic of what he saw as American democratic cultural mediocrity. He was an aristocrat, and a profound admirer of England, and the English constitution, as any reader of his other masterpiece, The Ancien Regime And The Revolution would understand. Tocqueville also did not see America as uniquely destined for world domination in the nineteenth century:

"There are now two great nations in the world, which starting from different points, seem to be advancing toward the same goal: the Russians and the Anglo-Americans… Each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world."

So D'Souza simply gets de Tocqueville wrong. Providence was not uniquely American. It was Anglo-American … and Russian! And he was above all a French patriot who wanted his own country to prosper by learning from the examples of others.

And this is not a trivial matter. For what the new right has come to assert as empirical fact is that Americans are actually a distinct species of mankind, that America has a divine blessing not bestowed on any other countries, that its inherent specialness means that if Americans torture, for example, it is somehow not torture; that if Americans invade a country, it is never an invasion but always a liberation; that if Americans occupy a foreign country for a decade, it is not an occupation; and so on.

This kind of nationalism is dangerous. It is not patriotism. It is not pride in the exceptional history and constitution of the US, which Obama has expressed and, in many ways, exemplifies. It is a kind of national idolatry in order to justify anything America does, and to demonize anyone, like Tocqueville and Obama and any educated person, who sees the imperfection and flaws of America, as well its immense and enduring and specific virtues.

Brooklyn, New York, 12 pm

Forbes says it fact-checked Dinesh D'Souza's racist smear piece on President Obama.

On Thursday, the magazine issued a minor correction on its Web site, saying that Mr. D’Souza had “slightly misquoted” Mr. Obama from a speech he gave about the BP oil spill. Mr. D’Souza also said that Mr. Obama did not focus in the speech on “cleanup strategies.” Forbes’ correction stated, “Obama’s speech did discuss concrete measures to investigate the oil spill and bring it under control.” The Forbes spokeswoman said that the correction put an end to the magazine’s review of the matter.

Apparently the magazine's fact-checkers aren't very thorough. Here is a passage from D'Souza's article:

A good way to discern what motivates Obama is to ask a simple question: What is his dream? Is it the American dream? Is it Martin Luther King's dream? Or something else? It is certainly not the American dream as conceived by the founders. They believed the nation was a "new order for the ages." A half-century later Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of America as creating "a distinct species of mankind." This is known as American exceptionalism. But when asked at a 2009 press conference whether he believed in this ideal, Obama said no. America, he suggested, is no more unique or exceptional than Britain or Greece or any other country.

And here is President Obama at that 2009 press conference:

I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism. I’m enormously proud of my country and its role and history in the world.

If you think about the site of this summit and what it means, I don’t think America should be embarrassed to see evidence of the sacrifices of our troops, the enormous amount of resources that were put into Europe postwar, and our leadership in crafting an Alliance that ultimately led to the unification of Europe. We should take great pride in that.

And if you think of our current situation, the United States remains the largest economy in the world. We have unmatched military capability. And I think that we have a core set of values that are enshrined in our Constitution, in our body of law, in our democratic practices, in our belief in free speech and equality, that, though imperfect, are exceptional.

In other words, when asked whether he believed in that ideal, Obama said yes. Matt Yglesias calls fact-checking useless. In this case, a capable fact-checking would've corrected a major error.

Gallup finds Romney and Palin leading the pack:

Historically, Republicans have generally nominated the early front-runner as the party's presidential candidate. The notable exception came in the last presidential election, when Rudy Giuliani led in most of the early nomination polls but had several poor early primary or caucus showings before withdrawing from the race.

The New York Times reports:

Pakistan closed the most important border crossing for trucks supplying NATO-led coalition troops in Afghanistan on Thursday in apparent retaliation for an attack by coalition helicopters on a Pakistani security post hours earlier. Trucks and oil tankers were stopped at the border post of Torkham just north of Peshawar and it was unclear when the post, one of two land crossings, would reopen, a Pakistani security official said.

Meanwhile, the real possibility of horrifying war crimes by the Pakistani military could mean the end of any legal cooperation between the two militaries. This war is falling apart, even as we send young Americans into the labyrinth of Kandahar to fight an enemy they cannot see, adequately identify, in defense of a government whose leader appears to be having a nervous breakdown.

Will Wilkinson interrogates the “mama grizzly” phenomenon:

Carly Fiorina has been included in the ranks of the mama grizzlies by mama-grizzly-in-chief Sarah Palin. It is not my impression that this has harmed Ms Fiorina’s chances among conservatives. But Ms Fiorina was the first woman chief executive of a Fortune 20 corporation! Surely this is more impressive than her experience raising two step-daughters. I’d like to understand the weirdness of this a little better.

My sense is that the mama-grizzly phenomenon is part of populist conservatism’s obsession with American authenticity.

Ms Fiorina’s education, executive experience, and vast wealth places her among the elite of the elite of America’s elite elite. But “the elite” are the bogey of salt-of-the-earth “real” Americans, and elitism is the great sin against God-fearing, flag-bedecked authenticity. Ms Fiorina is so far from the prototype of red-state authenticity, she might as well be from Jupiter or France. So, in order to get a boost from the tea party movement’s populist wave, it seems the most must be made of any connection, however, tenuous, to populist conservative ideals of womanhood. Apparently marrying into a couple of daughters is enough to qualify the former HP chief a “mama”.

What of grizzlies? Yes, they are fiercely protective of their cubs. Also, one does not find them roaming the effete streets of America’s populous, urban Democratic strongholds.

"Las Vegas hotel guests left with severe burns from 'death ray' caused by building's design."

…Germany will finish paying reparations for WWI!