Month: October 2010

Will Wilkinson reflects on American foreign policy and its causes:

Even the hardened neo-con architects of the war in Iraq are idealists of sorts, sincerely believing that frequent displays of America's awesome power to wreak devastation and death prevent even deadlier wars and make more favourable the chance that freedom will flourish worldwide. The United States is "causing enormous trouble around the world" not due to some muddled idea of freedom, but due to a mixed-up conviction that America is special, the vanguard of providence, called forth unto the world with the righteous sword of liberation. If America is "almost a rogue state", it is because our Pharisaic self-infatuation encourages us to see ourselves as a colossus of emancipation both able and obligated to stomp around the globe making it safe for democracy. It really isn't because Americans insist on motoring to the Piggly Wiggly in petrol-guzzling Ram Ziggurats.

The post is a response to this interview with Jonathan Franzen. On this whole topic, I recommend Andy Bacevich's new book, Washington Rules.

Josh Barro designs one. He wants to index it to inflation:

The gas tax was last raised in 1993, and has fallen by a third in real terms since. Many state gas taxes and other vehicle taxes have also fallen in real terms. But this has not led to lower spending on road construction and maintenance—from 1994 to 2008, while GDP grew 103 percent and road spending grew 102 percent, gas and vehicle tax receipts rose only 70 percent.

Governments have made up the difference by tripling their borrowing to finance roads and tripling the diversion of general revenue to pay for road costs. This is a bad trend, because gas taxes below the cost of roads use cause inefficient overuse of roads, and the higher sales and income taxes used to plug the gas tax gap are a drag on the economy. Real annual reductions in gas tax rates hasn't starved the beast, but have made the way we pay for our road infrastructure less efficient.

David Boaz's pitch:

People have rights that governments may not violate.

Thomas Jefferson defined them as the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When I’m asked what libertarianism is, I often say that it is the idea that adult individuals have the right and the responsibility to make the important decisions about their own lives. More categorically, I would say that people have the right to live their lives in any way they choose so long as they don’t violate the equal rights of others. What right could be more basic, more inherent in human nature, than the right to choose what substances to put in one’s own body? Whether we’re talking about alcohol, tobacco, herbal cures, saturated fat, or marijuana, this is a decision that should be made by the individual, not the government. If government can tell us what we can put into our own bodies, what can it not tell us? What limits on government action are there?

I agree with every word. Especially when this "substance" is a fricking plant that grows easily on the ground. A government "banning" a naturally occurring plant – to which humans need do no more than pick it up and smoke it – is as absurd as it is grotesque. You'll be banning mushrooms next … oh, wait!

A reader writes:

Interestingly enough, Fox Business Channel has a couple prominent shows that loosely fit your description of a Ron Paul-ish principled conservative show on which liberals should be comfortable appearing: "Stossel", with John Stossel, and "Freedom Watch", with Andrew Napolitano.  Both are essentially libertarian in slant and regularly defy the FNC conventional wisdom. I don't watch any cable news with regularity, but whenever I stop on Napolitano for a few minutes I have to double-check and make sure I'm watching Fox.  Maybe one of these shows will make it over to FNC proper at some point?  We can hope.

I think Stossel and Napolitano are both great TV and independent thinkers – not programmed Republican apparatchiks. (I also want to add what I didn't in my original post. I think Shep Smith is the exception that proves the rule.

His news show is crisp, fun, and neutral. He also has occasional opinions, but they are ways in which he humanizes the news and doesn't engage in faux objectivity. They're not propaganda like Hannity or Morris or O'Reilly. He's an emblem of what Fox could be if it regained integrity). Another writes:

MSNBC rarely invites conservatives on their programs, irrespective of whether they are "hard" or "soft" conservatives. And the idea of such hosts as Olbermann or Maddow or O'Donnell promoting anything beyond "partisan liberal propaganda" is utter foolishness. My question to you is: Are you going to boycott MSNBC, a channel on which you have previously appeared?

I think my reader is right on. I went on Olbermann once and felt a little sick afterward. But I was able to voice support for the genuine pro-life position when I was on there and defend sincere pro-lifers from being tarred with an extremist brush. I like Maddow, and take the point. No, I won't go on those shows (have never been on Maddow) for exactly the same reasons.

"Transparency International has brought out its Corruption Perceptions Index for 2010. Top five least corrupt nations: Denmark, New Zealand, Singapore, Finland, Sweden. Bottom five most corrupt, from the bottom up: Somalia, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Iraq, Uzbekistan. Good to know we’re only currently occupying two of that latter five," – John Derbyshire.

William Saletan defends himself against myself and Ta-Nehisi and focuses on the crucial point:

But where did Williams say irrational fear of Muslims is justified?

He said it in the very quote Will cites:

When I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb, and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous. Now, I remember also that when the Times Square bomber was at court, I think this was just last week. He said the war with Muslims, America's war is just beginning, first drop of blood. I don't think there's any way to get away from these facts.

By directly juxtaposing people just dressed in Muslim garb with a Times Square bomber threatening war between the US and all Muslims, and saying "I don't think there's any way to get away from these facts," he was legitimizing his nervousness, not confessing it. I see no other way to interpret those remarks, although of course he contradicted himself elsewhere in the conversation. He then had a chance to repudiate or retract the connection in the quote above and refused. Moreover, I did not call Williams a bigot, as Will claims. I said the quote above was bigoted, and that in my view, Williams was not, so far as I could see, a bigot. Will goes on:

I look forward to a world in which no American fears a Muslim on a plane. I hope writers like Coates, Sullivan, and me will help us get there. But in the meantime, we face more immediate threats. One is the small number of Americans who think their raw fear or anger at Muslims justifies violence. Another is the very large number of Americans, including dozens of congressional candidates and the next speaker of the House, who think Muslims shouldn't build a mosque in a place that strikes the majority as "insensitive." The task before us is to defuse such violence and discrimination by encouraging reflection on the emotions that underlie them. And to reflect on those emotions, we need to be honest about them. Williams' conversation with O'Reilly was part of that process. He shouldn't have been fired for it, and he doesn't deserve to be called a bigot. Eventually, I think Coates and Sullivan will agree.

Robert Wright, on the other hand, compares Juan Williams's comments about Muslims to homophobia.

Greenwald meditates on the all-too-common occurrence:

Leaving aside the debate over whether the Obama DOJ should be defending DOMA in court, the human costs from this conduct are severe, though often overlooked.  One of the most destructive aspects of DOMA is that it bars gay Americans who are married to a foreign national — an increasingly common situation for Americans generally in a globalized world — from obtaining a marriage-based visa for their same-sex foreign spouse.  By contrast, Americans who are married to a foreign national of the opposite sex receive more or less automatic visas and then Green Cards for their spouse, entitling them to live together in the U.S.

Just please watch this two-minute news report, describing the gut-wrenching (though not uncommon) plight of Josh Vandiver, an American citizen, and Henry Velandia, his Venezuelan spouse.  Despite their being legally married in Connecticut after four years of living together, Velandia, because of DOMA, is about to be deported to Venezuela, where Vandiver is unable to live and work.  In other words, the U.S. Government is about to separate this couple, who want to spend the rest of their lives together, and force them to live on separate continents thousands of miles apart.

Another case of this kind of ghastly trade-off is detailed here. Glenn lives in Brazil because this country will not treat his relationship with his partner as legal. He's lucky to be able to work from anywhere, and lucky that his spouse's country lets him live with his partner. Aaron would be in the same position if my green card application – made solely on my own merits – doesn't come through. But this is rare:

For the thousands of same-sex couples in that situation, the choices are grim indeed:  they can choose (1) to live illegally in one country or the other, or (2) separate and live thousands of miles away — for the indefinite future — from the person with whom they want to share their lives.  As the HRW Report put it:  "thousands of U.S. citizens and their foreign same-sex partners face enormous hardships, separation and even exile because discriminatory U.S. immigration policies deprive these couples of the basic right to be together."

With anti-gay and anti-immigrant forces about to take back the Congress, it seems as if this will not change for a long, long time. And so America increasingly becomes the one place in the Western world where gay relationships and marriages do not, as far as the federal government is concerned, exist.

Some disturbing news of possible Democratic shenanigans.

Eden Prairie, Minnesota, 12 pm