Month: September 2011

"The controversy over Live Action’s tactics in exposing Planned Parenthood’s abuses is now well known. And in the face of that controversy, some who are willing to countenance lying for a good cause have seemingly abandoned argument in favor of dismissiveness. Lila Rose’s lawyer, for example, was quoted in USA Today as saying that critics had made 'much ado about nothing.' Such an attitude to a matter of grave concern—what it means to defend the lives of the unborn in a fully upright way—is unworthy. By contrast, Professor Janet Smith, who has never shirked argument on behalf of the truth, has made a serious effort to support the often ill-defended claims on behalf of Rose and her Live Action colleagues. However, we believe that her recent intervention in the debate on lying and Live Action goes astray and warrants comment. We think that Smith’s commitment to truth should lead her to the conclusion that, as we will show, false assertion is always wrong," – Christopher Tollefsen and Alexander Pruss, First Things.

Some background. 

Jonathan Bernstein is startled by the lack of substantive foreign policy back and forth at the Republican debates:

 It may be that GOP primary voters think the 2012 election will be won or lost on domestic issues alone, and won’t end up pinning down the candidates on foreign policy in any meaningful sense. This is is a pretty remarkable turnaround, given how central foreign policy was for the GOP candidates in the last two presidential elections, and given that the United States is still involved in multiple wars abroad. And it will certainly be disappointing to the dwindling group of conservative writers and foreign policy wonks who are hoping that the GOP nominees will pledge to revive Bush’s national security policies — something Mitt Romney and Rick Perry have been largely unwilling to do.

They have been pretty clear about this. 

More similar than you might think:

According to a spate of recent studies, our noses are in fact exquisitely sensitive instruments that guide our everyday life to a surprising extent. Subtle smells can change your mood, behaviour and the choices you make, often without you even realising it. Our own scents, meanwhile, flag up emotional states such as fear or sadness to those around us. The big mystery is why we aren't aware of our nasal activity for more of the time.

An explanation for why a smell can conjure up a vivid memory:

[T]he very first time we associate a smell with an object, it evokes a much greater response in our brains than for any subsequent encounter with the smell or object, laying down stronger foundations for the memory. That doesn't happen with any other sense. Since those first encounters with a smell would have happened at a young age, this might explain why smells often transport us back to our childhood.

Douglas Rushkoff recently wondered:

Jobs, as such, are a relatively new concept. People may have always worked, but until the advent of the corporation in the early Renaissance, most people just worked for themselves. … The question we have to begin to ask ourselves is not how do we employ all the people who are rendered obsolete by technology, but how can we organize a society around something other than employment? Might the spirit of enterprise we currently associate with "career" be shifted to something entirely more collaborative, purposeful, and even meaningful?

Phil Bowermaster imagines the new parameters:

Increasingly, perhaps, a job is something that we each have to create. We can’t count on someone else to create one for us. That model is disappearing. We have to carve something out for ourselves, something that the machines won’t immediately grab.

We discussed earlier Arnold Kling's version of the paradox, "if a job can be defined, it can be automated or outsourced." A.S. at Free Exchange applies the logic of the above arguments to the real world:

The labour market rewards individual capital, being adaptable, knowing your industry, keeping your skills fresh and having a network of peers. The best way to build this is by changing jobs more frequently; a good job now must enhance your personal skill set which you can take somewhere else. That is why even before the crisis, average tenure was declining and most job churn was voluntary. This is a large shift in our definition of what a good job means.

A dubstep masterpiece:

Norm Geras complicates my thoughts on religious practice and belief:

Andrew speaks of beliefs of a kind that haven't been at the centre of my mind in writing about this question; such as the belief that 'the Blessed Virgin was… transported into the sky rather than dying' – one, I have to confess, I wasn't aware of. However, in questioning the thesis that belief isn't a crucial part of what religion is about, I had in mind more 'mainstream' beliefs, such as the beliefs that there is a God, that this God has certain characteristics and enjoins certain ways of being and doing, the belief in the immortality of the soul, and so forth.

Here, just today, I read that a Scottish rugby player, Euan Murray, believes that 'the Bible is the word of God' and he will not play rugby on the Sabbath on that account. Well, is this a belief or not? It is associated with a practice, no question about it: the practice of observing the Sabbath. But how can the bible be the word of God if there is no God or if there is one but He doesn't have any words? How can Euan Murray's practice of not playing rugby on the Sabbath be made sense of if we treat his beliefs as merely marginal or of no consequence?

Tim Carney predicts that the Republican primary electorate will ultimately settle for Mitt Romney: 

Perry's run looks less like Bill Clinton's 1992 white-knight performance and more like Fred Thompson's 2008 fizzle. This leaves Republicans with the unthinkable: Romney, who ran to the left of Ted Kennedy in 1994 and who could have been Obama's health policy director, is now the most likely man to carry the GOP nomination in 2012. It's Republican history repeating itself. In 2008, John McCain was the man the GOP base would never tolerate. McCain had passed unconstitutional "campaign finance reform," resisted Bush's tax cuts, supported a Ted Kennedy-sponsored "patients' bill of rights," and advocated amnesty for illegal immigrants, among other apostasies. 

Even Chait now sees Romney as a likely candidate. But Perry is still ahead in CNN's latest poll. Andrew Romano points to Romney's lackluster electoral record:

Mitt Romney is missing something. On paper, and onstage, he is almost flawless. But elections aren’t decided by algorithms or debate audiences; they’re decided on the trail. And the bottom line is that Romney is not very good at winning votes. In fact, over the course of his 17-year political career, he has notched only one electoral victory: the 2002 contest that made him governor. Most of the time—in 18 of his 23 primaries and elections, to be exact—Romney loses.

Katrina Trinko likewise isn't counting Perry out yet. Blumenthal puts his lead in context:

Whatever the recent trend, keep in mind that support for Perry, which recent polls have put in a percentage range of the mid to upper 20s, is roughly the same as Rudy Giuliani's support at this point in 2007 and slightly less than Howard Dean received as a Democratic candidate just before the Iowa caucuses in 2004. For Perry to win the Republican nomination, he will need to do more than maintain his current support.

A.O. Scott reflects on Thatcher's cultural influence:

Her ascendancy was a result of tensions and contradictions within British society that also produced a singularly vibrant culture of opposition. Those forces predated her 1979 election: punk rock, realist television dramas, agitprop theater and caustically satirical fiction were all features of the earlier ’70s, when the country was governed by Edward Heath and James Callaghan, two of the least charismatic statesmen in modern European history. But Thatcher deepened and sharpened the contradictions. Her impatient, confrontational populism can be seen as a reaction against the disorder amplified and travestied by punk, but her impatience with decorum and hypocrisy, her assault on customs and institutions, was itself a form of punk.

I grew up in that atmosphere as well. The savagery of the opposition to Thatcher should never be forgotten – nor its occasionally brilliant cultural achievements. Daniel Sage reviews Clare Berlinski's book on how she transformed British politics.

Chait deconstructs it:

Obama's international strategy is pretty much the same thing as Obama's domestic political strategy. The first part involves extending a hand to your adversary and demonstrating your own reasonableness. Assuming they don't take it, the second involves more traditional hardball politics. In this case, Obama is using the method to defend the traditional U.S.-Israel alliance, but it works the same way for advocating Democratic positions on jobs or the deficit or health care. Obama always starts out his strategy alarming his allies.

If you are going to attack, make it seem as if you have been left no other option. Because, in Obama's case, he often has no other option. But it is the demonstration of that – even if it means his own temporary humiliation – that allows for more radicalism. I guess it's how a black man pushes the envelope. After asking everybody very nicely for agreement first.