Author: Andrew Sullivan

ARAFAT GETS TO TAKE A WALK (IN RAMALLAH)
KARZAI STILL WINGING IT
G.O.P. RUNNING SCARED ON RECESSION PACKAGE
BUSH BACKS RIORDAN IN CALIFORNIA PRIMARY
BLAME CANADA

NAZIS, AGAIN: Here’s the Associated Press’s account of the murder of Daniel Pearl:

On Friday, a Pakistani investigator told The Associated Press that kidnappers killed Pearl by cutting his throat, and then decapitated him. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said the kidnappers made two videotapes, one longer than the other, that contained graphic images of Pearl’s death and the moments afterward. Another source close to the investigation said a tape showed Pearl before he was killed saying into the videocamera, “I am a Jew, my mother is a Jew.”

Thus, once again in human history, mere Jewishness is a prelude to execution. The term “Islamo-fascism,” popularized by Christopher Hitchens, is absolutely on target in this simple respect. Our enemy is without shame and without reflection obsessed with hatred of the Jewish people. If these barbarians had the power, they would do what Hitler did. And if we do not act soon, they may yet manage it.

SONTAG – “ICH BIN KEINE INTELLEKTUELLE!”: A reader alerts me to the latest Susan Sontag interview – this time with the German paper, Die Zeit. Sontag kept ducking serious political questions at first, in favor of epistemological ones. She is a “writer,” she claims, not an “intellectual.” In fact, calling her an intellectual is a function of sexism: “As soon as a woman surfaces, who thinks independently, looks good, and opens her mouth, she is styled an ‘intellectual’ star.” Poor Susan – objectified as a thinker. The horror of it. For a writer, though, she seems not to have changed her stripes. “Capitalism,” she avers, “is an ideology of selfishness and false individualism, which eats away at the feeling of human belonging and provokes irrational reactions: for example, the fanatical nationalism in Serbia or the jihad against the modern in Islamic countries.” Now that’s interesting: capitalism as a catalyst for Serbian genocide and Islamic fundamentalism. Are there many parts of the world less capitalist than post-Socialist Serbia and countries run by mullahs? Well, at least they aren’t America, where John Walker Lindh was “brutally mistreated by American soldiers,” and John Ashcroft is fomenting the “most radical fascist denial of the American system of rights that can be imagined.” And, of course, this is no war – because “I know, what war means, I have survived Sarajevo under siege, and I say to you, this is about repression and not war.” Repression? The forces of repression are the Americans, of course: “I hate the jihad, the American just as the Muslim.” Of course, moral equivalence is a step forward for Ms Sontag. In the past, she has considered mass-murdering Islamo-fascists as morally superior to the West. She’s going soft, isn’t she?

CFR HYSTERIA ANTIDOTE: Fred Barnes has, as usual, a cogent, sane response to the likely campaign finance reform bill. The bill doesn’t do much; and what it does, favors Republicans. Fred’s pretty persuasive, I’d say. While I’m at it, I might as well address the issue many of you have emailed me about. That’s the notion that it somehow adds to public cynicism if the Congress passes a law that might well turn out to be unconstitutional in parts. I’m sorry, but I don’t quite buy this. The argument might work if the Congress knew as a metaphysical certainty that parts of the bill would be struck down by the Court. But metaphysical certainty doesn’t exist in politics. And in cases like these, it’s also legitimate for the Congress to say what it wants to happen, but passing it off to the other branch to decide on the constitutional issues. That sounds to me like a civics lesson, not an exercise in cynicism. The argument is particularly odd coming from some conservative quarters, who are constantly urging the passage of, say, abortion restrictions that might well not pass the current Court. I think they’re right to do so; and CFR, even when parts of it may be constitutionally wobbly, should be held to the same standards.

SCHRODER’S GAFFE: The German chancellor wants the E.U. to set tax rates in member countries. That’ll teach those enterprising Brits. One way to stop sclerotic European welfare states from losing jobs to competitors is to reform and deregulate their economies. Another is to wreck competitors’ economies by imposing socialism on them from afar. Guess which option Schroder prefers.

GOLDBERG VERSUS BUCHANAN: Jonah takes on the paleos on immigration.

WILL ON EDWARDS: I think George Will is right that John Edwards is probably the most promising Democratic candidate for 2004. He still reminds me of Tony Blair though – after botox.

BOOK CLUB: My latest review of Chapters 3 through 9 of Robert Kaplan’s “Warrior Politics” is now posted, with your new comments. If you’ve read the book, and have a question to ask Bob Kaplan directly, then email it to bookclub@andrewsullivan.com. We’ll pick the five best questions, and send them on to Bob tomorrow for a response. Put the words ‘question for Bob’ in the subject line to help us read the emails more swiftly. And be tough on him. I haven’t. I like the book too much.

RICH PICKINGS: David Brock owes Frank Rich a big sloppy wet kiss. Who else on the planet cares less what a self-confessed liar and apparatchik now thinks about people he hung out with years ago? But the importance of Brock’s apostasy is very important to a certain view of the world. That view – whose Ground Zero is the Upper East Side set Rich writes from and for – is that all the evil in the world comes from the right. So the grotesque invasion of privacy and scandal-mongering that characterized the 1990s (and is still going strong) was the creation of the right and the right alone. As M. Vedrine might say, that is somewhat simplistic. It’s certainly fair to say that some parts of the right did indeed behave irresponsibly and disgustingly in the 1990s. But any faintly sophisticated account would also show that the left was involved as well. Rich begins his story with the Thomas-Hill hearings, as if the only people involved in muck-raking were
right-wingers trashing Hill. But the first trashing came from the left – of Thomas – with details of his porn collection that Rich then reproduces. And the first epic smear job of modern times was that of Robert Bork, also by the left. And among the pioneers of privacy-destruction were gay activists who helped pioneer ‘outing’ of the politically incorrect in the early 1990s. The cycle of dirt and scandal was thoroughly bipartisan. It’s also simplistic to argue that every attack on Bill Clinton was a right-wing smear on the president’s private life. There were many Clinton-critics (I was one of them) who were appalled by the invasion of his privacy, but equally horrified by his abuse of public office, perjury, obstruction of justice and general law-breaking. What’s really, er, rich is that, under the guise of sounding horrified by muck-raking, Rich goes at it with gusto, citing, among other things, Brock’s lurid accounts of dens of closeted homosexual Washingtonians. I have to say I’ve lived here for more than a decade, know a lot of gay men and a lot of Republicans and have never come across anything even faintly like this. It sounds fun, though.

TAXCUTSFORTHERICH: A relevant email to drive Paul Krugman up the wall:

I am not an economist. I don’t even pretend to understand the tax code. I take my taxes to H&R Block.
If any Democratic demagogue or liberal activist wants to claim that Mr. Bush’s tax cut favor “the rich,” let me show him my 1040. I support a wife and 5 kids on $45,000 a year. I had $2,700 in federal income taxes withheld — and got a refund of $4,600.
Guess that makes me “the rich.”

AN ANTI-KRUGMAN AVALANCHE: I didn’t realize what I was getting into. I’ve now had several new emails from professional and academic economists bemoaning the sad decline of Paul Krugman from first-class economist to third-class partisan ranter. Here’s yet another:

Here at Northwestern, and when I used to teach at William and Mary, Krugman was perceived among us as being a brilliant international economist, and skilled at insightful commentary that made complex economic issues clear to non-economists. His books and articles were useful in undergraduate teaching for precisely those reasons.
In the past 18 months I’ve noticed among my colleagues a significant decline in his reputation, even among politically “big-L liberal” economists, because he is increasingly perceived as grinding political polemics instead of offering enlightening and insightful commentary on economic issues. Many of us, regardless of political stripe, are increasingly embarrassed by him and his writing. I get the sense that this is the case even among my colleagues who themselves get money calls, although we’ve not explicitly discussed it.
For me it really kicked in last year with the California electricity situation, because my research is in electricity deregulation. Practically everything he asserted about the economics of the situation was wrong, and his articulation of it was tinged with political rhetoric. To tie this in with Posner’s recent comments about public intellectuals, it’s one thing for Krugman to talk about areas of economics that are beyond his expertise, but it’s another entirely to do so for politically polemic reasons. Of course, you’ve helped lay bare the irony of his electricity commentary.
The only reason most people I know still read him is to ridicule him, or to lament how the mighty hath fallen.

DERBYSHIRE’S PSYCHO PIC: And only our hero would post it online.

The terrorists who say they killed my husband may have taken his life, but they did not take his spirit. Danny is my life. They may have taken my life, but they did not take my spirit… My other hope now–in my seventh month of pregnancy–is that I will be able to tell our son that his father carried the flag to end terrorism, raising an unprecedented demand among people from all countries not for revenge but for the values we all share: love, compassion, friendship and citizenship far transcending the so-called clash of civilizations.” – Mariane Pearl, Daniel’s wife, in a deeply moving statement in the Wall Street Journal.

I spoke too soon. My next review installment of Chapters 3 through 7 will be posted first thing Monday morning. I got delayed with other deadlines.

It’s always good to check in on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s prayer check-list each week. The Almighty needs direction, of course, especially when there’s legislation pending in the Congress. Among this week’s approved petitions is the following suggested prayer:

That President Bush and Congress would have wisdom in relation to pending Campaign Finance legislation. Pray that provisions would be provided in the bill that would allow for distribution of voter guides and the airing of pro-life commercials.

Maybe they should simply pay Ralph Reed for the account. He has a direct line to God, doesn’t he? Or was that Ken Lay?

HEADS UP: I’ll be standing in for Daniel Schorr on NPR’s Weekend Edition tomorrow morning, live at 9am EST.

My report from Blair’s Britain – posted opposite..

Most days, I get an email from an economist, urging me to keep the heat on the shrill screeds of Paul “Enron” Krugman. Here’s a typical one:

It might be worth pointing to today’s Krugman column as an example of how intellectually slack this once able economist has become. He completely mischaracterizes “line 47” (the rate reduction credit on the 2001 Form 1040) as some sort of snatching away of the $300/$600 tax credit we all received last fall. In fact, it is an opportunity for those who did not receive a check they should have received to claim the credit. And the $300 was not, in any case, an “advance on future tax cuts”, it was the immediate implementation of the 2001 tax cut retroactive to the beginning of 2001. Doesn’t this guy check his facts anymore? I met Krugman once circa 1994 when he was still a working economist. At that time, most economists thought of him as a highly skilled trade theorist whose work had been mischaracterized by those more intellectually sloppy than him (he had written some papers showing how free trade was not desirable in some limited circumstances, and the anti-trade lobby had used it as ammunition against free trade generally). Economics is a profession where rigor is usually prized above ‘money calls’ (not that good economists don’t get money calls too sometimes), and Krugman was on everybody’s short list of future Nobel Laureates. It’s rather sad to see him trading on a stale reputation.

Here’s another more succinct synopsis:

Please keep pounding on Krugman. I have known Paul for 25 years and once regarded him as one of the better, if not best, international economic theorists in the world. Alas his sojourn into being an op/ed columnist has totally perverted him.

I wonder if this is the consensus now among professional or academic economists. There’s always an element of resentment toward fellow academics who make it into the mainstream and get “money calls,” but the constant chorus I keep getting from professionals suggests the Krugman credibility problem is now much deeper than that.

In his battle with the Weekly Standard, the pious, publicly-funded leftist starts to lose it.

THE ANTI-WAR LEFT IN ACTION: A useful first-hand account from FrontPage magazine. My favorite Begala-ism: “Now we know that [Bush] has a problem with Saddam Hussein. We know that. We know that he’s got to take revenge for what Saddam did to his daddy.” Maxine Waters, of course.

WHY I’M WRONG ABOUT CFR: Your letters will follow. Here’s Wally Olson’s take.

The disgusting murder of Daniel Pearl is another reminder of the barbarism we are now fighting. Its grotesque brutality, its shameless spectacle and its media manipulation are straight out of the pagan warrior handbook, as Robert Kaplan would describe it. We have every reason to be outraged, as well as saddened. But we have to remind ourselves that these are the risks of war against such an enemy. So far, the United States has survived this conflict with amazingly few casualties in the foreign arena. One is too many, of course. But I feel worried by the idea, buried in today’s Washington Post story that the administration might be considering a “new policy to take action to help free any American held hostage overseas, instead of just those who are U.S. officials. Options could include military strikes or direct contact with kidnappers, but not negotiations over demands, officials said.” This strikes me as unwise. Responding to every kidnapping of a U.S. citizen could become a permanent endeavor. Such a zero-tolerance policy, however laudable in principle, might even encourage such kidnappings, if they are seen as a way to distract and manipulate American public opinion and to yank the chain of the American government. We shouldn’t rise to this bait. The Pearl murder is surely a moment for anger but also for steady nerves. I can’t imagine the much-liked reporter would have wanted his legacy to be anything else.

POSEUR ALERT: “I think it will take years before we can repair the damage done by that statement,” – former president Jimmy Carter, on president Bush’s “axis of evil” phrase. What is Carter thinking? For a former president to criticize a current president so harshly while the country is at war is breath-taking enough. But who on earth does Jimmy Carter mean by “we” in that sentence? “We” as in craven appeasers of dictatorships, pathetic ditherers in international affairs, and sanctimonious prigs, perhaps? OK, I take his point.

SWIFT’S ABDICATION: The Boston Herald’s Margery Eagan masterfully dismembers the arrogance and illogic of the Massachusetts governor.

CLASSIC NOONAN: “As a communicator [Rumsfeld is] clear as clean water. He seems ingenuous. He talks with his hands. He’s thought it through and knows a lot and tells you what he knows. At first you sense his candor and clarity and enjoy it without realizing it. Then you realize you must be enjoying it because you’re still listening. Then you sense that his candor and clarity are in the service of intelligence and clean intentions. You find yourself following what he says, following the logic and the argument. Which makes you ultimately lean toward following him.” – Peggy Noonan, getting under Rummy’s skin, Wall Street Journal, today.

BOOK CLUB: Bob Kaplan recommends further reading; you keep at him. Later today: my take on Chapters III – VII.

“They’re one of the most dedicated couples in the penguin enclosure,” said Angie Pelekedis, a spokesman for the New York Aquarium, on Coney Island. “They sleep in the same nest. They even have sex, though I don’t know how successful that is.” This from the Telegraph’s story on the emergence of a gay penguin couple in New York. What’s interesting is that it seems to be far more than mere opportunistic homosexuality – which is so common in the animal kingdom. It’s actual coupling – and another nail in the coffin of the natural law argument that homosexuality is somehow unnatural. Only if you define nature as unnatural does the argument make any sense, given what we now know about humans and animals in the 21st century.

Why does the veep keep on lying about the GAO’s requests? Cheney continues saying they want the details of his notes. But the GAO has long since abandoned such a demand. The always-resourceful Byron York rightly sees danger ahead for the administration.