Author: Andrew Sullivan

by Patrick Appel

Andrew Exum provides an interesting definition of success:

[W]hile Iraq continues to be wracked by violence and suffers from political instability, U.S. interests have been served in the sense that the conflict in Iraq is now an Iraqi conflict that will be largely settled and fought by Iraqi actors. It's a curious, tragic and selfish definition of victory, I know. But it's victory.

by Conor Friedersdorf

Daniel Larison writes:

…what I find remarkable about this mosque controversy is how blatantly, narrowly political the opposition to this particular construction project has been. It has been an exercise in manipulating public anger and using it for the purpose of waging an ostensibly anti-Islamist political campaign by organizing against harmless Muslims and their organizations. A distinctive American culture isn’t under threat from this mosque, the Cordoba Initiative or Imam Abdul Rauf. Rauf and those like him do represent a threat to lazy conservative anti-jihadism that treats every Muslim to “the right” of Ayaan Hirsi Ali as a potential fifth columnist and would-be enforcer of creeping shari’a… 

It isn’t enough if Muslims peacefully practice their religion, reject violence and embrace their new countries, but they must also become pro-government loyalists.

In another post, he says:

These champions give the impression that they are a tiny band of courageous souls resisting the tide of indifference and appeasement that is otherwise taking us all to oblivion, but somehow they wind up critiquing figures such as Ramadan (or Rauf) who pose no conceivable threat to them or to anyone else. The less dangerous the Muslims in question are, the more insidious and subversive they are made out to be.

Obviously, there has been no shortage of self-appointed protectors who want to warn the public about threats from Islamist groups, and for the most part mainstream media outlets have repeated these warnings or served as venues for the issuing of such warnings. The point isn’t that there aren’t threatening, hostile Islamists in the world, but that they are largely so powerless, so irrelevant, and so few in number that it makes no sense that they inspire so much panic and alarm. Scoffing at the alarmists shouldn’t blind anyone to real Islamist threats when they exist. On the contrary, criticizing the people who routinely exaggerate the power of Islamists is an important part of confronting the threats that actually exist. It is also an expression of confidence in “what we stand for” that we don’t believe our way of life can be destroyed by such relatively weak foes.

The staunchest critics of the Cordoba Initiative ought to see that lavishing so much scrutiny on Imam Rauf and his plans for a mosque near Ground Zero is folly in a world where there are plenty of Islamist radicals who openly preach violence, encourage terrorism, and otherwise represent an actually threat to the United States. I've said before that it's perfectly acceptable to scrutinize Imam Rauf's record, and to subject his style of interfaith outreach to praise or criticism.

But if your object is protecting the United States from a security threat, as opposed to constructively engaging the question of how moderates ought to engage Islam as a whole, the decision to focus on Imam Rauf is the kind of judgment call that should basically disqualify you from any position actually responsible for safeguarding American national security.

by Chris Bodenner

In response to the court ruling, Kinsley puts the views of its supporters under the microscope:

Of the tens of thousands of embryos discarded by fertility clinics every year, a few are used for stem cell research. Extracting the stem cells involves destroying the embryos, which would be destroyed anyway. True, the destruction of embryos used for research is purposeful, whereas the destruction of embryos in the everyday work of fertility clinics is incidental. But is that distinction really strong enough to support the difference between cavalier acceptance of tens of thousands of embryo deaths in fertility clinics and a legal ban on using a small fraction of these embryos to help develop ways to save lives? (Conflict-of-interest note: My life included. I have Parkinson’s.)

(Photo: A colony of human embryonic stem Cells is seen on a computer monitor the is hooked up to a microscope at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center at University Wisconsin-Madison March 10, 2009 in Madison, Wisconsin. On March 9, 2009 President Barack Obama signed an order reversing the Bush administration's limits on human embryonic stem cell research. By Darren Hauck/Getty Images.)

by Patrick Appel

Bernstein tries to sort ideologies:

I do think that there's something authentically different between liberals and conservatives, at least some of the time, and at least in some cases.  If not first principles, though, perhaps we can call them impulses.  To me, the liberal impulse is basically: We Can Do Better.   And the conservative impulse?  Don't Make It Worse.  Liberals, or perhaps all of us when we're inspired by the liberal impulse, look around and see a variety of problems and available resources and want to alleviate pain and suffering; they want to solve problems.  Conservatives, or perhaps all us us when we're inspired by the conservative impulse, remember all the cases of noble intentions gone awry, the cases of unintended consequences, the cases in which problems seemed terribly severe but then they seemingly melted away without anyone, and certainly not everyone collectively, trying to address them.  Liberals appreciate the promise of the future; conservatives appreciate how rickety the accomplishments of the present are, and how easily what we think is safe can be destroyed.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

Andrew Marin's "I'm Sorry" campaign is merely a bait and switch to keep the pews and the collection dish full; it is nothing close to love and acceptance. In his own words, "I can still dignify someone's story and humanity and experiences as totally legitimate without giving away what I theologically think, feel and believe." If that isn't a classic example of deception, I don't know what is. What I do know is that isn't what I think of as a sincere apology.

When one is sorry, they realize the error in their way. It seems the only error Marin is admitting is vocalizing what he 'really' thinks of Gays. Is as if he's saying, "I'm sorry I said you were sinful and are going to hell; from now on I'll just keep what I really think of you to myself." This becomes painfully clear when you watch the epilogue on the video at the CBN site where the commentator draws parallels between Marin's campaign and that of Paul's campaign to the Corinthians who wwere awash in "sexual sin".

Another:

Color me unimpressed.  It's all well and good to take a less combative position but at the end of the day, we're still sinners who need to renounce our lifestyles.  Language always gives you away: "'I think Andrew does a great job of helping the church realize that there are a lot of people in that lifestyle that are hurting and who want to be reached with the Gospel,' O'Brien said." Translation: a lot of people are committing gay acts which is causing them pain and they want to be saved by Jesus.  If only we were nicer to them, they'd see the way!

Until Christians can accept that gay people exist, that suppressing their most fundamental desire is incredibly harmful, and that the best way to channel that desire is into committed, legally sanctioned relationships, we're never going to make any progress.  This sounds like another dressed up way to get us to pray away the gay, and I'm not interested.  Good for him in realizing what harm Christianity have caused gay people over the years.  Unfortunately, he still has a lot to learn.

Another:

Andrew Marin's theology is conservative. His education comes from Moody Bible Institute, which has moved from a condemnation of homosexuality to an attitude of showing love to all sinners. The bibliography of Marin's Bible study offers such books as Welcoming But Not Affirming by S.J. Grenz and works from Mark Yarhouse, presenter at NARTH conferences to support the ex-gay philosophy, and Robert Gagnon, a conservative theologian whose fringe ideas are not taken seriously by many biblical scholars. Marin's website declares “The Marin Foundation believes that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, God breathed by the Holy Spirit through human authorship (2 Ti 3:16). Our organization does not attempt to rewrite scripture so as to either affirm, or declare judgment on the GLBT community.” He states in a seminar to youth group leaders that it is possible and desirable to move from homosexuality to heterosexuality.

So make no mistake, Marin believes acting on same-sex attraction is a sin. He simply equates himself as a sinner to the gay community and offers an apology for those who act hateful. He may indeed be sincere in his apology and his version of a welcome. Marin can believe what he wants. And thanks, I suppose, for the welcoming smile; it sure beats the vitriol being spewed out there. Some gays are okay with his belief because his behavior is such a pleasant alternative. But he refuses to answer the question of whether he finds homosexuality sinful, finding the idea "divisive." In order for his welcome to be accepted, he has to, and he knows it. Let him stand up for his faith—as so many affirming Christians do—and see what sort of response he gets then.

I find it telling that not one affirming Christian group supports Marin's foundation. He is fooling people who have been victims of the conservative Christians for far too long. I'm a straight Christian, and I find his duplicity damaging. I know that he is offering the most we can hope for from a biblical literalist. But he will make more people turn from God when they learn of his true theology. Let him at least be honest about it and see how many want his hugs.

by Patrick Appel

 A reader writes:

Couldn’t this be a simple case of supply and demand?  We’re in an economic downturn and the majority of Americans live in areas where a car is mandatory to function.  As Americans exercise frugality while replacing a necessity, might they not just be increasing the demand for used cars in the same way store brand groceries have experienced much higher sales?  Even at 10-30% higher, they’re still cheaper than new cars.

Another reader:

Cash for Clunkers took a total of 680,000 cars off the market, while total used car sales are around 12 million annually in the U.S.  In other words, it took somewhere around 6% of the pool out of circulation (again, a year ago).  This is not that much.

 

Third, neither the list of top makes purchased under the program nor the list of top makes traded in skews towards expensive cars.  Toyota, Ford, Honda, Chevy, Nissan, Hyundai and Kia topped the list for makes sold and Ford, Chevy, Dodge, Jeep and GMC were the top 5 for makes traded in, not Acura or Lexus.  (Cadillac was 9th on the trade-in list, but accounted for all of 3% of the total.)

Fourth, the actual purchases skewed towards normal, often less expensive, family cars.  The top 9 models were (in order), the Corolla, Civic, Camry, Focus, Elantra, Versa, Prius, Accord and Fit.  They accounted for more than 20% of the cars purchased under the program.  The only car on that list that you might characterize as an extravagance is the Prius, although the gas mileage advantage probably makes the net cost more comparable to cheaper cars.  Throw in the other smaller/family car models in the top 20, and they account for more than 30% of the cars purchased under the program.  (Oh, and the last five models on the list are all Volvos.)

Fifth, you expect used car prices to increase in difficult economic times because people buy fewer new cars.  In fact, the interesting data point here is expensive cars are increasing in price much more than the low end cars, most likely because the supply has gone down as owners of expensive cars choose not to buy new ones.

Today on the Dish, Conor arm-wrestled with Poulos over liberty vs. tyranny. Drezner dissected the millennials' attitudes on war; private prisons seemed a little perverse; and we heard a personal testimony from the ground on dropout factories. Alaska may be the start of the establishment upset thanks to Palin, and an apologetic Christian said sorry to his gay best friends, but still thought it was a sin.

On the Mosque, Santorum spread lies; Harper had faith in American society; and Daniel Larison threw in his two-cents. Conor differed with David Pryce-Jones over how most Americans view Islamist radicals and this stabbing was a bad omen. We checked in on Pakistani politics and a trucker's view of the traffic jam in China. Drum defended statism; renters were searched like second class citizens; and used cars cost more thanks to Cash for Clunkers. 

Facebook dissed pot, approved cocaine, and lectured you on having babies. Religious hipsters continued to rock; and we kept up the rants on hula hoops, Christmas trees and the rat race. Serwer wanted his video games to stay unrealistic, and when it comes to gadgets and redevelopment projects, sometimes less is more. We got a sobering view of one man's depression and the chart of the day here, VFYW here, MHB here, FOTD here, and Colbert bait here. Time Magazine grew up; firefighters got rich (thanks to pensions); and this woman got caught hating cats. 

–Z.P.

by Patrick Appel

A couple readers made this point:

Conor's recent post "Police, Firefighters, and their Salaries" highlighted an interesting issue, and one I'm inclined to agree with him on.  However, I wanted to point out one area where I think Dan Foster and Conor were both more than a little misleading.

You quoted Foster as saying "average total compensation for an officer in Oakland — a city in which the median family earns $47,000 — is $162,000 per year."  While I don't know for sure, my guess is that the $47,000 figure is not "average total compensation", but in fact is simply salary/wages.  As you yourself pointed out, a big portion of police and firefighter compensation is pensions, but I am highly doubtful that pension costs are included in the $47,000.

I write only because this happens to be one of my pet peeves.  I am an actuary in the pension field, so I think it's fair to say I know more about pension accounting than most people. Lately it has become fairly popular to blame public pensions for most if not all of state and local fiscal problems, rather than the criminal financial management of those pensions by state officials.  When a politician decides to cut taxes by ending all contributions to the state pension fund, and then 20 years later the pension is only 20% funded, this makes the pension fund look like it's costing the state lots and lots of money, when what really happened is that the state started borrowing money from the pension fund and now has to pay it back.  Meanwhile, the lack of return on assets (which is supposed to counterbalance the service and interest costs associated with pension plans) makes the accounting "cost" of a pension much higher than the actual value of the pension benefits.

So the 162,000 figure includes the "cost" of a police officer pension, which is too high, and is being compared to the median salary/wages of the median family (i.e., a number that doesn't include the cost of pensions).  This isn't comparing apples and oranges as much as it is comparing apples and filet mignon – they're not even in the same category

Another reader highlights a problem with low paying police jobs:

Back in the 70s, it was a well known fact that Hong Kong policeman made little but managed to eke out a living by being paid under the table by local businessmen and gangs. I prefer that the state pays my local cop rather than local mob types. The $125k?  It's for hazard pay.

Another reader agrees with Conor:

This has baffled (and irritated) me for years.  I worked for the campus fire department when I was in college.  On occasion, we'd help the City FD administer physical tests for prospective firefighters.  Without exception, there would be 500 applicants for one position (the other two top finishers would be placed on a list for future openings).  And it was "only" 500 because the city stopped accepting applications at 500–there were always thousands of applicants seeking one open position.  These folks traveled the state, testing at every agency for every opening.  That was 20 years ago but I don't think it's changed.  If there's any indication that these folks are overpaid it's the imbalance of supply and demand.  You could pay firefighters a fraction of what they currently receive and still have an ample supply of qualified applicants.

Jonathan Cohn took on this topic a couple weeks back. His main point:

To what extent is the problem that the retirement benefits for unionized public sector workers have become too generous? And to what extent is the problem that retirement benefits for everybody else have become too stingy?

I would suggest it's more the latter than the former.

by Conor Friedersdorf

In a post over at Ricochet, James Poulos says a lot of smart things that are difficult to summarize succinctly, as is his wont. I'd like to run through a few of them.

Early on he picks up on the question I posed to Tea Partiers (after prompting from William Voegeli): If we're choosing our ruling class the wrong way now, what alternative do you recommend?

Mr. Poulos says:

I think it's consistent with the intuitions and judgments powering the tea parties to answer your pregnant question like this: it's not that we're choosing our ruling class the wrong way; it's that our ruling class is the wrong kind of people. They have the wrong character, the wrong disposition, the wrong objectives, the wrong — values. The problem isn't that 'politics is broken'. That's a symptom of the real problem, which is that the ruling culture of our ruling elites is broken.

Often times, when I've interacted with politicians, I've thought to myself, these are the wrong kind of people to be running things, and I'd celebrate if the American people stopped selecting its leaders based on their television appeal, the careful avoidance of unorthodox opinions, vague notions of who they'd like to have over for dinner, value-signaling rhetoric about third order issues, ideas about who "seems presidential," etc. Alas, democracy is the least bad way we have to pick these people.

But I was thinking more of unelected elites when I posed that question — policy wonks, journalists, Congressional staffers, think tank staff, bureaucrats, DC lawyers, etc. If the charge is that we're filling these positions with "the wrong kinds of people," something Tea Partiers would claim, then improving things is a matter of changing the selection process, isn't it? I'd argue, for example, that the Ivy League network makes for a more insular elite than is ideal, and that although it's desirable to have a well-educated ruling class, a true meritocracy would be somewhat less heavily populated by academic overachievers from the northeast. I imagine that change alone wouldn't cause the Tea Partiers to embrace our current system of elites, however, so I ask again, what do they propose?

How should the New York Times hire its reporters? What qualities should Sarah Palin look for in her press liaison? When the RNC looks for fund-raising staff what attributes should it seek? What qualifies someone to be director of the OMB? These questions force a line of thinking that I don't think the average Tea Partier has yet explored (let alone the average American).

Mr. Poulos does give his own account of how the culture of our ruling elites is broken, and although I won't try to summarize it, do give it a read.

What I'd like to do is skip down to this part of his post:

…progressivism tells liberal elites that the practice of politics is an obstacle to perfecting liberal culture. As Bill Voegeli's remarks suggest, if elites with a more conservative philosophy are vulnerable to a different set of temptations, they're much less susceptible to this one. The issue is simple: what is the foundation of that more conservative philosophy? What are the principles that fuel the right culture among conservative elites?

If I could break in for a moment, my tentative read of modern American political history is that conservative elites actually have been vulnerable to a lot of the same temptations as liberal elites, and that ideology isn't actually the most important factor in what ails our elites. But I want to think about that provocation before committing to it, so let's move on:

The central philosophical proposition of the tea parties is that the Republican Party establishment has too many elites who have become untethered from those principles and have been born and raised in the wrong culture of elite-hood. Whether by coincidence or for some other reason, this organizing conviction resonates extremely powerfully with the contention that the central conflict in American politics is between those who see political liberty as our most precious possession and those who see political liberty as an outdated obstacle to true justice and flourishing.

From the standpoint of the lover of liberty, there is a punchy and potent shorthand for that conflict ready to hand: liberty vs. tyranny. That's a slogan that must be unpacked, to be sure. But is it — to use your phrase — "almost completely useless?" I report, you decide.

I'm inclined to stick to my guns, and in doing so, I want to note that Mr. Poulos spent a lot of time persuasively arguing why liberty belongs in that formulation, and no time persuading us that it ought to be pitted against tyranny. Sure, it's perfectly acceptable to make the case that political liberty is our most precious possession, and to let that insight guide our actions in the political system. The problem comes when, having decided that, your reflexive assumption is suddenly that all your political adversaries are on the side of tyranny. Someone can conclude, as many conservatives have done, that political liberty is one precious possession, but that we cannot value it exclusively. There were French revolutionaries who saw liberty as their most precious possession. Would it have been "almost completely useless" for them to tell Edmund Burke, "We are for liberty, and you for tyranny?" I report, you decide. 

It makes no more sense to cast modern American liberals as operating on the side of tyranny. They value liberty far more highly than most people in the history of humanity, but assert that some checks on liberty are permissible because equality or justice are important too. In striking that balance, I tend to think they sometimes impinge on liberty too much (though it's worth acknowledging that conservatives strike the same balance and sometimes go too far in the other direction).

In comments, I asked Mr. Poulos, "Can you give me an example of a policy dispute that we can understand most clearly through the frame of liberty versus tyranny?"

He replied as follows:

Most clearly is a bar that most frames — including competing ones — are sorely challenged to clear. But the times being what they are, here's an illustrative (vs. exhaustive) list of possible answers: (1) Universal health care with an individual mandate. (2) The national security state/permanent Patriot Act. (3) The tax code and the structure and purpose of our tax policy. (4) The war on drugs. (5) Entitlement spending. (6) Philosophizing from the bench. (7) The endless Fannie & Freddie bailout.

Let me emphasize the point I closed with above: liberty vs. tyranny is a potent, punchy approximation of, and shorthand for, a serious, if not central, debate about some of the most basic issues surrounding the nature of justice in a democratic environment. This is true in theory, but it is also true in contemporary political practice. The case for taking the liberty vs. tyranny frame seriously isn't (simply) academic — it's a practical one that should, I think, have a special appeal for more libertarians right of center.

Upon reading that, I see a distinction that hasn't been made clear. It is one thing to use the frame of liberty versus tyranny as a serious tool for debating the nature of justice in a democratic environment, and I concede it can be useful in those discussions. Where I dissent is when it becomes a frame meant to understand contemporary politics as practiced in America, especially when conservatives are cast on the side of liberty and liberals on the side of tyranny. The list of issues that Mr. Poulos gives is illustrative: on national security and the war on drugs, the frame of liberty and tyranny forces us to place conservatives on the side of the tyrants.

It is more clear, accurate, and productive to say — if we're talking contemporary political practice — that on the issues mentioned above, conservatives and liberals tend to value liberty differently, and that even in the most extreme cases, were their preferred policy to end in tyranny, it wouldn't be by design, but because they overvalued security or tradition or equality or justice. That suggests a more appropriate frame for a whole host of issues. Universal health care is more a matter of both "liberty vs. security" and "liberty vs. equality" than "liberty vs. tyranny," and in saying so, one needn't abandon the claim that tyranny is implicated in the outcome.