Category: Old Dish

Jon Rauch is, in my view, the most honest thinker of his generation. Here’s his latest on the Iraq war – fearless, and right. Money quote:

A policeman shoots a robber who has killed in the past and who brandishes what seems to be a gun. The gun turns out to be a cellphone. The policeman expects a thorough investigation (and ought to cooperate). In the end, if he is exonerated, it is not because he made no mistake but because his mistake was justified. Reasonable people, facing uncertainty, would have thought they saw a gun.
George W. Bush and the CIA thought they saw a gun. So did French President Jacques Chirac, who last February warned of Iraq’s “probable possession of weapons of mass destruction.” So did Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, a former Vermont governor, who last February said, “My personal belief is that Saddam may well possess anthrax and chemical weapons. That being the case, he must be disarmed.”

And now he is. But I’d add something else: WMDs were not the only rationale given for this war before the war. The human rights issue, the immorality of continued sanctions, the necessity of finding a way to facilitate change in the region as a whole – these were all arguments made in advance (on this blog and elsewhere). The war was a justified mistake in one respect. We overstated the WMD angle. But we under-estimated the horrors of what was going on in that country. Shouldn’t that also count in the balance?

POWELL FIGHTS BACK: Tart exchange defending the president in Congress. Tim Perry noticed. Not many did.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “I know the pain of being less than equal and I cannot and will not impose that status on anyone else. I was but one generation removed from an existence in slavery. I could not in good conscience ever vote to send anyone to that place from which my family fled.” – African-American state senator in Massachusetts, Diane Wilkerson, on why she supports equal marriage rights for all citizens.

It’s amazing to me that the allure of Jean-Paul Sartre, despite some of his brilliant literary innovations, might be given any credence today. And yet Bernard-Henri Levy, the liberal French thinker, appears to find in Sartre a model of sorts. In a diverting essay, Brian Anderson asks why. (The short answer: both Levy and Sartre are French.) I tried to read Sartre long ago, in order to grapple with existentialism, but as soon as I discovered Camus, he seemed completely flat in comparison. Camus was a phenomenal mind and a far richer writer than Sartre, and he remained human. He was a thinker, rather than an intellectual, let alone an “absolute” one. The difference, perhaps, is in an appreciation of what we don’t know, a love of what we can actually cherish – love, friendship, political freedom – and a refusal to apply ideas to reality as if there were no need for compromise or restraint. I liked this part of Anderson’s essay:

It is significant, I think, that Sartre never married or committed himself exclusively to Beauvoir, disliked children and sired none of his own, regularly broke off friendships, and in general spent most of his time worshiping at his own altar. He was – to use his own language – a bit of a ‘bastard.’

I struggle myself with this over marriage rights. Am I foisting an abstract concept onto concrete reality? Or am I noting real human needs, actual relationships, and trying to make them civil? I believe the latter. And it is progress from the nightmares of the twentieth century that today’s reformers are not trying to destroy society or demean it – but to enlarge its embrace and understand its limits.

THE ONION ON MARRIAGE: Time for some light relief.

The Massachusetts legislature is debating an amendment to the state constitution to ban marriage rights for gays and lesbians. Riveting history in the making. Here’s the link.

You can listen to WBUR live on the web here.

It’s showdown in New York City.

I’ll be on WBUR radio in Boston tonight from 7 till 8 pm on marriage equality. And I’ll be on Aaron Brown’s Newsnight on CNN at 10 pm. The marriage wars are now fully engaged. So to speak.

It’s a classic bubble phenomenon. People are backing Kerry because others are backing Kerry. Will it burst? Noam Scheiber and Jon Chait weigh in.

The Onion has the scoop.

Confused about the budget picture? Here are some very helpful stats and graphs, courtesy of the Cato Institute. If you’re not worried about the spending explosion after looking at these, you’re Dennis Kucinich.

Unlike the New York Times and even Time, the Washington Post has finally realized what the religious right amendment to the constitution really means. Or at least they are fair enough to present the conflicting views about its impact:

The amendment’s authors say it is a compromise that would not stop state legislatures from allowing civil unions. Gay rights groups disagree. Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, which supports marriage rights for gays, said the White House and “the Christian right” are “being deliberately deceptive.” He said the “vague and sweeping language” of the proposed amendment’s second sentence “is intended to deny any other measure of protection, including civil unions and domestic partnerships.”

Exactly. This is the real fight. If the religious right were only interested in preventing any state from having marriage rights for gays, they would propose an amendment that would simply say: “Civil marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman.” That would do it. But their second sentence is a stealth bomb aimed directly at gay couples, stripping them of any rights or benefits or protections. If the president endorses the Musgrave Amendment, he will be declaring war on gay couples, in order to boost his political fortunes. That’s the reality, however they want to dress it up.