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 Dish 