Category: The Dish

In Britain, some liberals are arguing for making English-fluency a condition of immigration. Other liberals, namely Norm Geras, see the project as inherently illiberal. I would – if the immigrants are already here. But as a condition of immigration? Fine by me.

A reader writes:

As a cognitive-behavioral psychologist, I dismiss much of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. However, Freud’s concept of reaction formation is a perfect fit for the Craig scenario, and you’re right, it’s probably not conscious hypocrisy.

Reaction formation, according to Freud, occurs when an action or feeling that results in unconscious anxiety produces the opposite reaction in consciousness. A man who is afraid he is weak spends hours at the gym and wears nothing but tank tops when he goes out. A person who is aroused by porn joins a community effort to block the opening of an adult video store. A man who is terrified by the prospect of being gay consistently votes in an anti-gay pattern. In reaction formation, the declaration of the public persona is excessive, and the person is obsessed with making sure the public view is known to everyone. "Of course I am not gay! I have never been gay! I am innocent!" Freud would argue that Larry Craig actually believes this.

One recalls the astonishing scene in Schindler’s List where we see the sexual attraction of a Nazi for a Jew. 

I posted on Laud Humphreys’ theory about social conservatism and sexual adventurism here. I left something out:

In an unfinished manuscript left at his death, Laud Humphreys described meeting with a prominent Dixiecrat politician and his wife in 1948. When the politician left the room, his spouse began undoing Humphreys’s tie so that they could all have a little party — as, she explained, was their wont.

The biography of Humphreys explains that "this archconservative longtime segregationist served as U.S. Senator from South Carolina from 1954 until shortly before his death in 2003."

Anti-gay segregationists have sex with other men and black women in private, while persecuting them with gusto in public. Craig and Vitter are traditionalists after all.

Almost as bad as the GOP. On this Megan and Drezner agree.

The key tribal chief responsible for the only core success in Iraq these past few months has been assassinated. Who did it? Some analysis:

Nothing could have been more predictable than the murder of Abu Risha, the man most closely identified with America’s Anbar strategy. He was the public face of the turn against al-Qaeda, and Petraeus immediately said that "it shows Al Qaeda in Iraq remains a very dangerous and barbaric enemy."  But there’s no reason to assume that al-Qaeda killed him – I’d guess that one of the nationalist insurgency groups, the ones which current American rhetoric pretends don’t exist –  is a more likely suspect.  Other tribes deeply resented him….

His murder graphically demonstrates that the other groups threatened by the American Anbar strategy were never going to just sit back passively and allow it to succeed – an obvious strategic point which has always seemed to elude surge advocates.  The Sunni strategy as presented by surge advocates has always rested not only on a whole series of dubious claims about Iraqi Sunni politics, but also relies on a whole series of best-case scenarios in which nothing could go wrong.  In Iraq, something always goes wrong.

The branding of mass murderers needs work, apparently:

Ellen [graphic designer]: Here’s a classic example of a logo gone wrong: [the Palestine Liberation Front]. There are three main elements: a star, a map of Israel, and what is that thing?

David [photographer]: I think that’s supposed to be the tip of a machine gun.

Ellen: It looks like a man sitting in a chair. It’s not rendered very well. And all three elements are disjointed, like they were just plopped down on the page. They aren’t tied together.

David: Isn’t a red star a symbol of communism? Is the PLF a communist organization? That could potentially cause confusion.

Ellen: I don’t think they’re communists. But also, we don’t really know what all the symbols represent in other parts of the world. We should mention that. We can only really comment from our American perspective.

VodkaPundit comments here.

Bob Kaplan backs the Petraeus plan of damage-limitation/indefinite occupation because the alternative would be worse. He realizes that even the best scenario is a grim one:

[E]ven if Iraq were brought gradually to rights, and the clerical regime in Iran were to suffer severe setbacks, it would still be hard to justify the loss of tens of thousands of lives merely for the sake of strategic positioning.

Of course, the mullahs in Tehran do not seem to be suffering because of our action in their neighboring country. Bob’s bottom line is just as austere:

I suspect we will be stuck in Iraq with tens of thousands of troops for years to come. The results we obtain may be meager, but they’ll still be better than if we suddenly withdrew.

We need to be clear here: what we’re deciding to do is to occupy Iraq for the rest of our lifetimes. Success in preventing the place from becoming a spiraling vortex of chaos and genocide means probably around 100,000 troops for a decade at least – with up to 5,000 more dead Americans in that time period, and countless more lives crippled by injury. The war has wrecked America’s moral standing, added to the already monumental fiscal burden of the next generation, empowered Iran, and the opportunity costs are hard to fathom. What’s staggering to me is that the intellectually honest defenders of the surge, like Bob, acknowledge most of this. But they still believe withdrawal would be worse. That’s how bad it is; that’s how huge a mistake this has been. I don’t know if Bob is right that we should carry on regardless – none of us can know. But I doubt it. Matt does too.

Most encouraging data. Is peanut butter part of the reason?

James Joyner casts a skeptical eye on the latest Media Matters report – and rounds up bloggy reax. Yes, some labeling is in the eye of the beholder. But I’m sorry if I can’t see Morton Kondracke as a "progressive." Centrist tool would be more appropriate. Fred’s fig-leaf maybe.

A reader writes:

I may be giving the Idaho senator more credit than he deserves, but the man was pretty instrumental in my decision to very recently come out as a young, gay Republican. I’m 22, a college student studying journalism in Miami and a reporter at a major South Florida daily. I’ve been both gay and Republican for a very, very long time, and like many people happy to be Republican, I was not happy to be gay.

Though I’ve come to accept who I am, I never really thought about telling my friends for the main reason many gay men stay closeted: fear. Until I started following the Craig case.

I was at work two weeks ago when I saw a clip of the senator adamantly stating he was not gay in front of the world press. I stopped what I was doing and just looked at the man on the TV.

‘Could that be me some day at 62?,’ I thought to myself. ‘Angry, still afraid, paranoid, confused, living an unhealthy and dangerous double life – is that my future? And what kind of future is that?’

Something inside of me snapped. I immediately e-mailed a gay friend of mine and told him what I had always considered my "dark secret." A week later, I published an article in my college paper about life as a closeted man, pretty much outing myself to everyone I know in the process. The article came out Monday and I’m still getting phone calls, all of them positive and encouraging.

It’s been a long time since a politician has inspired me like this. I hope many other young conservatives will decide to take charge of their own lives after this incident and come out, not just to others, but to themselves as well.

I hope so too. Churchill was right.