The Dish

A reader points to Michael Gerson's denunciation of the Uganda bill published at Town Hall last month. Gerson wrote:

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn calls the law "absurd." GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley describes it as an "un-Christian and unjust proposal." Pastor Rick Warren concludes it is "unjust, extreme and un-Christian toward homosexuals." All three are right. And the prospect of pastors and counselors as informants for the state is particularly offensive — the calling of Judas instead of Jesus.

It was, of course, first published in the Washington Post. But it was very encouraging, and most welcome, especially for this statement:

[Americans] refused to be a "Christian nation" precisely because the founders held a broadly Christian view of human beings, who are subject to God and their conscience, not to the state. Pluralism is not a temporary or tragic compromise; it is the proper way to treat men and women created free and autonomous in God's image.

But I notice that the column ascribed the law to Ugandans, not Christianist Americans, including close allies of Rick Warren and of the GOP. And Gerson criticizes no one on his partisan team, merely citing leading American Christianist condemnation of the law. It's as if he realizes the anti-gay right has gone too far this time, i bold enough to say so, but not bold enough to actually take these people in his own ranks on. But it's a start for more sanity and less sectarianism on the right.

Chicago, Illinois, 8.45 am

It has turned into one of the more fascinating debates online in quite a while. Why? Because both sides are civil, smart as whips and intellectually honest. And because the deeper issues they are tackling – the balance between defense and welfare – are tectonic matters beneath our political discourse that merit being unearthed and examined. And what's striking to me is that when bloggers set this tone, even comments sections get the message. Here's an illuminating to and fro between Manzi and a reader. The reader first:

[You wrote]:

“From 1980 through today, America’s share of global output has been constant at about 21%. Europe’s share, meanwhile, has been collapsing in the face of global competition — going from a little less than 40% of global production in the 1970s to about 25% today. Opting for social democracy instead of innovative capitalism, Europe has ceded this share to China (predominantly), India, and the rest of the developing world.”

How do you know this drop in productivity was due to adopting the welfare state? That’s just a huge assumption. Why couldn’t it be the industrialization of countries with pools of cheap labor?

And if you are comparing the US to Europe it seems to me that, even if the drop was tied to adding a welfare state, that Europe comes out ahead. They equal our global productivity AND they have a welfare state. Or to look at it another way, we spend all this money to ensure global dominance, the main purpose of which is to promote our economic interests—but we can only equal Europe in output, who spend way less on global dominance.

And we can’t afford a welfare state.

It seems to me we are underachieving considering how much we invest in global dominance. I mean, we control the sea lanes, our military protects countries all over the world, we have the biggest and most influential economy, the world’s currency is based on the dollar, our culture is fast becoming the worlds culture… All that and we can’t even equal Europe.

— cw · Jan 6, 01:54 PM · #

Manzi's response:

I agree with a lot of what you say here. Probably the central point of the article was that we face a tragic choice. Europe’s (of Western Europe, or the “social market” economies, or whatever definition we want) have employed a package of responses to deal with the fundamental problems created by a market. This has created many advantages for them. One of things they have not been able to do, however, has been to maintain their share of the world economy. Over the long-term a civilization needs aggregate power to protect itself in an inherently hostile world. In this respect (though certainly not in all ways) Europe is free-riding on the US, and following a non-sustainable strategy in a world that (IMHO) will always turn violent.

My italics. I hope to return to that core debate soon, because, in my view, it really does affect a whole array of choices America has in front of it.

A reader writes:

Just a few clarifications on the caption you provided via Getty Images with the Face of the Day photo.

The caption as cited reads:

"Orthodox follower Ouzinos Panaiotis kisses the wooden cross thrown by Fener Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew in the Golden Horn after a mass as part of celebrations of the Epiphany day at the Church of Fener Orthodox Patriarchiate in Istanbul, on January 6, 2010.The Orthodox faith uses the old Julian calendar in which Christmas falls 13 days after its more widespread Gregorian calendar counterpart on December 25. By Mustafa Ozer/AFP/Getty."

No one in the Orthodox Church refers to the Patriarchate as the "Fener Orthodox Patriarchate", nor do we refer to Patriarch Bartholomew I as "Fener Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew". These are politicized Turkish designations that reflect the Turkish government's refusal to acknowledge him as Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, and his See as the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Orthodox equivalent to the Vatican. To denote what was cited not only affirms the controversial sentiments of the Turkish government, but it also associates Bartholomew's jurisdiction with only a small neighborhood of Istanbul/Constantinople.
 
Additionally, the caption reference to the Julian Calendar is all mixed up. While some Orthodox Churches still adhere to the old Julian Calandar, this photo has nothing to do with Christmas. The Ecumenical Patriarchate now follows the Gregorian Calendar, and so this photo reflects the Feast of Epiphany, the Baptism of Jesus. For those Orthodox Christians adhering to the Julian Calendar, January 6 – 7 is Christmas. The last sentence was a bit confusing.

God bless Dish readers.

"To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good . . . Ideology—that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race, and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations. — Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago.

“Military necessity does not admit of cruelty–that is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or for revenge, nor of maiming or wounding except in fight, nor of torture to extort confessions.” – Abraham Lincoln's General Orders, 100 Instructions for the government of the armies of the United States in the field.

A reader writes:

I guess it’s left to me to say what everyone else is thinking.  How many kinds of stupid does one have to be to go hiking on the Iraqi-Iranian border in 2009? I’m sure they’re not spies, I’m sure that they’re good people, and I’m also sure they’re smarter today than they were the day they were captured. I feel sorry for their families. But I’m not sure why the American government should spend any political capital to bail their reckless/dumb asses out.

Kevin Sullivan thinks that the following three questions, posed by the Leveretts, deserve answering:

First, what does this opposition want? Second, who leads it? Third, through what process will this opposition displace the government in Tehran?

Perhaps the best response to this is from a historian reader:

The Leveretts understand nothing about revolutions.  This is important.  They suggest that there can't be another revolution in Iran unless the opposition knows exactly what it wants, it has a visible leader in control, and it has a "process" for replacing the current government.  How many modern revolutions have ever satisfied those conditions,

beginning with the French Revolution? 

Those that were really coups d'état did — Russia 1917, Iran 1979 — but the most important revolutions in our lifetime have been the velvet ones; they were viral before the internet, succeeded in different and unforeseeable ways, and many were acephalic (word for the day).  Thousands of leaderless East Germans climbed the wall of the Hungarian embassy, then walked across the border when a government official made a slip of the tongue.  The wall fell.  One day Romanians cowered before Ceausescu's Securitate, the next day they booed one of his speeches, and four days later he was dead.  Game over.

The odds, the guns, the truncheons, and the will to brutality are all against the Iranian opposition today.  They have to live with that, and so do we.  The Leveretts for some bizarre reason, want to embrace it.  The title of their June piece in Politico was "Ahmadinejad won.  Get over it."  Well, revolutions happen.  Wake up.

It's a funny thing. Some neocons seem almost ambivalent about a revolution in Iran because it might lead to a nuclear-armed Iran not led by theo-fascists – which would complicate Israel's diplomatic and military position in the region. And many realists don't see a revolution because they remain wedded to the idea of the Iranian red staters rallying to their fundies the way Southerners rally to Cheney and Palin. Or perhaps because there's some kind of realist super-frisson in negotiating with the likes of Khamenei. I don't know. Skepticism is totally valid; but the measure of assurance that nothing has changed strikes me as off-base.

For what it's worth,I believe that a democratic revolution in Iran is both possible and would be the single most transformative event in global politics since the end of the Cold War. Especially for the US. I sure don't believe we should take it for granted; but I also see what is in front of us.

What's in front of us is a regime divided against itself, reliant on raw violence – and nothing else – to stay in control, a regime that has failed to crush massive resistance to a stolen election, and has, if anything, discredited itself further by over-reaction. State violence will have to keep increasing in intensity as state legitimacy keeps eroding. That's not a positive pattern for those in power. And if the only way out of that is some kind of deal with Mousavi and Karroubi, then we have a Gorbachev to deal with.

Percy Harvin won the Offensive Rookie of the Year Award:

Harvin was a controversial draft pick after he tested positive for marijuana use at the February scouting combine. But as it turned out, the biggest problem he encountered was an intensification of migraine headaches that has plagued him for much of his life. Migraines caused him to miss the Vikings’ rookie minicamp, the NFL’s rookie symposium and a game against Cincinnati last month.

(Percy Harvin #12 of the Minnesota Vikings breaks away from Al Afalava #24 of the Chicago Bears on November 29, 2009 at Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minnesota. By Elsa/Getty Images)

Larison agrees with the Leveretts and defends them against my critique:

As expected, Andrew didn’t like the Leveretts’ op-ed, which he calls part of “their campaign to diminish the significance of the Iranian uprising.” They might say that they are interested in correctly assessing the significance of any uprising in order to make their policy recommendations as realistic as possible. After all, if Western policymakers start banking on domestic political unrest to undermine the Iranian government in a major way, they will pursue policies that would be very different than if they assume that the current Iranian government is not changing and not going anywhere.

Well: sure. I don’t know the future, but the evidence in front of me suggests a huge shift in the distribution of power within the Iranian polity. Of course we shouldn’t anticipate the imminent demise of the regime, but we shouldn’t be in any doubt as to its completely collapsed legitimacy. More to the point, if US policymakers had taken the Leveretts’ analysis as accurate directly after the rigged election, they would have had no idea what was coming over the next several months. It seems to me that when analysts have a proven track record of being wrong, their next statement – in line with their previous demonstrably false take – should be viewed skeptically. Of course, in the MSM, it guarantees them a spot in the NYT. Larison’s bottom line:

The government’s rallies may be fake and the opposition protests may be heartfelt and courageous, but so long as an authoritarian state can limit and divide its opposition and retains the loyalty of its security forces none of that matters.

Really? Well, today we hear that one of the most hated men in the repressive architecture of the Khamenei regime, and one of Ahmadi’s key henchmen, Saeed Mortazavi, has been cited by the Iranian parliament for torture and abuse and murder of prisoners under his authority. That makes Iran’s parliament not only a good deal more active in pursuing torturers in the executive branch than the US Congress, but also another fracture in the junta’s control. Then comes another interesting story today about leaks of unrest and dissent among the … Revolutionary Guards:

“Since June, there has been much anecdotal evidence that suggests deep divisions between the hard-line commanders of the Guards and between the Guards and members of the regular armed forces who are dissatisfied with the election and its aftermath,” said Alireza Nader, an analyst with the RAND Corporation. “The extent of these divisions are hard to gauge, but they have the potential to weaken Khamenei’s grip at a critical juncture.” …

Mr. Milani, for example, pointed to what he said was a credible report based on information from the Military Command for Greater Tehran that the authorities have used criminals and prostitutes to intimidate protesters and fill the ranks of pro-government demonstrations…

On Jan. 2, the Rouydad News Web site said that an opposition supporter within the Guards, or I.R.G.C., provided a detailed account of the funeral for Ali Moussavi, the assassinated nephew of the opposition leader, which was controlled by the Guards’ internal intelligence service.

Who knows what to make of this? I don’t. But after the death of Montazeri, after Ashura, after clear signs that Mousavi feels confident enough to offer the junta a lifeline, is it “realist” to believe that the regime is as secure as ever? Regimes such as Khamenei’s are secure … until they aren’t.

February 11. That should be the next serious data point.

(Photo: Iranian opposition supporters hold pictures of the late founder of the Islamic republic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as they protest with the green symbolic color of the opposition at Tehran University’s campus on December 13, 2009 to condemn any insults against Khomeini. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned opposition leaders to distance themselves from protesters whom he accused of acting ‘against Islam’ and the late Ayatollah Khomeini. The protests were triggered by state television airing footage of a torn poster of Khomeini, which opposition leaders condemned, rebuking the state television. AFP/Getty Images)