The Dish

San Francisco, California, 11 am

A reader writes:

I disagree with the reader who wrote to recommend against using the term denialist for those who do not accept anthropogenic global warming. The term is accurate. The consensus view on climate science is supported by an immense body of research that is genuinely being denied.

But more importantly and in a way your reader might view as less "arrogant,” just look carefully at the arguments the denialists make. They simple do not stand up to scrutiny. There is no there, there. To anyone familiar with the variety of denialists in existence these days, the term brings to mind a particular method of argumentation designed to create an impression of controversy, not Nazi gas chambers. There are those who deny that we went to the moon, deny that evolution occurred, deny that AIDS is caused by HIV, and yes deny that the holocaust occurred. All of them share qualities with the AGW denialist: they deny the best supported explanation in favor of one that is determined in advance by an ideology. They fall into conspiracy theory mode, wave away evidence with special pleading, cherry pick their data and “experts” and will not change their mind no matter what the evidence shows. This methodology is essentially the opposite of skepticism by the way, a term you and the media have also used. Skepticism as a method advocated by the modern scientific skeptical movement, essentially encourages proportioning one’s beliefs to the evidence which is precisely what George Will, James Inhofe, Sarah Palin, et al are not willing to do.

A great discussion with Jonathan Safran Foer on his arresting new book.

I've been struggling with some kind of flu and so was unable yesterday to give Obama's Nobel Acceptance speech its due. It's a remarkable address – Niebuhr made manifest. What strikes me about it most of all – and I do not mean this in any way as a sectarian or non-ecumenical statement – is that it was an address by a deeply serious Christian. It was not Christianist. It did not seek to take sacred text or papal diktat to insist on a public policy or to declare that the president of the United States is somehow the instrument of God or good or that America is somehow more divinely favored than any other nation. It was written and spoken in such a way to reach anyone of any faith or none. It translated a deeply Augustinian grasp of history into a secular and universal language. It was an expression of tragic hope.

And that's one aspect of Obama's now-famous-phrase, the "audacity of hope", that is often overlooked.

Why is hope audacious?

Because the world is inherently tragic. Because, in Camus' words, men die and they are not happy. Because in Obama's words,

We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes.  There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified… For make no mistake:  Evil does exist in the world.  A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies.  Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms.  To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

When I have been asked why I, as a conservative, support this man the way I do, I can only answer: listen to him. What is the philosophy that most affirms "the imperfections of man and the limits of reason"? What philosophy sadly demurs when told that peace is possible on earth, that history is leading to utopia, that war is over, that "freedom is on the march"? And this is the critical distinction between Bush and Obama: Obama is far more conservative than his predecessor. He sees that the profound flaws in human nature affect us as well as them; that we "face the world as it is," not as we would like it to be; that the decision to go to war is a moral and a pragmatic one; that ends have to be balanced by a shrewd and sometimes cold-eyed assessment of means.

For peace to exist, there must sometimes be war. A statesman will sometimes have to bargain with evil men. A statesman will also sometimes have to let evil flourish because he simply does not have the proportionate means to counter it. Human nature is alloyed between good and evil, and evil often wins.

Hope is not optimism. We have little reason for optimism given the first decade of the twenty-first century. Hope is a choice. As much a choice as faith and love.

I am staggered that so many neoconservatives and conservatives seemed shocked and enthused by the address. This does not, it seems to me, reflect on the address's novelty for Obama. Nothing in it was very different from anything he has said before. Distilling it all in one 36 minute address may have clarified it for his opponents. But I have to say their welcome applause merely reveals that they have not been listening for so many months. They still do not grasp the president we have or the seriousness he has brought to the tragic dimension of a moral foreign policy in an immoral world at a perilous time. I asked Obama in the campaign about some of this. Here's a response worth recalling from more than two years ago:

Barack Obama: You know, reading Niebuhr, or Tillich or folks like that—those are the people that sustain me. What I believe in is overcoming – but not eliminating – doubt and questioning. I don't believe in an easy path to salvation. For myself or for the world. I think that it’s hard work, being moral. It's hard work being ethical. And I think that it requires a series of judgments and choices that we make every single day. And part of what I want to do as president is open up a conversation in which we are honestly considering our obligations – towards each other. And obligations towards the world.

Andrew Sullivan: But you don't think we're ever going to be saved on this earth do you?

Barack Obama: No. I think it's a … we're a constant work in progress. I think God put us here with the intention that we break a sweat trying to be a little better than we were yesterday.

"A little better than we were yesterday." Whatever that is, it is not utopian or liberal except in the deepest, Niebuhrian sense. Obama has never been a pacifist. Never. His opposition to the Iraq war, as he said at the time, was not because he was against all war, but because he was against a dumb war. He is, in so many ways, a Niebuhrian realist. And with Niebuhr, there is the deeper sense that even though there is no ultimate resolution in favor of good over evil on this earth in our lifetimes, we still have a duty to try. It is this effort in the full knowledge of ultimate failure on earth that is the moral calling. It is to do what we can, knowing that it will never be enough.

The problem with Bush's foreign policy was that it was based on a "doctrine" which is never a good thing to base any politics on; that it was far too sanguine about the power of good in the world; far too crude about the role of culture and history in limiting the universal appeal of Western freedom; far too reckless in deploying resources without any concern for their limits; and so convinced of its own righteousness that it could even authorize the absolute evil of torture in pursuit of the absolute good of freedom. Bush was riddled with all the hubris, arrogance, rationalism and utopianism of the worst kind of liberalism. Obama is not a Tory realist; he still believes in the slow, uncertain march of human enlightenment. But he sure isn't a Bush-style or Carter-style utopian. And he is such a deeper, calmer spirit than Clinton's always-maneuvring mind.

These are desperately dangerous times. They are dangerous primarily because religion has been abused by those seeking power and control over others – both in the mild version of Christianism at home and the much, much more pernicious and evil Islamism abroad. They are dangerous because the fusion of this kind of religious certainty with the sheer power of technological destruction now available could bring the planet to catastrophe if we are not very, very careful. Very few moments in history have required an Augustinian statesmanship as much as now.

This is why I have supported this unlikely man for several years now. Two quotes from Niebuhr help illuminate why. The first:

"The task of building a world community is man’s final necessity and possibility, but also his final impossibility. It is a necessity and possibility because history is a process which extends the freedom of man over natural process to the point where universality is reached. It is an impossibility because man is, despite his increasing freedom, a finite creature, wedded to time and place and incapable of building any structure of culture or civilization which does not have its foundations in a particular and dated locus."

That is our task now. How do we find the motivation to accomplish it? Niebuhr again:

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; there we must be saved by hope.

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; there we must be saved by faith.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.

No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our own standpoint.

Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness."

(Photo: People cheer for US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama as they greet the Torch Parade from the Grand Hotel Balcony in Oslo on December 10, 2009. By Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images.)

Greg Sargent notes a "dispiriting postscript" to Palin's climate change op-ed, "a piece that has been widely criticized as riddled with falsehoods":

I’m told by the paper’s insiders that her piece was one of the most-read WaPo opinion pieces of the year, coming in 21st in page views out of literally hundreds of opinion articles. An earlier Palin Op ed in the paper on the same topic was the third most read of the year. A lot of this is probably driven by heavy outside linkage. But still, the fact that Sarah Palin, of all people, is able to command such attention for her views on the science of climate change, of all things, is kind of amazing.

Johann Hari is disgusted by carbon reduction sleights of hand. One example:

The nations of the world were allocated permits to release greenhouse gases back in 1990, when the Soviet Union was still a vast industrial power – so it was given a huge allocation. But the following year, it collapsed, and its industrial base went into freefall – along with its carbon emissions. It was never going to release those gases after all. But Russia and the eastern European countries have held on to them in all negotiations as "theirs".

Now, they are selling them to rich countries who want to purchase "cuts". Under the current system, the US can buy them from Romania and say they have cut emissions – even though they are nothing but a legal fiction. We aren't talking about climatic small change. This hot air represents 10 gigatonnes of CO2. By comparison, if the entire developed world cuts its emissions by 40 per cent by 2020, that will only take six gigatonnes out of the atmosphere.

David Link, with his customary nuance, examines the question:

Warren is all over the map on gay equality. On her show last night, Maddow clearly nailed Warren’s incoherence, both on Prop. 8 and on his role in Uganda. But that is where I think a bit of empathy may be in order (and I know this will be controversial). Like so many other heterosexuals of his age and older, Warren is

caught in a bind.

He believed the lies and misperceptions about homosexuality that history, particularly as embodied in his religion, have taught him. He relied on those distortions, and built his belief system around them. For many years, we did too. It was hard to realize and then live out the truth about our own lives against those perversions of truth.

But as the Catholic church learns daily, you cannot deny nature long without paying a price. Sex and intimacy are fundamental to human beings, and cannot be either renounced or faked. We learned that the hard way, and are trying to correct the record so it doesn't happen again. Warren is obviously struggling with that. His conversation after Prop. 8 with Melissa Etheridge may have been a turning point. But his loyalty to the lies history taught him about us still permits him to blind himself to the lies he tells himself. And no lies are more persuasive then those.

Josh Shahryar illustrates the student protests of 16 Azar. Masoud adds:

This has to be troubling for the regime, as the knee-jerk argument that protests are confined to the "bourgeois of northern Tehran" is now clearly false. This has become a national movement.

Amazingly, the Pentagon has not offered a formal response to the Seton Hall Study of three alleged prisoner suicides at Guantanamo Bay, as detailed here. Since the allegations of obvious misconduct are very serious, one wonders why the Pentagon has just gone silent. And whether they can stare down the incriminating evidence of – at minimum- grotesque incompetence as if it doesn't exist.

It's been a very long time coming – longer than it took to bring actual (if flawed) democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan. Yesterday, this happened:

House and Senate conferees have come up with a compromise conference agreement that would provide funding for most federal departments and agencies.  But unlike past years, there is no provision that would prevent D.C. from legalizing medical marijuana.

In 1998, D.C. voters approved a referendum that would allow the possession of and usage of medical marijuana.  Republicans in Congress swiftly blocked the referendum by placing a provision in funding bills that prevents D.C. from enforcing or implementing the law.  That provision has appeared each year until this year's funding bill. The conference agreement must be adopted by the full House and the full Senate.  Neither chamber can amend the bill; it's a straight up-or-down vote.

This could actually mean that citizens of the United States are allowed to hold a referendum – and have the results enforced by law! Imagine that!

Previously, Americans (unlike Iraqis or even Afghans) were allowed to vote in the District of Columbia but were not allowed to have those votes actually affect public policy. Because the District's inhabitants were too black liberal for some of the more hardcore Republicans and Democrats from other parts of the country to allow them to govern themselves. The vote to legalize medical marijuana in 1998 arrived at a 69 percent majority in favor. This was not a narrow vote – it was an overwhelming popular majority more than ten years ago, long before the big increase in public support for medical marijuana over the last ten years.

I'm not entirely sure what the procedural steps are when Proposition 59 is allowed finally to take effect. But it seems to me that the moment the appropriations bill passes, and the block on Prop 59 falls, medical marijuana must become legal in the district.