Matt Zeitlin

In a debate that’s sure to get old, Jamie Kirchick has fired off another screed, so common these days, bemoaning the fall of the “anti totalitarian left.”

Anti-totalitarianism was once an animating feature of the Democratic Party, and the American left in general. It was FDR who led the United States against Fascism, Harry Truman who aided anti-communists fighting in Turkey and Greece and John F. Kennedy who stated that the United States “would pay any price, bear any burden” to defend freedom abroad. The American labor movement played a crucial role in fighting communism (both domestically and internationally), with the AFL-CIO’s Lane Kirkland, the “Champion of American Labor,” at the helm…With the impending realist takeover of the Democratic Party, anti-totalitarianism will recede, and this is unfortunate. Whereas once the AFL-CIO had a large and effective international office, you’d be hard-pressed to hear, for instance, what they’re doing for Iraqi trade-unionists. But the intellectual failings of the American left cannot compare with the infighting of the British left. A fascinating feud has erupted over the past few weeks amongst several left-wing British writers over the future of the European left. It begins with Nick Cohen, a co-writer of the much-heralded Euston Manifesto, whose book, “What’s Left? How Liberals Lost Their Way” presents an historical examination of “the willingness of people on the liberal-left to support or, more often, excuse or explain away totalitarian movements of the ultra right.” Johann Hari, a columnist for the Independent and an erstwhile supporter of the Iraq War himself, trashed the book in Dissent and renounced Euston for being explicitly pro-war (Cohen responds here). Yet one of the signers of Euston was Michael Walzer, himself opposed to the Iraq War.

Besides the fact that the AFL-CIO is actually working and advocating on behalf of labor unions in Iraq, since when did Jamie Kirchick give a rats ass about labor unions, or for that matter, any cause that can traditionally be associated with the left? This is a man who worked at has written for* the Weekly Standard and Commentary, two right wing mouthpieces, self identifies as a conservative and is “strongly opposed” to a whole gamut of left wing causes, even unions. So why then is Jamie wrapping himself in the flag of Bayard Rustin, and presenting himself as a man genuinely concerned with the left?

This type of dishonest appropriation of left wing causes, especially ones relating to labor unions, is a common neocon trope — Michael Ledeen also complained that American labor unions weren’t doing enough to support their fellow workers in Iran. Never mind that Ledeen and Kirchick never write about any other labor issues — labor is just another way of trying to shame the left into supporting their dangerous, failed ideology.

Jamie is just a symbol for how confused the current “anti-totalitarian left” is. The entire idea of an international left, while Jamie would say it coalesced around 50s opposition to the Soviet Union, is in fact a relic from the Internationalist labor and communist movements from the first part of the 20th century. Since the cold war and the era of truly global ideological struggle is over, those who would want to engage in such a conflict are left grasping for straws. So, in an effort to revitalize their fighting spirit, they have latched on to one of the most unlikely champions of any international leftist movements – George Bush. When Michael Weiss, Jamie Kirchick, Nick Cohen and other champions of the anti totalitarian left wonder why other self acclaimed leftists aren’t on their side, it’s because they decided to attach their anti totalitarianism to the most reckless and authoritarian president in our nation’s history. And since we are American (notice how the Euston Manifesto was signed in Britain), we have to actually live with Bush. And since Guantanamo, warantless wiretapping, legalized torture and secret prisons are all directly related to the “struggle” that this soi disant left has signed on for, we have no hope but to oppose these “leftists” in their current guise.

Notice how I say current guise — Jamie Kirchick, since he really isn’t a man of the left, is all too happy to be pessimistic about any hope for the Democrats to be like Bayard Rustin and get back a little of their internationalist flavor. He ominously warns about Democrats turning inwards into a “feral crouch,” almost gleeful in having another 4-8 years to slam the party of the American Left for not living up to his ideals:

Beyond the particularities of specific military interventions, what is most worrying is that the left has become so embittered by the response to 9/11 that it has withdrawn into a feral crouch from which it is more suspicious of what the Western democracies do to protect themselves than it is with the plight of oppressed people abroad…Indeed, Tony Blair is gone and his evil puppeteer George W. Bush will soon be out as well. We may very well have a Democratic president. But what will inform their foreign policy values now that the Democratic Party is not animated by the anti-totalitarianism of old, but rather a mere hatred for the president and a serious lack of faith in even the potential role America can play in the world?

Is he serious? Does he think that Hillary Clinton, one of the main drivers in the Clinton White House for intervention in Kosovo, will be some sort of anti-American isolationist. Does he think the same things about Barack Obama or John Edwards, whose foreign policy manifesto is deeply infused with internationalism? Barack is all about hope and optimism, hardly the kind of person who doesn’t believe in America’s potential power for good. So while some of the netroots and international ANSWER might be wary of the orientation of these potential president’s foreign policy, Democrats and the American left will support them. If Kirchick were serious about supporting an Anti Totalitarian Left, he would recognize that those who support the policies of our would be authoritarian war monger President have been more damaging to America’s ability to promote freedom and push back against totalitarianism than those who have prudently opposed those policies of overreach, recklessness and aggression.

* James Kirkchik emailed me with this correction.  His “contentions” (Commentary‘s blog) bio, dated August 16 described him as “…a frequent contributor…to the Weekly Standard.”  His current contentions bio describes him as only “on the editorial staff of The New Republic and is a columnist for the Washington Blade.” I apologize for the error.

David Ignatius reports that the Bush administration passed on a chance to screw up the occupation of Iraq even more.  There were plans to counter Iranian support for Shia parties in the 2005 elections by throwing American weight behind Allawi:

To counter this Iranian tide, the CIA proposed a political action program, initially at roughly $20 million but with no ceiling. The activities would include funding for moderate Iraqi candidates, outreach to Sunni tribal leaders and other efforts to counter Iranian influence. A covert-action finding was prepared in the fall of 2004 and signed by President Bush. As required by law, senior members of Congress, including Pelosi, were briefed.

But less than a week after the finding was signed, CIA officials were told that it had been withdrawn. Agency officials in Baghdad were ordered to meet with Iraqi political figures and get them to return whatever money had been distributed. Mystified by this turn of events, CIA officers were told that Rice had agreed with Pelosi that the United States couldn’t on the one hand celebrate Iraqi democracy and on the other try to manipulate it secretly.

Ethically, that was certainly a principled view. But on the ground in Iraq, the start-stop maneuver had the effect of pulling the rug out from under moderate, secular Iraqis who might have contained extremist forces. (Asked about the withdrawal of the intelligence finding, spokesmen for Rice and Pelosi declined to comment.)

Props to Rice and Pelosi for cutting this plan off.  As AJ Rosmiller has written, Allawi was already viewed as an American stooge, and a vastly unpopular and incompetent one at that.  Does Ignatius really think that Allawi would have been an effective leader if he “won” an election when it was clear that a plurality of Iraqis didn’t support him or his secularist party? Since Allawi was initially so unpopular, funding and supporting him through the CIA would have made things worse, if he was seen as CIA stooge (which he was) his popularity would have tanked more, and he would have needed more American support to maintain any semblance of authority and the insurgency would probably be worse, since the possibility of gaining power through the government would seem less likely if it became obvious that the US was pulling the strings.

The facts on the ground are that the Shia are the largest group in Iraq, and many of them are friendly with or don’t really mind Iran and their influence.  So funding “moderate politicians” and supporting Sunni tribes probably wouldn’t have worked, those groups are either too small or too balkanized to ever be a cohesive political force in Iraq.  The Iranians are in the fortuitous situation where the group they are most inclined to support is also the largest and most popular in Iraq, no amount of cover CIA meddling would be able to change that, so even if action to counter Iranian influence was “justified” it would still be futile.   So no, David, Pelosi and Rice weren’t naive in letting the Iraqi political process go forth without American interference, instead they recognized that hoisting unpopular, corrupt, incompetent leaders on an already occupied nation was not likely to promote the interests of any relevant parties, except for Allawi himself.

We all know about the classic Nigerian email fraud, some wealthy Nigerian needs to transfer his money to the US and will give a good portion of it if you can assist him. They need your money to pay transfer fees, bribe bank and government officials, but it’s all a very little amount comapared to how much he’ll give you! Snopes has a good run down of the 419/Advance Fee Fraud here.

In my inbox today, I got a newfangled (to me) solicitation.  Instead of the Nigerian prince who needs to transfer his money, it’s a wealthy Malay man who died of a heart condition brought on by the death of family in a plane crash.  Since he has no next of kin, the 9 million dollars he’s deposited in the Malay bank will be “confiscated,” unless I can help him out.  I think this is a parody of the Advance fee scam, but check out the email below the fold and judge for yourself.  If you want to check it out in all of it’s fradulent glory, email me and I’ll forward the solicitation to you.

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GFR points us to a report showing that married women do more housework than their live in counterparts, and married men do less housework than those who forgo the ring:

“Marriage as an institution seems to have a traditionalizing effect on couples—even couples who see men and women as equal,” said co-researcher Shannon Davis, a sociologist at George Mason University in Virginia…

The scientists analyzed surveys gathered in 2002 from 28 nations, from 17,636 respondents (8,119 males and 9,517 females) as part of the Family and Changing Gender Roles III Survey. All respondents were either married or cohabiting with a significant other.

Overall, they found men spent about 9 hours a week on housework compared with women, who spent more than 20 hours weekly.

Now, as an on the record defender of marriage, despite it’s ritual patriarchal baggage, these results should concern me, but they raise more questions then it provides a concrete basis for conclusions about marriage as an institution(I discuss my support for marriage in this post).

The data compares live in and married couples, but the article doesn’t discuss if there is any correction for time. For example, what are the comparable household work ratios for couples that lived together for two years and have been married for five compared to couples that have lived together for seven? Also, how does having children fit into the mix? Are live in couples still more egalitarian after they have children?  It’s easy to imagine there being a post childbirth housework shift, but this article doesn’t discuss it.  If married couples are more likely to have children, and then childbirth causes the responsibilities/work shift, then marriage wouldn’t be prescribing these norms per se.

Also, there is some selection bias at play, though the study shows that even avowed gender egalitarians have a (smaller) housework shift, surely a higher percentage of gender egalitarians are choosing to maintain live-in relationships instead of getting married. This is why part of me hopes that people don’t consider this research as very important. What I mean is that there is a possibility of a feedback loop — if a gender egalitarian couple sees this research or has an impression of marriage being an institution that “traditionalizes” them, ie enforces patriarchial norms, they are more likely to opt out of the institution all together, thus making it more patriarchal.  Instead, they could participate in the institution, and transform it — which I imagine is happening anyway. And since marriage is a wealth building, efficient and positive institution, such a negative reaction would be unfortunate.

There is another reason this research doesn’t seem particularly meaningful – there is less and less of a difference between live-in couples in married couples. Where 50 or so years ago, people got married and then moved in together, today people are more likely to live together for 2-5 years and then get married. In some ways, the marriage threshold for behavior should be getting less signifigant, which it could very well be, but I don’t have data over a range of time. This also means that those who do have live-in relationships and don’t get married are likely to either a. be on the marriage track or b. to be outliers in a whole range of attitudes concerning relationships, and thus the divergent household responsibilities would say more about those not getting married than those who are.

I also disagree with the implication Garance draws from the research, that the traditionalizing effect could explain falling marriage rates.  Taken literally, this line of argument implies that married couples have no agency  — that there is something mechanistic going on about crossing the altar and women working in the house more,  which is unlikely considering that couples oftentimes seamlessly transition from live-in to married.  Though changing social attitudes, ie women wanting to be more independent, could be part of the explanation for falling marriage rates, it’s more likely to be a related phenomena — that as women’s educational opportunities increase and the average first marriage age goes up, women are more likely to be financially and emotionally self sufficient by the time they would otherwise get married and are thus less likely to need to get married.

Americans don’t like small cars, traditional ones like the CRX are often looked at as starter cars for the financially marginal and certainly not for a (small) family or a well off individual.  One of Ezra’s commenters points out that it’s different in Japan and Europe where “Small cars…are outfitted much better (more expensively and more profitably) because they’re seen as the family car, and not as basic transportation for recent grads.”

In so much as there are small cars sold in the United States, there is some sort of gimmick to elevate them over a standard, larger vehicle.  Toyota’s Scion brand is putting a premium on good design and stylish, functional accessories. BMW’s A series, which is coming to the US soon, will be the best performing small car on the market, while the Prius has an advantage from it’s high technology and consumptive virtue derived from buying it.  If gas prices are getting higher, and small cars are going to get more prevalent, US companies are going to have to find a niche.

My suggestion is diesel, or even better, biodiesel hybrids.  Diesels get better gas mileage, and their emissions and noise issues have been mostly fixed.  Even better, biodiesel is essentially carbon neutral — the carbon that’s emitted from burning the fuel is the same that’s taken in during the photosynthesis of the plant matter. Make it hybrid, using GMs new hybrid technology , and you’re likely to get better gas mileage than Priuses and the like due to using diesel instead of normal gas.  Also, we should all be driving plug-in biodiesel cars eventually, and if GM could do a big roll out, they could change American attitudes towards diesel and small cars and make them more palatable for an American public.  Of course, if GM were a rational entity, they wouldn’t have all these different brands, but that’s a story for a different time.

Bobby Jindal’s Catholic apologetic article from ten years ago should make perfect sense to anyone with even a passing knowledge of Christian theology, history or the basic conflicts between Catholics and Protestants should have recognized Jindal’s apologetic as a rather standard expression of the Orthodox Catholic point of view.  Henry Farrell does a good job of debunking Atrios, the Louisiana Demos and Kos’ complaints about the piece, and Michael Gerson, one of my favorite evangelicals, has a good bit on it:

This Democratic ad is not merely a tin-eared political blunder; it reveals a secular, liberal attitude: that strong religious beliefs are themselves a kind of scandal; that a vigorous defense of Roman Catholicism is somehow a gaffe.

This is a strange, distorted view of pluralism, which once meant civility, respect and common enterprise among people with strongly held and differing convictions. In the liberal view, pluralism means a public square purged of intolerance — defined as the belief in exclusive truth-claims and absolute right and wrong. And this view of pluralism can easily become oppressive, as the “intolerant” are expected to be silent.

On the receiving end of those expectations, Jindal has given these issues considerable thought. “This would be a poorer society,” he told me, “if pluralism meant the least common denominator, if we couldn’t hold a passionate, well-articulated belief system. If you enforce a liberalism devoid of content, you end up with the very violations of freedom you were trying to prevent in the first place.”

I don’t know if Gerson is right that denunciations of an orthodox point of view are fundamentally intolerant, but for Democrats to get all excited about Catholic orthodoxy as being a sign of intolerance is just silly — Bobby Jindal is just apologizing for his faith, not being a modern day Torquemada. Despite the philosophical questions about pluralism and orthodox religious belief, which I can’t address here, it shows a high level or ignorance of “people of faith” for the La dems to go after Jindal for being a strong believer.  For the historical and theologically minded, the evangelical-Catholic alliance is odd – these people have been at eachother’s throats since the early 1600s, but if the only way Democrats can think of exploiting it is by attacking one side for having orthodox faith, then they might as well throw in the towel at trying to wedge religious conservatives from the GOP.

Garance Franke Ruta has been investigating the legal background of Senator Craig’s lewd conduct/soliciting/cruising snafu, and found out that “in State v. Limberhand, [the Idaho Court of Appeals] ruled that (solo) masturbation within an enclosed restroom stall was constitutionally protected behavior as the individual within the stall had a reasonable expectation of privacy within the stall.”

Yes, you read that right, the man who went to the Idaho Court of Appeals to protect his right to masturbate in a bathroom stall was named Limberhand. Just like Wordsworth was destined by his name to become a poet, or Chris Moneymaker was destined to become a poker player, so Limberhand was destined to….well, you can figure it out.

What is a perfect American car?  I don’t want to bag on Garance specifically, so it’s unfortunate that her post had to provoke this rant, but here it goes.

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David Brooks chalks up Gonzo’s larger failings as due to his essential outsiderism, that because he wasn’t ensconced in Washington and the federal government, he was hopeless at running the DoJ:

Anti-establishment sentiment once had merit, but it has reached the point of absurdity, and Alberto Gonzales represented many of its failings. He lacked the experience, the professional stature and the insider knowledge required of a good attorney general. He was part of an administration that was unthinkingly hostile to elite opinion, even when the elites were making sense.

Now he is out, almost like in Little League, by mercy rule. And perhaps it’s part of a pattern. Vietnam discredited the old establishment of the Wise Men and the Best and the Brightest. The events of the past few years have exposed the pretensions of the anti-Washington outsider.

How does Brooks thesis of outsiders screwing things up in Washington explain all of the “events of the past few years?” If we look at Gonzales’ failings in the larger context of the Bush administration ruthlessly politicizing every agency and steadily accruing more powerful unto itself, then it’s both insiders and outsiders who are at fault. Dick Cheney, who is the point man for executive secrecy and concentrated power, is the consummate Washington insider. David Addington, his chief of staff and torture impressario, Washington insider. Donald Rumsfeld, insider. The gang at the DoJ who interpreted the Authorization for the Use of Military Force to authorize warantless wiretapping were mostly “insiders.”

While Gonzales shortcomings as an administrator may be do due to a lack of skill and experience in operating in large bureaucracies, his failings at the policy level – his being a Bush crony willing to destroy the DoJ in pursuit of the administration’s ends – had nothing to do with whether he was from San Antonio or Alexandria and was just standard practice.

There’s some talented person on Edwards’ communication staff who thinks up these punchy one liners for the resignation of sundry bush figures.

Edwards on Rove:

“Goodbye, good riddance.”

Edwards on Gonzo (via Garance Franke-Ruta on the Iowa Independent)

“Better late than never.”

Ezra the Old, recently returned from Brazil, asks if we really are the indispensable nation:

In the 1990s, the formulation was that we were the “indispensable nation.” The question, increasingly, is indispensable for what? A land war with China, certainly, but no one’s jumping into that. A reduction in carbon emissions, but we don’t appear interested in cooperating. Our funding for various developmental projects is important, but not indispensable in the sense that it grants us prestige or unquestioned leadership. Our involvement in various international organizations and treaties — the International Criminal Court, the UN, the Non-Proliferation treaty — legitimizes them, but we’ve pulled away or sought to undermine these institutions and they’ve survived despite our efforts. Our recent invasion continues to prove an unmitigated disaster, we’ve lost our prestige and proven unable to bring Iran to heel, and Latin America is now populated with leaders who found political success in anti-Americanism.

Being a good liberal, I sure wish we doubled down our commitment to international institutions like the NPT and ICC and think it’s a damn shame (but probably inevitable) that populist leaders get elected demagoguing against the US. We still, in light of recent failure, plug some large holes and have some essential roles within the international system due to being the only super power. These roles are less visible than say, invading Iraq, but still important. Michael Mandelbaum, in his Case for Goliath explained how while US dominance may seem unattractive on the surface, the US fulfills many of the roles of a world government and it was unclear if, at this time, any other nation or group of regional powers could do the same:

The network of military alliances (like NATO) and trade pacts (like the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and international organizations (like the United Nations and World Bank and Group of 8 ) that the United States was mainly responsible for bringing to life has become an American-led global management system. It is familiar, inclusive and fairly unobtrusive. Its institutions provide a reasonable role for lesser powers, which is why the NATO alliance of consent survived and expanded while the wretched conscripts of the Warsaw Pact rebelled.Above all, this system has been a remarkable and seductive economic success. Having built the tripartite trading structure of the modern world (North America, Western Europe and Japan) to enrich its citizens and allies and sustain the cold war, the generous Americans have expanded it to include the Asian tigers and Eastern Europeans. Now 1.3 billion Chinese and 1.1 billion Indians are clambering up the food chain to prosperity. They deal in dollars, raise money in the New York and London financial markets, generate big trade surpluses with the United States and then send their brighter and most ambitious children to American graduate and business schools, where they are exposed to the creeping osmosis of the Western value system.

These functions are benign and highly beneficial – and there’s bipartisan agreement on us not pulling back from the world in such a manner as to endanger this hegemonic standing. The question becomes how we can exercise this considerable power and not be tempted by it – ie, don’t screw over the NPT, don’t attack Iraq or Iran. So while we should rail against militarist hawks that would squander our power in pointless wars like Iraq and possibly Iran, we should still recognize that our Navy’s presence in international sea lanes assures that much of world commerce can go by unabated, that being able to put cutters in the Straight of Malacca is a Good thing. Of course, this can’t last forever, either American political will to foot the bill for such an expansive military will dry up or other countries will no longer consent to our running the world. This is why we need forward leadership to build up institutions – WTO, ICC etc – that can run the international system without the military of one country. In the long run, this could be one of the longest lasting legacies of the Bush administration, setting back the era of American institution building and engendering so much ill will in the world as to make future efforts to build those institutions all the more difficult, and necessary.

Gonzo’s resigned, so the question is, can Bush find someone worse? There are rumors that John Yoo – torture justifier in chief – might be appointed. Though he is a professor at the Best University in the World, if Bush floats Yoo then this is should be the place where Democrats finally draw a line in the sand and say no. John Yoo is the most offensive Bush administration employee, worse than Gonzales, Addington or Rumsfeld.

He is responsible for the legalization of torture — American has interred people before in wartime, it’s reprehensible, but not unprecedented, same with preemptive, disastrous foreign wars. Yoo’s justification for torture was truly unprecedented and deeply un-American. If John Yoo becomes chief executor of our laws, it won’t be all that different than it was under Gonzo, but it would be the most profound symbol of the Bush administration’s fundamental rottenness.

As a side note, my mom works out at the same gym as John Yoo and reports that he slowly trudges on the treadmill with four books spread out in front of him. Smart guy, real intellectual, apparently an excellent teacher and colleague – he’s just totally rotten.

UPDATE:  Stephen Kaus, Mickey’s brother, who’s an attorney in the Bay Area also reported on John Yoo’s working out at this gym.

Bloggingheads TV honcho Bob Wright has long talked about how membership in international organizations like the WTO could be a powerful carrot and stick to force countries to reform their political and economic systems.  In many cases, our policies of economic isolation of countries we don’t like haven’t  been effective at being an impetus for political or economic reform (see Iraq, Cuba, Myanmar, Iran).  It’s mostly because we haven’t been credible in offering these countries a light out of the tunnel, for Iran and Iraq, there never was (or will be) a free trade deal to sign, so the leaders don’t have a large incentive to give up their power in the hope of improving their economic situation.  Robert Novak’s recent column, however, reports that Democratic pressure on Colombia, in advance of voting on their proposed FTA with the US, has lead to Uribe to start cleaning up his corrupt military:

The forced resignation two weeks ago, under pressure from President Alvaro Uribe, of three prominent officers accused of drug trafficking is not likely to end the shakeup in Colombia‘s army and navy. More heads will roll in a long-overdue purge of corruption in the military. The credit has to go to the left-wing members of Congress who have taken over the Colombian account on Capitol Hill since the Democratic victory in the 2006 elections.

A conservative American with close, longtime ties to Colombia put it to me bluntly: “The firing of these officers is seen as President Uribe’s way of clearing the decks to make the Democrats in Congress happy, in order to secure the free-trade agreement. There are plenty more generals and admirals to get the heave-ho.”

Can I say how much I love Congressman McGovern, who’s leading the pressure on Colombia to clean up their corrupt, cartel infected military?  I mean, we get to relive the glory days of congressional opposition to militant right wingers in Latin America and do it as a pretext to a FTA?! Fantastic!

As a side note, this is a great example why union, environmentalist and general left wing opposition to small, bilateral FTAs is so counterproductive.  Even if  free trade was such a bad thing for manufacturing jobs, wages and the living standards of the United States (I don’t think they are, but roll with me anyway) an FTA with Colombia or CAFTA wouldn’t do anything to exasperate that (dubious) trend, instead, FTAs are a way of integrating small countries into the global financial system, allowing them to access a large export market and a great incentive for political reform.  Of course, being a committed (yet liberal) globalist, I want to see a WTO round complete with a deal to sign that cuts down on Western and Japanese agricultural subsidies, but until then, these regional FTAs are the way to go.

PS – There’s an interesting study that the Atlantic wrote up showing how CAFTA has improved the living standards of small time rural farmers – “The study finds that although rural incomes will likely decline as protective tariffs are phased out over the next 20 years or so, food prices in those countries will drop enough in almost every scenario to make up the difference—often with extra cash to spare. The typical rural household in CAFTA countries devotes a substantial chunk of its earnings to buying basic food items, and import tariffs (some as high as 154 percent) inflate their cost. As a result, the authors find, “lower food prices would mitigate and, in most cases, reverse the negative effect that lower incomes would have on rural welfare.””

Stephen White and many others think that the primary nefarious function of TNR is to give otherwise wacky right wing ideas a patina of moderation and seriousness:

The problem with TNR is not that the magazine itself directly causes bad things to happen, but rather because it helps — along with a host of other factors — bad things to seem reasonable to serious people.

This is reasonable enough, and in some cases TNR has been an unfortunate enabler of bad conservative policy and ideas.  While in the policy realm, I’m much more inclined to blame the actual Bush administration for pushing through bad policies, in the intellectual realm, TNR has enabled and provide cover for otherwise disreputable ideas — namely their hyping of the Bell Curve (of course, it was really Andrew Sullivan’s fault and the rest of the staff nearly resigned in protest) which otherwise would not have achieved similar mainstream credibility.

But if Stephen, Kathy G and many other liberal bloggers are correct that, as Brian Beutler puts it, “The New Republic ‘s readers are center-lefters, center-righters, Very Serious People, and delusional neo-conservatives,” then shouldn’t their enthusiastic support for more left wing causes that don’t have much broad based institutional and media support have a similar effect as their support for the occasional right wing cause?

I’m thinking specifically of universal health care and mandatory vacation for workers, both of which are plenty popular among the political left, but haven’t quite gotten the necessary momentum from the media so that Democrats can strongly go to battle on these large, fundamental new reforms and programs.  Can TNR’s support (Foer’s first editorial was supporting universal health care and they’ve editorialized in favor of mandatory vacation) for these two initiatives make them more palatable to their “center-righter, Very Serious People, and delusional neo-conservative” readership?  If so, then maybe it isn’t such an awful publication after all.

When John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt released their infamous Israel Lobby paper, it was one of the strangest public debates in memory.  Mearsheimer and Walt were tarred by Israel supporters as being anti-semites and for writing a 21st century version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, while Noam Chomsky and Joseph Massad, for example, — who one might think would be simpatico with MW — called out our their paper for being unoriginal and uninteresting.  Dan Drezner said it was just poor political science (attributing Iraq to the power of AIPAC was a bit of stretch).  While I was more in the Drezner camp,  the mainstream line on it seemed to be closer to what Abe Foxman and Eliot Cohen were saying about the paper — that it was a mendacious anti-Semitic lie.

Well, just in case anyone enjoys hearing Likudnik hawks ranting about antisemitism every time anyone tries to say one iota of a negative thing about American policy towards Israel, Walt and Mearsheimer’s book on the topic is coming out soon. Already, people are tagging it as anti-Semitic while I’m sure the American Likudniks (Eliot Cohen, much of the Bush White House etc) are chomping at the bit, ready to unleash their rage at M & W.  What’s going to make round 2 a bit more interesting is how the ADL, in the eyes of many Jews and those who follow their work, has been near discredited for their initial denial of the Armenian Genocide, firing a regional director who spoke out against the policy and now admitting that what the Turks did in 1915 was “tantamount to genocide” all the while forthrightly admitting that their pained contortions on the little matter of genocide were in service of promoting and protecting Israel’s interest in not seeing the Congressional resolution passed.  It’s almost like the ADL — which claims to be a civil rights group –  is lobbying, on behalf of Israel.  Shhhh! Don’t tell anyone!

The DNC is slapping down Florida and taking away its delegates because they moved up their primary too early:

The Democratic National Committee sought to seize control of its unraveling nominating process yesterday, rejecting pleas from state party leaders and cracking down on Florida for scheduling a Jan. 29 presidential primary.

The DNC’s rules and bylaws committee, which enforces party rules, voted yesterday morning to strip Florida of all its delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver — the harshest penalty at its disposal.

A part of me wishes that all states tried to move up their primaries in February and January so that they could “heighten the contradictions” and force the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary to happen around Thanksgiving thus pissing everyone off so much so that we can finally find the will to break those two small, lilywhite, rural states’ bizarre stranglehold over our nomination process.

The large scale investment of foreign nations in high profile wester assets all too often breeds a reflexive, uninformed xenophobic and protectionist response – just look at the ugliness following the CNOOC-Unocal and Dubai Ports deals. There’s also the sneering, fearful undercurrent of concern with sovereign wealth funds from export rich country flush in dollars daring to invest their money – like China’s stake in Blackstone and Singapore’s investment in Barclays. Of course, no one can put forth a coherent case why investing in western banks or investment firms is any different than investing in currency, but certain actors fear of the foreign is quite profound.

In what is sure to be the next xenophobic fear-o-thon by the Dobbs of the world is a Chinese company’s bid to buy American disk drive manufacturer Seagate:

Although disk drives do not fall under a list of export-controlled technologies, the attempted purchase of an American disk drive company would require a security review by the federal government, according to several government officials.

In recent years, modern disk drives, used to store vast quantities of digital information securely, have become complex computing systems, complete with hundreds of thousands of lines of software that are used to ensure the integrity of data and to offer data encryption.

That could raise the prospect of secret tampering with hardware or software to make it possible to pilfer information via computer networks, intelligence officials have warned.

This looks like quite a thin concern – are the Chinese going to steal all of our packets and information using their super secret disk drive technology that Seagate already has? Isn’t it worth pointing out that US phone companies are already transferring our communications to the NSA, shouldn’t that be a bit bigger concern than a Chinese company selling hard drives? Is there any evidence of the Chinese using other formerly American technology assets like Lenovo for nefarious purposes? Shouldn’t we be correcting for anti-foreign bias instead of seemingly searching for a reason to impede the free exchange between a Chinese company and Seagate’s stockholders?

The article also mentions concerns about “competitiveness” – which is a mostly BS concept. Seagate isn’t an “American company” – it’s owned and controlled by its stockholders. Countries don’t produce things – companies do. Countries don’t have incomes – people do. And even if you do talk about “national shares of wealth” – the American people would certainly be better off if, say, our wealth could increase 2% while China’s increased 5% – sure, our “competitiveness” would take a hit, but we’d be better off.

Seagate’s stock price ticked up with this news, so unless someone can put forth a very, very good reason why this deal shouldn’t go through, then we should let the Seagate stockholders do what the see fit with their company.

Radar Magazine, while otherwise eviscerating Jerry Falwell U as the “Worst Christian University in America,” repeats the media popular canard that “the debate team won the national championship last year.” This has come up in other accounts, that Liberty’s debate team was ranked #1 in the country and had thus “beat Harvard.” This is a huge misrepersentation based off fudging what being ranked first in the country in debate actually means.

The first thing to understand is that ranking college debate programs is an inherently misleading, fuzzy enterprise. The way policy debate works is that teams of two compete against each other. At tournaments, a team of two is the winner – not the school. The Copeland award, given at the end of the college debate season, is given to the best team, not the “best” school. So then, by what metrics is Liberty better than Harvard, and all other schools?

One way to evaluate what school is the best is to look at the number of teams they send to the big, end of the season tournament – the National Debate Tournament – the rough equivalent of the NCAA basketball tournament. Well, in 2007, Liberty sent one team, which finished 3-45 in the seven eight preliminary rounds and didn’t advance to the elimination rounds (the equivalent would be not getting out of group play at the World Cup). They finished 51 out of the 78 teams. An Emory team won the tournament, defeating an Oklahoma UMKC (OU lost in semis, my poor memory – mz) team in the final round. Schools that sent multiple teams were Harvard, Emory and Dartmouth with three teams each, and about ten others with more than two.

So why is Liberty the number 1 team in the nation? It’s because they simply have the largest amount of teams, and thus accumulate a high ranking for sending the most teams to every tournament at the novice, junior varsity and varsity levels. Their ranking isn’t indicative of their success in debate, just that they win a lot of small, uncompetitive tournaments and send many teams to them. At the varsity level, the Liberty program is fairly mediocre, and certainly not deserving anywhere near the amount of attention they get. A Liberty team has never won a single varsity level tournament and has consistently ranked in the 40s-60s among varsity programs. Saying that Liberty is the number one debate program would be like claiming that (if this were allowed) a basketball team with more people and that played against mostly Division II opponents was better than Florida.

This deliberate misrepresentation has been noted and deconstructed before, but it’s good to remind people that the inspiring story of the little Christian school beating Harvard at debate is just a lie.

Steven White, Whippersnapper™, responding to my defense of TNR, reiterates Kathy G’s point – that when they do go all counter intuitive, it genuinely enables the implementation of noxious conservative policies:

And that’s sort of the dark side, if you will, of the magazine: Despite its degree to which it is continually interesting and worth reading, all too often the higher-ups hire people to write things that really shouldn’t be written in any magazine left of The Weekly Standard. And whenever some crazy, wingnut idea gets into the pages of TNR, suddenly it’s “bipartisan” or “moderate” instead of just crazy.

Can Steven White, Kathy G or anyone who reads this blog give me an example of a bad policy during the Bush administration whose passage or implementation was otherwise not going to happen or was in doubt but then TNR ran an article or editorial endorsing said policy, and that article pushed the policy over the edge and insured its passage or implementation?

And as a side note to Kathy G’s jeremiad, since when did welfare reform and NAFTA being bad become mainstream liberal ideas? Gosh, I used to think those were the two keystone achievements of the Clinton presidency…

Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, Reformist Republicans™, have both praised Jim Manzi’s National Review piece outlining a conservative approach to climate change. He wants conservatives to come out of the muck of “is Anthropogenic Global Warming happening?” and instead ask “What should we do about it.” I think that if Republicans adopt the Manzi plan, we’re totally screwed. To be clear, by “we,” I mean the world as a whole and, secondarily, Democrats – even though there is a feedback loop going on here.

Manzi’s strategy is based on a few keystones – 1) APG is real 2) APG’s effect on America is likely to be slightly negative and far off (100 years is the inside estimate he gives) and 3) Carbon abatement will have short term negative effects on the economy to avoid the small chance of climate catastrophe and thus aren’t advisable.

There are a few issues with Manzi’s plan, which is more research into carbon abatement, carbon reduction technologies along with low-cost strategies for adaptation. The most obvious objection is that the chance of negative worldwide effects of APG occurring within the next 50-100 years are higher than Manzi estimates and that Manzi arbitrarily brackets off the higher probability, more immediate effects in “poor areas close to the equator” should probably be higher up in Manzi’s consideration, or at least higher than they appear to be for him – zero. He also tries to do wave the magic policy wonk wand of “my set of policies will not devolve into hand outs for various interested parties.” Well, government research money for large, ambitious goals often turns into just that (see Complex, Military Industrial), so I’m going to need more than Manzi’s assurances. A carbon tax, on the other hand, won’t lend itself to all sorts of arbitrary and inefficient carve outs. And since this is the GOP implementing Manzi’s supposed policies, I imagine the usual cast of characters will be drinking from the trough. The strategy of adaptation is inadvisable for two reasons. 1) North America , under a fairly wide range of scenarios, probably could adapt for about 150-200 years, but without serious carbon abatement, the warming will continue to happen, thus rendering previous adaptation to a world with temperatures of x unsuitable for a world of temperatures of x+3 and 2) We can adapt, and Bangladesh will go under water – that would not be good.

The second, and more immediate, reason that Manzi worries me is that his political strategy could be deadly for Democrats and for serious efforts to reduce carbon emissions and lessen climate change. Getting serious on climate change is hard enough, as Reihan puts it, “The costs of climate change are uncertain, unpredictable, very diffuse, and (mostly) in the future.” The human mind is generally very bad at discounting appropriately and there’s massive immediacy bias at play. Additionally the way democracies work, the immediate concern (winning elections) is all most policy makers care about, so long term, diffuse issues like global warming are structurally hard to address. Global warming, specifically, will become impossible to do anything about if the GOP gets out of the denialist cave and goes with Manzi’s strategy:

Imagine what a competent phone-bank and direct-mail effort could do in these
states by contacting employees in carbon-sensitive industries (such as auto manufacturing and truck
transport) with some version of this message: “My opponent wants you to pay thousands of dollars per year,
and maybe lose your job, to help avoid a problem that might occur in sub-Saharan Africa a hundred years
from now. I oppose this policy. I think we should invest in American technology and ingenuity to protect
ourselves from any climate risk that might threaten us.”
Tellingly, the most obvious examples of persuadable voters are old-line industrial-union members alienated
by an elite policy that imposes huge penalties on them. They used to be called Reagan Democrats.

If the Democrats make some noise about implementing a carbon tax, and the GOP comes over the top with this message, we’ll be so screwed. The only way to break this logjam would either have the EPA do some sketchy quasi-constitutional regulation or sequential, massive, disastrous hurricanes that could plausibly be laid at the feet of global warming. Besides that, people just want cheap gas.