Big Man Crush

I have one on Daniel Koffler, the super-jew-blogger who managed to work at bout Reason and Dissent. Not only do I find his honest pursuit of a left-libertarian politics extremely exciting and (sometimes) persuasive, but I just love his post at The Art of the Possible* about neoconservatives, Jews and Israel. I think I’m swooning.

*It’s really a shame that TAOP didn’t start when I was 15 or 16. Back then, I actively described myself as a left-libertarian. Due to the horrible cocooing effect of being in the liberal blogosphere, I’ve become significantly more statist. *Sigh*

The Big Aristotle

The lovely and talented GFR and Alex Massie have both responded to Linda Hirshman’s Open University post on Aristotle and his relevance to modern politics. Alex is bewildered by Linda’s take that the “conventional wisdom” on Aristotle is that “Aristotle was a defender of slavery and women’s inferiority and thus disabled from providing wisdom in these emancipated times, an argument that would also eliminate the Declaration of Independence.” GFR, having fought in the trenches of Harvard undergrad moral reasoning classes, wearily reports that, indeed, Seyla Benhabib isn’t too big a fan of a political system built on: “the agonistic public sphere depend[ing] on the existence of a private sphere of drudgery and servitude that frees the always male citizen to participate in politics”

There are, however, other problems with both bringing back Aristotle’s thought for liberal, progressive or left wing politics and with Hirshman’s piece itself. The latter first. Hirshman uses Rahm Emanuel as an Aristotelian fighter against “extremism.” I’m not saying that the Bush administration and GOP congress weren’t extreme, but Rahm wasn’t a fighter against extremism: he’s a partisan. He’d fight against Republicans if their party platform was “abortion for some, small American flags for others.” In other words, Hirshman’s argument can be made in simple partisan terms, without trying to impress everyone by speaking of Aristotle. Furthermore, Hirshman bases her case against “extremism” as a paean to the virtues of divided government. Again, why Aristotle is necessary to do this is beyond me, Madison and Hamilton would be just fine. Her argument is more baffling when you realize that Rahm Emanuel doesn’t value divided government, just as no politician does. His job is to create a permanent Democratic majority, that means Democratic congresses that support legislative priorities of Democratic presidents, he isn’t, on his own, a force for “moderation” nor should he be.

There are numerous direct issues and problems with Hirshman’s plea for Aristotelianism in American politics. Her desire for a new politics based around virtue comes with a bunch of philosophical baggage, such as Aristotle’s metaphysics and physics, the former of which the 20th century philosophical project has gone to great lengths to show aren’t really falsifiable, verifiable or really that important and his physics, which have been shown to be bunk since the times of Garance’s hero Bacon (Galileo and Newton helped out as well). So what we have left over are platitudes about “extremism” and “virtue ethics.” I worry about virtue ethics in the American political sphere, or in any political sphere, for a few reasons. If the question of how people should act is what “virtues” they should cultivate, it’s horribly vague and doesn’t really provide a ton of answers in specific cases. Isn’t “protecting” Americans against terrorists a virtue, wasn’t Bush’s crusade in Iraq built on how god damned right it was for people to be free and for their to be democracy. I think the left can do a fine job of saying Bush is wrong because his actions have had horrible consequences with no high minded metaphysical junk required.

Additionally, virtue ethics is an undesirable political ethic because it is necessarily private. People act with virtue, individuals pursue and cultivate it. Institutions, like an administration, Congress or Court can’t pursue virtue the same way individuals can. So why virtue ethics may be fine for my interactions with my neighbors, I’d expect something with a bit more rigor and public modes of debate and verification for public political decisions.

Though Hirhsman’s cries for “a moral language to frame the challenge to one of the most vicious periods of American politics.” seem poignant, she doesn’t seem to realize that the debasement of the Bush years, in the beginning at least, were incredibly popular, so when the PATRIOT ACT passed, or when Gitmo opened or when we invaded Iraq, if we had the moral language she so desires, nothing that different would have happened. Bush’s popular actions would still be popular. The American public is capable of acting when shit gets really bad, and they don’t need a new moral language to do it.

There is also a profound illiberalism embedded in virtue ethics, because even though it is a “private” ethical system, it’s a private one the seeks to encompass everyone. The proper telos of human life is what “determines” the virtues of individuals. It is necessarily society that decides these virtues or these teloses, and I don’t trust American society to always value the most humane virtues. It’s easy to see, for example, virtues or telos’ of human life based around, say, procreation, which makes homosexuality a most grievous moral wrong. A late-Rawlsian account of public virtue is a more desirable because it is silent on the foundational issues that virtue ethics or Neo-Aristotelian politics demands to be heard on, and instead decides to take no position on metaphysical issues and instead allow for a public space where people bracket off their metaphysical commitments and agree on certain norms. Hirshman is playing political Russian Roulette, maybe the virtues that would be cultivated in her world would be liberal ones, but they might not be.

The more philosophically sophisticated among my readership (however small it may be) will say I’ve put up an ugly caricature of virtue ethics, and I probably have. But that’s what reducing Aristotle to Rahm Emanuel does, Hirshman has largely inexplicably just decided that some uncontroversial points that are already embedded into our political system and institutions are best expressed in an “Aristotelian” way, she should have to justify why this obscure, all encompassing philosophical system whose foundations have been disproved or rendered “not even wrong” should be the basis of a new American politics when good ole’ fashioned liberalism seems to be doing OK (we did win in 06 anyway)

Mona Charen’s Willfull Ignorance

The Corner today is having some fun bashing the Palestinians for their civil war in Gaza, snidely suggesting that it’s the fault of dovish Two Staters like me.

  Here is an account from Jihad Watch about the escalating violence between Hamas and Fatah in the Gaza Strip. Gaza was a perfect test case. The Palestinians got their wish: Israel withdrew. Did they proceed to build the “peaceful democratic state” they have always sung of in their propaganda? Hardly. They are killing each other. Jihad Watch quotes the Jerusalem Post:

This is completely ahistorical.  Has National Review forgot who is the major supporter of elections uber alles in the Arab world?  It’s none other than our man George W. Bush.  Does Mona forget how the Right nearly peed itself with Iraqi elections and the Lebanese eviction of Syrian forces.  Birth pangs of a new Middle East, Arab spring and all that jazz.  Bush was the primary supporter of elections in the territories, and when they selected Hamas instead of Fatah, whose militia we’re training and supporting, shit hit the fan.  So maybe Mona should stop bashing those of us who, in the long term, oppose the occupation and support a Two state solution and look closer to home on whose bad policies are being implemented in the Middle East.

And all the lights that lead us there are blinding

Reading the lovely and talented GFR’s post about “astronomy villages” got me thinking about those fascinating maps you see showing which parts of the world are lit up. Of course, the East coast of the US, Western Europe and Japan are lit up like a box of firecrackers, while Africa is the dark continent and entire stretches of Russia, Australia and Latin America are dim. The most striking spot on the map is the Korean peninsula, the south is very light while the North is strikingly, immediately dark.

I first became familiar with this map as a poster in the physics hallways at my school, it’s supposed to show the harms of light pollution. But look again, where would you rather live? The masses of people in Africa would surely like some light pollution, China’s people have benefited from it’s massive increase in light pollution. This is just another example of how environmentalism is a rich man’s or more accurately, industrialized countries’ game. You don’t really give a crap about being able to see stars if you can’t feed your family or have steady employment. The issue, of course, is that the “light” countries are putting the most carbon in the air. Hopefully there doesn’t have to be a strict choice between the great expansion of positive liberty that industrialization brings and the environmental havoc it could wreak, but environmentalists should recognize that industrialization has brought more good to humanity that anything, and it’s really our choice to make responsible decisions now.

Full Disclosure: I love going to Tahoe and seeing the clear night sky

Fun Friday Feminist Blogging - Hillary, she’s a woman, is that good enough?

Dana Goldstein, a good candidate for GFR commenter Dion and mine infamous blogger breeding program, has a column up at TAP discussing Hillary’s appeals to women based on her being a woman. The data is pretty striking about Democratic women’s support for Hillary:

According to the Harvard Institute of Politics’ survey of voters between 18 and 24, although Obama leads Clinton by 6 points among young Democrats, she bests him by 6 points among young women. Democratic women of all ages and races favor Clinton over Obama by a stunning 25 point margin

Being a libral minded dude, I have some issues with this apparant “affinity voting.” Progressives and Liberals should vote for the candidate that best maps their preferences about policy and think would be the best president, and concerns about her Iraq War vote and chumminess with Mark Penn, rightly give many liberals pause. How do you then put her gender into the equation? It’s immediately apparent that no matter how far to the center Hillary is, liberal and progressive women will support her. Obama and Edwards, for example, will never have this said about them:

0-year old Anjali Chavan, an Ohio State University student interning in D.C. for the summer, said she had no qualms with voting for Clinton because she’s female.”I honestly feel that no man can understand what it’s like to be a woman and represent half the population unless you go through the same issues we go through,” she said. “It’s nice to have a viable woman candidate.”

This isn’t necessarily the type of identity politics many white male liberals like myself find so tawdry; a female president, and the corresponding icnreasing power, influence and representation are all surely liberal goals, or at least something liberals should be happy about.

There is, of course, a contradiction here. Female politicians can be plenty centrist and moderate, and male ones can be as far to left as any liberal would like. These fault lines were best explored by the GFR vs Yglesias/Rosenfeld TAP throwdown. Yglesias and Rosenfeld relentlessly focused on Clinton’s centrism and perception of leftism while the lovely and talented GFR started from the premise that Clinton would be a good choice because she’s a woman and then put out a whole bunch of polling data and very nuanced takes on her positions to justify her liberality and electability.

Surely Yglesias and Rosenfeld support more women involved in all levels of government, as do nearly all liberals. And surely a female president is something that all liberals would like to see sooner rather than later. The problem comes with which female president the Democrats come around to nominate, or for that matter, Republicans. We shouldn’t be held up to feminist blackmail on Hillary, there should be a fair, gender-neutral evaluation of her positions and electability. The guess there’s something of a compromise for liberals and progressives. Shouldn’t Hillary being a serious candidate for the Democratic nomination, for now, be enough. If the leftier wing of the party revolts and picks say, Obama, and he wins where Hillary couldn’t, that would be a bigger victory for liberal ideals than Hillary getting nominated and losing. This will always be a tricky line to navigate, but I think liberals and progressives needn’t be blackmailed into Hillary support and all the candidates should get as much a gender neutral hearing as possible.

Of course, Newt Gingrich and Ali G explored all the real reasons Hillary wouldn’t make a great president well before any other pundit.

This Is What It Sounds Like When the Doves Cry

Garance Franke-Ruta and Ben Smith’s diavlog must be some sort of absurdist performance art. One would think that both of them, having reputations for being bad diavloggers, would try to spice things up, speak louder, not fill up so much of the time with dead air…especially after the lovely and talented GFR acknowledges in the very beginning of the diavlog that they have reputations for doing exactly that in bloggingheads episodes.

But no, literally seconds after GFR’s introduction/warning, Ben slips into his few words monotone and GFR, though not as bad as other times, slips into her “creating awkward silences for journalistic purposes” and it’s all downhill from there. They are also so soft-spoken that the ambient noise drowns them both out like it’s a jackhammer. There are, however, great moments where they both know that the entire endeavor is going off the rails, and a look on confusion comes over them, Garance’s (beautiful) eyes start to dart to right and a sense of panic sets in with the silence. And then they just start mumbling and GFR desperately grasps for something, anything to talk about.

The sad thing is that even if, say, Dan Drezner and Megan McCardle had their list of topics, it would still be boring. There’s a reason bloggingheads has people that are bloggers/pundits first and journalists second (Bob, Mickey, Yglesias etc) its because their job is to think of something intrinsically interesting to say, that they thought up on their own. Additionally, commentators as opposed to journalists are going to talk about more interesting things, like the actual substance of a policy, rather than, say, the extent of the Clinton campaign’s machinations against these two new biographies. Beat reporters like Smith are supposed to just report facts and add minimal commentary or originality. Garance is also more of a journalist than a “blogger” or pundit and those weaknesses show up as well.

Now, my personal anti feminist alarm is blaring right now, but I believe that the blogosphere can allow for extreme personal honesty, so here it is. The saving grace of this diavlog is how god damned attractive GFR is. I mean, maybe this was obvious in all my posts about her, but I will watch any bloggingheads with Garance, no matter how boring. In the forum for this diavlog, the commenters try to do some real post game/making fun of Ben and Garance, but then just decide that GFR is really, really attractive, or in the parlance of my times and place  “fine ass breezy,” but not in an intimidating or “too attractive to take seriously” way (I don’t like that some women are ‘too attractive’ to be taken seriously, but that’s the way it is)   But I must point out how far ahead of the curve I was on this one.  As any of my friends will begrudgingly tell you, I’ve had a crush on her since March 12. Of course, both the geographical and age distance are great, but to quote Natalie Portman in Zoolander “[She's] almost too good-looking…that would be the main deterrent in considering a relationship”

The Bends!

Wow, Ezra Klein is the gift that keeps on giving. Much thanks to Matt Yglesias for his shout out and even Garance’s slightly mocking one. I’ll take what I can get. Apparently I should post more. But I’m going to be in Providence for the weekend, so posting may be light. I guess i have to kill my small fan-base one way or another! In all seriousness, this is more blogospheric attention than I ever imagined getting, who knows, maybe one day Mickey will link to me!

Maybe I’m just 2 demanding, maybe I’m just like my father 2 bold

Yet again, I feel the obligation to, in the parlance of my times, roast on the lovely and talented Garance Franke-Ruta. I know I criticized her proposal for raising the age of consent to appear in dirty films from 18 to 21 as an unnecessary, prudish paternalistic state intervention that would impeach upon free association and the opportunites of young women and would probably be enforced by conservative prosecutors to go after college students taking erotic pictures and videos of each other.

But my criticism today is of the Go Fug Yourself variety. No, no, I’m not bagging on how Garance looked at the Stanley Hillman Awards. (By the way, she looked fantastic as usual.) The same way the Go Fug Yourself crew mercilessly mocks and belittles the ridiculous clothing of starlets at red carpet events out of sadness because they usually look so good when they don’t seemingly make special efforts to look awful, I have to worry about Garance’s most recent American Prospect article, entitled “How Hollywood Values Saved America!” is quite simply, trivial tripe.

The thesis of her article is pretty obvious: The Hollywood cycle of saying something offensive and contrary to Hollywood’s liberal values (Gibson and Jews, Richards and blacks, Isiah Washington and gays) and the public and Hollywood types getting outraged, followed by a big public apology and then usually rehab has moved east to DC (Hollywood for ugly people).. Remember, this dolled-up Hollywood gossip is in a magazine co-founded by Robert Reich that purports to offer “Liberal Intelligence.” She then moves on to examine three (ooh symmetry!) Washington offensive speech scandals (Allen and “macaca”, Coulter and “faggot” and Imus) and, because no one knew this already, tells us that Coulter Allen and Imus all suffered consequences for being insensitive, bigoted A-holes. And, apparently, all thanks to the mainstreaming of Hollywood values.

I wonder what the editorial meeting was like where they assigned or accepted this piece. Let’s just look at what else is in the June issue of the Prospect included, we have a colloquium on the Middle East with articles by Gershom Gorenberg, Shlomo Ben-Ami and a whole host of esteemed writers.. So, typical wonky stuff so far from the TAP we all know and love. We have four columns, one from Mark Schmitt, Robert Reich, Robert Kuttner respectively (ed- toeing the Bob Kuttner line, are ya!) and Jo-Ann Mort. They’re, again, about serious political stuff from conservatives commandeering government for corporate profits to Reich and Kuttner talking about public investment and Mort informing the world that no, not all American Jews are crazy Likudniks, AIPAC style right wing Israeli nationalists. One might say, “but Garance’s piece was in the “Culture & Books” sections of the magazine, so it doesn’t have to be wonky policy analysis.” Well, one could say this, but let’s look at the other Culture and Books pieces, we have reviews of scholarly or otherwise serious books. Garance’s piece sticks out like a sore thumb of frivolity.

Now, I’m not saying there isn’t a place for good cultural analysis, I think that TNR has been able to meld culture and politics pretty well, yes, even with Lee Siegel. But TAP has always struck me as a more serious publication. Monthly magazines can tend to have longer, extensively researched pieces that really go into depth about issues and provide some original ideas or thought provoking analysis. This is why Garance’s piece is so odd, it clearly didn’t require that much research, the basic facts of the issue were accessible mostly by memory, though surely abetted by a few Lexis searches. And the analysis just seems so obvious, and the subject matter so trivial. Why should liberals really care that when conservatives are assholes, they’re getting punished by the public. And more importantly, doesn’t the TAP readership already know this, as does much of the public? I understand that need for content and that Garance probably is contracted to write x number of articles per year or something, but she is clearly capable of better, more serious and informative work. Her article on Hilary Clinton, for example, brought a perspective not usually heard in the liberal intelligentsia and presented it intelligently. Also, her articles about George Allen’s entanglement and conflicts of interest with a VA hi-tech company were good journalism as is most of her work. Her recent piece, however, isn’t anything worth writing home about (ed - then why are you going on a near 900 word rant about it!).

Now, surely some critics (ed – you fool, no one reads this, you have no critics, and starting one sided flame wars with respected members of the liberal blogosphere isn’t gonna help!!!) will accuse me of being sexist by using adjectives typically used by men to describe demean women’s writing and contributions to the public sphere (frivolous, unserious etc) Well, I guess I’ll do penance by citing some great wonky stuff written by a women to make up for it. So maybe Garance and I were never meant to be, maybe I’m just to demanding

Full Disclosure: Despite two consecutive posts criticizing Garance, I still have a huge crush on her (ed – you’re like an eight year old who bugs and annoys a girl he likes because that’s the only way he knows how to express his feelings, you’re totally pathetic!)

xxxBARELY LEGAL PORNxxx

(ed - you really sank this low so quickly…)

The lovely and talented Garance Franke Ruta published an op ed in WSJ a few weeks ago arguing, in light of sleazy dirtbag Joe Francis going to jail, that the age of consent to appear in porn (for just women, men too? I dunno) should be raised from 18 to 21. GFR, after getting savaged by nearly every liberal blogger with a Y chromosome, has since returned to her crusade to deny the masses their unhindered access to barely legal porn. At campus progress, she fleshes out (ed - harhar…not) her case for protecting legal adults from the evils of soft core porn. She starts by bizarrely accusing her liberal critics, including current and former colleagues of, writing “responses [that] were disturbingly marked by a far greater concern for access to pornographic depictions of teenagers than for the exploitation of young women.” She cites Yglesias‘ cheeky post entitled “I Want My Barely Legal Porn!” as evidence he doesn’t care about government coercion or infantilization, instead of just wanting to ogle 19 year olds in his basement. She even uses one blogger’s admission that, shockingly, 18-19 year old women can be really attractive as prima facie evidence that he opposes her idea for merely lecherous reasons.

In her crusade to deny us all movies of drunk 18 year olds stripping, she further accuses her own colleague Ezra Klein of being politically motivated in his opposition to raising the age of consent.

Nor did they look at the major Democratic donors who have helped Francis expand his reach and normalize his approach of creating “gratuitous nudity, end to end,”

Because we all know Ezra and Matt (ed - the famous one) are solely driven by their desire to kiss up to “major Demcratic donors” in their mission to exploit women. Nevermind that Ezra had posted 9 months before this blogospheric kerfuffle had a post entitled simply “Joe Francis is Scum” - man, Ezra’s really in a “rush to defend raunch culture.” Garance goes on to cite legal cases where Francis seemingly exploited young women, and was being sued for amounts of up to 2.1 million dollars and had several indictments coming down the pipe - ie the system was working without Garance’s age increase.

There are other legal remedies that will crack down on Francis’ exploitation without prohibiting sober ADULTS, men and women, from pursuing a career of their choosing without the state enforcing GFR’s moralized disgust that not all women can be Harvard educated liberal journalists (ed – you really don’t want to be a liberal blogger do you). One could for example, require that before publishing pornographic material, that the producers get two releases, one at the time of filming and one, say, two weeks later so as not to have the only consent be given while intoxicated. Or you could just enforce laws on the book about drunken consent, or even amend them to make consent for pornography given while intoxicated not legally binding. The point is, you don’t have to limit women’s choices and infantilize adults who are entrusted with being able to sign binding contracts, join the military and being able to make medical decisions for themselves.

To flex my libertarian muscles for a second, opposing proposals like this one is about drawing a line in the sand about how active the government should be in how people chose to live their lives act or employ themselves. Julian Sanchez’s comparison to the some pro-lifers bizarre assertion that denying reproductive autonomy is “empowering” hits the mark here, notwithstanding that Garance isn’t opposed to women, in general, having a free range of non erotic opportunities. Us liberals need to remember that the real reason (we should) support government intervention in the economy and other forms of liberty curtailing coercion is to allow for more freedom and to positively enhance people’s ability to fulfill their ends in society. This is why we’re OK with coercion to redistribute income, have social security, enforce a minimum wage and the whole gamut of liberal intervention in the economy. Now surely, our conception of “freedom” and “rights” are different from libertarians, but we should still be able to recognize and criticize illegitimate government coercion when it inhibits people’s victimless free action in society. That’s exactly what raising the age of consent from 18 to 21 to be in pornographic films, the government limiting people’s choices and freedom to participate in society and fulfill their personal ends…basically, treating adults like children.

Full Disclosure: Ever since seeing her on bloggingheads tv, I’ve had a huge crush on Garance, she would have to devote the rest of her journalistic career to hyping an invasion of Iran, increasing agricultural subsidies and punishing drug dealers by cutting off their hands for this to change.