Helmut, over at phronesisaical a few days ago asked a good question -- "What sort of post do I need to write to get lots of comments and links?" I think I've succeeded in answering the inverse question -- how do I write a post to guarantee no comments? Two words: Polish politics.
So what makes a post that you respond to and what makes one that you don't?
The Polish Prime Minister is in Brussels to try to smooth over the rough relations that have developed of late with their fellow European Union member states. Things seem to be a bit odd in Poland and I'm wondering how seriously we need to be concerned about it.
A recent EU report found some troubling trends in the country.
In a resolution adopted in Strasbourg, the deputies condemned "the general rise in racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic and homophobic intolerance in Poland," blaming it in part on religious platforms like Radio Maryja. "The EU should take appropriate measures to express its concerns and notably to address the issues of the participation in the government of the League of Polish Families, whose leaders incite people to hatred and violence," it said.At a remembrance ceremony at Auschwitz last year, groups representing homosexuals were not invited to participate.
The director of the Museum of the Former Camp of Auschwitz did not reply to a request from Poland’s gay activist NGO Campaign against Homophobia to lay a wreath to the gay victims. Neither was the Campaign’s delegation officially admitted to the ceremony of commemoration.This, of course, is that illustrious "New Europe" that our administration was dearly hoping would replace that stodgy old Europe with their socialized medicine, free college, and liberal vacation policies. There are also now rumblings about trying to bring back capital punnishment.
Mr Walesa said he did not like the policies of the Kaczynski brothers and would boycott Solidarity's anniversary celebrations so he would not have to appear with them, the BBC's Adam Easton reports from Warsaw. Mr Walesa once fired the twins when they worked as his advisers while he was president in the 1990s. "His approach is to first destroy and then think about what to build," Mr Walesa said last month of the country's current president, Lech Kaczynski.I don't know if this is localized (things seem to be worrisome in neighboring Lithuania, as well) or a normal part the nationalizing process (once the honeymoon of liberation wears off and many problems still remain, scapegoating is to be expected to some degree). But I'd be interested in hearing thoughts. Helmeut? Ducksters?
I've been reading more and more from folks who hold the "Hillary is unbeatable for the Dem nomination in 2008" hypothesis to be strongly supported bordering on the fatalistic. The primary, they argue, is a fait accompli. I don't get it.
I'll grant that she has unparalleled access to BOPOMs (big ol' pots of money) , but I guess I just don't see -- outside of Barbara Streisand and a handful of Manhattan billionaires -- who her natural constituency is. I would love to have it explained to me because it seems like I'm missing something obvious here.
Progressives aren't fond of her because she has run away from virtually every truly progressive stance, including but not limited to her finger in the wind support for the invasion of Iraq, for what appears to be the sole cynical purpose of positioning herself as a "moderate" before her run for the presidency. Mainstream Democrats don't like her describing her with derogatory terms that are nothing short of stunning. In representing everything the entrenched party machine stands for, the on-line Democratic "take back our party" netroots certainly aren't in her corner. While her stances and voting records mirror Lieberman's, the chances of seeing the same sort of sympathetic GOP rally 'round the fake moderate movement that we're seeing for Joementum is about as likely as seeing Billy Barty in the pro basketball hall of fame. Purely conjecture here, but the swing voters (should they still exist) seem like the ones who would be most affected by the perception that her desire to achieve power is really all about her. So is it the working moms who are supposed to identify with her? Who is her natural base? Where would her hard core, unshakable support come from? I mean one does still need votes to win an election*, no?
(*May not apply in Florida and Ohio)
I understand that the current resident of the White House was put there by conservatives who felt that having a president named "George Bush" would be a symbolic repudiation of Clinton's defeat of H. W. Bush in the first place and make it seem that the country had rejected all things Clintonian. I also understand that some think of Hillary's election as the mirror image of this. Bill and Hillary will be swept back into the White House, the Democratic party insiders hope, by a groundswell of Democrats and independents yearning for those simpler times when the worst problems we had in the country had to do with consentual sex between adults and which telephone Al Gore was using. To elect Hillary would be tantamount to a nationwide "oops, I don't know what we were thinking letting him sit in the driver's seat, we should have stayed with the Clinton program" sort of thing. But I don't think that equation works. Bush was widely, albeit naively, seen in the run-up to 2000 as harmless. He was just an affable goofball and the government had a life and inertia of its own and things would run as they always did, so it really wasn't a big deal who was president.
But two things have changed. First, after the twin debacles of Iraq and Katrina, there is now no doubt in anyone's mind that it does matter who sits in the Oval Office, making symbolism far too petty to be taken seriously anymore. Secondly, with Hillary, you get Hillary. She isn't the blank page that Bush was thought to be. Rightly or wrongly, every move she has made in the last six years has been attributed to presidential aspirations -- and, to be honest, it does seem like an inference to the best explanation. The undeniable aura around her is one of a cynical, calculating politician in the most pejorative sense of that term and as a result, I don't think name recognition or nostalgia for the pre-recession dot-com boom era will garner many votes. To the contrary, name recognition is most likely her biggest problem. Even if Bravo came out with a new series entitled "Queer Eye for the Self-Interested, Nakedly Ambitious Presidential Candidate" starring Carson Cressley and Naomi Wolf and Hillary was chosen as their first project, any attempt to change her image would be doomed. Not only is that image so deeply entrenched, but any move to change or soften her in order to get more votes would be widely criticized as just another move to change or soften her in order to get more votes. Al Gore was trashed for "reinventing himself" whenever he was actually being Al Gore, can you imagine the media frenzy if Hillary actually did try to reinvent herself?
In the last go 'round all we heard from the Hillary-wing of the party was that Democrats need to ignore their best judgment about which candidate actually shared their values, was willing to fight for them, and had the authenticity to be a good president in order to look at nothing other than electability. Electability, we were told, was all that mattered and whatever "electability" meant, part of it was immunization from attack by the Republican slime machine. "Vote for a decorated Vietnam vet," we were told by them, "There's no way they could impugn the patriotism of someone like that. If our guy is a war hero, it will mean that they can't say that our candidate doesn't strongly support the troops." Sigh. Now those same masters of prognostication and political insight are arguing that Hillary, without serious opposition, will and ought to be the Democratic candidate? Yeah, those mean old Republicans would never ever say anything bad about Hillary Clinton, after all, she's electable...I just can't figure out by whom.
As the old drumbeat starts in the direction of Iran, I've been thinking about the reasoning used by those in power and the reasoning they project onto those not in power. While the usual goal of diplomacy is negotiating ways to live together; really, underlying it all is the attempt to get people to do what you want them to do or at least to get them to stop doing what you don't want them to do.
This is especially true with the neo-conservative foreign policy of our current administration. The idea is that America, as the strongest and most prosperous corporate democracy, has reached the end goal of socio-politico-economic development and therefore has the right and obligation to bring along the rest of the world and align them with our national/corporate interests for their own good. Foreign policy is really a matter of bending others to our will.
Now, this requires getting inside the heads of those with whom you are negotiating and figuring out what would motivate or discourage them from acting. This requires understanding the rational processes of the other. Very often we hear that enemies of the US, be it Kim Jong Il in North Korea or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, are "crazy" or "irrational." Maybe they are, maybe they aren't; but in cases of asymmetric power, I'm wondering if we aren't seeing here a misunderstanding of rationality, a projection of rationality from the position onto a place where it does not belong.
You see it over and over again: the way the US deals with North Korea and Cuba, the way the Israelis treat the Palestinians,... The approach is based on the old Pavlovian notion of positive and negative reinforcement. If you push the left pedal, we give you a painful shock; if you press the right peddle, we give you a food pellet. Thereby we train you to push the pedal we want you to push. Indeed, the more you push the wrong pedal, the more painful the shocks will become. The more and the longer you act in a way that we do not approve of, the more difficult we make life for you -- all the time showing you that we will stop the pain if only you do what we want. Of course, the rational person prefers the absence or the eleviation of pain to the experiencing of pain, and so not allowing your will to be bent to ours under these circumstances is irrational because in acting in that way you are freely chossing pain where you do not need to be experiencing it. What kind of idiot prefers the stick to the carrot?
This is the reasoning of people who have something to lose and the foundational standard of rationality that they apply to everyone, regardless of their relative wealth, power, or circumstances.
But, of course, that sort of cost/benefit analysis is not the one made by those with less power. First, what is on the line is not just pain or no pain, but one's dignity and existence as a person or nation in and for itself. The surrendering of autonomy is a major cost that is not included in the calculation by the powerful. It may be the case that no carrot is worth suffering the stick that takes away one's soul and going along is to give in and give up more than merely spiteful resistance. Those who are in control think only on the operative level because they are never faced, muchless are not virtually always faced with questions on the existential level -- they know their basic status as a free agent is safe and only have to decide what to do as a free agent. Not so on the other end of diplomatic shotgun. It is not childish intransigence, as it may appear from the perspective of the powerful, but the fight to maintain one's self as an autonomous being, to preserve one's very humanity.
But further, there is something else in play here that makes such cost/benefit analyses seem problematic in the first place. The rationality of an act is context dependent -- the rationality of this bet is not just based upon an examination of this bet, but also other bets you have made. There are what we call "Dutch book" bets (apologies to Hanno) in which you have a series of bets, each one being rational by itself, but when taken together guarantee that the bettor will lose money. It is always irrational to take such bets.
But there is a similar, but subtly different case -- what SteveD long ago termed "Vegas book" bets -- which turn not on other bets, but other environmental factors. These bets are irrational all other things being equal, but may be rational when all other things aren't equal. Take the lottery -- what a bumper sticker I saw once referred to as a tax on those who can't do math. The lottery is usually a bad bet because the payoff is less than the odds of winning. The reward needs to be at least as great as the risk. If you are flipping a coin for money and not getting paid 2:1 for winning, you will lose money over the long run regardless. To play such games for purposes of winning money is therefore irrational. But suppose you need $100,000 quickly or a mobster will break your kneecaps and you only have a dollar in your pocket. The odds of winning that $100,000 on the lottery is less than 100,000:1, but what other choice do you have? You would be an idiot to not take the bet, even though it is a bad bet. If someone with a lot of chips raises in poker, it must be seen differently than if someone with fewer chips raises. What is rational when you are in control is different from how you ought to play when you are not.
The powers seem to be looking at those without much in the global political capital and assuming that they are going to play like those who have all the chips. When you have both little and everything to lose, you play differently. Seemingly bizarre actions become perfectly rational and the old equation of "they'll come around if we just make life difficult enough" fails to work. The true believers will hew and cry that we just haven't been tough enough on them. "We will break you." And the more they resist and fight back against those with much more power, the worse it becomes for them, the slimmer the odds and the more rational we make seeming irrationality.
If we want to have any hopes of being diplomatically successful and (if our intentions are actually noble) making this a better world, then, given that we hold most of the chips, it seems like those who make policy need a deeper understanding of the rationality of the powerless.
So I'm writing a biography of Descartes for the high school reader. I love the idea of exposing kids who generally don't see it to philosophy, the history of science, and the history of math. But I'm starting to wonder if the themed narrative biography is really the way to go. Kids today are "visual learners" and I'm thinking that it should be screenplay.
With the Philosophers' Drinking Song and "G'day Bruce," Monty Python (holy be thy name) has the nerd comedy angle covered and the little known Stealing Heaven which depicts the story of Abelard and Heloise covers the cheesy, romantic, chick-flick genre. What we still need is something for the adrenaline-soaked, testosterone-laden, 14-year-old boy thriller niche. We need someone to do for philosophy what Indiana Jones did for archaeology. That's why I am suggesting -- Rene Descartes: Action Adventure Hero.
Stay with me here. Descartes contracted tuberculosis as a newborn from his mother and was pale and sickly throughout his childhood. But as a young adult he found himself in robust health and compensating for his early years, he studied fencing, becoming quite good with a sword, and became a mercenary, learning the military arts from Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, a famed tactical genius. The Catholic Descartes lived in Holland and served under the Protestant Maurice as he was engaged in battle against the Spanish-Austrian monarchy, a mutual enemy of Holland and France. But once the war enlarged and became sectarian, Descartes fought for the Catholic Bavarian army of Maximilian I against Maurice and his former comrades.
Historians disagree over whether Descartes saw combat with either force, but they do agree on one episode... After leaving Maximilian's army, Descartes returned home to France following a leisurely, circuitous route seeing much of central Europe on the way. Taking a boat to Holland, Descartes traveled with only his manservant. At the time, wealthy men were often accompanied by large entourages, including bodyguards. Seeing that Descartes had no such protection, hearing him speak well-heeled French to his servant, and seeing him dressed in taffeta with an ostrich-feather plumed hat, the rough-necked crew took Descartes to be a wealthy French merchant, and a bit of a pufter at that. Thinking he could not understand Dutch, they openly plotted to rob and murder Descartes, feeding his corpse to the fishes. Of course, having lived in holland, Descartes understood every word and realizing he was outnumbered, saw the element of surprise as his best tool. Waiting for just the right moment, in one smooth motion, Descartes drew his sword and pounced on one of the sailors, knocking him against the side of the boat putting the tip of his sword to the man's throat. In a calm, clear voice, Descartes explained in Dutch that he understood every word said. He was tired from the war, he declared, but no so tired that he would not happily kill each and every one of them himself. Seeing his desired destination from the ship, he then politely asked if one of the crew would mind rowing him and his manservant ashore. The suddenly genial sailors thought this was a smashing idea and Descartes was taken to land where he went on to discover analytic geometry, modern philosophy, a version of Copernican cosmology based on an early form of the principle of relativity, and the strange idea that dogs are just hairy little robots (can't win 'em all, I guess).
This is exciting stuff, but for Hollywood it would still need some puffing up. So I'm thinking that in the movie version, Descartes rows himself and his manservant (the bumbling sidekick used for comic relief) ashore. But when they get halfway there, Descartes turns to the camera and says, "Cogito ergo BOOM." Camera cuts to the ship which is torn apart in a fiery explosion with flaming bodies flung in all directions. Quick cut back to a close up to Descartes who winks and says, "I think, therefore they are not."
So the only thing I can't figure out is who plays Descartes. I'm thinking it should be someone British because there is nothing that says continental Europe in American cinema like a British accent. But I'm also open to other possibilities. Suggestions?
Brothers, Sisters, and Transgendered Comedists Everywhere,
This weekend's sermon is about sacrificing for Comic righteousness. Yes, doing the funny thing is not always easy, as we discussed a few weeks ago, and sometimes doing the funny thing is not always cheap. But, as good Comedists, we must put the punchline before the bottom line; to truly serve the will of the Cosmic Comic, we must value a great joke more than gold.
And no one teaches us this lesson better than Gerald Ratner. Mr. Ratner was the son of the founder of Ratner's, British jewelry retailer, and eventually became the company's chief executive where his business savvy built the company up into an extremely large and successful chain. As chief executive, it was his job to address the company's Institute of Directors. In April 1991, the gathering was held at the Royal Albert Hall and the good Mr. Ratner took the stage.
A joke, at such occasions, often loosens up the crowd. So Mr. Ratner uncorked a classic.
We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say, 'How can you sell this for such a low price?' I say, 'because it's total crap.'"The joke went over extremely well...at first. It brought the house down...and then it brought the company down.
A few posts back there was an interesting discussion about the utilitarian concerns about Democracy that go all the way back to Plato -- if you leave the power to make decisions in the hands of the people, how do you know they won't completely screw it up? Is Democracy a desirable end in itself or is it claimed to be the best means for some other desirable end, say maximizing freedom or standard of living or some other measure of the good life? If it is claimed to be the best means to human flourishing, on what grounds should we accept this claim?
The always insightful I, put it this way:
Hanno--By "faith in democracy" I mean believing in the process, that it works for the good of the people, that it is a better system than any given alternative, that it truly has the power to produce enlightened decisions instead of mob mentalities, that it isn't just the least bad of the political options available. Unless you have a deductive argument proving with certainty that democracy provides this, I'd say there's an element of faith involved when we engage in the democratic process. Geez, these days voting alone is an act of faith that one's vote will even be counted.
On the contrary, there is no reason at all to think that the majority will make decisions for the good of the people or even of the majority.Giving you the freedom to make choices certainly does not in any way assure that you will make the right choices, however one wishes to define 'right." Were it otherwise, there would be no smokers, no drug addicts, no people flunking out of college, etc. The assumptions underlying your faith are that always that individual not only know what is right for them, but also that they will choose to do what they know is right. For societies and individuals, these assumptions seem flatly false. Even the educated minority does not understand economics, diplomacy, science, so how can we expect them to make knowledgeable choices? If they are right, but the answers require sacrifice and pain, the majority is more likely to turn away from right, as we do as individuals when our doctor, for example, tells us we really need to lose 15 lbs.
It is not surprising, then, that as democracies, we can make really bad choices. We can democratically give power to a power hungry mad man (Hitler, for example), democratically support the deaths of millions (Native Americans), wars of aggression (perhaps in the name of peace and defense, but sometimes in the name of God's will, or manifest destiny). There is absolutely nothing about democracy which even suggests that good choices will be made. But even if the majority knows something is wrong, just like the individual, the will to do the right thing can also be undone.
For this reason, we even protect major decisions from democracy (the Supreme Court and the Federal Reserve are two examples that jump to mind, where we know democracy will screw things up.) If there is a virtue to democracy, it must be found somewhere else.
First, we might note, when things go wrong in a non-democratic society, violence is almost always a part of the reaction. Democracies allow for change without violence, as long as everyone sticks to the "gentleman’s agreement" to abide by the rules, even when those rules are suspiciously enforced. It was this abiding that made Nixon surrender the tapes when the Supreme Court ordered him to, and this abiding when Democrats lived by the Supreme Court decision giving W. the Presidency. Second, and perhaps more importantly (though do not undersell the importance of the
first!) the power to make your own decisions is important even when you make the wrong decision.It is almost an existential virtue. You fucked up, but it was your choice. No one forced it on you. It is the virtue of autonomy. So to, in a society, there is a virtue in making our own decisions. But this is not quite equivalent, because in society, autonomy is impossible, unless you autonomously agree to live by the will of the democracy. We make our own choices, but we must live by the acceptance that the vote may not (and in my case, almost never) goes the way I want. I could say a lot more about this, but this is already too long.
We lost another great one yesterday, jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson passed away at 78. A big man, Maynard had the ability to hit notes that a trumpet was not made to hit. During his solos, he would work up a scale and just when you thought there was no possible way for someone to hit a note that high, he took it up two more steps, the trumpet screaming. It was not uncommon during his concerts, for dogs in a three mile radius to suddenly look up and say, "
What the heck was that?"
His album "MF Horn" was a big part of the soundtrack of my childhood, especially his cover of "MacArthur Park" and the album cover is one of those images I can instantly summon up. My first MF show was a few weeks before my zeroith birthday. My mother was 8 1/2 months pregnant and he was playing a show for the local musicians' union. Everyone was petrified that he might reach for a note and the vibrations could induce labor. The last time I saw MF was just two years ago, a fantastic show with my grandfather, my dad and his brothers. One of those evenings I will never forget.
The thing that was always wonderful about seeing Maynard live was not just the music -- his shows always swung and he made sure to surround himself with incredible young players, helping them launch their careers -- but the chance to be with MF himself. You felt like you had just had a beer with him. He always seemed loose and funny and kind and personable and everything you would hear would only further that impression. in a world full of jerks and mediocrity, Maynard Ferguson was a great talent who was also a wonderful, sweet person.
A couple of ideas for today:
We randomly select twelve gardeners who are to plant nothing but zucchini and forbid anyone else from planting it. The output from those dozen plots will satisfy the actual demand for the squash across the country for the year.
Steve D suggested years ago that for states that enact smoking bans in bars, someone ought to brew beer with nicotine in it. Put it in bottles with a black label and simply call it "death" with the bottles' warning labels double the usual size.
A colleague once told me that to write a bestseller, put one of the following words in the title: "diet," "sex," or "Einstein." The next book I am considering writing...Einstein's Sex Diet: Lose Weight the Smart and Fun Way.
Any good ideas today?
Schadenfreude -- enjoying the suffering of others...
Freudenschade -- suffering in the delight of others...
Freudundschatze -- A famous psychologist and his sweetie...
Freudenschadenfreude -- suffering at others enjoying the suffering of others...
Last week, Aspazia wrote a series of posts, entitled "Missives from Grove," about her trip to Grove, Oklahoma to talk with people who remembered Dr. William Jennings Bryan Henrie, a country doctor who was arrested in 1962 for performing abortions. It is an incredibly touching discussion of the complexities of abortion in the Bible Belt before the topic's complete politicization. Please read them if you have not, yet had a chance. If that series is not nominated for a Koufax award, there is no justice in the blogosphere.
Aspazia was accompanied on the interviews by a conservative local reporter who was trying her best to shoehorn the views of the older generation into the contemporary intellectual trenches, but despite the efforts, continued to fail. The discussion then was not the discussion now. Back then abortion was not ABORTION. In the discussion attached to these reflections, a conversation began about why that transition occurred. Here are some additional thoughts on that topic.
Aristotle teaches us that there are always different ways to answer why questions. One is to cite what he calls "the efficient cause" -- that is, explain how it came to be. This is what we usually mean by cause -- what was the domino that knocked into this one, tipping it over? In this case, what historical factors led to the elevation of abortion to the exclusion of virtually all else in contemporary moral discourse? Another is the "final cause," that is, what end is being served by something, finding that for the sake of which it was done. It is looking not at what knocked over the domino, but why the dominoes were tipped in the first place. For what purpose was abortion elevated? The third aspect we'll discuss is the formal cause, what is the structure that makes the thing what it is. What are the rhetorical moves that allowed abortion to dwarf the rest of the pressing issues that we need to take seriously as a society?
The Efficient Cause
As there have been a number of very good expositions on the use of abortion in the rise of the religious right, let me merely point you to two wonderful sources. Thomas Frank has an excellent chapter in What's The Matter With Kansas where he traces back to 1991 and the "Mercy Summer" in Wichita when the football stadium was packed to the rafters with anti-abortion activists. The hyper-enthusiasm surrounding the issue, seeing that many people with that much passion for the cause in one place, he argues, caused a gestalt switch in the minds of abortion foes and turned abortion into ABORTION. Michelle Goldberg in Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism traces the movement and the use of abortion back farther in an integrated history of the rise of Christian evangelical political power. The stories they tell are compelling from a number of angles and well worth the read.
The Final Cause
What turned abortion into ABORTION is the fact that on both sides of the argument ABORTION is not about abortion, it is about larger political aspirations and ramifications. This is not to say that pro-choice advocates do not truly want abortion to be safe and legal, nor is it to say that pro-life advocates do not want abortion to become illegal and to cease. Both do; BUT, while they have views on abortion, ABORTION means something much larger -- it has become a symbolic place in the political landscape that, like Jerusalem, holds radically different, but equally sacred meaning for both camps.
To the pro-life camp, ABORTION is the central battleground in the fight to Christianize American law, culture, and politics. It is not the morality of abortion which is important, it is the symbolism. There are lots of things that are seen by the religious right as immoral but legal, but none of these have the effect of abortion, none of these give rise to mass and often violent protest, and none of these are giving rise to back door attempts to plant legislative time bombs, like double homicide charges for murdering pregnant women or outlawing embryonic stem-cell research, that would serve to establish legal foundations for later abortion rulings in the courts. Abortion became ABORTION because it relates to contemporary secular approaches to sex and feminism, what the movement sees as two major hurdles to becoming a Christian nation. It is here that sex outside of wedlock and the promotion of women's rights can be tied to the death of innocents, the most horrific of wrongs. So if the Christianization cannot triumph here, it is doomed. But if it succeeds here, it will give rise to momentum that will break the backs of the secular opponents and the tide will roll Christianity to its rightful place as the foundation for this nation. ABORTION is seen as the leading edge of the front line in the war for the soul of the nation.
To the pro-choice camp, ABORTION is representative of every advance that women have made in their work to become full citizens and autonomous humans. The major successes of the movement to include women in the social contract as equal partners are at most only a couple of generations old. It is not even 100 years since women have been guaranteed the right to vote in the US. It is only since 1964, a scant 42 years since civil rights for women were guaranteed by law. And workplace rules and wages continue to be live issues that require continuing the fight. The hard-won advances are still green and not so entrenched that there is not fear of losing the them...Especially when there are social forces conspiring against them. ABORTION is not about abortion, it is about women having the right to control their bodies, it is about the right to be fully human and not mere vessels for fertilization. If women lose the right to abortion on demand, the fear is that women will lose the autonomy, the humanity, that they have finally gained and that the tide will have changed and other advances will be under attack. The slippery slope back to the days of immoral dehumanization will have begun.
For both sides, the question really has little to do with the morality or legality of abortion. The larger question of what it symbolizes and the momentum of who wins the battle is what turned abortion into ABORTION.
The Formal Cause
But there is another way of looking at what turned abortion into ABORTION and that is the form of the rhetoric, the ways of arguing that we see in the contemporary discussion. Because of linguist George Lakoff's work, much has been made of what he calls "framing" and there is no doubt that this is happening in this discussion. But there is another rhetorical trick that was crucial in the transformation of abortion into ABORTION.
Framing is the act of setting the parameters for discussion by choosing the language of the debate. What Lakoff shows is that words are not just "Hello, my name is" stickers that we put on things, they come with ways of seeing the world packed into them. Selecting certain words instead of others limits the discussion by putting certain topics on the table and others off the table. Both sides have done this in their choice of designators. "Pro-choice" frames the issue in terms of liberty and who wants to oppose freedoms to choose? "Pro-life" frames the issue in terms of the life or death of a fetus and who wants to be pro-death? The selection of the name is designed not only to designate which side one is on, but also to elevate (in a fallacious question-begging fashion) one part of the complex inter-related moral issues that are operative in this incredibly difficult ethical question.
But what we see is more than framing. We see another trick which I will term "caging". The idea behind caging is to take a series of related issues that you do not want acted upon and selecting a small single issue to pull attention way from all the rest. Like magicians who will do something flamboyant and fascinating with their left hand to keep you from seeing what they are doing with their right hand, the idea is to make one insignificant issue the focus of all attention in order to make sure that all other related issues are ignored. As long as there is a raucous passionate debate around that issue and it is made to seem of paramount importance, then the assumption by most listeners is that a fair and open debate on all issues is taking place and no one will notice what you are doing with regard to the other issues.
In this way, women's rights have been caged by ABORTION. All the time, effort, and money that could be going into furthering women's rights on a number of fronts are sucked into the ABORTION fight. Not only that, but how to cage the issue is determined by what issue is easiest to frame when let out of the cage. If conservatives chose to openly fight against voting rights or equal pay for equal work legislation, it would put them clearly on the side of immoral support of injustice and they would lose quickly and decisively. But by caging women's rights and only letting ABORTION out of the cage, any possible advances on the women's rights front are stopped in their tracks and pro-lifers can portray themselves as the defenders of families and innocent life, not the opponents of women's rights.
In the same way, civil rights issues have been caged with only affirmative action set outside the cage. We can bring the civil rights charge to a halt by focusing all attention only on hiring in a small set of cases. Again, this is made more effective when the caging is combined with framing -- affirmative action is only to be addressed in terms of quotas. In this way, the advancement of civil rights legislation not only stops, but those stopping it do so by portraying themselves as opposing discrimination.
The framing and caging of environmental issues have not worked in concert and has been less successful. The framing is in terms of jobs vs. spotted owls. The caging has been around national parks. Pay attention, virtually the only time you will hear discussion from the administration about environmental issues is in terms of protecting or using the national parks and national forests. These are important places, but far from the most important environmental issues facing us today. But by caging the other issues, snowmobiles in Yellowstone will take up the resources to fight the real problems.
Gay rights? Cage questions about hate crimes, workplace discrimination, housing discrimination,... only let out marriage. Then frame it in terms of "protecting the family." Cage and frame.
Abortion, thus, became ABORTION for several reasons. (1) It is an issue that historically took on a life of its own and became a rallying point, (2) it is deeply symbolic in struggles on both sides of the political spectrum that makes it ground zero in the culture war, and (3) it is an effective way to cage off other issues that those with certain agendas want off the table.
I know, I know, after your summer beach reading, you're up to here with Hans Reichenbach's early writings on the theory of relativity... but for that hard to buy for philosophy of science geek on your Chirstams list...
Hans Reichenbach was one of eight students in Albert Einstein's first seminar on the general theory of relativity at the University of Berlin in 1919. He was amongst the first philosophers to understand the theory in all of its mathematical detail and became Einstein's self-appointed bulldog in the popular media. Einstein's theory was attacked from all sides, physicists challenged its empirical claims, philosophers tried to argue that its foundations were self-refuting, cranks of all stripes came up with bizarre "disproofs." Reichenbach took them all on in physics journals, philosophical journals, and popular science magazines.
He saw Einstein's work not only as a radical strike in physics, but as a template for restructuring philosophy. He set about to clearly lay out what in the theory was philosophy and what was science, what in the theory was arbitrary linguistic convention and what was a matter of fact in the world, what in the theory was supported by observation and what still needed confirmation. Once this was done, he set out to pinpoint the errors in understanding of the opponents of relativity. And he took on all comers with intelligence, wit, and an ease of style that makes his writings a joy to read.
Get it quickly, sales have been brisk...it is ranked amongst the top sellers on Amazon (if the "top sellers list" is extended to include include almost 1,000,000 titles).
There is a special level of Comedy Heaven for straightmen and Bruno Kirby is there. He was a fine actor, appearing, notably in The Godfather (I and II), but he was a magnificent comic foil playing playing opposite some of the funniest comedic actors where he could deliver a dry, self-deprecating line with the best of them.
He was a master at playing the schlamazel, portraying characters you would laugh at instead of with, but could still feel for. As Lt. Hauk in Good Morning, Vietnam, you couldn't help but feel bad and annoyed at the same time for a guy who tried so hard to be funny and knew, and resented, that he was outclassed.
I understand you're pretty funny as a dj, and, well, comedy is kind of a hobby of mine. Well, actually, it's a little more than just a hobby, Reader's Digest is considering publishing two of my jokes.He was amazing as Harry's best friend Jess in When Harry Met Sally,
You made a woman meow?and as Ed in City Slickers,
Shut up! Just shut up! He doesn't get it! He'll never get it! It's been 4 hours! The cows can tape something by now! Forget about it please!But the classic was the cameo as the limo driver in This Is Spinal Tap,
You know, it's just that people like this...you know... they get all they want so they don't really understand, you know...about a life like Frank's, I mean, you know when you've loved and lost the way Frank has, then you, uh ...you know what life's about.He was a man with integrity. After City Slickers, Billy Crystal declared that there would be no sequel -- of course, there wouldn't. A good movie, not a cinematic classic by any stretch, but a solid comedy, it wrapped up neatly and sequels for such movies are craven, financially motivated, not artistic, undertakings. And then City Slickers II was proposed. Kirby could have cashed in, it was a guaranteed seat filler for a couple of weekends until the fact that the film was sure to be crap killed it. But he said no and held the line. This was a man who turned down sure cash to not be a part of bad comedy.
Suppose you are house sitting for a friend and something important comes in the mail that needs to be taken care of immediately, something that requires a signature. You call your vacationing friend and explain the situation and the friend says that it can't wait until she gets home, please sign her name and send it out asap. Is this forgery? If so, is it morally wrong?
Signing your name is what Austin would call a performative use of language -- you are doing something with words rather than saying something with words. By signing a document, you may be displaying agreement or support of a statement (signing a petition), accepting the terms of a covenant (signing a contract), or accepting responsibility for something (signing for a package). Your friend in the example gave a clear indication that she was willing to accept what came with the signature, but the acceptance could only be verbal and not written. In asking you to sign for her, you were deputized, given the authority to speak on her behalf and it was done in a way that she not only approves of but directly requested. The needed signature was a mark of acceptance and that acceptance was given, you are just playing the role of messenger.
But the notion of a signature is starting to become obsolete. The functions of the signature are being taken over by "lock and key" information. Whether it is digital encoding, knowledge of a social security number, pin, or password, or possession of answers to questions like "What is your mother's maiden name?", "What was your first car?", "What is the first vowel in the name of your favorite Beatle?" (include Stuart Sutcliff and you get all the vowels), the idea is that there is only person whose informative key fits in the lock and that by providing the information, it is the same as a signature. It is this move towards non-signature signatures that has made identity theft something prevalent. Before the internet, the only place you'd ever see identity theft was in Shakespearean comedies -- and even then, you never could completely believe that they could really pull it off.
The move to "digital signatures" is strange because it removes one of the key elements of the signature, presence. Jacques Derrida wrote an interesting piece on exactly this question ("Signature, Event, Context" -- Aspazia made it part of a class we team-taught a couple years ago on the analytic-continental divide) and he points out that what is expressed by a signature is not merely assent or acceptance of what is signed, but a lasting artifact of your presence. Think about why people ask celebrities for autographs. An autograph says I really saw Brooks Robinson or Amy Tan or the guy who played the best friend of the boyfriend of the daughter on "Who's the Boss?" Part of the point of the signature is not just to say that I agree to what is signed, but that I was there. One of the most famous signature in history, of course, is John Hancock on the Declaration of Independence and the idea was not just that his name is there and that he agrees with the sentiments expressed, but that it not be at all ambiguous to King George that John Hancock was there, was part of the action. Think of graffiti or "Kilroy was here" -- the act of putting your name on something is to make it undeniable that you were present at some place. The concept of a signature comes from the signet rings of kings and high officials where if a latter was sealed with a certain insignia, you knew the hand of the King had been on that letter. Authentication in some way is connected with proof of presence.
This is what makes the signature question about the vacationing friend tricky. The needed signature is not only a sign of acceptance, but a sign of acceptance at that place by your friend. Set aside the possibility that your friend would later change her mind and say "I never signed that" -- the lack of her real signature displays a lack of actual presence and that is what was requested by the person who sent the letter. You are bound by your signature because you were there and you read it and you did physically receive this and not only have signaled your agreement, but have physically instantiated that acceptance. There is a thing -- your signature -- that exists as an independently verifiable fact of the world. But that fact is now a sham. Signing for your friend could therefore be seen as a form of lying, as you, trying to say that your linguistic act is really the act of someone else. Like Cyrano to Roxane, the sentiment may be authentic, but the act is a deception...albeit a harmless sort of deception that makes no real difference.
So, is it the spirit or the letter, in this case quite literally, the letter -- that is important?
I'd been considering an occasional series about fascinating characters from intellectual history that are largely absent from the collective mind and with all of the fuss over the confirmation of the solution of Poincare's conjecture (for a nice discussion of the conjecture, see Good Math/Bad Math), it seemed to perfect not to start with Henri Poincare.
Jules Henri Poincare was born in 1854 in Nancy, into a prominent family -- his father was on the medical faculty at the University in Nancy and his cousin would become prime minister and President of the Republic. Where the word genius has become largely meaningless, Poincare fits the most rigorous of usages. He was a mathematical physicist, philosopher, and one of the greatest mathematicians in history. He made major and lasting contributions to many fields in mathematics -- indeed he is considered the last of the generalists, the last mathematician to be a force across the mathematical spectrum.
Indeed, it was this breadth of interest that led to one of his most famous contributions. He had been working on extending the result of his dissertation which dealt with differential equations, when he decided to go on a geological field trip for a diversion. The moment his foot hit the step to get on the bus, a thought shot through his mind, completely out of nowhere -- the equations he was playing with in order to solve a problem in algebra were actually identical in form to those which characterize the non-Euclidean geometry of Lobachevski. It was not a problem he had been working on. It was not a hunch that might be worth checking out. It was a sudden realization that arrived fully formed...and it was a biggie.
Euclidean geometry was the very epitome of what a mathematical system should be. It started with obvious undeniable truths (Euclid's five postulates) and through deductive logic derived with absolute certainty a wide range of stunningly intricate results. Philosophers for hundreds of years thought that it was the model that all other studies should follow. So when a new geometry was proposed by N. I. Lobachevski with a slightly different set of axioms and bizarre results that seemed like they couldn't be right, intellectuals across the academy treated it with open hostility. If it could be shown to be self-contradictory, then it would move from the annals of history to the anals of history. So a fullcourt press was on to find contradictory results derived from Lobachevski's postulates.
What Poincare's epiphany did was to create what is called a "relative consistency proof," that is he figured out a way of mapping the new axioms into the old system. The key is to understand that contradictions are a matter of the form of a sentence. "I have a bloog and I don't have a bloog" is a contradiction no matter what a bloog happens to be. Lobachevski's postulates are or are not self-contradictory because of how they relate their terms to each other, not because of what the terms mean. So Poincare figured out a way of giving the basic terms in Lobachevskian geometry new meanings derived from Euclidean geometry, but he did it in such a way that what Lobachevski's postulates said not only made sense in Euclid's system, but were true in Euclid's system. So since self-contradictoriness is a matter of form and sentences of the form of Lobachevski's postulates could be derived from Euclid's, the only way the new, hated non-Euclidean geometry could be self-contradictory is if Euclid was also self-contradictory...and no one would ever say that. So all of the hopes of saving the classical image of the construction of knowledge were vaporized the moment Poincare's foot hit the bus.
But Poincare was not only a mathematician, he also fancied himself a philosopher and thought about what his result meant. He realized that just as he could translate Lobachevskian into Euclidean geometry, so he could translate Euclidean into Lobachevskian. Any geometric fact could be moved back and forth between the systems, just as you could move distances between feet and meters, just as you could translate French sentences into German. The relative consistency proof gave Poincare a new picture for what mathematics was, the language for science. Choosing between mathematical systems is just choosing between languages, languages are not true or false they are what you use to express sentences which are true or false. As such, mathematical truths are mere grammatical conventions, free choices that have no deep meaning. Mathematical truths turn out not to be truths in any deep sense. So, not only had Poincare overturned the hopes of saving the classical approach to finding truth, but he had also radically undermined the classical notion of truth itself.
[This work was read by and highly influential on a certain Swiss patent clerk. Indeed, the claim has been made that if Einstein hadn't have and Poincare had lived longer, Poincare would have discovered the theory of relativity. We have no way of knowing whether such claims are true, indeed (contrary to what Hanno might say) such claims are likely not meaningful. But there it is.]
Poincare's work on the translation of geometry was based on his idea which he shared with/got from Felix Klein, that geometry is really a part of what mathematicians call group theory. A group is a set and an operation such that if you start with any member of the set and use operation, you get a member of the set. Take the even numbers and adding two -- add two to any even number and you still get an even number. Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries just used different basic groups and it is a free choice which group you want to provide the language you use to describe reality. But Poincare realized that not all geometries could be put into the group mold. In an early piece, he derides these as not "real" geometries and mere oddities that are interesting to play with, but not meaningful. A few years later, suddenly they are real geometries...What happened?
What happened was that Poincare had virtually begun the study of topology, or analysis situs, as he called it. Topology is the study of what lies beneath geometry. Very roughly, think of geometry as the study of figures in space where topology studies the properties of the space itself. How many dimensions does space have? Is space infinite? Is it closed? These are all topological questions. Things like distances and angles that can be measured and have geometrical meaning are not worried about in topology. As long as you aren't ripping or connecting, you are dealing with topology. Squishing, stretching, twisting -- no problem.
It was in thinking about these topological relations that Poincare formulated his conjecture. Conjectures are guesses, but they are more like the stray dogs of the mathematical world. Conjectures may be true, they may be false, you just don't know. Some are mangy and ignored, but others are incredibly cute and you want to adopt them -- but you never know whether the dog belongs to someone and you never know whether someone is going to show up and take it away. Poincare's conjecture was like finding Lassie in a parking lot and what Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman just did was to let the mathematics community adopt her.
I feel sorry for Tony Blair. It's got to be tough to be Bush's lapdog. I mean, after that Barney incident, you know the whole world is watching just to see how hard he drops you on your head.
I feel sorry for CNN anchor Chuck Roberts who was dogged into apologizing for referring to Ned Lamont, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Connecticut, as "the al-Qaeda candidate." Sure, repeating such a horribly ignorant and unfounded Republican smear is cheap and extremely unprofessional, but in a profession peopled by Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Don Imus (who is not only not smart or funny, but has threatened to blackball from his sorry excuse for a show any Democrat who endorses Lamont -- you know, the actual democratically elected candidate), Roberts must feel like the guy who gets pulled over in the middle lane doing 70 while being passed by a car doing 95 with a broken tail-light and a driver with a beer in one hand and a joint in the other.
I feel sorry for those of us blog readers who have dial-up connections and who have found that many of the blogs that we used to enjoy reading for their fine writing and insightful commentary now seemingly post nothing but you-tube links instead of, well, actual content. You kids with your you-tube. Why back in my days in the blogosphere, people used to read and write. But now all you do is sit in front of that damn tube with your crazy hair and rock music. If you tried to pretend you had content with such nonsense back then, you would get flamed...and you were glad to be flamed, we appreciated the value of a good flaming back then. Builds character, it does. Not like you kids today where "Hey it's an old Souxsie and the Banshees clip" passes for a deep post.
I feel sorry for everyone who isn't Brock at Battle Panda and didn't write the sentence,
"I've long said that it's a good thing that Richard Reid wasn't the ass-bomber, or we'd all be dropping trou for the TSA."Yeah, we're all glad he chose the shoe. The airport security folks are bad enough the way they use that wand now. Then again, the explosive materials detection device works by blowing a puff of air...it would be kind of cool to see what it must be like to be the president.
I've always thought that it would be cool to be amongst the initial set of "they," as in "they say..." A while back, when I brought up this quest to be at the baptism of a new entry into the colloquial repertoire, Hanno suggested a real winner that I've been looking for an excuse to slip in..."Shooting an elephant." The conversations about the DLC and their support for the war in Iraq has provided such an opening.
The phrase comes from a short story by George Orwell, called "Shooting an Elephant." The narrator of the story is a British police officer in Burma who is receiving little respect from the locals. Then things changed when,
One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism – the real motives for which despotic governments act. Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it? I did not know what I could do, but I wanted to see what was happening and I got on to a pony and started out.The elephant was not wild, but a tame, working elephant that had broken loose of its chains and destroyed some bamboo huts, stalls at the market, and stepped on a man killing him. He had a trainer, or mahout, who could handle him and calm him down in such situations, but when the mahout heard of the escape, he immediately set out to look for the elephant, but went in the wrong direction -- it would take hours for him to return.
But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side. I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd– seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives," and so in every crisis he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing – no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.And so, he shot the elephant.
The Lamont-Lieberman battle was filled with echoes and parallels from the Vietnam era. Democratic reformers and anti-establishment insurgents weren't wrong about that conflict, either. Vietnam was a terrible mistake for the United States. But like Iraq, Vietnam was a badly chosen battlefield in a larger conflict with totalitarianism that America had no choice but to pursue. In turning viciously on stalwarts of the Cold War era like Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, and Scoop Jackson, anti-war insurgents called into question the Democratic Party's underlying commitment to challenging Communist expansion. The party's Vietnam-era drift away from issues of security and defense—and its association with a radical left hostile to the military and neutral in the fight between liberalism and communism—helped push a lot of Americans who didn't much like the Vietnam War into the arms of Richard Nixon. Democrats knew that Vietnam and Iraq were not good foreign policy or moral decisions, but they were wrong to oppose them.By not going along with the war, the Democratic party lost the "one long struggle not to be laughed at." The DLC-ist argument put forward by Weisberg is that Democrats are fools and that they just need to swallow hard and "shoot the elephant."
David Sirota has yet another must read, this one detailing the ways and standard operating procedures of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), home of the so-called "moderate" or "centrist" Democrats. Bill Clinton is their patron saint and with the defeat of Joe Lieberman, their posterchild, in last week's primary, they've been going a bit off their collective nut.
Sirota does a fantastic job setting out very clearly the degree to which the DLC -- and the major players in the Democratic party who are part of the movement -- have prostituted themselves and the party at large to the interests of big business.
As the American Prospect detailed a few years ago, the DLC is funded by huge contributions by some of the largest and most powerful multinational corporations in the world - companies like Chevron, DuPont, Enron, IBM, Merck and Company, Microsoft, Philip Morris, Texaco, and Verizon Communications who eagerly forked over the $25,000 entry fee to be on the DLC's "executive council." As the Prospect noted, the DLC's "revenues climbed steadily upward, reaching $5 million in 1996 and, according to its most recent available tax returns, $6.3 million for 1999." Said the organization's executive director: "Our revenues for 2000 will probably end up around $7.2 million."This money has led to Democrats like Lieberman and Biden in the Senate, to support corporate-friendly/people-unfriendly legislation like the bankruptcy bill and oppose people-friendly/corporate-unfriendly moves concerning reforms in health care.
DLC-ism's fundamental tenets preach that Democrats should 1) never frontally challenge moneyed power; 2) unquestioningly embrace Washington's distorted definition of national security "strength" as being a politician willing to indiscriminately bomb/invade foreign lands regardless of how that weakens U.S. security; and 3) deliberately distort the concept of "centrism" to make it mean "well outside the mainstream of American public opinion."Now, there is no doubt that large segments of the party are cult-like followers of these axioms and that this wing has been in control of the party and overseen the loss of control of all three federal insitutions and many, many governorships across the country.
This week's Comedist meditation is on the universality of humor. There is no doubt that some jokes are contextual and that there are some things that some people find very funny, but others do not. Yet, surely there are some things that are at least nearly universally held to be funny. Say, something like this.
What is it about passing gas that is funny? When I was a lacrosse player, we would have to travel hours on a bus to get to games and this topic alone kept many of the other guys amused for much of that time. Is it the sound? It is cacophonous and punctuated. Such sounds do tend to be funny -- for a classic example, Spike Jones' Cocktails for Two (pay special attention to 1:48-2:08). Is it the smell? Is it that it is socially impolite and thereby embarassing? Are we laughing at the deviation from enforced norms? Or is it the combination of the two that makes the whoopie cushion one of the greatest human inventions of all times?
Even the ways we refer to it tend to be funny: farting, passing gas, breaking wind, floating an air biscuit, playing the gluteal tuba, cutting the cheese, the one gun salute, trouser coughs. Any others?
It certainly is a normal part of all human life -- on average people pass gas about 14 times each day. It even plays vital roles in nature -- researchers have discovered that herring farts have a language all of their own. Herring pass gas in order to communicate, but do so at a frequency that their preditors cannot hear -- making such fish farts silent, but not deadly.
To show you how
deep the Comedist connection to farting runs, consider "The Creation of Adam" from the Sistine Chapel. Now, if you look very closely at the upper righthand side, you will find that Michelangelo has included the phrase "pulleth my finger" in Latin.
We leave you this weekend, with this classic:
An elderly lady complains to her doctor that she has been passing gas much more frequently than she usually does. "It's not a real problem," she says, "More of a nuisance because they are silent and don't smell at all." The doctor gives her a prescription and tells her to come back in a week.
A week later, she returns and says to the doctor, "I don't know what it was you gave me, doc, but I still pass gas all the time. It is still silent, but now it smells terribly!"
The doctor replies, "Now that we've cleared up your sinuses, let's see what we can do for your hearing."
Jacob Weisberg's article, "Dead With Ned: Why Lamont's Victory Spells Democratic Disaster" in Slate has been attracting a lot of attention. The gist is that just as in 1972, those darn anti-war Democrats are going to scare voters away.
The party's Vietnam-era drift away from issues of security and defense -- and its association with a radical left hostile to the military and neutral in the fight between liberalism and communism -- helped push a lot of Americans who didn't much like the Vietnam War into the arms of Richard Nixon.The protesters might have been right about both Viet Nam and Iraq, Weisberg argues, but opposing what they knew to be immoral debacles, then and now, is political suicide.
In 1972, the Democrats repudiated their flawed Cold Warriors and chose as their standard-bearer a naive and honorable anti-war idealist. It was not George McGovern's opposition to Vietnam but his larger tendency toward isolationism and his ambivalence about the use of American power in general that helped him lose 49 states to Richard Nixon. In a similar way, the 2006 Connecticut primary points to the growing influence within the party of leftists unmoved by the fight against global jihad. Nixon had the gift of hippie demonstrators and fellow-traveling bluebloods like Ned's great uncle Corliss Lamont as antagonists. Today's Republicans face an anti-war movement with a different tone and style, including an electronic counterculture of enraged bloggers and callow entrepreneurs like Ned himself. Yet the underlying political dynamic is not altogether different.We're e-hippies! Groovy! [Disclaimer: I have a volume entitled The Grateful Dead and Philosophy coming out in the spring with Open Court publishers, so I may not exactly be the best person to stand as a representative if one is looking to undermine Weisberg's characterization here.]
I was pondering Goldbricker's post from a couple of weekends ago in which she points to James Dobson's checkered past as he, himself, tells it in his book The New Strong Willed Child.
Dobson admits in one of his books that as a child he arranged a fight between two mismatched dogs. The battle involved a tenacious bulldog and a "sweet, passive Scottie named Baby," and Dobson provoked it by throwing a tennis ball toward Baby. He writes what happened next: "The bulldog went straight for Baby's throat and hung on. It was an awful scene. Neighbors came running from everywhere as the Scottie screamed in terror. It took ten minutes and a garden hose for the adults to pry loose the bulldog's grip. By then Baby was almost dead. He spent two weeks in the animal hospital, and I spent two weeks in the doghouse. I was hated by the entire town."Does this matter? For the evangelical set, we see things like this, Bill Frist's getting cats from the SPCA under the auspices of adopting a pet and then taking them home to dissect, and George W. Bush's past "infelicities" all get wiped clean by being born again. But when we look at the ethics and not the theology of the question, it becomes should the character or moral history of the source of moral proclamations make a difference in how seriously we take the proclamation?
From Marty Peretz, Editor of The New Republic,
Worse can be said of Bill Clinton's stumping in Connecticut for Joe (and Hillary's endorsement, too.) When Clinton came into the state, Lieberman and Lamont were running dead even in the polls, more or less. Clinton's appearance began Lieberman decline.The Clinton visit happened first, Lieberman's defeat after, therefore the second HAD to be caused by the first. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. What Marty fails to realize is that on the morning of Clinton's visit, I made pancakes. THAT was the real cause...beware the flapjack. And Hillary, if you are even thinking of running in '08, I've got some batter left in freezer...
I'm thinking about virtues. Aristotle argues that they are the heart of ethics. All things have an end, a goal towards which they are striving which is always a part of them as their potential. Something is virtuous when it actualizes part of its potential.
In terms of human behavior, Aristotle argues, the virtues are the mean between extremes. Glutton and anorexic = bad, moderate eater = good. Drunkard and teetotaler = bad, occasional drinker = good. Buffoon and wet blanket = bad, witty = good. Big spender and cheap bastard = bad, generous = good. It works in many cases, especially when it is easy to apply the relevant vice or virtue unambiguously.
But what happens when virtues come into conflict? Let's think about graciousness and determination.
Certainly it is a virtue to be gracious in defeat, especially when one has been defeated in an endeavor that one is deeply committed to. Such graciousness not only exhibits a maturity of character, but also bolsters the institution in affirming a deep commitment to its functioning. It shows that you consider the process more important than winning. If the process is democratically held elections, then graciousness shows a true commitment to the principles underlying the governmental structure.
At the same time, determination is certainly virtuous. Someone who does not let setbacks keep them from striving for their desired goals is to be lauded. We hear cliched platitudes from coaches all the time... "No pain, no gain." "Nothing worth doing is easy." "Do it, you wussy. C'mon little baby...what are you chicken or something? Be a man, god damn it..."
[Sorry, had to step out for a brief bit of therapy...better now.]
But what do we say of someone who is not gracious in defeat for the sake of perseverance? Is such a person a sore loser or is he deeply committed? Is it a matter of context? Is it a matter of intention? How much of an insult to the process is it if one runs over it to pursue one's personal goals? Suppose one's goals are more than personal?
Daniel Levy has a fascinating editorial in Haaretz. His argument is that the escalation in Lebanon is a result of the American neo-conservatives failing to understand the role the US is supposed to play in the Middle East dance. (Good reason to take his analysis seriously: he was a top Israeli negotiator at Oslo.)
Levy argues that the job of the US is to be the good cop to Israel's bad cop. Israel rattles the saber and the US offers the peace deal which moves American and Israeli interests slightly forward while maintaining the delicate balance in the larger region. The possibility of ending hostilities while living to fight another day combined with pressure from the US closes the deal. At least that was the unspoken agreement before now.
But the neo-cons looked at Israel's tough guy routine and took it seriously. They didn't realize that it was part of a larger strategy that kept a lid on a boiling pot. Instead, they thought that the US script constrained Israeli forces that really wanted to keep going, so they decided to be bad asses too and not step in, thereby letting the IDF off the leash to "finish the job"... just like they did in Iraq...
There is no doubt that the PNAC group is filled with members enamored of Israeli tactics, but again we see the naivete of trying to divorce those tactics from the larger context. It still stuns me that there is not a greater degree of discussion about the nature and failings of neo-conservatism in America. Levy is dead on when he writes,
Disentangling Israeli interests from the rubble of neo-con "creative destruction" in the Middle East has become an urgent challenge for Israeli policy-makers. An America that seeks to reshape the region through an unsophisticated mixture of bombs and ballots, devoid of local contextual understanding, alliance-building or redressing of grievances, ultimately undermines both itself and Israel. The sight this week of Secretary of State Rice homeward bound, unable to touch down in any Arab capital, should have a sobering effect in Washington and Jerusalem.Yet, while there may be blame afforded to the Bush administration for bungling foreign policy, there is precious little analysis of how these failings are a direct result of the application of a well-formed political theory. There are central guiding principles here which are being empirically disconfirmed. It is not only in the world's interest to disentangle themselves from the purveyors of this theory, but also to make clear what the theory is and where and how it failed.
