The Next Hurrah

The Shrillification of the Moderates

by emptywheel

I'm fascinated by the outpouring of moderates' conversion narratives, from balanced and temperate to, um, shrill. JMM started it:

As Americans I think we need to grapple with what's happened.  And it goes beyond President Bush.  He did after all win reelection. He marginally expanded his congressional majorities. In the rough and tumble of the political moment, the fight needs to be taken to the president and his party. But we also need a more probing consideration of the forces that have made all this possible.

In any case, this is all a way of saying that in this all-or-nothing crisis the country has been passing through, I think it's made sense to line up with those who say, No. I guess I'm one of those partisanized moderates Kevin Drum has spoken of (not sure that's precisely the phrase he used.) That leads to a certain loss of nuance sometimes in commentary and a loss in the variegation of our politics generally. As a writer, often it's less satisfying.

But I cannot see looking back on all this, the threat the country is under, and saying, I stood aloof. 

Cargo Cult Voting

by emptypockets

Last month, a group in Arizona proposed increasing voter turn-out by entering each person who casts a ballot in a $1 million lottery. Today, Norman Ornstein writes in the Times that voting should be compulsory, with fines levied against non-voters:

If there were mandatory voting in America, there’s a good chance that the ensuing reduction in extremist discourse would lead to genuine legislative progress. These days, valuable Congressional time is spent on frivolous or narrow issues (flag burning, same-sex marriage) that are intended only to spur on the party bases and ideological extremes. Consequently, important, complicated issues (pension and health-care reform) get short shrift.

This is cargo-cult thinking. (As Richard Feynman explained it: "In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head to [look like] headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas -- he's the controller -- and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land.") This proposal worships at the altar of voter turn-out: it says that since good democracy requires great citizen participation, if we force citizens to participate then we will get a good democracy. Unfortunately, that plane won't land.

In fact, good democracy requires informed voter participation. As states like California begin to put ever more detailed policy proposals on the ballot, it becomes obvious that voters who are ignorant of those issues shouldn't be voting on them. And, in fact, many don't -- they skip those questions. Good for them. It is undemocratic to impose an issue-awareness test or public-policy exam on voters at the polls, so we must rely on citizens to perform their voting duty responsibly, including abstaining from voting on issues which they do not understand or do not care about.

Besides self-selecting for more politically aware voters, low voter turn-out also provides a means for citizens who object to the political system itself to register their disapproval. Ornstein suggests that this group simply mark "None of the above" on the ballots but that is a rejection of the candidates, while staying home is a rejection of the political system itself. The importance of "stay at home" speech can be seen in the way reports of voter turn-out have become part of the election-day narrative, in the often-cited fact that Kerry received more votes than any previous presidential candidate, and in the numerous GOTV movements that have taken root. When enough people stay home, it makes politicians, activist groups, and people like Norman Ornstein begin to wonder "What's wrong?" and to try to fix it.

The Times called the Arizona voting lottery proposal, "One of the cheesier propositions on the November ballot... more Sybaritic than democratic," saying that "a million-dollar award to the voter cheapens politics as much as any candidate's money-grubbing. The better answer to the problem of low voter turnout -- lively races debating substantive issues -- was signaled by Arizona voters themselves when the presidential contest in 2004 drew them out at a healthy 77 percent rate." I fail to appreciate the distinction between drawing voters to the polls with a positive financial incentive like in Arizona or with a negative one like Ornstein's fines. The Times got it right: the way to increase informed participation is by raising the level of political discourse, not the other way around. First, you make people care. Then turn-out will look after itself.

How to Lose

by emptywheel

About one thing the squalling Neocon Democrats are consistent. They claim that their positions--centrism and hawkishness--are the winning positions. But they ignore that in both recent elections and recent wars, those "winning" policies brought Democrats and the US only failure.

Which is about all you need to know about Marty Peretz' latest straw man op-ed, beyond the fact that is filled with nasty name-calling. Here is Peretz' little bit of wisdom:

But he does have one issue, and it is Iraq. He grasps little of the complexities of his issue, but then this, too, is true of the genus of the peace candidate. Peace candidates know only one thing, and that is why people vote for them.

[snip]

Now Mr. Lamont's views are also not camouflaged. They are just simpleminded. Here, for instance, is his take on what should be done about Iran's nuclear-weapons venture: "We should work diplomatically and aggressively to give them reasons why they don't need to build a bomb, to give them incentives. We have to engage in very aggressive diplomacy. I'd like to bring in allies when we can. I'd like to use carrots as well as sticks to see if we can change the nature of the debate." Oh, I see. He thinks the problem is that they do not understand, and so we should explain things to them, and then they will do the right thing. It is a fortunate world that Mr. Lamont lives in, but it is not the real one. Anyway, this sort of plying is precisely what has been going on for years, and to no good effect. Mr. Lamont continues that "Lieberman is the one who keeps talking about keeping the military option on the table." And what is so plainly wrong with that? Would Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be more agreeable if he thought that we had disposed of the military option in favor of more country club behavior?

Let's see. I'm sure Peretz would consider me a "peace" Democrat, even though I'm against stupid wars rather than all wars. But here's what this "simple-minded" peace Democrat who "grasps little of the complexities" of the issues in the Middle East knew, before the war in Iraq.

The End Of An Era

Since mcjoan invoked Peter Beinart, and I brought up Robert Kagan, let's finish that thought and bring in EJ Dionne to talk about The End Of The Right? and David Rieff (writing in the Times Sunday Magazine) discussing The Beginning of the End of the [Neocon] Adventure. Let's set the stage. Things aren't going so well out there in foreign policy land. Iraq's a mess, the political landscape's a wreck, and we may be seeing a tidal wave election in the fall. Both as a source and as result of this, the philosophical underpinnings (such as they are) for the Bush Administration are under attack in the courts and in the press as never before. First Dionne:

Is conservatism finished? What might have seemed an absurd question less than two years ago is now one of the most important issues in American politics. The question is being asked -- mostly quietly but occasionally publicly -- by conservatives themselves as they survey the wreckage of their hopes, and as their champions in the Republican Party use any means necessary to survive this fall's elections.

As you may know, the George Will conservatives and the Bill Kristol conservatives, refereed by David Brooks, don't get along so well these days.

And these days the conservative mansion is a fractious place. My friend George has decided to go after my friend Bill, and we all look forward to the day when his arguments catch up to his sarcasm.

Nor do the economic and the social conservatives. But when clutching for power, funny things happen on the way to philosophical purity:

The most obvious, outrageous and unprincipled spasm occurred last night when the Senate voted on a bill that would have simultaneously raised the minimum wage and slashed taxes on inherited wealth. Rarely has our system produced a more naked exercise in opportunism than this measure. Most conservatives oppose the minimum wage on principle as a form of government meddling in the marketplace. But moderate Republicans in jeopardy this fall desperately wanted an increase in the minimum wage. So the seemingly ingenious Republican leadership, which dearly wants deep cuts in the estate tax, proposed offering nickels and dimes to the working class to secure billions for the rich. Fortunately, though not surprisingly, the bill failed. The episode was significant because it meant Republicans were acknowledging that they would not hold congressional power without the help of moderates. That is because there is nothing close to a conservative majority in the United States.

There's also nothing close to a neocon majority, so let's turn to another failure of ideology: Republican foreign policy. From the Times mag: 

Speaking from experience, Billy boy?

By Meteor Blades

Selecting the contemptible, feeble, outrageous, inaccurate, intellectually destitute, villainous, morally upsidedown, false, stupid or depraved comments that emerge from the mouth of Bill O'Reilly on the Foxaganda label is a turkey shoot. Pick a date. Any date. Bullseye. Olbermann does it and Mike Stark does it and so do the folks at this site and this one.

For August 2, Billy boy managed to combine all those categories into one typical scurrilous comment, condescendingly delivered in his faux homespun imitation of Lonesome Rhodes. I had missed the broadcast, but it was captured by those fine deconstructors over at Media Matters:

The Enlightenment Strikes Back

by DemFromCT

Sometime even Kansas can surprise you.

Less than a year after a conservative Republican majority on the State Board of Education adopted rules for teaching science containing one of the broadest challenges in the nation to Darwin’s theory of evolution, moderate Republicans and Democrats are mounting a fierce counterattack. They want to retake power and switch the standards back to what they call conventional science.

The Kansas election is being watched closely by both sides in the national debate over the teaching of evolution. In the past several years, pitched battles have been waged between the scientific establishment and proponents of what is called intelligent design, which holds that nature alone cannot explain life’s origin and complexity.

We've been following Kansas and the creationists for some time, made easier by the excellent home grown blogging of Red State Rabble:

God Is A Scientist

Moderate school board member Sue Gamble sends this note from a mother in Great Bend, Kansas:

Like Pres. Bush and Sen. McCain I essentially would agree with the concept of Intelligent Design. So would many scientists. But do you believe that there were once kangaroos in the Middle East? This is the question asked his audience of an Australian “expert” on a Christian channel I was listening to. He declared he was going to “prove” there were despite the lack of fossil evidence. I listened intently expecting an interesting study or argument. Instead he asked if his audience believed that Noah landed the Ark on Mt. Ararat and if they believed that-then they believed that kangaroos dispersed from the Middle East to Australia.

Anyone with everyday logic can spot that circular argument let alone needing the logic of syllogisms and proofs that is required of science.

After much research, as a Mom of 2 young kids, I have come to the conclusion that the Intelligent Design arguments are a red herring to forward a literal interpretation of the Bible that requires that the earth be only 6k years old. To pit Faith against science is not comparing apples and oranges-but rather apples and bicycles. One is life-giving and sustaining. The other is a means of getting from one place to another.

For Faith the answer to all Truth must be God. For a scientist everything is a theory- there is no Truth. There is only a valid conclusion (one that can be proven logically) and an invalid one.

That is why the changed science standards are so damaging. Science is nothing but a methodology which requires everything be theory. To a scientist it is theoretical that the sun will rise tomorrow. There is no true or false. Only valid and invalid. It is only accepted on empirical evidence that the sun will be there tomorrow. It cannot be “proven”. That is the standard set for science and I learned this in my first college science course.

This is more deeply rooted than we effete corps of intellectual snobs (thank you, William Safire) give credit to. It's important to both watch and participate at local levels (school boards matter, folks! Get out and vote!) because before you know it, there's going to be an Intelligent Design candidate at a school board near you.

The Birth Pangs of a New World

by emptywheel

One of my favorite books with which I disagree strongly is Philip Bobbitt's The Shield of Achilles. Bobbitt elaborates on the old equation between predominant military strategy and the form of the state to argue we're entering a new age, with a new type of state, the market-state.

This book ... is principally concerned with the relationship between strategy and the legal order as this relationship has shaped and transformed the modern state and the society composed of these states. A new form of the State--the market-state--is emerging from this relationship in much the same way that earlier forms since the fifteenth century have emerged, as a consequence of war. ... the State is being transformed, and this transformation is constitutional in nature, by which I mean we will change our views as to the basic raison d'etre of the State, the legitimating purpose that animates the State and sets the terms of the State's strategic endeavors.

My dispute with Bobbitt is threefold. First, his argument is fundamentally tautological. By defining the temporal (post-Westphalia) and geographical (Europe) scope of his book as he does, he eliminates the governing entities like the Catholic Church, the Mongols, China, and the Arab empire that might trouble his neat conclusions that assume the continual existing of what he calls States. By limiting his inquiry to things that look like States, he ensures that his end-point will also look like a State.

"It's A Very Disturbing Trend"

by DemFromCT

The Washington Post has an interesting and important article (not that it's the first best thing on the topic, but it's a reminder of the context that the Schiavo fiasco took place and the ongoing presence of this issue) on the rise of assertive religious conscience in the practice of health care.

In Chicago, an ambulance driver refused to transport a patient for an abortion. In California, fertility specialists rebuffed a gay woman seeking artificial insemination. In Texas, a pharmacist turned away a rape victim seeking the morning-after pill.

Around the United States, health workers and patients are clashing when providers balk at giving care that they feel violates their beliefs, sparking an intense, complex and often bitter debate over religious freedom vs. patients' rights.

I won't rehash every incident and example (see Trapper John's Pharmacists Against Medicine from March '05), but given the current state of affairs of religion in public life, this is a topic that's bound to get more and not less contentious the closer we get to election season. One thing that might put the brakes on this at the national level is the disastrous Terry Schiavo debate in Congress. While Americans of all faiths and stripes want freedom of religion, the vast majority of voters want this out of their bedrooms and homes.

The unseemly sight of Bush cancelling vacation plans and rushing to DC (not for Katrina, not for Middle East war, not for Iraq but for a religious right overreach in meddling with the Schiavo family's personal affairs) has put the breaks on aggressive GOP Congressional action. In the 11/05 Pew Poll, only 17% thought Congress "did the right thing" and 72% thought Congress "should have stayed out".

But at the local level, there's clearly room for some expression of faith and conscience. Doctors are not required to perform abortions nor are they required to help the state execute prisoners. In fact, Missouri can't find a doc to perform the process of lethal injection.

The Missouri Department of Corrections established its first written procedure for lethal injections Friday but was unable to meet a federal judge’s Saturday deadline to find an anesthesiologist willing to perform lethal injections.

The issue is that of whether the health professional (including nurses or pharmacists) or the patient comes first. Many times, there's room for compromise (such as transferring a nurse out of an abortion suite, or agreeing that City Hospital and not St. Elsewhere would perform the procedure). But with the advent of Plan B and simpler technology, moving the issue from the large institutions (hospitals, city government) to the arena of small business (e.g.,. pharmacies or free-standing medical offices) is inevitably going to cause conflicts and flare-ups. Small business doesn't have a history and tradition of ethics committees and other institutional proicess to resolve such contentious issues, and throwing it to either the courts or the local political process is both inevitable and predictable (see Missouri and stem cell research for what happens).

To many socially conservative Republicans and religious leaders in Missouri, however, a new political campaign to legalize and protect such research is an evil to be fought in courtrooms, churches and polling stations.

Lawrence Weber, executive director of the Missouri Catholic Conference, called it "morally reprehensible science." Bishops instructed priests to deliver pointed homilies.

Voters may be asked to decide. After the courts weigh in, that is.

Religion belongs in the public arena, but it needs restraint and secular compromise to allow the body politic to function. Secularists need to understand that people of faith are rquired to follow their conscience, but not to the extent that the public is put at risk.

The idea that this will be worked out with comity and sober realism in an era of Republican pandering to the religious right to stay in power is, alas, impossible for these current Republicans to implement. And while Democrats are used to major internal battles on policy, the ones that don't take place on the Republican side are often worse for the country than the ones that do amongst Dems.

PNAC Packs Their Bags

by emptywheel

Ever since Francis Fukuyama disavowed the Neocon movement while at the same time defending the noble principle of supporting the Dick Cheney Scooter Libby Defense Fund, I've been waiting for this moment: the time when the NeoCons would make an obvious show of packing their bags and heading home for the century.

Despite the happy chatter before the Iraq invasion about cheering crowds and bouquets and cakewalks and how the war was going to pay for itself, the signatories wrote that "we are fully aware of the dangers of implementing this policy."

There had been debate about PNAC's future, but the feeling, a source said, was of "goal accomplished" and it looks to be heading toward closing. Former executive director Gary J. Schmitt , who had been executive director of President Ronald Reagan 's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, left recently for a post at the American Enterprise Institute. (Not a big move. Actually, only five floors up from PNAC.) Still, seems like a short century.

Goal accomplished?? Are they kidding??? (And note their shrewd avoidance of the word "Mission" ...these ex-Trotskyite intellectuals are clever.)

Alien Anthropologist in the Da Vinci System

by emptypockets

I left my home planet -- a land where intelligence leaks, wire taps, and whether your neighbors can marry matters as much as 2500 lost lives and a half-trillion dollar deficit -- and I alit in a foreign world where what counts is a story about an albino monk killer.

I visited only briefly, just long enough to read this piece on the latest battle between Hollywood and Holy See manifested in today's release of The Da Vinci Code movie. I did not care who won this war, but reflections of my own struggles glimmered through it and were focused more sharply by my distance -- a very long distance, considering I would not care if Jesus had three boys of his own and Mary Magdalene was bringing up three very lovely girls with hair of gold (the youngest one in curls). But some people do care, rabidly, and they are professional publicists and long-time mind-manipulators. My seeing how they attack the problem was, in their words, "a teaching moment."