It's not personal. If I knew him I might even like him; he's reputed to be smart and interesting. But from a policy perspective, there are few public figures I find more reprehensible than Paul Wolfowitz, now in trouble as president of the World Bank. Wolfowitz has been an architect iof neoconservative foreign policy theory and practice, and in his previous job as deputy defense secretary was one of the chief progenitors of the disastrous war in Iraq.
So there's a certain Schadenfreude in seeing him in trouble, with most of the World Bank staff lined up against him and plenty of people calling for his resignation. However, I'm not sure if the current beef is a valid one. It revolves around his girlfriend, an 11-year employee of the bank. When Wolfie came on, he informed the bank's ethics people of the potential appearance of a conflict of interest (though she wouldn't report to him) and the deal worked out was that she would transfer to the State Department with theWorld Bank paying her salary -- with a raise, since she was due for a promotion.
That's the public "scandal" that has precipitated his problems. I'm not sure they're warranted.
There's a more serious beef against Wolfie, that he's an incompetent manager, that his anti-corruption campaign is selective and perhaps hypocritical, that he's arrogant, that he's surrounded himself with cronies whose signal characteristic is loyalty rather than competence. I don't know enough to judge that charge. It may just be that he's shaken up the bureaucracy at the World Bank, a gaggle of overpaid and underworked stuffed shirts in an institution that probably does more harm than good.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Campaign finance deform
Here's a link to the Register's editorial on the Wisconsin case argued this week before the Supreme Court. The issue was whether an ad run by Wisconsin Right to Life was a forbidden "issue ad" that actually (shudder!) seemed calculated to affect an election and was run too close to an election. To me the McCain Feingold law, which restricts political speech at precisely the time it is most important, is a clear violation of the First Amendment. but a previous court (no Roberts or Alito) didn't see it that way. It's probably too much to hope the Supremes will reverse that ill-considered decision.
A Laughlin interlude
Been away for a while. We got back last night from Laughlin, NV, where we joined Jen's brother Joe (Desert Hot Springs) and her other brother Steve (Atlanta -- well, Flowery Branch if you want to be more precise), to take in the annual Laughlin River Run, a festival for bikers that celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. Not being one, I find bikers fascinating. All the ones I've met, even those who look pretty tatooed and scary, are extremely friendly. There are more big bellies than chiseled torsoes.
The fascination -- love affair -- most bikers have with their bikes is something to behold. And they seem to love to get together. The authorities estimated there were about 70,000 bikers in and around Laughlin over the weekend, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised. There are get-togethers all around the country. At Laughlin here were large bikes and small, Hondas and Yamahas and BMWs and Suzukis, and custom models with names nobody but a specialist or infatuated enthusiast would know, but mostly Harleys. From what I can tell as an observer, U.S. bikers seem to have a love affair with Harley-Davidson.
There's a fascinating backstory here. Harley-Davidson, as far as I can tell, is the only U.S. company to use protectionism successfully, the way advocates of protectionism claim it is designed to work. You may know the mythology. An American industry or company gets into some kind of trouble and blames it on foreign competition. So the government imposes high tariffs or duties on the cheatin' furriners for long enough for the American company to get their act together and be able to compete internationally again.
What usually happens, of course, is that when shielded from competition a company or industry simply continues whatever got it into trouble and becomes even less competitive. So the "temporary" protection becomes eternal. The U.S. steel and textile industries are prime examples of industries that have used protectionism in this cynical way, so the "necessity" for protection is never-ending.
Harley-Davidson, however, did it the right way. Back in the 1980s the company had almost forgotten how to make good motorcycles and was getting pasted by Honda, Yamaha and other Japanese motorcycle makers. So it asked for protection and the government, always eager to grant favors with a political payoff, of course obliged. But instead of using protection to stay lazy, Harley-Davidson actually retooled, redesigned, revamped its management structure, and started making bikes people actually wanted. After a few years, it decided it could compete internationally again, and told the government it could lift the tariffs and other forms of protection. It did so, and since then Harley has gone from strength to strength.
This doesn't mean such protectionism is a good thing. Harley is the only company in U.S. history, so far as I know, to use it responsibly, and that was a matter of company pride.
The bottom line of the weekend was that we spent hours visiting the vendors' tents -- they took up the parking lots of at least three casinos -- including the more maverick vendors several miles downriver at the Avi -- and saw nothing that even resembled the product Jen and Joe have designed. They're planning to file a patent application this week and from then it's on to samples, prototypes and production.
The fascination -- love affair -- most bikers have with their bikes is something to behold. And they seem to love to get together. The authorities estimated there were about 70,000 bikers in and around Laughlin over the weekend, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised. There are get-togethers all around the country. At Laughlin here were large bikes and small, Hondas and Yamahas and BMWs and Suzukis, and custom models with names nobody but a specialist or infatuated enthusiast would know, but mostly Harleys. From what I can tell as an observer, U.S. bikers seem to have a love affair with Harley-Davidson.
There's a fascinating backstory here. Harley-Davidson, as far as I can tell, is the only U.S. company to use protectionism successfully, the way advocates of protectionism claim it is designed to work. You may know the mythology. An American industry or company gets into some kind of trouble and blames it on foreign competition. So the government imposes high tariffs or duties on the cheatin' furriners for long enough for the American company to get their act together and be able to compete internationally again.
What usually happens, of course, is that when shielded from competition a company or industry simply continues whatever got it into trouble and becomes even less competitive. So the "temporary" protection becomes eternal. The U.S. steel and textile industries are prime examples of industries that have used protectionism in this cynical way, so the "necessity" for protection is never-ending.
Harley-Davidson, however, did it the right way. Back in the 1980s the company had almost forgotten how to make good motorcycles and was getting pasted by Honda, Yamaha and other Japanese motorcycle makers. So it asked for protection and the government, always eager to grant favors with a political payoff, of course obliged. But instead of using protection to stay lazy, Harley-Davidson actually retooled, redesigned, revamped its management structure, and started making bikes people actually wanted. After a few years, it decided it could compete internationally again, and told the government it could lift the tariffs and other forms of protection. It did so, and since then Harley has gone from strength to strength.
This doesn't mean such protectionism is a good thing. Harley is the only company in U.S. history, so far as I know, to use it responsibly, and that was a matter of company pride.
The bottom line of the weekend was that we spent hours visiting the vendors' tents -- they took up the parking lots of at least three casinos -- including the more maverick vendors several miles downriver at the Avi -- and saw nothing that even resembled the product Jen and Joe have designed. They're planning to file a patent application this week and from then it's on to samples, prototypes and production.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Boycotting Fox
A number of Democratic candidates have announced that they would boycott candidate debates sponsored or co-sponsored by Fox News Channel. In this article John Judis, who is ususally pretty good, makes the most respectable case I've seen yet for doing so, but he falls short. Of course Fox isn't really "fair and balanced," but neither are the other networks. Boycotting Fox simp[ly makes the candidates look petty.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Yeltsin comments
Here are a couple of insightful assessments of Boris Yeltsin. Anne Applebaum, foreign affairs writer and Washington Post columnist, sees Yeltsin as a transitional figure (though given that he picked Putin one has to wonder what he was a transition to). Masha Gessen, listed by TNR as a Moscow journalist, sees him as Russia's first and last true democrat, but ultimately something of a tragic figure, especially in light of what has followed his presidency.
Internet campaigning
In 2004 Howard Dean pioneered successful fundraising on the Internet, and of course it's obligatory for every candidate (and every mouthy person like me who isn't running for anything) to have a Web site. We're seeing an expansion of political Internet use in this year's -- well, next year's, but who's counting in the Campaign Eternal? -- presidential race.
According to this interesting story, candidates are increasingly using MySpace, Facebook and YouTube as part of their campaigns, apparently largely to appeal to younger voters. There's Joe, age 64, from Delaware, who's a Scorpio -- Joe Biden, of course, "looking for friends." And Bill, 6'2", "Latino/Hispanic" and "straight, also a Scorpio. Bill Richardson. Before he thought better of it Mitt Romney filled in the blank for body type as "6'0"/Athletic" and Obama listed himself as "Slim/Slender" before he apparently thought it was too much like looking for a hookup, or at least a little creepy.
When I talked to Kent Snyder, campaign manager for Ron Paul, my own personal favorite of the candidates running, he told me that people would look back on this year as the year the Internet transformed presidential politics, almost as dramatically as TV transformed national politics in 1960 or so. And he's proud to say that despite having received almost no national publicity and having enough money to have a campaign organization and travel respectably but not much more, Ron is now #2 among GOP candidates on both MySpace and YouTube. We'll see whether that and being the only candidate during early debates who actually can believably claim he would be guided by the Constitution if elected will translate into primary votes
According to this interesting story, candidates are increasingly using MySpace, Facebook and YouTube as part of their campaigns, apparently largely to appeal to younger voters. There's Joe, age 64, from Delaware, who's a Scorpio -- Joe Biden, of course, "looking for friends." And Bill, 6'2", "Latino/Hispanic" and "straight, also a Scorpio. Bill Richardson. Before he thought better of it Mitt Romney filled in the blank for body type as "6'0"/Athletic" and Obama listed himself as "Slim/Slender" before he apparently thought it was too much like looking for a hookup, or at least a little creepy.
When I talked to Kent Snyder, campaign manager for Ron Paul, my own personal favorite of the candidates running, he told me that people would look back on this year as the year the Internet transformed presidential politics, almost as dramatically as TV transformed national politics in 1960 or so. And he's proud to say that despite having received almost no national publicity and having enough money to have a campaign organization and travel respectably but not much more, Ron is now #2 among GOP candidates on both MySpace and YouTube. We'll see whether that and being the only candidate during early debates who actually can believably claim he would be guided by the Constitution if elected will translate into primary votes
Monday, April 23, 2007
Will Russia ever have decent governance?
When I called Arnold Beichman, the venerable journalist, historian, and expert on Russia for reflections on the death of Boris Yeltsin, the somewhat rhetorical question he kept asking as we talked, was almost plaintive: Will Russia ever have a ruler who is not a scoundrel or a tyrant?
Arnold views Yeltsin as something of a hero, the man who disassembled the Soviet Union and became Russia's first -- and perhaps only? -- democratically-elected president. He was a flawed character, hard-drinking and not always possessed of the best judgment. But he unilaterally gave independence to Ukraine, which Russia had ruled for three and a half sometimes restive centuries, institutionalized freedom of speech and the press, and moved boldly toward establishing something of a free market by eliminating price controls in one fell swoop (which did hurt millions of Russians when the prices of necessities skyrocketed after decades of being kept artificially low). He was a small-d democrat and an instinctive liberator.
The privatization of state assets in Russia was, to say the least, imperfectly handled, with insiders picking up properties for pennies on the ruble and hundreds of crony-capitalist "oligarchs" making fortunes overnight. But Yeltsin, who never claimed expertise in economics, was guided in the process by many who claimed such expertise, including several highly overrated economists from the West. He was better at the big picture than follow-through, and while becoming popular on the promise to fight corruption, never quite had gumption or perhaps the real power to root it out. His health was sometimes suspect and he drank hard, which sometimes put him effectively out of commission for weeks. His reelection in 1996 was suspect, and every Russian election since has been rigged to a great extent.
And yet when the occasion called for courage, he could be magnificent. When hard-line old-school communists tried a coup against Gorbachev's reforms, there was Yeltsin mounting a tank outside the Russian White House, rallying the people and foiling the attempt, an act that could very easily have gotten him killed. Gorbachev wanted to reform the system to save communism. Yeltsin, who publicly quit the party in 1990, wanted to eliminate it. Gorbachev was the favorite of the intellectuals, but Yeltsin actually thought more deeply and more radically. If you 're interested in a pretty good appreciation of Yeltsin, warts and all, Leon Aron, who left Russia in 1978 and is at the American Enterprise Institute, and wrote a Yeltsin biography, has a pretty good one here.
Yet in the years before his resignation in 1999 he seemed to fall in with the corruption. He was a good political infighter, but that's what he seemed to enjoy more than policy. And he anointed Vladimir Putin as his successor.
Putin has consolidated power where Yeltsin tried to decentralize. At least 20 journalists, many of whom were doing investigations into government corruption or malfeasance, have been murdered, and investigations have gone nowhere. Putin has broken any oligarchs who challenged his rule, notably Boris Berezovsky. Whether Putin is really still a communist believer, as his background in the KGB suggests, or "just" an autocratic authoritarian, he is actively undoing a good deal of what Yeltsin tried, perhaps imperfectly, to do.
On April 14 he let it be known that dissent would be quashed by surrounding some 2,000 demonstrators, including former world chess champion Garry Kasparov (who also opposed the communists) with some 9,000 security forces, who administered some beatings and broke up the crowd. It was probably not accidental that a Reuters crew was allowed to capture the events and disseminate them to the West and elsewhere, letting all kinow that the government is fully prepared to suppress even a whisper of dissent quite brutally.
There seems to be a cycle in Russia whenever decent governance and a semblance of civil oprder threaten to break through. Historical crises -- the collapse of the Soviet Union was one, as was the crushing of Russiand forces in World War I. That earlier crisis brought in a brief period of democratic governance floowed by Lenin, followed by Stalin, a moral monster willing to do whatever it took to estaboish stability and consolidate power. The recent crisis saw Gorbachev displaced by a period of optimism under Stalin, followed by Putin, followed by ... what? Likely another dark period in Russian history.
To some extent Russia's vulnerability to brutal rulers has to do with its geographic vulnerability. Catherine the Great said "I have no way to defend my borders except to extend them." But ruthless expansion begets near-madness. Catherine was at first regarded as enlightened, then became increasingly despotic. Ivan the Terrible started out as a reformer for his time and place.
So is Russia entering another dark cycle? It's difficult not to suspect so.
Arnold views Yeltsin as something of a hero, the man who disassembled the Soviet Union and became Russia's first -- and perhaps only? -- democratically-elected president. He was a flawed character, hard-drinking and not always possessed of the best judgment. But he unilaterally gave independence to Ukraine, which Russia had ruled for three and a half sometimes restive centuries, institutionalized freedom of speech and the press, and moved boldly toward establishing something of a free market by eliminating price controls in one fell swoop (which did hurt millions of Russians when the prices of necessities skyrocketed after decades of being kept artificially low). He was a small-d democrat and an instinctive liberator.
The privatization of state assets in Russia was, to say the least, imperfectly handled, with insiders picking up properties for pennies on the ruble and hundreds of crony-capitalist "oligarchs" making fortunes overnight. But Yeltsin, who never claimed expertise in economics, was guided in the process by many who claimed such expertise, including several highly overrated economists from the West. He was better at the big picture than follow-through, and while becoming popular on the promise to fight corruption, never quite had gumption or perhaps the real power to root it out. His health was sometimes suspect and he drank hard, which sometimes put him effectively out of commission for weeks. His reelection in 1996 was suspect, and every Russian election since has been rigged to a great extent.
And yet when the occasion called for courage, he could be magnificent. When hard-line old-school communists tried a coup against Gorbachev's reforms, there was Yeltsin mounting a tank outside the Russian White House, rallying the people and foiling the attempt, an act that could very easily have gotten him killed. Gorbachev wanted to reform the system to save communism. Yeltsin, who publicly quit the party in 1990, wanted to eliminate it. Gorbachev was the favorite of the intellectuals, but Yeltsin actually thought more deeply and more radically. If you 're interested in a pretty good appreciation of Yeltsin, warts and all, Leon Aron, who left Russia in 1978 and is at the American Enterprise Institute, and wrote a Yeltsin biography, has a pretty good one here.
Yet in the years before his resignation in 1999 he seemed to fall in with the corruption. He was a good political infighter, but that's what he seemed to enjoy more than policy. And he anointed Vladimir Putin as his successor.
Putin has consolidated power where Yeltsin tried to decentralize. At least 20 journalists, many of whom were doing investigations into government corruption or malfeasance, have been murdered, and investigations have gone nowhere. Putin has broken any oligarchs who challenged his rule, notably Boris Berezovsky. Whether Putin is really still a communist believer, as his background in the KGB suggests, or "just" an autocratic authoritarian, he is actively undoing a good deal of what Yeltsin tried, perhaps imperfectly, to do.
On April 14 he let it be known that dissent would be quashed by surrounding some 2,000 demonstrators, including former world chess champion Garry Kasparov (who also opposed the communists) with some 9,000 security forces, who administered some beatings and broke up the crowd. It was probably not accidental that a Reuters crew was allowed to capture the events and disseminate them to the West and elsewhere, letting all kinow that the government is fully prepared to suppress even a whisper of dissent quite brutally.
There seems to be a cycle in Russia whenever decent governance and a semblance of civil oprder threaten to break through. Historical crises -- the collapse of the Soviet Union was one, as was the crushing of Russiand forces in World War I. That earlier crisis brought in a brief period of democratic governance floowed by Lenin, followed by Stalin, a moral monster willing to do whatever it took to estaboish stability and consolidate power. The recent crisis saw Gorbachev displaced by a period of optimism under Stalin, followed by Putin, followed by ... what? Likely another dark period in Russian history.
To some extent Russia's vulnerability to brutal rulers has to do with its geographic vulnerability. Catherine the Great said "I have no way to defend my borders except to extend them." But ruthless expansion begets near-madness. Catherine was at first regarded as enlightened, then became increasingly despotic. Ivan the Terrible started out as a reformer for his time and place.
So is Russia entering another dark cycle? It's difficult not to suspect so.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
More on medical marijuana
Here's a link to the Register's Friday editorial, which outlines what we think is going to be necessary to bring the county into line with state law concerning medical marijuana and access to it by patients. We were particularly shocked to learn that the policy of the sheriff's department when encountering a medical marijuana patient, is to confiscate both the cannabis and the recommendation letter. We believe that is clearly contrary to state law, and that if the sheriff's department doesn't change it's policy soon it's likely to face the same kind of lawsuit that got the California Highway Patrol to change its policies.
Iraq not going well
I saw a news story today suggesting that the U.S. military thinks things are going better in Ramallah than before. Perhaps that's so, but perhaps it's a temporary situation -- the "surge" looked to be leading to lower levels of violence until this week, when several blasts killed hundreds of Iraqis in a single day. Do you wonder that Iraqis look at the attention paid to the Virginia Tech shooting -- not that it wasn't uniquely horrendous for this country -- and wonder what Americans would do if we had steady casualties anywhere near close to what they are sustaining?
Unfortunately, I suspect that the negative trends in Iraq outweigh the positive. Here's a link to a piece I did last week for Antiwar.com that explains some of the longer-term reasons for that opinion.
Unfortunately, I suspect that the negative trends in Iraq outweigh the positive. Here's a link to a piece I did last week for Antiwar.com that explains some of the longer-term reasons for that opinion.
Constant
I've been reminded this weekend that another way to say "evergreen" is "constantly deciduous." I'm glad that our eucalyptus, pine and oleanders don't go bare in the winter (if the oleanders did, we'd have no privacy at all). But that means that they're dropping leaves and producing new ones all year long. As of tonight we have a lot fewer of those leaves on the ground, but it took hours and hours and there are still some we haven't gotten to yet.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Orange County and medical marijuana
What did I do with my day on Tuesday? I attended a full meeting of the Orange County Board of Supervisors. Chairman Chris Norby -- a good guy, and I don't say that about very many elected officials -- put the issue of having the health department issue photo ID cards to medical marijuana patients on the agenda. Some 25-30 people came to testify in favor, so it took a long time. Here's the Register editorial that describes the outcome.
I was also interviewed by KCET, the Los Angeles public television station, for its 7:00 p.m. show, "Life and Times," sort of a local "news hour." That segment on medical marijuana is scheduled to be aired April 26.
I was also interviewed by KCET, the Los Angeles public television station, for its 7:00 p.m. show, "Life and Times," sort of a local "news hour." That segment on medical marijuana is scheduled to be aired April 26.
Trade and China
Here's the Register's editorial on the U.S. decision to seek redress with the World Trade Organization for certain Chinese policies that arguably interfere with open trade. I'm not sure if it's appropriate or not, but better a WTO complaint than unilateral sanctions of some kind. It can be easy to forget that it wasn't so long ago that Japan was known for sending cheap trinkets to the U.S., but its economy matured (and then went into something like senility, though it seems to be recovering some). Free trade policies offer the most flexibility for letting the people who do the actual trading deal with changing conditions in other countries' economies rather than having the government set a rigid policy that will be outdated in a few years -- or maybe as soon as it's enacted.
Not much hope in Iraq
Here's a link to last Sunday's Register editorial, which discusses the situation in Iraq. It might not be hopeless, but it requires suspending belief to see it as other than pretty dire.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Saudi Arabian assertiveness
Saudi Arabia, which normally makes its influence felt behind the scenes, has been unusually assertive of late, as I wrote a few weeks ago. It brokered a deal between Fatah and Hamas in Palestine, called Iran's Ahmadinejad over for a dressing-down, hosted the Arab League summit, and just recently branded the U.S. "occupation" in Iraq "illegal."
Here's a reasonably good discussion of Saudi Arabia's recent moves by Rachel Bronson of the Chicago Coouncil on Global Affairs, author of "Thicker than Oil: America's Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia." She notes that part of the explanation is that "With the United States regionally hamstrung and President Bush domestically neutered, [King] Abdullah has clearly decided to take matters into his own hands."
I think that puts it too kindly. I suspect Saudi Arabia has watched Dubya (ironically the son of one of Saudi Arabia's best American friends) blunder in Iraq and elsewhere and decided that as long as he is president the Americans are going to be hopeless -- flailing like an overgrown baby in a room full of delicate crystal, spreading instability and resentment wherever they go in the Middle East. The Saudis' other concern, of course, is Iran, which it has been watching guardedly for 30 years. The Saudis really don't want Iran to get nuclear weapons and become the clearly dominant power in the region, and the American intervention (which gave Iran influence in Iraq that it could only dream of before) and posturing is making such an eventuality all the more likely.
Here's a reasonably good discussion of Saudi Arabia's recent moves by Rachel Bronson of the Chicago Coouncil on Global Affairs, author of "Thicker than Oil: America's Uneasy Partnership with Saudi Arabia." She notes that part of the explanation is that "With the United States regionally hamstrung and President Bush domestically neutered, [King] Abdullah has clearly decided to take matters into his own hands."
I think that puts it too kindly. I suspect Saudi Arabia has watched Dubya (ironically the son of one of Saudi Arabia's best American friends) blunder in Iraq and elsewhere and decided that as long as he is president the Americans are going to be hopeless -- flailing like an overgrown baby in a room full of delicate crystal, spreading instability and resentment wherever they go in the Middle East. The Saudis' other concern, of course, is Iran, which it has been watching guardedly for 30 years. The Saudis really don't want Iran to get nuclear weapons and become the clearly dominant power in the region, and the American intervention (which gave Iran influence in Iraq that it could only dream of before) and posturing is making such an eventuality all the more likely.
Lukacs on patriotism
Here's another brief excerpt from John Lukacs' fine book on George Kennan. Lukacs notes that Kennan "was a patriot and not a nationalist: because patriotism is defensive, while nationalism is aggressive; because patriotism is traditionalist, while nationalism is populist; because patriotism is love of one's land and history, while nationalism is a viscous mass that binds formless masses together. A patriot will be concerned with his nation's faults (Chesterton: "my country right or wrong is saying: my mother drunk or sober")."
Somebody once said that patriotism is love of country while nationalism is dislike of other countries. There's truth there, but I think Lukacs' formulation is a little more elegant.
Somebody once said that patriotism is love of country while nationalism is dislike of other countries. There's truth there, but I think Lukacs' formulation is a little more elegant.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Idealism and realism
I wrote in a previous post about the importance of realism in foreign policy. I'm indebted to John Lukacs, in his excellent new book on George Kennan, for a somewhat more sophisticated discussion that I'm happy to lift in its entirety for your delectation He speaks of scholars who:
"were wont to contrast Kennan [who criticized the "legalistic-moralistic" approach] 'the realist' to the 'idealist' category of American foreign policymakers. One half of that fixation is correct, but the other half is not. 'Moral' and 'ethical' are not quite the same things. Perhaps he should have coined the term 'legalistic-moralizing' rather than 'legalistic-moralistic,' but that is not the main issue. Kennan's view of foreign policy and of the world and indeed of human nature was a moral one. And the American predicament, to this day, is the failure to understand that the opposite of idealism is materialism, not realism; indeed, that idealism and realism are the best possible combination; that history is made by what people think and believe and that the entire material organization of the world is but the superstructure, a consequence of that."
I recommend the entire book highly.
"were wont to contrast Kennan [who criticized the "legalistic-moralistic" approach] 'the realist' to the 'idealist' category of American foreign policymakers. One half of that fixation is correct, but the other half is not. 'Moral' and 'ethical' are not quite the same things. Perhaps he should have coined the term 'legalistic-moralizing' rather than 'legalistic-moralistic,' but that is not the main issue. Kennan's view of foreign policy and of the world and indeed of human nature was a moral one. And the American predicament, to this day, is the failure to understand that the opposite of idealism is materialism, not realism; indeed, that idealism and realism are the best possible combination; that history is made by what people think and believe and that the entire material organization of the world is but the superstructure, a consequence of that."
I recommend the entire book highly.
Oh, the horror!
Differences between a libertarian like me and a more standard-issue conservative? Here's a fretful editorial from the Wall Street Journal wringing its hands over all the subpoenas Congress has been serving on the White House. The subhead sums it up: "Congress's real goal is crippling the Bush Presidency" [note the worshipful and entirely unnecessary capitalization]. The Journal's editorialist harrumphs:
"Democrats are trying to usethe manufactured outrage over the entirely legal sacking of Presidential appointees to insert themselves into private White House deliberations. Mr. Bush needs to draw line somewhere, and fast ..."
The Journal seems to think it would be sad to cripple the Bush presidency. I think it would be wonderful. I was equally joyful when the Clinton presidency was crippled. I only wish the crippling would be permanent, but unfortunately most Americans seem to want to give a new president the benefit of the doubt. For my taste the presidency, in both parties, has become entirely too imperial. Let Congress root around to its heart's content in the White House and dig up as many embarrassments, real and imagined, as it can find.
"Democrats are trying to usethe manufactured outrage over the entirely legal sacking of Presidential appointees to insert themselves into private White House deliberations. Mr. Bush needs to draw line somewhere, and fast ..."
The Journal seems to think it would be sad to cripple the Bush presidency. I think it would be wonderful. I was equally joyful when the Clinton presidency was crippled. I only wish the crippling would be permanent, but unfortunately most Americans seem to want to give a new president the benefit of the doubt. For my taste the presidency, in both parties, has become entirely too imperial. Let Congress root around to its heart's content in the White House and dig up as many embarrassments, real and imagined, as it can find.
Blacksburg and Gun Control
After every tragic incident the debate over gun control predictably fires up again, although it doesn't seem as intense this time. Just as some people think we can eliminate evil and irresponsible behavior by banning some material things -- drugs -- some people seem to think we can eliminate crime and violence by banning or severely regulating or banning some other material things -- guns. Thus is magical thinking, not analysis or serious policy, in both cases.
This Zogby Poll is the first post-Blacksburg poll I'm aware of on the subject and it seems to reflect a certain amount of common sense. Some 59 percent of Americans say they don't think stricter gun laws would have prevented this massacre. To be sure, a majority also thinks more guns in more hands wouldn't have prevented the massacre either. This is actually fairly sensible as well.
John Lott's "More Guns, Less Crime" thesis is true in a general sense, and there's simply no question that wherever concealed-carry laws or "must-issue" permit laws have been passed crime has not increased (as controllers always predict) and in most states it has declined, although not very dramatically. Even thouigh the Virginia Tech campus (unlike most of Virginia) was designated a "gun-free zone" -- one of those hapless feel-good policies colleges are susceptible to -- so the shooter could be pretty sure no other armed people would be around to challenge him, it's simply impossible to know whether having a more liberal approach to guns on that campus would have stopped this shooting spree.
Even if it were allowed, it's unlikely many students or professors would be packing as an everyday matter. And even if one of them were, it's not assured he or she would have the presence of mind or coolness to stop the shooter. It's different in a crisis situation than at the shooting range. Most cops, who are trained, aren't especially good shots, which is one reason they tend to empty their weapons when they decide to shoot. So believing that having less restrictive gun policies probably wouldn't have stopped this particular psychopath is hardly an unreasonable position to take.
Here's a remarkably sensible discussion of gun control from the Economist's blogger, Megan McArdle, writing on Andrew Sullivan's blog.
The encouraging thing about the Zogby poll is that solid majorities doubt gun control would do much good, and the position solidifies as people get older. That could change if the controllers crank up the propaganda machine, but the case is weak and the other side is better positioned than in years past.
This Zogby Poll is the first post-Blacksburg poll I'm aware of on the subject and it seems to reflect a certain amount of common sense. Some 59 percent of Americans say they don't think stricter gun laws would have prevented this massacre. To be sure, a majority also thinks more guns in more hands wouldn't have prevented the massacre either. This is actually fairly sensible as well.
John Lott's "More Guns, Less Crime" thesis is true in a general sense, and there's simply no question that wherever concealed-carry laws or "must-issue" permit laws have been passed crime has not increased (as controllers always predict) and in most states it has declined, although not very dramatically. Even thouigh the Virginia Tech campus (unlike most of Virginia) was designated a "gun-free zone" -- one of those hapless feel-good policies colleges are susceptible to -- so the shooter could be pretty sure no other armed people would be around to challenge him, it's simply impossible to know whether having a more liberal approach to guns on that campus would have stopped this shooting spree.
Even if it were allowed, it's unlikely many students or professors would be packing as an everyday matter. And even if one of them were, it's not assured he or she would have the presence of mind or coolness to stop the shooter. It's different in a crisis situation than at the shooting range. Most cops, who are trained, aren't especially good shots, which is one reason they tend to empty their weapons when they decide to shoot. So believing that having less restrictive gun policies probably wouldn't have stopped this particular psychopath is hardly an unreasonable position to take.
Here's a remarkably sensible discussion of gun control from the Economist's blogger, Megan McArdle, writing on Andrew Sullivan's blog.
The encouraging thing about the Zogby poll is that solid majorities doubt gun control would do much good, and the position solidifies as people get older. That could change if the controllers crank up the propaganda machine, but the case is weak and the other side is better positioned than in years past.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Northern Ireland and Iraq
I don't think many have commented on what seems an obvious lesson to be drawn from the recent welcome and remarkable development in Northern Ireland. Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein and Protestant firebrand Ian Paisley actually sat in the same room with cameras aimed at them and agreed to form a joint administration for Northern Ireland to be instituted May 8. On the one hand you can be disgusted at the two, as Christopher Hitchens obviously was, for keeping the mutual killing going far too long when these two personally might have done an agreement years ago and saved a good deal of bloodshed. Or you can choose to be pleased that there seems to be a resolution at last.
The significance as we look at current civil war-like situations -- Iraq, anyone -- is that it took about 40 years to bring this latest episode in "the troubles" to a resolution (being optimistic; snags could still arise between now and May 8). Culturally and genetically the two sides in the Northern Ireland divide were very similar -- except for some being Catholic and some being Protestant, of course.
Much of the blame for keeping the struggle going can be laid at the feet of pigheadedness on the part of leaders, of course, but those hostilities weren't all generated by opportunistic leaders. Sometimes it just takes a long time for most everybody to get so tired of the violence as to be ready for it to end. Almost every society contains small groups of people who see violence as a way to advance their agenda and are willing to carry it out, and they can disrupt a society effectively even if the vast majority are sick of their stuff.
There may be more differences than parallels, but if anything the differences seem to militate on the side of a certain amount of sectarian violence, likely at a higher level than in recent decades in Northern Ireland, persisting in Iraq for a long time to come. The chances of the U.S. establishing stability and handing off to a stable Iraqi government in any reasonable amount of time are ridiculously slim. In many ways U.S. troops are helping to foment and perpetuate violence, perhaps creating more insurgents than they are able to kill just by being a foreign occupying force. It might even be that the best chance for the Iraqis to get serious about governing themselves reasonably is to be staring a U.S. exit date in the face. Better to cut our losses sooner rather than later.
The significance as we look at current civil war-like situations -- Iraq, anyone -- is that it took about 40 years to bring this latest episode in "the troubles" to a resolution (being optimistic; snags could still arise between now and May 8). Culturally and genetically the two sides in the Northern Ireland divide were very similar -- except for some being Catholic and some being Protestant, of course.
Much of the blame for keeping the struggle going can be laid at the feet of pigheadedness on the part of leaders, of course, but those hostilities weren't all generated by opportunistic leaders. Sometimes it just takes a long time for most everybody to get so tired of the violence as to be ready for it to end. Almost every society contains small groups of people who see violence as a way to advance their agenda and are willing to carry it out, and they can disrupt a society effectively even if the vast majority are sick of their stuff.
There may be more differences than parallels, but if anything the differences seem to militate on the side of a certain amount of sectarian violence, likely at a higher level than in recent decades in Northern Ireland, persisting in Iraq for a long time to come. The chances of the U.S. establishing stability and handing off to a stable Iraqi government in any reasonable amount of time are ridiculously slim. In many ways U.S. troops are helping to foment and perpetuate violence, perhaps creating more insurgents than they are able to kill just by being a foreign occupying force. It might even be that the best chance for the Iraqis to get serious about governing themselves reasonably is to be staring a U.S. exit date in the face. Better to cut our losses sooner rather than later.
Must we?
Well, at least this wasn't one of those cases where all the neighbors of the murderer say he was quiet but otherwise unremarkable and nobody suspected a thing. This kid was obviously troubled and lots of people knew it.
I think it's mostly hindsight to try to find someone to blame for the fact that he wasn't restrained in some way before -- although I have to wonder how he became a senior if he never said anything in class. You wouldn't want to live in a society in which every troubled kid who acted strange was watched like a hawk and maybe put in preventive detention lest he be a mass murderer. There are a couple of things few have remarked on that seem worth mentioning.
Seung-Hui Cho was an (obviously) extreme example of a couple of strands in American culture that strike me as unhealthy in general, and decidedly so in far less extreme versions. He seemed to harbor an unhealthy resentment against the rich and "privileged" (he apparently named some rich kids he thought had especially dissed him, though it wouldn't be surprising if they were unaware of having done so), and he seemed to have been utterly incapable of taking personal responsibility for his own actions and attitudes. "You caused me to do this," the "disturbing" note found in his dorm room reportedly said. Somebody else was responsible for what he did.
The mainstream media and many of the attitudes imparted in public schools and many colleges reinforce much milder but still toxic versions of both these attitudes. You can hardly pick up a newspaper without reading a story about some new report showing that the rich are getting richer and it's oh, so lamentable. Many Americans have something of a split personality about the rich, consuming gossip about celebrities and heiresses avidly without apparent resentment, aspiring more to be rich than to bring down the rich, yet eternally susceptible to entertaining envy. Envy, about which Helmut Schoeck wrote an excellent book, is easily the most personally corrosive of the sins or vices, since it can never be satisfied. It desires only to bring down the object of envy, not to bring oneself up.
There are so many examples of voices in popular and political culture urging people to blame their problems on "society" or "the man" or "the system" or "the privileged" or the whites, blacks, browns or yellows, on immigration or globalization, the corporations, the greedy rich, and on and on that it is tedious just to mention a few. There are also voices suggesting that if you stop blaming others and work on yourself by taking responsibility for your choices, you are more likely than not to improve your lot in life. But the blame-others voices seem to have the upper hand.
I suppose it's inevitable that the videos the kid made will be splashed all over every kind of medium for days or weeks. It's supposed to be a free country so I wouldn't stop it even if I thought I could, but I can't help but regret it. You just know that some troubled or disturbed kids out there will latch onto him as a cult figure and have sick dreams about emulating or surpassing him. And having these words and images assaulting you can't be helpful for those who want to maintain a healthy and open attitude toward life and their fellow humans.
I think it's mostly hindsight to try to find someone to blame for the fact that he wasn't restrained in some way before -- although I have to wonder how he became a senior if he never said anything in class. You wouldn't want to live in a society in which every troubled kid who acted strange was watched like a hawk and maybe put in preventive detention lest he be a mass murderer. There are a couple of things few have remarked on that seem worth mentioning.
Seung-Hui Cho was an (obviously) extreme example of a couple of strands in American culture that strike me as unhealthy in general, and decidedly so in far less extreme versions. He seemed to harbor an unhealthy resentment against the rich and "privileged" (he apparently named some rich kids he thought had especially dissed him, though it wouldn't be surprising if they were unaware of having done so), and he seemed to have been utterly incapable of taking personal responsibility for his own actions and attitudes. "You caused me to do this," the "disturbing" note found in his dorm room reportedly said. Somebody else was responsible for what he did.
The mainstream media and many of the attitudes imparted in public schools and many colleges reinforce much milder but still toxic versions of both these attitudes. You can hardly pick up a newspaper without reading a story about some new report showing that the rich are getting richer and it's oh, so lamentable. Many Americans have something of a split personality about the rich, consuming gossip about celebrities and heiresses avidly without apparent resentment, aspiring more to be rich than to bring down the rich, yet eternally susceptible to entertaining envy. Envy, about which Helmut Schoeck wrote an excellent book, is easily the most personally corrosive of the sins or vices, since it can never be satisfied. It desires only to bring down the object of envy, not to bring oneself up.
There are so many examples of voices in popular and political culture urging people to blame their problems on "society" or "the man" or "the system" or "the privileged" or the whites, blacks, browns or yellows, on immigration or globalization, the corporations, the greedy rich, and on and on that it is tedious just to mention a few. There are also voices suggesting that if you stop blaming others and work on yourself by taking responsibility for your choices, you are more likely than not to improve your lot in life. But the blame-others voices seem to have the upper hand.
I suppose it's inevitable that the videos the kid made will be splashed all over every kind of medium for days or weeks. It's supposed to be a free country so I wouldn't stop it even if I thought I could, but I can't help but regret it. You just know that some troubled or disturbed kids out there will latch onto him as a cult figure and have sick dreams about emulating or surpassing him. And having these words and images assaulting you can't be helpful for those who want to maintain a healthy and open attitude toward life and their fellow humans.
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