courtesy of the Baseball Crank, who has put together an excellent and thoughtful list.NB: this is a list of mistakes—to wit, things that hampered President Bush and his administration in achieving their goals and purposes—not a list of policy disagreements. To take the biggest one, the invasion of Iraq was not a “mistake.” You may think we never should have invaded Iraq, and history may prove you right or it may prove you wrong, but either way, that’s not a “mistake”—it’s a policy judgment with which you disagree. That’s a whole other list and a whole different set of questions and issues.As such, almost all of the points on this list are apolitical; certainly the first eight are, and even the last two probably apply to Democrats as well as Republicans, though differently. Most of these points have to do with matters of practical judgment such as personnel appointments and communication.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Laughing at Uncle Joe; or, is Joe Biden the new Dan Quayle?
I like what Ed Walsh has to say about this:
In an earlier post, I mentioned the trouble comedians were having coming up with a funny trope to use to poke fun at President Obama. The experts’ conclusion seems to be that Vice President Biden is the fattest target for humor in the Administration.Now we see the story developing further. It’s not just Biden, see, but Obama’s reaction to Biden that is becoming a reliable comic routine. In this scenario, Barack Obama is Joe Biden’s straight man.It’s promising. As this Politico clip of segments from “The Daily Show” and “The Tonight Show” makes clear, watching the habitually on-message president react to Biden’s howitzer-in-a-hurricane rhetorical style is pretty funny. And it offers the hint of a crack in Obama’s cool public face.
John Updike, RIP
If you’d asked me yesterday who was America’s greatest living writer, I probably would ultimately have come down for John Updike; as the Wikipedia article on him puts it, “Updike was widely recognized for his careful craftsmanship, his highly stylistic writing, and his prolific output, having published more than twenty-five novels and more than a dozen short story collections, as well as poetry, art criticism, literary criticism and children’s books.” He seemed to do everything, as a writer, and if not always brilliantly, he consistently managed to do it with insight and wit. I particularly appreciate his willingness to be unfashionable in his opinions (as seen for instance in his piece “On Not Being a Dove”). Like the rest of his contemporaries, he was no longer at his best as a writer, but his death today of lung cancer is a great loss to the republic of American letters—with his independence of mind, I think, being the greatest loss of all.
An unexamined faith is . . . what?
In my previous post, commenting on James Hitchcock’s Touchstone editorial “Subject to Change,” I discussed the main body of his argument, but I didn’t address his closing comment, which might be the most interesting thing he has to say:
One of the oldest and deepest assumptions of Western civilization is that the unexamined life is not worth living, and it is a perplexing theological conundrum to what extent real faith exists if the possibility of rejecting it does not exist also.
This is in one way a logical conclusion to his piece, since it does connect directly to the burden of his argument; this is really the core question underlying the issue he raises. Put like this, however, this closing paragraph is also an opening paragraph to an article (or a book) not yet written, as it opens out onto a whole new field of discussion. For my part, I tend to think this is a question without a definitive answer—that it really depends on the person; it does seem clear, though, that an unexamined or unchallenged faith, if not necessarily less real, is at least far less robust than a faith that has had to confront and address the possibility of unbelief. As well, those whose faith is never questioned are not likely to learn to question and evaluate themselves, and thus their faith will probably tend to be shallower, and to engage life in a more superficial fashion. I don’t think we can look down on those whose faith is sheltered, but we can say that it’s an open question whether they’ve put their roots deep enough to survive the storms if and when they come.My brothers and sisters, consider it entirely as joy when you face trials of many kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfast endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.—James 1:2-4
Modernity as universal cultural acid
James Hitchcock has a truly remarkable editorial in the latest Touchstone which asks a penetrating question: can traditional societies survive the power of modernity? He writes,
A closed traditional society finds it almost impossible to effect an orderly and controlled transition to modernity. Religion dominates all aspects of life to the extent that no distinction is made between matters of faith and mere custom. . . .Thus, it proves psychologically impossible to discard those things in traditional society that have outlived their legitimacy without thereby setting off global change. The changing culture fosters a half-conscious conviction that truth lies roughly in asserting the opposite of what one previously believed. Changes cannot be evaluated rationally, because people are carried along by a euphoric sense of having liberated themselves from long-standing, narrow oppressiveness.Modern society offers an opportunity to exercise freedom in the fullest sense, an exercise that exposes the facts that what passes for deep conviction may be for many people merely a brittle social conformity, and what passes for morality may be the mere absence of opportunities for sin.Muslims who see the United States as the Great Satan reject the good of political liberty along with the poisonous moral licentiousness that such liberty permits. They perceive the ambiguity of modernity itself, most of which either originated in the United States or has been propagated through American influence.But for that very reason the antibodies to modern cultural viruses also exist most robustly in the United States, which is practically the only society in the Western world where moral traditionalists have an effective voice in public affairs.Religious belief is stronger in America than anywhere else in the West partly because believers have had to find ways of living their faith without the kind of social supports that, historically, were provided in countries with established churches.
This is an interesting explanation for America’s unusual religious culture, and one that makes a great deal of sense; but if he’s right to suggest that “the forces of modernity—political, economic, and cultural—really are irresistible and that sooner or later almost every society in the world will have to face them,” then the implications of his argument must be faced as well, because they are of great significance. As he says,
If that assumption is correct, it is better to experience modernity sooner rather than later, in order to make use of what is good in it and to learn to cope with what is bad. Simple quarantine is no longer possible. . . .Both for societies and for individuals, our cultural situation is tragic in the classical sense, because it requires decisions none of which are free of possible bad consequences. Maintaining a rigorously closed society may protect generations of people from the worst evils of modernity, even as it virtually guarantees that later generations will be infected all the more virulently. But alternatively, allowing people a good measure of freedom inevitably leads to abuse.
While, from a Christian perspective, one may well call the consequences of this situation for the church tragic, there is a silver lining as well: if Hitchcock’s overall thesis is correct, then that applies not only to Christian societies but also to Muslim societies as well. This suggests that while traditionalist Islamic societies will no doubt succeed in resisting modernity for some time—which is, I believe, the driving concern behind the rise of Islamism in its various forms, including its most virulent strain, jihadism—they cannot resist forever; eventually, the Islamic world will see its own version of Quebec’s “Silent Revolution,” and the collapse of radical Islam, leaving much of the Islamic world looking much like the once-Christian nations of western Europe. This offers hope that, in our conflict with militant Islam as with the Cold War against global communism, if we will stand strong and not surrender, we will see a Berlin Wall moment.
The state of the media and the sphere of legitimate debate
I read an interesting article yesterday on why the Internet weakens the authority of the press (thanks to a link from JMHawkins in the comments on this post on the probable closure of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and why that matters; the post deals specifically with sports coverage, but the points it makes are broader in application). The article, posted by Jay Rosen on PressThink (which looks like it might be a blog for the blogroll), deals with the following diagram from the 1986 book The “Uncensored War”: The Media and Vietnam by Daniel C. Hallin:
Rosen describes these three spheres in this way:
1.) The sphere of legitimate debate is the one journalists recognize as real, normal, everyday terrain. They think of their work as taking place almost exclusively within this space. (It doesn’t, but they think so.) Hallin: “This is the region of electoral contests and legislative debates, of issues recognized as such by the major established actors of the American political process.” . . .2. ) The sphere of consensus is the “motherhood and apple pie” of politics, the things on which everyone is thought to agree. Propositions that are seen as uncontroversial to the point of boring, true to the point of self-evident, or so widely-held that they’re almost universal lie within this sphere. Here, Hallin writes, “journalists do not feel compelled either to present opposing views or to remain disinterested observers.” (Which means that anyone whose basic views lie outside the sphere of consensus will experience the press not just as biased but savagely so.)
Consensus in American politics begins, of course, with the United States Constitution, but it includes other propositions too, like “Lincoln was a great president,” and “it doesn’t matter where you come from, you can succeed in America.” Whereas journalists equate ideology with the clash of programs and parties in the debate sphere, academics know that the consensus or background sphere is almost pure ideology: the American creed.3.) In the sphere of deviance we find “political actors and views which journalists and the political mainstream of society reject as unworthy of being heard.” As in the sphere of consensus, neutrality isn’t the watchword here; journalists maintain order by either keeping the deviant out of the news entirely or identifying it within the news frame as unacceptable, radical, or just plain impossible. The press “plays the role of exposing, condemning, or excluding from the public agenda” the deviant view, says Hallin. It “marks out and defends the limits of acceptable political conduct.”Anyone whose views lie within the sphere of deviance—as defined by journalists—will experience the press as an opponent in the struggle for recognition.
Rosen analyzes the work of the press in terms of these categories, and makes some interesting points:
That journalists affirm and enforce the sphere of consensus, consign ideas and actors to the sphere of deviance, and decide when the shift is made from one to another— none of this is in their official job description. You won’t find it taught in J-school, either. It’s an intrinsic part of what they do, but not a natural part of how they think or talk about their job. Which means they often do it badly. Their “sphere placement” decisions can be arbitrary, automatic, inflected with fear, or excessively narrow-minded. Worse than that, these decisions are often invisible to the people making them, and so we cannot argue with those people. It’s like trying to complain to your kid’s teacher about the values the child is learning in school when the teacher insists that the school does not teach values. . . .Deciding what does and does not legitimately belong within the national debate is—no way around it—a political act. And yet a pervasive belief within the press is that journalists do not engage in such action, for to do so would be against their principles. As Len Downie, former editor of the Washington Post once said about why things make the front page, “We think it’s important informationally. We are not allowing ourselves to think politically.” I think he’s right. The press does not permit itself to think politically. But it does engage in political acts. Ergo, it is an unthinking actor, which is not good. When it is criticized for this it will reject the criticism out of hand, which is also not good.
This is, I think, essentially correct, and is a more helpful way of understanding media bias than simply using categories of left and right; among other things, it’s a more nuanced model, allowing room for what he refers to as “complications,” such as the point that these spheres cannot be understood monochromatically:
Within the sphere of legitimate debate there is some variance. Journalists behave differently if the issue is closer to the doughnut hole than they do when it is nearer the edge.
That said, to make use of this model it is necessary to map it to the political spectrum in this country; and that, of course, is where disputes arise. Rosen is clearly a man of the left, and those who engage with him would seem to be even more so; for him, and for them, it seems to be axiomatic that the media’s understanding of the sphere of consensus is wrongly shifted in a conservative direction—and thus, to put the matter in standard terminology, that the media is biased against liberals. From where I stand, that seems nonsensical. But then, as Rosen might say, this isn’t really a dispute about the media at all: it’s a political dispute based on the differing understandings of conservatives and liberals about what properly belongs in each sphere. As such, it is in fact an inevitable political dispute over the most basic part of any political discussion: the definition of the terms of that discussion. This is why Markos Moulitsas (the Kos of Daily Kos, for anyone who might not know) said in his response to Rosen’s post,
The person who controls the [conventional wisdom] controls the terms of the debate. Modern activism is in large part a battle to capture that CW.
Of course, the ultimate purpose of Rosen’s article is to apply this analysis to the rise of the blogosphere, about which he makes an interesting point:
In the age of mass media, the press was able to define the sphere of legitimate debate with relative ease because the people on the receiving end were atomized—meaning they were connected “up” to Big Media but not across to each other. But today one of the biggest factors changing our world is the falling cost for like-minded people to locate each other, share information, trade impressions and realize their number. Among the first things they may do is establish that the “sphere of legitimate debate” as defined by journalists doesn’t match up with their own definition.
I think he’s right about that; but in truth, I think he doesn’t go far enough. It’s not just that journalists’ definition of the sphere of legitimate debate doesn’t match up with “their” definition—it’s that there is no one “they,” and thus that we may wind up with the national conversation being atomized instead as different groups insist on their differing definitions of the various spheres. We have people, for instance, working very hard to define “Sarah Palin is an idiot” into the sphere of consensus for purposes of political expedience, and others working very hard to move that statement into the sphere of deviance on the grounds that it’s objectively untrue. The danger of this sort of conflict is that it may tend to replace legitimate debate over issues with arguments over whether issues are legitimate—a sort of meta-debate which is not likely to prove productive. Disputes over definitions are, as I said, inevitable in any political conversation; but when they’re used as a proxy to avoid actually having the conversation, that’s unhealthy for democracy. The great advantage of the political blogosphere is that bloggers, unlike journalists, are open about their partisanship, thus putting the inevitable biases in the foreground and allowing readers to take them into account. The great disadvantage is that one can always use one’s partisanship as an excuse to treat one’s opponents solely on one’s own terms, rather than putting in the hard work to consider them on their own terms, and thus to give them credit for their good intentions. Doing so may not be the best thing we can do for our own political agenda—but it is the best thing we can do for the health of our country.
Thought on worship and idolatry
Human beings have an instinctive tendency to idolatry. That might seem a strange thing to say in the West, where we don’t have big statues standing around for people to bow down to, but it’s true. For one thing, we were made to worship, and have a bent that way; if we don’t consciously worship God (or some other god), we will usually find ourselves coming unconsciously to worship something else.This might sound like a strange thing to say, but take a look around. Take a look, not at people’s formal religious affiliations, but at where they put their money, their time, and their trust, and what do you see? You see entertainment; you see possessions; you see, perhaps, investments; with some people, you see their ambitions, whether social, political, or economic; you see relationships, certainly; and you see a lot of people who put most if not all of their money, time, and trust, quite frankly, in themselves. Now, some of these are purely good things—for example, if I didn’t spend money and time on my wife and kids, I’d get a lot of questions, not least from them—and none of them are evil; but the pattern is another matter. As Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there is your heart,” and it’s even truer that where your trust is, there is your heart; we might say, going further, that where your trust and treasure are together, there is your true worship, and the true focus of your attention.Worship isn’t just about going and participating in a formal service somewhere, although that’s what we associate with the word; worship is about giving honor, and according someone (or something) a place of particular importance in our lives. The word “worship,” in its older English form, was “worthship”; it meant to ascribe worth to something, to see that thing as having worth, as being important, and to treat it accordingly. Now, the word “worship” has come to have a more specific meaning, a formally religious one, but that old meaning is still at the core of it—it means to treat something or someone as of greatest worth, and to behave accordingly.This is perfectly natural; indeed, we might say it’s necessary, or even inevitable. The problem is, in our pride, we resist according that place to God, because doing so means giving up control—or, at least, the illusion of control—and so we have the tendency to turn instead to things, or to the self, to find security and peace and meaning in life instead of turning to God. That way, by giving pride of place to nothing greater than the self, we remain free from being told what to do (as long as circumstances permit, anyway). The problem is, in so doing, we put our trust and our hope in things which simply cannot bear the weight, and so—sooner or later—they fail us.(Partially excerpted from “Can You Do This?”)
This is shameful
According to the Anchorage Daily News,
The Army is terminating retirement credit for time served in a largely Native militia formed to guard the territory of Alaska from the threat of Japanese attack during World War II.The change means 26 surviving members of the Alaska Territorial Guard—most in their 80s and long retired—will lose as much as $557 in monthly retirement pay, a state veterans officer said Thursday. The pay claims of 37 others have been suspended. . . .The action comes almost a decade after Congress passed a law qualifying time served in the unpaid guard as active federal service. The Army agreed in 2004 to grant official military discharge certificates to members or their survivors.
This is just wrong. For what it’s worth, it sounds like this doesn’t come from the Army itself, but from somewhere in the DoD:
The reversal follows an analysis by the Department of Defense that determined that the Army is not authorized in the law to count territorial guard service for the purpose of calculating retirement pay, said Lt. Col. Richard McNorton, the Army’s human resources command in Alexandria, Va.”The focus is to follow the law,” he said. “We can’t chose whether to follow the law. We have to follow the law.”
Whether that’s a reasonable interpretation of the law or just the sort of thing you could expect some government bean counter to come up with, I don’t know, but it needs to be set right—and if that means changing the law again, then we need to change the law again. These are people who served this country, and they’re now old and vulnerable; it’s not appropriate to try to save money by taking away benefits our government had agreed to give them for their (unpaid) service. I think the state of Alaska has it right on this:
“This is earned income and it’s not being paid,” said Jerry Beale of the state Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.Gov. Sarah Palin said the state is pursuing a remedy for “these brave Alaskans, who did so much for the cause of freedom during a time of great national peril.” . . .”It took nearly 60 years before the federal government honored these defenders of our territory for their service,” Palin said in a statement. “While most died waiting for this recognition, the few who survive are now being told their Territorial Guard service is not worthy of federal recognition. This is unacceptable. These people are no less heroic than the militias at Lexington and Concord, or the defenders of the Alamo.”
Channeling Dubya, Part III
Match the speech to the president:
[T]he world has watched with growing concern the horror of bombings and burials and the stark picture of tanks in the street. Across the world, people are grieving for Israelis and Palestinians who have lost their lives.When an 18-year-old Palestinian girl is induced to blow herself up, and in the process kills a 17-year-old Israeli girl, the future, itself, is dying—the future of the Palestinian people and the future of the Israeli people. We mourn the dead, and we mourn the damage done to the hope of peace, the hope of Israel’s and the Israelis’ desire for a Jewish state at peace with its neighbors; the hope of the Palestinian people to build their own independent state.America is committed to Israel’s security. And we will always support Israel’s right to defend itself against legitimate threats. For years, Hamas has launched thousands of rockets at innocent Israeli citizens. No democracy can tolerate such danger to its people, nor should the international community, and neither should the Palestinian people themselves, whose interests are only set back by acts of terror. To be a genuine party to peace . . . Hamas must meet clear conditions: recognize Israel’s right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past agreements.The Palestinian people are blessed with many gifts and talents. They want the opportunity to use those gifts to better their own lives and build a better future for their children. They want the dignity that comes with sovereignty and independence. They want justice and equality under the rule of law. They want freedom from violence and fear.The people of Israel have just aspirations, as well. They want their children to be able to ride a bus or to go to school without fear of suicide bombers. They want an end to rocket attacks and constant threats of assault. They want their nation to be recognized and welcomed in the region where they live.Now, just as the terror of rocket fire aimed at innocent Israelis is intolerable, so, too, is a future without hope for the Palestinians. . . . Our hearts go out to Palestinian civilians who are in need of immediate food, clean water, and basic medical care, and who’ve faced suffocating poverty for far too long. Now we must extend a hand of opportunity to those who seek peace.Today, Palestinians and Israelis each understand that helping the other to realize their aspirations is key to realizing their own aspirations—and both require an independent, democratic, viable Palestinian state. Such a state will provide Palestinians with the chance to lead lives of freedom and purpose and dignity. Such a state will help provide the Israelis with something they have been seeking for generations: to live in peace with their neighbors.Lasting peace requires more than a long cease-fire, and that’s why I will sustain an active commitment to seek two states living side by side in peace and security.We meet to lay the foundation for the establishment of a new nation—a democratic Palestinian state that will live side by side with Israel in peace and security. We meet to help bring an end to the violence that has been the true enemy of the aspirations of both the Israelis and Palestinians.
President George W. Bush, or President Barack Obama? The answer will be posted in the comments.
Lemon socialism
What a great coinage. That’s how Robert Reich describes our current economic model, as the bailouts spread:
Put it all together and at this rate, the government—that is, taxpayers—will own much of the housing, auto, and financial sectors of the economy, those sectors that are failing fastest. . . .It’s called Lemon Socialism. Taxpayers support the lemons. Capitalism is reserved for the winners.
Too true. Painfully true, in fact. It’s not the sort of thing one usually hears from liberals (especially under circumstances in which even conservatives have been advocating big government spending), but that only makes his comments all the more important, and the warning they contain all the more urgent.HT: Jennifer Rubin