by Henry on September 4, 2009
David Broder 2009
Looming beyond the publicized cases of these relatively low-level operatives is the fundamental accountability question: What about those who approved of their actions? If accountability is the standard, then it should apply to the policymakers and not just to the underlings. Ultimately, do we want to see Cheney, who backed these actions and still does, standing in the dock? I think it is that kind of prospect that led President Obama to state that he was opposed to invoking the criminal justice system, even as he gave Holder the authority to decide the question for himself. Obama’s argument has been that he has made the decision to change policy and bring the practices clearly within constitutional bounds—and that should be sufficient. In times like these, the understandable desire to enforce individual accountability must be weighed against the consequences. This country is facing so many huge challenges at home and abroad that the president cannot afford to be drawn into what would undoubtedly be a major, bitter partisan battle over prosecution of Bush-era officials. The cost to the country would simply be too great.
Lord Justice Denning, on the Birmingham Six stitch up
Just consider the course of events if their [the Six’s] action were to proceed to trial … If the six men failed it would mean that much time and money and worry would have been expended by many people to no good purpose. If they won, it would mean that the police were guilty of perjury; that they were guilty of violence and threats; that the confessions were involuntary and improperly admitted in evidence; and that the convictions were erroneous. That would mean that the Home Secretary would have either to recommend that they be pardoned or to remit the case to the Court of Appeal. That was such an appalling vista that every sensible person would say, ‘It cannot be right that these actions should go any further.’ They should be struck out either on the ground that the men are estopped from challenging the decision of Mr. Justice Bridge, or alternatively that it is an abuse of the process of the court. Whichever it is, the actions should be stopped.
Funnily enough, not only did the British political and justice system manage to keep stumbling on after the Birmingham Six were released, but most reasonable observers would agree that it was the better for finally admitting that it had locked up six men for sixteen years on trumped-up evidence. Similarly, one might imagine that the US justice system would be the better for examining the prima facie evidence that the Vice President of this country engaged in illegal acts, rather than pretending that it didn’t because of the risk of partisan upheaval. But not if one were David Broder.
by John Holbo on September 2, 2009
Megan McArdle replies to my post:
So I’m not sure that this conversation is likely to be productive, since at least one side of it has decided to substitute sarcasm for engagement. But let’s see if we can’t tone down the nastiness a little, and try to have a reasonable discussion.
I agree with the first sentence. And I agree with the second sentence. Moving right along. [click to continue…]
by John Holbo on August 30, 2009
Three weeks ago Megan McArdle was annoyed. Have you ever noticed how health care reform proponents act as though there’s deep wisdom in reminding us that there is going to be rationing one way or another? “This is one of the things that most puzzles me about the health care debate: statements that would strike almost anyone as stupid in the context of any other good suddenly become dazzling insights when they’re applied to hip replacements and otitis media.” I – and others – pointed out that there were problems with McArdle’s use of the word ‘ration’. Without missing a beat, McArdle has moved on to being impressed by the deep wisdom of the thought that (envelope please): there is going to be rationing one way or another. She muses about the ironic circumstance that no one wants to utter the r-word and – long story short – ends by suggesting that reformers are particularly remiss in this regard. They want the fact that there is going to be rationing, one way or another, to be invisible. Have you ever noticed this about health care reform proponents?
Silly reformers. [click to continue…]
by Henry on August 25, 2009
Andrew Gelman and John Sides have a very good piece at the Boston Review on the reasons why journalists and pundits got so much about the 2008 presidential election wrong, with responses by Rick Perlstein, Mark Schmitt and others. In their response to the response, John and Andrew say:
Will these efforts get political scientists invited to Joe Scarborough’s kaffeeklatsch? Probably not. The media ecology fetishizes novelty in reporting and certainty in commentary. And yet the academic study of elections shows that what is certain is almost never new, and what is new is almost never certain. We might only bore Fox & Friends with our scholarly qualifications and caveats, or simply look foolish trying to present our research in soundbites. [click to continue…]
by John Holbo on August 12, 2009
Discussion is perking along in my McArdle on rationing thread. For the record: she articulates her general case against national health care here, then follows up here. I think it all adds up to a nice illustration of the point I was making in this post (I wish I had made it more clearly, to judge from comments.) McArdle’s opposition to national healthcare is based entirely on slippery slope arguments, arguments from unintended consequences, and suspicions that those who are proposing national health care really want different things than they say they do. Now, this is reasonable. But only up to a point. Because at some point we need something more, but McArdle is quite strident in her insistence that what she has said is enough.
What does she leave out? Arguing only in the ways she does leaves it unclear what she would think about national health care reform if it worked. And the reason it is important to know that is that we really have to know what McArdle’s values really are – her ideals. Let me show how it goes. [click to continue…]
by John Holbo on August 11, 2009
Megan McArdle has a post up grousing about how ‘but we have rationing already’ arguments are facile. Pardon me for not seeing her point (although I am willing to concede there may be overuse of the term, as we shall see). Let’s say the rationing in question is some guaranteed minimum coverage (public option). Obviously minimum is not maximum. That’s what people mean when they call it ‘rationing’, and that’s an ok use of the word. But lets start by noting that, paradigmatically, rationing needs two elements: it provides a minimum for everyone in a group by forbidding anyone from getting more than a certain maximum. Rationing means using the latter mechanism to ensure the former result. In that sense, the proper thing to say is that the guaranteed minimum coverage doesn’t really involve rationing.
Suppose, instead, we were talking about a guaranteed minimum income (as was proposed in the 70’s, and as such free market luminaries as Milton Friedman thought made a certain amount of economic sense, if memory serves.) Lots of folks would be opposed to guaranteed minimum income today (to put it mildly), but would anyone say a guaranteed minimum income was bad economics because it would amount to ‘rationing of the money supply’‘? And fiat rationing (as McArdle says) is inefficient. I don’t think economists would see this as a problem. Why not? Because there is no reason why the volume of money overall should be a function of – critically constrained by – some minimal income provision. That’s just not how the money supply would be determined: there wouldn’t be some iron economic law that there couldn’t be more money than everyone times the minimum. [click to continue…]
by John Holbo on August 10, 2009
Here’s a thought I’ve been meaning to write up for a while. This post has inspired me. Your opponent says healthcare reform will put us on the slippery slope to socialist soylent green serfdom. You reply by acknowledging the objection, in outline: ‘You’re worried Obama/liberals want something different from what they are willing to ask for, for fear that they would lose public support. You are also worried that what is being proposed may have bad, unintended consequences.’ (See if you can lock your interlocutor in on these two points. Which shouldn’t be hard. Now move on to step two.) ‘Fine. Suppose you’re right. Suppose they are lying, or half-lying. They don’t want the moderate stuff they say they want at all. They want something radical, or at least something more.’ (See if you can get agreement to that.) Also: ‘you are right. Something this big and sausage-like sure could work out badly in practice; that’s something to worry about.’ (Now you spring the trap.) ‘But suppose someone said these things and meant them. Suppose Obama were just the liberal he presents himself as. Call this guy Bizarro Obama if you want to emphasize that you aren’t fooled for a second into believing our Obama is this guy. Fine. Would you have any objection to Bizarro Obama – the actually just moderately liberal one? Also: suppose the policy worked more or less as proposed. Not perfectly. But suppose it didn’t just totally blow up. I know, I know, you don’t believe this policy will work. That’s fine. But suppose it did. Would you have a problem with that. If so, what’s the problem.’
Call these: sticky slope arguments – or – the argument from intended consequences. I think you see where I’m going with these names, and maybe you see as well why leading your opponent down this path might leave your opponent a bit deflated, rhetorically. Which might then be an opener for saner debate. [click to continue…]
by John Quiggin on August 1, 2009
The Internets are buzzing with the latest survey showing, among other things, Republicans are split on the Birther issue with only 47 per cent accepting the claim that Obama was born in the US. That’s almost exactly equal to the 48 per cent who agree that global warming exists – it’s evident from the public debate that the overlap between Birthers and opponents of AGW is very high ).
But I wouldn’t want to give the impression that over 50 per cent of Republicans are conspiracy theorists who believe in a secret plot to impose a Kenyan-socialist dictatorship as part of the UN/IPCC system of world government. On the contrary, the proportion is only about 25 per cent (more in the South). As on the global warming issue, the balance of opinion within the Republican Party holds to the sensible “sceptical” position: the science isn’t settled, the birth records are unclear, sightings of black helicopters need further investigation and so on. That’s good to know.
by Harry on July 28, 2009
My contribution to the Open Left Debate at Demos is here. I offered them a long and a short version, and am rather relieved that they went with the short version, mainly because it contained something that on reflection I wish I hadn’t said (but, since its not published I’m under no obligation to divulge it!). For what its worth, the long, and more didactic (but also more tentative) version of my answer to the first question, “What is it about your political beliefs that put you on the Left rather than the Right?” is below the fold; but please go to Open Left to join that debate.
[click to continue…]
by Henry on July 23, 2009
Brandon del Pozo is a captain in the NYPD (now working for Internal Affairs on internal police corruption cases, but with plenty of experience as a beat cop in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and as a police instructor too). He is also a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at CUNY. He has sent us a post with a different perspective on police discretion and the Gates arrest than that of my last post. We are publishing his post in the interests of furthering serious debate. Brandon asked me to make it emphatically clear that all views expressed here are purely personal, and that he is not acting as a spokesperson for the NYPD in any way. His post is below.
*****************************************
From my own experience and what I have learned about the incident, I highly doubt that I would have ordered the arrest of Professor Gates for any charge. I do, however, think that based on his actions as alleged by Sergeant Crowley, his arrest was somewhat plausible within the universe of possible outcomes to the incident. That still does not mean that the cops in question weren’t acting “stupidly,” as President Obama suggested. It is possible to do a lawful thing that is stupid, and that is why officers have discretion in many cases. While it can be misused, discretion is there to prevent them from stupidly enforcing the letter of the law. That the arrest was unwise and imprudent has also been made clear by how quickly the charges were dropped and the apologies issued by the government of Cambridge.
On the other hand, I do feel that Professor Gates seems to have acted inappropriately. There was no good reason for him to converse belligerently with the responding officer from his first words, or accuse him of racism, or refuse to answer basic questions directly related to the scope of the officer’s legitimate investigation. Of course, Gates also had the prerogative to say nothing at all, but this is different from saying nothing constructive, and instead issuing verbal abuse. This is not how people should relate to police officers as officials who are ostensibly trying to ensure public safety, but at least as importantly it is not how people should relate to other people in their community whose behavior they haven’t had the chance to independently assess. Police officers are expected to bear much greater burdens than the average citizen in this regard due to the nature of their job, but the limits on these burdens acknowledge their core personhood.
[click to continue…]
by Michael Bérubé on July 16, 2009
I’m still writing a long, substantive-ish piece responding to Larry Lessig’s twin posts on the dangers of confusing socialism with collaborative stuff on the internet, but it may be no harm to try to expel the less substantive stuff from my system in the meantime. And I do have some stuff to get out. I usually like Lessig’s stuff, even when I don’t agree with it, but these two posts are a horrible, horrible mess.
Post the first:
It is completely unreasonable to call [Kevin Kelly’s argument] “socialism”—at least when the behavior described is purely voluntary. It’s like saying “Because Stalin set up a competition between different collective farms, it’s not unreasonable to call that free market capitalism.” … The thing that Smith was pointing to (and Hayek too), is not “socialism.” It is not reasonably called socialism. Because “socialism” is the thing Smith was attacking in the 6th edition of his Theory of Moral Sentiments. Socialism is using the power of the state to force a result that otherwise would not have been chosen voluntarily by the people. … Coercive government action is—IMHO —a necessary condition of something being “socialism.” It isn’t sufficient—there is plenty of coercive governmental action that doesn’t qualify as socialism, like raising taxes to fund national defense, or to pay the police. … I’m not an opponent to all things plausibly called “socialist” … A graduated income tax could properly be called “socialist,” because it is coerced … But all of the examples of proper “socialism” begin with pointing to coercion by the state. A conservative Baptist church is not “socialist” when it voluntarily collects money to give to the poor, even though the result is similar to the result of a “socialist” plan to redistribute money from the rich to the poor. … sloppiness here has serious political consequences. When a founder of the movement which we all now celebrate calls this movement “socialist,” that plays right in the hand of those would attack everything this movement has built. Again, see Helprin. Or Andrew Keen.
Post the second:
There’s an interesting resistance (see the comments) to my resistance to Kevin Kelly’s description of (what others call) Web 2.0 as “socialism.” That resistance (to my resistance) convinces me my point hasn’t been made. … It is not even that never in the history of “socialism” have people so understood it (there have of course been plenty of voluntary communities that have called themselves “socialist”). Instead, my argument against Kelly was about responsibility in language: How would the words, or label, he used be understood. Not after, as I said, reading “a 3,500 word essay that redefines the term.” Rather, how would it be understood by a culture that increasingly has the attention span of 140 characters? … In reading the reactions to my argument, however, I realize that in using the term “coercion” I was committing the same error that I was accusing Kelly of making. People associate the word “coercion” with Abu Ghraib or Stalin. And certainly, the “coercion” of socialism isn’t necessarily (or even often) that. That’s fair. By “coercion” I meant simply law—that “socialism” is a system enforced by law, and enforced contrary to the way individuals would freely choose autonomously to associate. … So I didn’t mean anything necessarily negative by the term “coercion.” … Again, if you doubt that, think about American critics of “socialism”: None of them are complaining about people voluntarily choosing to associate however they choose to associate (except of course if they are gay). They are complaining about people being forced to associate in ways they don’t choose to associate.
[click to continue…]
by John Quiggin on June 29, 2009
Over the last week or two, there has been a lot of discussion of the idea of Obama leading from “two steps behind”, initially in relation to the Iran protests1, and then as a general description of his operating style. There’s an obvious link to the famous quote attributed to FDR, “I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it.”
But, how should Obama’s supporters respond to this, particularly on civil liberties issues such as detention withour trial where Obama is not only two steps behind but often appears to be going in the opposite direction? Suppose that Obama really wants to deliver on his campaign rhetoric about openness and due process, but is facing powerful resistance from within permanent power centres such as the CIA. Hence, it might be supposed, Obama has to put up a show of resistance, and needs his supporters to make enough noise to compel him to fulfil his promises
How, if at all does such a situation differ from one in which Obama is a natural centrist wants to backslide on promises made to secure his base in the election year, but can be held to his promises by sufficiently vociferous pressure?
[click to continue…]
by John Holbo on June 25, 2009
Whether or not Theory jargon incapacitates humanities folks, communication with regular folks-wise, I think it might provide a leg-up when it comes to understanding Republican governor infidelity pressers. Here’s Mark Sanford: “And the biggest self of self is indeed self.” True, untrue, or neither? Discuss. Defend your answer on the grounds that it is necessary for the progress of World-Spirit.
Here’s the context:
But I’m here because if you were to look at God’s laws, in every instance it is designed to protect people from themselves. I think that that is the bottom line of God’s law. It is not a moral, rigid list of do’s and don’ts just for the heck of do’s and don’ts, it is indeed to protect us from ourselves. And the biggest self of self is indeed self. If sin is in fact grounded in this notion of what is it that I want, as opposed to somebody else.
What do you make of this?
by John Holbo on June 24, 2009
Henry and a few others suggested I was a bit hard on Douthat for not being hard enough on Helprin. Douthat may be guilty only of the venial sin of obligatory civility in the face of a bad book, not the mortal sin of Higher Broderism. (Although one hopes the critic’s motto is not ‘if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.’) It really was his last paragraph that set me off, and it’s worth saying why. I’ll leave Helprin and even Douthat mostly out of it. [click to continue…]