November 2007

From the Department of “Are you absolutely sure about that?”, evolutionary psychology once more is on the march:

Hmmm. I think the best you can say about this is at least they did the right thing and went ahead and published these desperately unconvincing results rather than sweeping them under a rug.

Over the last few years, Crooked Timberites, myself included, have given some grief to Jonathan Adler both under his own name and his ‘Juan non-Volokh’ pre-tenure pseudonym for failing to say very much about torture, abuse of state power etc. So it’s only fair to note that he has recently been much more willing to “directly”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_11_04-2007_11_10.shtml#1194490360 “criticize”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_11_04-2007_11_10.shtml#1194537717 Bush administration overreach than in the past and seems to be “moving”:http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_11_04-2007_11_10.shtml#1194453946 “towards”:http://volokh.com/posts/1194103751.shtml saying that waterboarding is indeed torture. Unfortunately, Alan ‘if torture was good enough for the Nazis, it’s good enough for us‘ Dershowitz seems, if anything, to be getting “worse”:http://blogs.ft.com/crookblog/2007/11/derschowitz-on-.html.

Well, it looks like <a href=”http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_11/012454.php”>everyone’s</a> making <a href=”http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/7789.html”>popcorn</a> for <a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/books/07cons.html?ex=1352091600&en=ee37f9bbfe3bf306&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss”>the big Regnery suit</a>, looking forward eagerly to the discovery phase in which we may finally learn just how many copies of Regnery books are “sold” by being shipped from one wingnut outfit to another. As the <i>New York Times</i> reports:

<blockquote>The authors also say in the lawsuit that Regnery donates books to nonprofit groups affiliated with Eagle Publishing and gives the books as incentives to subscribers to newsletters published by Eagle. The authors say they do not receive royalties for these books.

“You get 10 per cent of nothing because they basically give them away,” Mr. Patterson said in an interview.</blockquote>

<a href=http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/11/07/more-regnery-hilarity/>Jane Hamsher asks</a>, “Do these authors really not understand that it takes incredibly deep pockets to do what they’re accusing Regnery of doing, and that they are the beneficiaries of it?” Since the answer to this question is something like, “sadly, no,” it appears that this lawsuit might also suggest an answer to a question that has long vexed the philosophy of wingnuttery: <i>can there be a group of Regnery authors so stupid that other Regnery authors would notice?</i>

Elsewhere, in other wingnut welfare news, <i>New Criterion</i> editor/publisher Roger Kimball has <a href=”http://pajamasmedia.com/xpress/rogerkimball/”>donned pajamas</a> and is now <a href=”http://pajamasmedia.com/xpress/rogerkimball/2007/11/03/the_groves_of_academe_or_you_c.php”>complaining</a> that NYU is having a one-day conference about public toilets. No, you really can’t make this stuff up. (And the comments are priceless! –though some of them are probably subsidized by Regnery.)

Just as Heroes Season II is finally hitting its stride, the Hollywood writers strike may cut it short. The producers are shooting an alternative ending that could air in early December, finishing the series half way through. That would be a shame, because this series is pacing itself pretty much like the last one. Both started slowly, with disparate characters wandering around doing lots of exposition but not much plot. Then the first narrative arc took off, feinted left in the middle of the season and revealed the real drama which peaked in the season finale. You really need the full dose for the plot to culminate. And the hotness. Twenty-odd episodes of hotness.
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Pajamas Media is hosting a debate between Laura at 11D and Megan McArdle on school vouchers. Laura is first up, and might welcome some friendly faces.

It seems that the Revolutionary Communist Party has a large notice running in the latest New York Review of Books. I have not actually seen that issue yet, but over the weekend, a friend wrote to protest:

Simply staggered that you have not signed onto the full page ad in the NYRB (Engage!) demanding that the voice of Bob Avakian be projected and protected. You, who have done so much to keep Avakian before the masses. You, who have chosen *not* to join voices including Mumia Abu Jamal, Rickie Lee Jones, Aladdin, Ward Churchill, Chuck D, Cornel West, and Michael Eric Dyson.

Don’t you know that Martin Niemoller said that “first they came for the communists?”

Okay, my mistake. It is also true that I have neglected to blog about the doings of Chairman Bob for months now. In part, though, that has been because the Chairman went AWOL for quite a spell there. No new articles or interviews with him appeared in the party press, and after a while it became reasonable to wonder what was up. Something cardiac, perhaps? Involving rich pastries?
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“Megan McArdle”:http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/11/the_rich_really_are_different.php claims that I “got”:https://crookedtimber.org/2007/11/06/a-little-rich/ Michael Franc’s op-ed wrong.

Democrats indisputably represent more rich voters than Republicans; their constituency is the people in their district, not the people in their district who voted for them. Moreover, politically, this matters a great deal. The guy from Heritage is actually making a good point: the constituency of the Democrats will force many of them to support the interests of the rich, even where they might ideologically prefer to oppose, because doing so is good for their district.

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I’m reading The Conservatives Have No Clothes [amazon], by Greg Anrig. Pretty good so far, but:

It is difficult to overstate the impact of the Heritage Foundation – along with the much broader network of conservative think tanks, foundations, university-based programs, activist organizations and media affiliates – on U.S. public policy and debates over the role of government in recent years. (p. 2)

Phrases like ‘it would be difficult to overstate’ are a delicate way of saying it would be difficult to state. But it’s a lot. But Anrig’s thesis hinges on how much:

The philosophies of the leading individuals who financed movement conservatism are far outside the mainstream. (David H. Koch ran as a vice presidential candidate on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1980, receiving just over 1 percent of the vote – a typical showing for libertarians running for public office even today.) But the institutions receiving their largesse needed to concoct strategies for simultaneously keeping those founders happy while also building a broad political coalition.

The real wonder of the conservative enterprise has been its ability to transform the rudimendary desire of a handful of wealthy families to gut the government into a set of public policy ideas that would help to accomplish that goal while sounding appetizing enough to attract large numbers of voters. Rather ingeniously, the simple, easy-to-understand ideas they developed are largely consistent with each other and elegantly link to a broader story line that the conservative movement has effectively sold with remarkable sophistication. That’s how the right won the war of ideas. It’s also the underlying reason why those ideas are failing. (p. 11)

One should, of course, read the book before judging; but I expect a lot of skeptics would fire back promptly that this is shaping up to be a too-easy false consciousness thesis. The whole ‘appetizing enough to attract lots of voters’ bit doesn’t sit easily with the ‘far outside the mainstream’. (Why did Ron Paul raise 4 mill. from 40,000 individual contributors in a single day? Obviously he’s still polling at the traditional, libertarian 1%. But there’s something a bit more going on, surely.) I’m actually pretty sympathetic to Anrig’s overall case, but what is precisely difficult is rigorously refraining from overstating the degree to which his basically plausible, coherent narrative is accurate. Just how influential has Heritage been?

Today is 150 days after the Belgian elections, and there is still no government. The crisis is as deep as it was when I last “wrote about it”:https://crookedtimber.org/2007/09/19/the-ingredients-of-the-belgian-cocktail/. There have been partial agreements between the negotiating parties over the last weeks, but for none of the crucial issues there is an agreement yet – the situation of the Francophone population in the Flemish border communes around Brussels, a solution to the crisis in the election district Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde, some aspects of the welfare state reform, and the government budget.

And it is a crucial day: the Commission Internal Affairs of the National Parliament (where the Flemish make up the majority) has a meeting today, and the Flemish parties have threatened that if there is no (for them acceptable) compromise (or at least the beginning of a compromise) on Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde in the coalition negotiations, they will use their majority position to vote for the splitting of this election district. Such a Flemish-Francophone majority-minority decision would be unheard off for Belgian political norms, since it would basically imply that the Flemish majority imposes its will on the Francophone minority. All political commentators argue that this would only deepen the political crisis.

I haven’t been following each and every detail of Belgian politics in the last two months – even for a Belgian it is rather complicated, and the constant political incidents and provocations (from both sides), which have continued even after the negotiations have been resumed, are making me tired and slightly depressed. Readers who had more time and energy to follow the debate are very welcome to expand below. In the meantime we’ll be waiting to see what happens on this crucial day – the Commission Internal Affairs meets in 4 hours and 55 minutes, and so far there is no sight on any solution for Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde in the coalition negotiations.

It’s election time here in Australia, and there are some reasons why readers Down Under (from our perspective)

might be more interested than usual.

George Bush has no more reliable ally than the Liberal (=conservative) government of John Howard. Howard has backed Bush straight down the line on Iraq and climate change, and (unlike Tony Blair) raised no objection when Australians were held in Guantanamo Bay for years on end. The general assumption among political hardheads until about a year ago was that, although these positions might be unpopular, Australians would not vote against an incumbent government when the economy was going well. Labor was ahead in the polls, but no-one really believed it. But after a change of leaders at the end of 2006, Labor moved to a large lead in the polls, which it has kept ever since.

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The “Financial Times”:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0d758a1e-8af8-11dc-95f7-0000779fd2ac.html, for reasons best known to itself, serves up this “steaming heap of buffalo dung”:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0d758a1e-8af8-11dc-95f7-0000779fd2ac.html from Heritage Foundation Vice-President for Governmental Affairs, Michael Franc, on its op-ed page.

A legislative proposal that was once on the fast track is suddenly dead. The Senate will not consider a plan to extract billions in extra taxes from mega-millionaire hedge fund managers. … Far from embarrassing, this episode may reflect a dawning Democratic awareness of whom they really represent. For the demographic reality is that, in America, the Democratic party is the new “party of the rich”. More and more Democrats represent areas with a high concentration of wealthy households. Using Internal Revenue Service data, the Heritage Foundation identified two categories of taxpayers – single filers with incomes of more than $100,000 and married filers with incomes of more than $200,000 – and combined them to discern where the wealthiest Americans live and who represents them. …Democrats now control the majority of the nation’s wealthiest congressional jurisdictions. More than half of the wealthiest households are concentrated in the 18 states where Democrats control both Senate seats. …

Soon this new political demographic may give traditional purveyors of class warfare the yips. To comply with new budget rules, liberal Democrats on Capitol Hill are readying a tax increase of at least $1,000bn over the next decade. Ms Pelosi says she wants to extract all of this from “the wealthy”. When has a party ever championed a policy that would inflict so much pain on its own constituency? At what point will affluent Democrats crack and mount a Blue State tax rebellion?

A hint to the people at the _Financial Times_ (a group whom I usually hold in considerable esteem): when an op-ed’s argument rests on a statistical fallacy so howlingly awful that it’s obvious to someone like me, it’s not a good idea at all to publish it. More generally, when a Heritage Foundation vice-president proposes a piece to you, et numeri ferentes, _especial_ attention to the basis of those figures is not only warranted but necessary. If it is true that Democrats tend to represent richer districts, both basic logic and an elementary grasp of statistics should tell you that this _does not imply_ that they represent richer voters. Indeed, not only does it not imply this, we _know_ that it isn’t true. See further “Andrew Gelman et al.”:http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/red_state_blue_state_revised.pdf

Do richer voters still support Republicans? If so, how can we understand the pattern that the Democratic do best in the richer “blue states” of the Northeast and West, while the Republicans dominate in the poorer “red states” in the South and between the coasts? … The Republicans have the support of the richer voters within any given state but have more overall support in the poorer states. Thus, the identification of rich states with rich voters, or more generally, the “personification” of so-called red and blue states, is misleading. For example, in the context of the Brooks quotes above, within an “upscale” area that supports the Democrats, the more “upscale” voters are still likely to vote Republican. … The pattern that richer states support the Democrats is _not_ a simple aggregation of rich voters supporting the Democrats.

And so on. I have a lot of respect for the _Financial Times_ – they do a better job in my estimation than any other newspaper of preserving a high quality of debate and are usually quite scrupulous about factual detail. This makes it all the more odd that a piece like this, which is better suited for publication in an introductory statistical textbook as a particularly egregious cautionary example of the fallacy of aggregation, could have made it in. Better filters please.

“Ezra Klein”:http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2007/11/the-5-bloggers-.html, responding to this blog and others, lists off the five bloggers whom he misses most. Prominent among them, of course, being the Fafblog, “the only blog that’s ever really mattered.” See also “Dan Nexon”:http://duckofminerva.blogspot.com/2007/11/best-blog-post-every.html on how “the fact of the matter is… and now I’m going to get choked up and grieve for a minute about the gaping hole its lack of updates has left in the blogmarch… almost any random selection from Fafblog would beat out the competition.” Which is so completely and obviously true. But even as the Library of Congress is “cataloguing and preserving”:http://www.discourse.net/archives/2007/10/library_of_congress_collecting_law_blogs.html blogs of “historical importance to the Congress and to the American people,” the Fafblog’s archives, a genuine national treasure if ever there was one, are 404ing (I’m sure that both Brewster Kahle and Google have them stashed away somewhere but what a pain). In order to collate and preserve material of vital historical significance, I ask you, Crooked Timber readers, to link to, quote _in extenso_, and thus preserve your favourite Fafblog posts of all time. As my contribution – this reminder of how, long before there were glibertarians, there were “Gibletarians”:http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/nothing-says-i-care-like-war-on.html.

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Jonathan van Antwerpen at the Social Science Research Council emails to tell me about a “new blog”:http://www.ssrc.org/blogs/immanent_frame/ that they have set up examining questions of “secularism, religion, and the public sphere.” They’re starting off with a discussion of Charles Taylor’s new book, _A Secular Age_, including posts by Taylor himself, Robert Bellah and others. Unsurprisingly given my own interests in academic blogging, I’m happy to see the SSRC doing this – it’s a great way to broaden debate about these issues beyond the usual suspects.

Also worthy of note for pol theory types is “Public Reason”:http://publicreason.net/, a new blog set up to:

create an open forum for political philosophers and theorists to post their own papers, along with conference announcements, ideas about philosophical problems, etc., in a way that is conducive to discussion among and communication between political philosophers/theorists

“Jim Henley”:http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2007/10/29/7355, “Matthew Yglesias”:http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/10/blogospheric_classics.php, “Brad DeLong”:http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/10/five-nomination.html, “Dan Drezner”:http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/003564.html, and now “Scott Lemieux”:http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2007/11/best-posts-ever.html have various nominations for the Best Blogpost or Best 5 Blogposts ever. If (in a blatant act of ballot-box stuffing), we count posts that have been nominated by more than one of the above-gathered experts once for each time they have been nominated, we arrive at the startling conclusion that _50% of the bestest blogposts ever have been written by Crooked Timber contributors! ! !_ Of course, none of those posts was actually published _at_ Crooked Timber, a fact over which we will pass swiftly, and in silence. To even the odds a little, nominations are invited below for the 5 Best Blogposts Ever by Non-CTers. Please be specific – ‘everything by Fafblog’ does not count as a vote, whereas 5 individual links to 5 individual Fafblog posts does .