Contretemps at Cato

If you make “room” for market-based policy instruments you will wind up with market-generated income distribution. That’s the point of them.

I see no reason to think emissions trading will reduce pollution, although it may well accelerate moving of polluting industries to third-world countries.

How is “Koch” pronounced in this case? Like “coach” or “coke” or “cock?”

Also from the New Yorker article:

Casting his group as a champion of ordinary workers who would be hurt by environmentalists, [Koch stooge] Phillips went to Copenhagen last year and staged a protest outside the United Nations conference on climate change, declaring, “We’re a grassroots organization. . . . I think it’s unfortunate when wealthy children of wealthy families . . . want to send unemployment rates in the United States up to twenty per cent.”

I think the OED has found a new example for their entry on irony.

The article also raises the interesting point about the sense of endless persecution indulged in by these poor, helpless billionaires. Organized labor in the US is a joke, destroying Social Security and Medicare is a much more mainstream notion, effective tax rates for the rich have trended lower, income inequality has increased dramatically … yet there’s still the threat that “big government” might occasionally swat their wrists when they spray toxic chemicals in children’s faces. I hope they don’t manage to finish bringing the system down, because Koch Schmibertopia would make me long for Somalia.

Presumably that’s the end of the Cato Unbound site, where they tried to promote dialogue with liberals and even leftists. Granted, there was always some “respondent” parroting boilerplate libertarianism, but there was some interesting material also.

Oh, so the Koch brothers don’t own any arms companies?

“a rapprochement between libertarians and (US-style) liberals”

Don’t you mean:

“a rapprochement between (US-style) libertarians and (US-style) liberals”?

The term “libertarian” has been, and still is, used by anti-state socialists (anarchists, some marxists, etc.) a lot longer than its appropriation by right-wing free-marketeers in America. In fact, the term was first coined by a French communist-anarchist in 1858, in New York of all places. T

It was then taken up by anarchists across the globe — and is still used by us as an alternative to anarchist. It is also used by some Marxists, who call themselves libertarian Marxists, as well as other socialists (like Maurice Brinton and the British Solidarity group in the 1960s and 70s). he American right-wing appropriation of the term dates back to the 1950s.

Karl Widerquist’s encyclopedia description of libertarianism covers the ground quite well. A few choice quotes:

“Before that [the 1950s], and in most of the rest of the world today, the term has been associated almost exclusively with leftists groups advocating egalitarian property rights or even the abolition of private property, such as anarchist socialists who began using the term nearly a century early, in 1858”

Stating the obvious:

“The three are not factions of a common movement, but distinct ideologies using the same label.”

And this one is great:

“Right-libertarians seldom call themselves right-libertarians, preferring to call themselves simply ‘libertarians,’ often denying any other groups have claim to the name. It is perhaps poetically appropriate that property rights advocates have appropriated a term that was already being used by people who subscribe to the idea that property is theft, and that these property rights now accuse anarchists of trying to steal it from them.”

So it would be nice if left-wingers would not let the right appropriate a term which was, for over 100 years, a term used exclusively by the left. As well as being annoying to genuine libertarians, it associates liberty with the right and an ideology (better called “propertarianism”) which is far more concerned with property than liberty.

CATO was also very consistent and pretty good on foreign policy.

I’ll second that. This, for example.

Having said that about Mercatus… I get my salary and research funding from several federal institutes, a state university and its medical center, and a private children’s hospital (and thus its billionaire donors). I’m not suggesting that there is a moral difference between my situation and the Mercatus / CATO scholars.

Cato head Bill Niskanen was very out-front against the first Gulf War, and it cost Cato some of their funding.

Bill Gardner: “I’m not suggesting that there is a moral difference between my situation and the Mercatus / CATO scholars.”

That’s moral tone-deafness. Those federal institutes, state university, and private children’s hospital presumably don’t use you as part of a propaganda operation.

And saying that Cato was occasionally good on something or other, where that did not conflict with Koch interests, is beside the point. Just as with Tech Central Station, the propaganda needs camouflage, so that people like the ones in this thread can be fooled. See here, for instance, or better yet here. Wilkinson and Lindsay are just as complicit as the people who wrote propertarian boilerplate.

There is, I think, room for a version of liberalism/social democracy that is appreciative of the virtues of markets (and market-based policy instruments like emissions trading schemes) as social contrivances, and sceptical of top-down planning and regulation, without accepting normative claims about the income distribution generated by markets.

But that *is* the US left. US liberals already appreciate the virtues of markets, subject to an awareness of their limitations (such as their tendency to generate extremely skewed income distributions). US libertarians seem to want to jettison the awareness of markets’ limitations and just accept them uncritically.

And top-down planning is only resorted to after other approaches have failed — which is not that uncommon an occurrence.

The idea of liberals reaching for the heavy hand of government as a first resort, let alone as an end in itself, is a splinter faction at most, if not an outright strawman, that has historically been used to smear the entire leftish half of the US political spectrum.

Who wants to engage with the people who have been allying with torturers and theocrats in spite of their supposed principles, and deliberately misrepresenting your views for years? Don’t all raise your hands at once.

Rich Pulasky @ #18: That’s moral tone-deafness. Those federal institutes, state university, and private children’s hospital presumably don’t use you as part of a propaganda operation.

Are you sure? For example, the private children’s hospital is named after a corporation, in return for a large donation. My research is occasionally cited as evidence of the hospital’s good works, and the corporation uses the hospital to project a positive public image. I too view it this way, that is, I think my work is good, and that in a small way it speaks well for the donors. Wouldn’t the Mercatus people say the same?

There’s a substantial difference between Lindsey/Wilkinson and Glenn Reynolds. Both Lindsey and Wilkinson very clearly, and very explicitly tried to use their positions to change the ideological momentum of the libertarian movement towards one that was more compatible with liberalism and a reasonable acquaintance with empirical facts. It is at least plausible that they have suffered for this by losing their positions because they got the funders unhappy (one person I know who is pretty familiar with this world speculates that this is what happened here). This seems to me to be a very different thing from being a “dupe.” There are different plausible theories of how best to accomplish change. Some people opt from trying to change stuff from within existing organizations and structures, while gritting their teeth and dealing with the bullshit that they have to deal with. Others opt for doing it from outside, while gritting their teeth and dealing with the unhappiness of starting from an institutionally marginalized position. I don’t think that there is any obvious _prima facie_ case that the one or the other is the right way to go. If Lindsey or Wilkinson had shut up and gone with the program it would have been a different thing – but they very clearly and very visibly tried to change the movement from within. It didn’t work out, but they should not be condemned for trying.

Bill Gardner: “Are you sure? For example, the private children’s hospital is named after a corporation, in return for a large donation. […]”

If you want to reduce your work for federal institutes, a state university, and a private hospital to only the work for the private hospital, and then say that the unnamed corporation that named the hospital is as bad as Koch, which routinely funds global climate change denialism as well as every other major right-wing corporate cause, then fine. You’re just as bad as they are. I fail to see why your shame makes them any better.

Rich – you’re getting confused here. As best as I know, Glenn Reynolds never had any involvement with Cato (apart from promoting his book at a Cato event). I brought up his name because of the Tech Central Station piece that you linked. And yes – while I am sympathetic to both Lindsey and Wilkinson because their views are broadly more compatible with mine than others, the more fundamental point is that they were and are interested in engaging honestly on the facts. As best as I can see, you have a theory of politics under which anyone on the other side is necessarily either an active conspirator, a crazy, or a dupe. Under the current constellation of American politics, that can explain quite a lot. But it certainly can’t explain everything.

Perlhaps this is what happened.

From the New Yorker piece, about the Koch brothers, “They are the Standard Oil of our times.” I would be proud of this! Although the Center for Public Integrity who made the comparison accuses them (and by extension, Standard Oil) of ” lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation,” nothing could be further from truth – about Standard Oil at least.

John D. Rockefeller is often accused of having been an exploitative capitalist because he built a railroad “empire.” Many argue that he colluded with Vanderbilt when his railroad gave discounts to Standard Oil for delivery. However, Vanderbilt offered the same discount to anyone else who could provide the railroad with that same amount of business. It was simply a volume discount. Nobody else could offer the same volume of business because no one else was as efficient. Rockefeller was able to capitalize on his success, but his success was a result of his efficiency. Only by continuing to improve his operations was he able to build on this success and maintain his dominant position.

In The Myth of the Robber Barons, Burton Folsom points out that before Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, most oil producers wasted more oil than they sold, and rivers ran with wasted (dangerous and polluting) oil. Rockefeller’s innovation was to refine the oil and create hundreds of products from it, wasting almost none of it. His efficiencies and the discount from Vanderbilt allowed Rockefeller to cut the price of kerosene from 58 to 26 cents per gallon by 1870 and to keep cutting it each year after that. While “before 1870 only the rich could afford whale oil and candles,” “[b]y the 1870s, with the drop in the price of kerosene, middle and working class people all over the nation could afford the one cent an hour that it cost to light their homes at night,” allowing many Americans for the first time to work and read at night.

If this is what Koch industries is doing–offering energy for cheaper than ever before and cutting pollution by 80% in tandem–then they should be proud.

I had thought that Reynolds wrote for Cato Unbound, but he seems to be listed there as a contributor without me being able to easily find any actual contributions. But in any case I think that Cato and Tech Central Station are more or less equivalent.

I still think that you’re giving them a pass. I’ll quote you from a comment back:

“Some people opt from trying to change stuff from within existing organizations and structures, while gritting their teeth and dealing with the bullshit that they have to deal with. Others opt for doing it from outside, while gritting their teeth and dealing with the unhappiness of starting from an institutionally marginalized position. ”

All right, then the first group of people have to deal with the moral responsibility of being dupes — or of duping others. The second group of people have to deal with the moral responsibility of ineffectuality. Neither one gets to escape it by saying that they meant well, or that they were “engaging honestly on the facts.”

Are Lindsay and Wilkinson “engaging honestly on the facts”? Perhaps. We’ll see what they say about their termination of employment from Cato. Will they be willing to say that they made the choice to work within the system, but now that they are out, they are free to say that the shop was the corporate propaganda vehicle that people said it was? Or are they just going to go to their next think tank jobs and maximize their personal future employment chances by not saying anything about it? I’d guess the latter, but we’ll see.

And your characterization of my theory of politics reminds me of the Duncan Black quote, which I paraphrase from memory as “Everyone who was wrong is right, everyone who was right is crazy.”

Well, maybe you should feel ashamed, Bill Gardner. You have various sources of work, but by your own description: “My research is occasionally cited as evidence of the hospital’s good works, and the corporation uses the hospital to project a positive public image. I too view it this way, that is, I think my work is good, and that in a small way it speaks well for the donors.” You willingly allow people to use your work for their corporate image, while saying that it really doesn’t matter to you whether they are actually a good corporation or not, except insofar as they support you and you think your work is good.

OK, so you’re fine with acting as a corporate whore. I guess that people shouldn’t necessarily be ashamed of being whores. But sex workers, at least, don’t generally have lots of adverse externalities for everyone else. Your work could, for all I know, be the deciding factor that gives that corporation a better enough public image so that it is able to effectively support the same libertarian health care that you say you disagree with, with negative consequences to everyone that far outweigh your work. Are they actually doing that? Well, you apparently don’t know and as a matter of principle don’t care.

Academic Lurker @36: the above statement is really incredibly naive.

Because?

Rich @37: [You are] saying that it really doesn’t matter to you whether they are actually a good corporation or not, except insofar as they support you and you think your work is good.

Sorry, where did I say that?

“Sorry, where did I say that?”

If you’re not saying that, then your case and that of Lindsay and Wilkinson are not comparable. So you offered a false equivalence between your work at a private children’s hospital and their work at a Koch-funded think tank. Which is what I originally wrote about “moral tone-deafness”.

Sebastian, you personally have lied, in this venue, as part of your support for global warming denialism, and have claimed that the East Anglia Emailers must still be guilty or something while showing no concern about the people who stole their Emails. People here still seem to think that that makes you a nice, respectable person. I don’t.

And if that’s “my style of confrontation” rather than the general style of reasonable people everywhere, then shame on them. The people who think that you’re fine aren’t “civil”, they’re just moral cowards, or reflexively sticking up for fellow middle class people via the marker of a certain middle class writing style.

Rich @40: If you’re not saying that, then your case and that of Lindsay and Wilkinson are not comparable. So you offered a false equivalence between your work at a private children’s hospital and their work at a Koch-funded think tank. Which is what I originally wrote about “moral tone-deafness”.

That’s helpful, thanks. I do care about the corporation that funds the hospital. I wouldn’t work for the Philip Morris Children’s Hospital. I work for a hospital supported by an institution that, in so far as I know what they do, I agree with enough that I can live with them. I assume Lindsey and Wilkinson would have said the same.

I confess to being confused about what “liberaltarianism” was going to be. Many of the statistics Wilkinson has been citing are not new. US non-intellectual libertarians’ social beliefs, by and large, match what is called liberal in the US. Thus, if they vote Republican, they put economic matters and/or national security above social issues. Presumably, the intention was to downplay the social issues in order not to alienate libertarian Republicans who preferred not to go along with the social conservatives, and to keep them voting Republican. However, Wilkinson has been blogging a lot about the importance of social and cultural concerns.

Piglet @43:

I do report funding that was specific to a project when I publish. We are also required to report anything that would be an apparent conflict of interest, even if the resources were not used on a project. For example, if I wrote about antidepressants, I would be required to discuss funding from Pfizer, even if they hadn’t supported that specific research. (I have never been funded by Pfizer or any other device or pharmaceutical company.) Your question prompts me to reflect, however, that we do not report contributions that support the institution as a whole (i.e., the bricks and mortar). I am not sure there’s a good reason for that.

If Cato and Mercatus disclose their funders on their websites, I can’t find it. They do say that they do not accept government support, which if nothing else is consistent.

Rich @45: Glad that we were able to work out a partial agreement.

@Norwegian Guy. Yes, he did. But he also recanted on that.

The respective roles of Bill Gardner and Rich Puchalsky in life, as I see it: Gardner does useful research that may improve lives. Puchalsky sits in front of a computer informing Gardner he is a whore because part of the research is funded by some corporation.

Hey, the libertarians are right! The market really does allocate resources in the most appropriate way.

I kind of agree with Rich on this. The job of Cato’s writers, like Reason’s, is to get voters for the Republican party and to increase support generally for (basically) current Republican positions. They can’t reasonably expect to do that job while attempting to change those current Republican positions, if only because the better they do their job, the more they would undercut their other project. Now, if they are really personally committed to the Republican party, that would be a different question. But then non-Republicans who debate them ought to realize that, at any given time, they are more likely acting as hacks than as people committed to honest debate (their commitment would then only allow them to engage in honest debate within the Republican party, privately).

And personally, I think that if there really are a lot of people who think they are really going to change the institution while dealing with everything they are forced to put up with, when “everything” includes propaganda, something is very wrong here.

“Lindsey is smart, honest, committed to real debate, and wants what’s right. That’s all I can ask for from an intellectual opponent.”

And who cares that he is partially responsible for the deaths of thousands of people — people who did not come to life again when he recanted on bloggingheads or whatever. What’s important is that he meets your standards for what kind of debating partner you want.

Rich – this is exactly the kind of argument I used to hear from people like Glenn Reynolds – that those like me who were arguing against the war were responsible for the continued torture and murder of thousands under Saddam’s regime. Glenn Reynolds was very obviously committed to any argument that would allow him to keep burnishing his public conscience, his self-proclaimed moral righteousness and his not inconsiderable sense of self-esteem. I’m not saying that this is what is driving you – you certainly do not seem to be slimy and dishonest in the same way as Glenn Reynolds – but you also seem pretty starkly opposed to any claim that people on the other side of any of a number of debates can have legitimate reasons for disagreeing with you. Even if the sources are different, the end result – a kind of Manicheanism in which everything breaks down into a simple struggle between Good and Evil – is more or less the same. It would be a much simpler world if everyone who was on the ‘other’ side was corrupt, evil or stupid. But that’s not the world we live in, as best as I can see. Maybe it’s the world that you believe that you live in – but from my perspective, that is your problem, not mine (perhaps from your perspective, my take is my problem, and not yours).

Or perhaps from your perspective, warmongering is just the same kind of thing as saying that we should not rush to war, so that Glenn Reynolds’ views and mine are mere mirror images of each other. The commonality, I see, is that anyone who believes in anything extreme — war, peace, whatever — is a Manichean extremist who believes in simple struggles between Good and Evil, unlike the sophisticated people who don’t reject good debating partners merely because they were in fact partially responsible for thousands of deaths.

After all, those deaths — which actually happened — are just the same as the supposed deaths which would have occurred had we not invaded and deposed Saddam, correct? After all, history does not exist. Historical responsibility does not exist.

And my supposed “self-proclaimed moral righteousness” does not have anything to do with what actually happened in the last decade. Those people who I disagree with could, after all, have perfectly legitimate reasons for disagreeing with me! In theory. Who cares what their actual, demonstrated reasons are, because history does not exist.

Ah, and I see that chris thinks that pundits who speak out vigorously, in public venues, in favor of war have no responsibility for the war, because they do not have “veto power”. Wow, that’s — comforting, isn’t it?

So, there were many people who said for many years that Cato was a mere subsidiary of Koch, that it was a bought-and-paid-for corporate propaganda shop. Against this, people like Henry said that we were Manichean extremists who rejected the subset of people at Cato who were honest, reasonable advocates of libertarianism. And now that we’ve been proven right, why, it turns out that we were crazy all along. And the people like Henry, who of course were wrong, were really right because they were wrong for the right reasons.

Come on, Rich. All your antagonists on this thread are saying is:
1) There’s an important difference between being honestly wrong and being dishonestly wrong; and
2) There are degrees of responsibility for criminal state policies, with those who devise and implement them having a far greater responsibility than those who merely, as citizens, verbally support them.
It’s hard enough to get Americans to listen when we call Kissinger or Cheney war criminals. If we start calling people like Brink Lindsey war criminals (or almost), we may as well give up.

Because Puchalsky did not assassinate Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and overthrow the GOP regime, he is personally responsible for every Iraqi death.

If I wrote some boilerplate about how great public intellectuals were, and how an intellectual speaking to the public had a certain kind of responsibility, I would guess that most people would write oh yes, very true. But it turns out strangely enough that this responsibility does not apply to deadly mistakes!

Responsibility for actual events follows causation, and stops with it. The words of the powerless are not actually “deadly mistakes” because the powerless *are powerless* and no different outcome would have resulted if they had said something different.

Now of course arguments about causation and inevitability require consideration of counterfactuals, and are always somewhat arguable on that basis, but I don’t think you’re going to actually defend the thesis that if Lindsey had opposed the war it wouldn’t have happened; rather, you just want to remove the causal element entirely so you can paint with a broader brush. As you can see, most people here don’t support that endeavor.

Although I suspect most people talking about the “responsibilities” of public intellectuals are really more concerned with integrity, not saying things you know to be false, not representing unsupported speculation as established fact, etc., rather than the actual *consequences* of what they say, because in most cases there aren’t any. It’s somewhat rude to point out to intellectuals that they’re not that important in actually causing events, but they aren’t, in fact, that important in actually causing events. Which intellectuals are perceived as the voice of the Zeitgeist and which are perceived as voices in the wilderness depends on which way the Zeitgeist is already moving.

“And who cares that he is partially responsible for the deaths of thousands of people—people who did not come to life again when he recanted on bloggingheads or whatever. What’s important is that he meets your standards for what kind of debating partner you want.”

You use electricity, some of which comes from burning coal, which causes global warming. You are partially responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in the future whose lives will be somewhat impacted by global climate change. You might want to turn off your computer immediately!

To echo a point that’s already been made, the influence of Brink Lindsey on the decision to invade Iraq and on the climate of opinion that supported the decision was, I would go so far as to say, minimal. Kenneth Pollack, yes. Bill Kristol, yes. And some others. Brink Lindsey, no. I follow U.S. foreign policy more closely than the proverbial person in the street and I don’t believe I’d ever heard of Lindsey until this thread. Admittedly, I was not doing much reading of blogs or similar fora in ’03. But being employed by the Cato Institute and having an online presence and engaging in debates with Henry Farrell does not make someone — in this case Lindsey — a major public intellectual. And I’m sure Rich Puchalsky is going to say that I’m an ignorant, uninformed, amoral person, but so be it.

The thread has gotten way uncivil (Mrs Tilton in particular, what has gotten into you?) and this is *not* Rich’s fault. Rich is right and Henry is wrong. There are those here who say that you shouldn’t take somebody to task just because they are (or have been) intellectually supporting war and other crimes and injustices, and that it is impolite to call them out on it. Some of us disagree. And I realize that this has been an ongoing concern of Henry’s – the alleged impoliteness of calling right-wingers right-wingers and taken them to account. Go on living in a fantasy world in which right-wing extremists are amenable to rational arguments.

“And Cato was by far the best of the self-described libertarian organizations – the others range from shmibertarian fronts for big business to neo-Confederate loonies.”

Has there been a scholarly examination of the bizarre views many libertarians have of the Confederacy? I’ve lost count of the number of libertarians who’ve told me that the CSA was just about to abolish slavery, as soon as it acquired undisputed independence. Because, you see, they’d be unable to stop slaves from running away, once they lost the protection of the federal Fugitive Slave Act.

In other words, the fact that they were about to lose a government handout would stop a group of private individuals from finding an alternate solution to the problem the government had previously dealt with–the exact opposite of the ordinary libertarian view.

So if a person is committed to an immoral view and then they come to see that that view is wrong and change their minds, we should nonetheless continue to stigmatize them for their past wrongness? And there I was naively thinking that the purpose of political argument was to win people over.

Perhaps a social scientist should regard a debate or discussion with certain employees of certain think tanks in the same way a biologist would regard a debate or discussion with a creationist.

Some debates that amuse me are Vidal and Buckley in 1968 and a certain debate with David Horowitz at Reed College a few years ago. I’d like to see more discussions where the “liberal” side explains forthrightly and with evidence that the particular person representing the right is more interested in spewing nonsense and lies than an honest discussion. The evidence would be examples of previous statements by that person.

I think such discussions might lead more americans to understand that they are being fed so much propoganda. Of course, I realize, the funders of platforms where such discussions could occur are not interested in making it clear what they are funding.

Mrs. Tilton, I think you misunderstood the argument they were having. Bill was saying “They’re not any worse than me.” Then Rich argued, “No, they’re worse than you because of a, b, c.” Then Bill argued that no they were not any worse. So Rich said, “Okay, have it your way. You’re just as bad.”

This seems to be something of a Rorschach blot.

To me it read like:
(f) market socialism.

But it’s been a while since I sat through any lectures on welfare economics.

(a) classical liberalism
(b) standard US liberalism
(c) European conservatism
(d) the Third Way
(e) total jibberish (sic)
among others.

I suspect that means I’m on to something, but I don’t know what.

That those things aren’t as different as some people pretend? Present-day US liberalism isn’t all that leftist by the standards of real leftists, so it’s converging more on classical liberalism (except for some redistributive policies, which I assume the person who described this program as “classical liberalism” was overlooking or considering unimportant). At the same time, what passes for liberalism in the center-right US passes for conservatism in lefty Europe (aside from the xenophobic elements, which don’t really show up in this kind of abstract, economic-focused summary). And the Third Way was just a brand name pasted onto something that wasn’t all that new at all.

Either that, or the description is so vague with terms like “appreciative of the virtues of markets” (tacitly implying that you’re still allowed to criticize their flaws, if any) and “sceptical of top-down planning” (while still leaving open the possibility of adopting it when it is *truly* necessary) that it functions as the political equivalent of cold reading, and anyone will see in it something to agree with, because everything that would normally be a point of disagreement vanishes into the vague terms that people are free to interpret in a way that suits them. Presumably this is what the “total gibberish” description is getting at.

Thanks, piglet, Josh, Walt. Mrs Tilton’s bit is based on disinclination to read, and I didn’t see any point in responding to it. Once Bill Gardner said that he did in fact care about what kind of corporation he was supporting, then my point was made. The difference between him and people working for Koch is that either they a) don’t care what kind of corporation they support, in which case they are corporate whores, or b) they do care, in which case they don’t have any great objection to climate change denial and a whole range of other right-wing corporate propaganda that Koch implements.

Geez, chris. There’s no room for a normative space for pundits in between “they personally ordered mass murder” and “they had no effect at all, and never can”? I don’t think that we need to get very far into exotic modes of morality to decide that this is BS. Strangely enough, we have no trouble judging public intellectuals harshly who tried to stir up aggressive war if they happened to live in other eras, and weren’t people who are part of the present day good old boy’s club.

Let’s look at it from a society-wide point of view for a moment. Our society does not lack people who wish to become pundits. I’d say that any of our current ones could have their jobs easily filled by other people, couldn’t they? So really, it would be no trouble if all of the ones who were cheerleaders for aggressive war for reasons that all turned out not to be true got innocuous jobs instead — perhaps as tech writers, high school teachers, all of the kinds of jobs that we recommend here to people who want to be english professors but who worry that they can’t make it.

After all, when someone cheerleads for war in this way, they reveal something about how they think. They are still going to think that way in the next situation that comes along. Andrew Sullivan, to piick an example out of a hat, is still the same person who could write that the left was going to form a hostile 5th column, even though he’s repudiated the statement. His basic style hasn’t changed.

So, have any pundits resigned their jobs? None that I know of. All right, so they are self-interested people, and when they apologize for cheerleading for war, it’s to salve their own egos and go on with their careers rather than being anything meaningful. I have no trust whatsoever that they won’t find a reason to cheerlead for war next time.

But perhaps if all of the people who are actually capable of meaningful remorse left, the field would be left to those who weren’t? Well, on the right, that’s already happened. Except that people like Henry keep describing some of the people who remain as rational, honest, fine people that it’s good to disagree with. What was that advertisement for Marvin the robot in Hitchhiker’s Guide? “The plastic pal that’s fun to be with.”

And then Henry says that oh dear, it’s Manichean — “theological” in Mrs Tilton’s terms — to point this out. That we must preserve this difference that does not, in observeable reality, exist. Because otherwise Henry would have no one to argue with. And that would make him sad.

“Mrs Tilton’s bit is based on disinclination to read, and I didn’t see any point in responding to it.”

Heh, of course the fault must have been hers. No right thinking person could ever actually disagree with you.

chris: what passes for liberalism in the center-right US passes for conservatism in lefty Europe

Since I don’t know much about lefty Europe, I’m not sure whether you mean (a) Republicans and center-right Democrats who sadly admit that liberalism isn’t what it was before Goldwater and Nixon made it impossible to be a “true” liberal, or (b) center- or farther left leaning people who still aren’t embarrassed to call themselves liberals now that anyone in the center or farther right, these days, uses it as a casual insult.

“Since I don’t know much about lefty Europe”

Perhaps I can help. What chris is saying is that many European conservatives tend to hold policy positions that in the US are associated with liberal Democrats, whereas what is called conservatives in the US would regard these same policy positions as “socialist”. Does that make sense?

There’s no room for a normative space for pundits in between “they personally ordered mass murder” and “they had no effect at all, and never can”?

False dichotomy much? You were the one pushing “partial[] responsib[ility] for the deaths of thousands of people” onto pundits. The idea that their views can be wrong, or disgusting (to some observers), or even in some sense reprehensible, *without* actual blood on their hands doesn’t seem to have occurred to you.

bianca: “Is it ok to be a whore for a good (left) organization? or if you need to work for a living is it ok to be a whore for your employer as long as you let everyone know that anyone in your position has the wrong beliefs (and why)?”

It’s a matter of basic integrity to work for something that you believe in. One of the basic criticisms of the left for the right is that forcing people into wage-slavery denies this to them.

Do some people in our current society have to take any job that they can get in order to survive? Sure. But we’re not talking about McDonalds or Wal-Mart employment in this thread. We’re talking about well-paid, elite pundits who have many other job opportunities available, should they choose to do something else. If they work for Koch because they don’t care whoe they support, as long as the money is good, then I think “whore” is a good term, yes. Bill Gardner for some strange reason originally thought that this was the same as his work for a branded private hospital, even though he had actually evaluated the corporation that branded it to some extent and wouldn’t work for Altria Hospital.

Wherever you work, even if you’re printing Che portraits on t-shirts all day, all kinds of monied interests are involved; that “good corporation” might be owned, behind the scenes, by the Carlyle group, or, for that matter, by Koch Industries. That’s the nature of the beast. In the end, all you have is your personal integrity. Of course, one wouldn’t want to work for the KKK or some such, but Cato Institute doesn’t strike me as an obviously objectionable employer.

Henry, good argument has to be based on reality. I’ll quote you:

“engaging respectfully with people whose politics we don’t agree with, but who are themselves engaging in good faith and have (what we consider) good or useful things to say. Not to do this is to be, in a quite fundamental sense, dishonest and untrue to our vocation (see e.g. Weber). ”

But what if they are not themselves engaging in good faith? This is unpossible, you write. It cannot be. It must simply be that I like “four legs good, two legs bad” politics, that I am a one-man ideological enforcement agency, that I am Manichean and so on.

I’ve said it twice already, and I don’t expect it to get through. But what is the result of finding out that people who worked for Cato were, in fact, following the corporate orders of Koch, that even the “good faith, honest” people who worked at Cato were only there as long as they functioned to boost Koch’s overall message? The result is that the people who said this all along were wrong. People like Henry — for even Henry has to see, at least dimly, that he’s just defending the privilege of people like himself at this point — are always right, because hippies are always wrong.

It has nothing to do with partisan politics. Henry’s loyalties are to the left, but in an even more fundamental sense, they are to the respectable interlocutors, left and right, who make up his world. He quotes Weber, but he doesn’t seem to have actually thought about Weber.

That’s the current moment in microcosm. Why can Obama’s administration not take global warming seriously, or get a large enough stimulus, or get health care that isn’t warmed over RomneyCare, or refrain from hippie-punching their base over oil drilling? I’m sure that they have people, like Henry, who will patronizingly explain this is what they have to do, this is their job and it’s political reality and hey, maybe there’s a street demonstration somewhere we’d be more suited to. But really it’s because they can’t believe that the organizational structure that they depend on is gone. Not coming back. The hippies must be wrong, because otherwise things would just be too uncomfortable.

me @ 108
Lest I be misunderstood, I don’t have a specific answer in mind. I can think of minimum two different ways, in fact. (1) They could be denied the ability to engage in political action except on the right. (2) Their ideas and energies, which they intend to devote elsewhere, could be appropriated by the movement on the grounds that they will otherwise go to waste (and they really belong to us anyway, deep in their heart). Others may have something else in mind.

Sebastian @110

“And you are partially responsible for global warming and that deaths that will be associated with that because you use electricity which is generated in a market which often uses coal burning and other environmentally bad techniques.

Why are you allowing yourself to be complicit?”

Sebastian, when you initially made this point, further upthread, I had thought that you were joking, and that it wasn’t too bad a gag, but given you’ve repeated it, I’m not sure that it’s not meant seriously.

Clearly, you don’t have to get run over by a tank to be a good peace activist; however, you definitely CAN’T be a good peace activist writing op-ed articles supporting a war. Similarly, you don’t have to live in a cave to be a climate activist, but you definitely CAN’T be a climate activist if you write articles saying ‘drill, baby, drill!’.

Rich has made reasonably clear, I think, (“Do some people in our current society have to take any job that they can get in order to survive? Sure. But we’re not talking about McDonalds or Wal-Mart employment in this thread. We’re talking about well-paid, elite pundits who have many other job opportunities available, should they choose to do something else.”) that the debate here is not over consumers of opinion, or political talking-points, but over the producers instead. Insofar as he’s drawn a distinction between the agency of the consumers (not very much) and the producers (really quite a lot), I don’t think he’s mistaken at all, and that’s why your climate change analogy doesn’t work.

Wilkinson “Ten Influential Books” A post linked without comment at CT

5. The Bell Curve by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein. This is the first intellectual book I ever reviewed in print. I gave it a mixed review in the Northern Iowan. (I think I had some misgivings about some of the race and IQ stuff, but I understood that it was not a book about race.) A sociology professor either sent me an email or wrote a letter to the editor (I don’t remember which!) condemning me for not condemning the book for being racist. This was my first taste of the excitement and frustration of participating in public intellectual life. I was impressed with Murray’s fortitude and grace in the face of what seemed to me to be outrageously unfair, truly scurrilous attacks. And it helped me understand the difference between trying hard to honestly think through tough social problems because you care and mouthing comfortable pieties in an effort to get credit for caring.

Good intentions, hell etc.

In case my previous posts haven’t made it sufficiently clear, I believe that urging people to commit murder is a reprehensible act. I don’t believe it is, itself, murder. Lindsey is guilty of, at most, the lesser offense.

Debating whether the people who led the cheering for the Iraq war are guilty of murder sort of distracts from the important question, which is “Why are they still so influential?”

Since the thread has already been Godwinned, I’ll mention that what chris says “was settled at Nuremberg” is actually the opposite of what took place. To quote wiki (for convenience) on Julius Streicher: “In essence, the prosecutors took the line that Streicher’s incendiary speeches and articles made him an accessory to murder, and therefore as culpable as those who actually ordered the mass extermination of Jews […]”.

Do I think that pundits are guilty of the crime of mass murder? No. I think that they are partially responsible for the deaths of thousands of people.

Is saying that a distraction, as several people have mentioned? No, I think it’s the truth. This thread is not a political campaign and there is no message to be off of.

Bill Gardner: “Yes, if it’s true that Wilkinson and Lindsey share your evaluation of Koch and don’t care, then they are corrupt. But I doubt the premise. So the ‘strange reason’ is that I assumed that Lindsey and Wilkinson were reflective about where they worked and who funded the place, and were willing to accept moral responsibility for those choices.”

I already addressed this branch of the argument. If Lindsey and Wilkinson knew what Koch was, and evaluated it as being compatible with what they wanted to do, that’s even worse then if they were dupes. If, to use your prior example, you were willing to work at Philip Morris Hospital, in the full knowledge that your work was going to be used to support teen smoking campaigns — and yes, I think that’s a fair analogy to what Koch does — you might be willing to accept moral responsibility for it. But that would indicate even more serious moral failure than if you just didn’t care.

Is there some special sense in which it might be possible to morally justify working at Philip Morris Hospital? I’m sure that anyone could make up a thought experiment for doing so. You are near a cure for cancer, there is no other funding immediately available, you will save many more lives etc. Yes, one can imagine a special situation in which it can be justified. But what you said, originally, was that “I’m not suggesting that there is a moral difference between my situation [of working for a private hospital] and the Mercatus / CATO scholars.” And that’s just wrong. Not every case of working for a corporation is the same as every other. There are some corporations that are known bad actors, and the people working for them need really good reasons to carry out propaganda operations for them, much better reasons than the minimal justification needed to just work for a private hospital.

Popeye at 121, it’s not even a distraction from the thread. The point is that it’s impossible to lose the evaluation “I try to evaluate whether someone is arguing in good faith, I try to go on things like track record and previous experience, willingness to admit error etc.” even if that person said that we should kill thousands of people. That’s not part of their track record, I guess. Or it was a good faith error and we should forget about it now that they’ve admitted they were wrong. Let bygones be bygones. After all, what’s important is that they said that they were wrong later, not that they called for people to be killed.

It’s the same thing that immunizes these people from taking money from known global climate change denialists. If they are individually part of the Reasonable Person Club, then who cares who they work for, whose goals they carry out? Evaluating them as if none of that matters is a “better approach than dismissing people tout court without actually investigating what they are saying.”

And that’s why, as roac mentions in 118, these people are still so influential. Henry has been thoroughly socialized into the same mode of thought that all of the “reasonable people concerned about argument” hold to. What matters is their social mores. Not whether their argument is insane or brutal, or whether they are making it on behalf of some corporate propaganda operation. They can apologize for that later, if it becomes no longer fashionable to have called for war, and then it’s only civil to forget all about it.

Henry, I didn’t say anyone here approved of the book.
But you enjoy the white man’s luxury of magnanimity.

bq. But you enjoy the white man’s luxury of magnanimity.

? ? ? I’m presuming this is a slur of some class, but it’s honestly too cryptic for me to understand, let alone be insulted by …

“Sebastian, when you initially made this point, further upthread, I had thought that you were joking, and that it wasn’t too bad a gag, but given you’ve repeated it, I’m not sure that it’s not meant seriously.”

Some jokes are serious. It is definitely a joke, as the reasoning is patently ridiculous. But it is definitely serious, as Rich’s chain of causality in being “partially responsible” is much tighter toward global warming than Lindsey’s is for the Iraq war. There is a direct, though small, causal chain between Rich’s computer usage and global warming. The same is not true of Lindsey’s responsibility for the Iraq war.

“Nothing. Which is rather my point.” I have no idea what your point was but the rhetoric you used is familiar from anti-environmentalists who like to argue that you cannot be an environmentalist unless you emulate a stone age life style. I never understood that kind of reasoning but it seems to be related to difficulties with the concept of responsibility. Perhaps we’ll find out more about this mystery.

“I have no idea what your point was but the rhetoric you used is familiar from anti-environmentalists who like to argue that you cannot be an environmentalist unless you emulate a stone age life style. ”

And the same argument is used by Rich to argue that you cannot be a right thinking human being unless you agree with him.

Yes the argument is stupid. You’re absolutely correct.

I have to agree with Rich on this one. The job of selling the war to the American public was not performed only by members of the foreign policy establishment. I was done by an army of pundits, talk show hosts, journalists, public intellectuals and bloggers who jumped 110% on the pro war bandwagon and shilled for the Bush administration and its talking points (and lies) as often and as loudly as they could.

Obviously any individual member of this group – as an individual – can’t be credited with accomplishing much.* But the mass of them beating the drum 24/7 for months leading up to the invasion helped make it palatable to the public, and so they bear some responsibility. I don’t see why these dots are so difficult to connect.

*The really big fish, Bill O’Reilly & etc.

Henry 136: trying to explain what Sebastian is claiming is a bit dangerous shall we say. Is that your argument or Sebastian’s? But it gets better when you totally misquote me: “If you find Sebastian’s claim about responsibility ridiculous, the same is true – in spades – of Rich’s claim”. What makes you think that, I have no idea (especially given my comment 130).

Sebastian 135: “And the same argument is used by Rich to argue that you cannot be a right thinking human being unless you agree with him.”

Again, this is not ridiculous, it is completely disconnected from the discussion. It is not the kind of statement that can be rationally debated, which makes it all the more insidious because the person making the claim will always feel vindicated.

And Henry, another thing. I am not familiar with Lindsey and have no opinion so far about him. You and Rich disagree in your judgment about that person but this debate has long ago transcended that particular issue. The claim has been made that a propagandist cannot, under no circumstances, be held responsible for the acts that he/she publicly advocates and justifies. That is the issue and I would like to hear whether you endorse that view. The claim has been made, and shown to be false, that Nuremberg has exonerated propagandists. I would argue that the suggestion to exclude propagandists from considerations of responsibility, if not guilt, is unhistorical, unpolitical, and immoral. Again, this is not about what you think of Lindsay, it is an important question of political morality and I am amazed to say the least that you are willing to embrace such a shallow viewpoint.

Henry – This isn’t a complaint about this blogs commenting policy – you are entitled to spend your own money however you see fit – but after several years of this my opinion is that the policy of constant ‘engagement’ with (vituperative, furious, abusive) representatives of the centre, Right and Far Right usually precludes serious discussion of left-wing or radical ideas here.

engels – this is an entirely fair criticism and one which I worry about (as I note above, it’s a criticism that Lemuel Pitkin has made too). For what it’s worth, the seminar that Harry is organizing on Erik Olin Wright’s book should have some good serious discussion of possibilities for the left, and I am trying to read my way through the work of Sam Bowles (which I find fascinating and important). I would genuinely be grateful for recommendations of other lefties I should be reading. I follow Phil’s Gaping Silence blog, have gone off Splintered Sunrise since it moved from entertaining discussion of differences among UK and Irish Marxists into a bizarre mix of laddishness and crypto-Catholicism, and occasionally check out Lenin’s Tomb. I’m grateful for other recommendations. I note that my personal druthers are for empirically inclined analyses rather than various manifestations of ‘Theory’ but am prepared to read the latter if reasonably light on the jargon etc.

sg – I was strongly and publicly against the war, for what it was worth (not much, obviously), but lots of other people were not. Including a couple of co-bloggers of mine here, whom I obviously both believe were acting in complete good faith, and who are not stupid or under-informed people down at the pub. So too various luminaries of the blogosphere, including Matt Yglesias, Kevin Drum and Josh Marshall. They are open to criticism – but not, I would contend, for acting in bad faith.There was a weird, febrile atmosphere – Ken Pollack and lots and lots of groupthink. NB that this is not to say that the case against the war wasn’t both obvious if you thought about it properly, and entirely correct. It is to say that a lot of smart people were not thinking about it properly for sociological reasons that I’ve never seen a really adequate discussion of. I won’t say that I know Brink Lindsey well – I’ve spoken to him for a few times, never for more than a couple of minutes, and swapped an occasional email. I’ve read his work quite frequently. I usually don’t agree with it but I do usually find it thought provoking. I’ve always found it honest – willing to engage seriously with viewpoints other than his own, and to directly address inconvenient evidence. He has also shown a willingness to pursue awkward and uncomfortable topics – his piece in the Prospect this month arguing against the AEI’s attempts to revive a culture war on economics is a good example. And other honest people work for Cato too. I’ll defend Julian Sanchez’s honesty and integrity against all comers – a libertarian who arguably did more than anyone else to uncover the manifold dishonesties of John Lott. If you want to claim that Julian is a “lying turd” because he works at Cato, all I can say is that you’ll have your work cut out for you if you want to back up this assessment. I’ve previously “described”:https://crookedtimber.org/2010/06/09/whitewashing-rosh/ Cato as “an odd mix of genuinely smart and honest people (e.g. Sanchez, Brink Lindsey) and organized hackery.” I’m sticking by that assessment.

Piglet – I’m afraid to say that is complete bullshit. I criticized Rich for making a specific claim about a specific person, not for any general claims that he made or did not make about ‘war propagandists.’ As for the “it is really up to you whether you wish to set the record straight” guff, this rhetorical trope really wasn’t very effective the first time that the Decents tried to push it, and it isn’t very effective now. From the “Encyclopedia of Decency”:http://decentpedia.blogspot.com/2007/08/will-you-condemn-thon.html, for the benefit of those unfamiliar with this august tome:

bq. Will-You-Condemn-A-Thon
Sporting Pursuit

bq. Amusing internet pastime, in which several Decents quiz a pro-fascist, repeatedly demanding denunciation of a vast range of randomly-chosen murders, atrocities, war crimes and military actions in an increasingly hectoring tone.

bq. “I agree, Guantanamo Bay is an affront to democratic ideals. But Will You Condemn Palestinian suicide attacks on Israeli restaurants?…

bq. Yes, well, Do You Condemn Jihadist chlorine-bomb attacks?…

bq. Okay, I knew you would be too sly to openly support such acts, but Will You Condemn terrorist attacks upon the American military?

bq. What about the Battle of Teutoberg Forest, then, Will You Condemn that? …I see.

bq. …Oh, fuck off, Nazi.”

bq. Secondary stage of the Decent Debating Technique, the Will-You-Condemn-A-Thon can only be averted by reciting the Catalogue of Contempt in its entirety.

Henry, does that mean that your judgment of “good faith” is purely subjective (I don’t mean this in a bad sense), i.e. based on your interactions with them and the quality of their work, and if so is it at all determined by who they work for? Because it seems to me that you can be allowed a certain degree of independence by something like the Cato Institute, and still be required to argue certain positions (or understand that you have to argue certain positions). In my view that doesn’t make one a paragon of good faith, it just means that one has been allowed a certain degree of moral flexibility in these areas, to be reeled in at will – that ain’t good faith.

e.g. it’s entirely possible that Julian Sanchez is a “lying turd,” he just wasn’t required to be a lying turd in the instance you site. (I don’t know whether he is or not, this is just an example).

I’m naturally inclined towards Rich’s view of this, that you can’t associate yourself with an organization whose specialty is clearly opinions-for-hire, and expect (or deserve) to be treated as a genuine interlocutor, even if occasionally the institution in question allows you to be. It’s not as if there aren’t (I presume) other, more good faith people writing about the same issues, and being seen as intellectually serious/worthwhile by others is part of the reason shit-stirrers like the Cato Institute get to continue influencing public opinion. I should add, I worked at an “independent” think tank of some repute for a while, and there were very serious discussions internally about the need to dissociate ourselves from any impression of being opinions for hire. I don’t think the right-wing think tanks care about this because they seriously don’t see a cost attached to being seen as partisan.

I suppose I’m probably echoing Rich, but isn’t there some kind of intellectual responsibility on your part to treat these people like the intellectual exiles they are, in the interest of discouraging others from taking up their line of work? As a case in point, the thing that really frustrated me during the build up to the Iraq war (well, one of the things, the main one obviously being the blood rage of its main proponents) was the way obvious liars and conmen got to be treated as serious on an issue which a 10 year old could see was a bunch of bullshit. If their institutions and their line of work received the respect it deserved (none) then maybe this wouldn’t have happened (I know I’m being hopeful).

Though obviously it’s your blog and I do enjoy reading the libertarian headkicking that goes on here.

On the topic of the Iraq war, I too cannot understand how supposedly rational, intelligent commentators of the left got fooled, and it’s a sociological question well worth investigating. Millions marched around the world, majority public opinion opposed it on solid grounds, but people here supported it – why? The only argument I can think of, and again this probably means I agree with Rich, is that they didn’t want to look like hippies, i.e. it was caused by moderate-left hippy-punching. And I think the need for leftist “thinkers” to do that sort of thing would be reduced if the far right commentators were held to account in the public intellectual field as corporate mercs and liars, rather than “good faith” commentators who got it a bit wrong while they cheered for a war that killed a million people.

In short (but not really): when you engage these mercenaries on the terms of a proper intellectual playing field, you empower them to set up the kind of febrile environment that prevented the left from thinking clearly and presenting a clear intellectual case in a pressing issue.

Amen sg.

I’ve never commented here ( at least not that I can remember) but I have a lot of sympathy for Rich’s position. What bothers me right now is that all the war advocates out there have thrived despite being absolutely wrong on the one of the most important ( dare I say, easiest) questions facing America.

These individuals were absolutely and completely wrong in a manner that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives, countless maimed individuals and trillions of dollars. There has been no cost at all to their careers because there is always a Henry willing to take up arms to defend them. Maybe just maybe if such a colossal failure in judgement was allowed to reflect on ones judgement then we might be in a better position as a country.

Seriously, read this link Rich posted and tell me that the arguments there are in good faith. http://reason.com/archives/2002/10/29/no-more-9-11s

In defending Lindsay, you bring up Yglesias also going getting affected by a “weird febrile atmosphere” but never in bad faith. Oddly enough Yglesias wrote about this the other day.

This is the exact cause sg mentions above. Yglesias merely wanted to be with the elites punching hippies. He was also influenced by Kenneth Pollack who I believe bares absolutely no responsibility,for writing that book in making a case for war.

Would it be arguing in bad faith to say that Yglesias made his arguments in bad faith?

Forgive the typos and all. I’m writing while watching a friends JRT that I swear is hopped up on crystal meth.

The Yglesisas link;

Read the whole thing especially the last two paragraphs.

he thinks that when a pundit writes “We should go to war!” there is no unambiguous way in which that contributes to us going to war.

The critical disagreement in this thread is about whether it is possible to work for Cato and not be a horrible person, or if it is possible to have supported a war at some point and not be a horrible person.

Now I personally think that both things are indeed possible, although perhaps not very likely. I also think that to successfully argue that something is impossible requires a higher burden of proof than to say something is possible. So I am not too surprised that having started a debate by arguing that no one working for Cato could possibly be a decent person, Rich has decided to claim victory by attacking the position that no pro-war pundit could possibly have any responsibility for any of the consequences of war.

no Popeye, the central questions are a) can you work for Cato and be judged not to be a liar b) even then, is it possible for you to be judged not to be lying in this instance and c) was it possible to support the Iraq war without being either taken in by lies or a liar.

Obviously if the answer to c) is no, then the culpability of Cato and its allies in the slaughter of a million Iraqis depends very much on the answers to a) and b). Were they morally culpable, or just awesomely stupid? Rich and I think the former, so in this case they’re also horrible people. But it’s secondary to the main question.

no Popeye, the central questions are a) can you work for Cato and be judged not to be a liar b) even then, is it possible for you to be judged not to be lying in this instance and c) was it possible to support the Iraq war without being either taken in by lies or a liar.

No sg, these were not the central questions in the comment thread — excluding your comments, the word “liar” appears exactly once in this thread. And excluding your comments, the word “lies” appears twice. I appreciate your attempt to re-frame the debate but somehow this comment thread reached 146 comments before you chimed in.

and sg – one final comment before I go to bed. I worry that your account lets the moderate left (in particular the leadership and foreign policy establishment of the Democratic party) off the hook much too easily. They certainly faced a difficult political choice in 2002-2003 – war was very popular. But many of them – far more of them than said so in public or voted in Congress – knew that it was probably a very bad idea.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply, Henry. I’m not sure I agree with your perception of the American thinktank world but you’re right, I don’t know that much about it. My experience of think-tanks, btw, was in the UK, where I worked as a research fellow at The King’s Fund (I don’t make a point of revealing my identity or career details online, but I don’t try to hide it either, so there you go).

I certainly agree with your last comment in 163 and I don’t think I’m letting off the moderate left, who failed in key debates and used hippy punching to cover their failure – and, of course, finally, voted for or allowed to proceed a terrible war. But failing in your response to a war push you didn’t start is very different morally to starting that war, or indeed to jumping onto the pro-war bandwagon for very dodgy reasons, which is the general character of the right’s behaviour in that time.

Thanks LFC – exactly right (it was midnight after a long day). Ornstein it was.

bq. (1) the fact that we can’t go to GoogleMemeTracker, and actually quantitatively track Brink’s influence, whereas we can (in theory) measure Rich’s carbon footprint (disclaimer – not well; you wouldn’t have a meaure of the GW that Rich helps prevent).

As it happens, there is such a thing as “MemeTracker”:http://www.memetracker.org (albeit it is not run by Google), and I am about to start working with it (funding willing) on a project looking at how debates over the Gaza blockade worked, who was influential etc. So these questions of causation are not a momentary or opportunistic interest of mine – they are something I have been thinking about a lot. MemeTracker does not have data going back to 2002-2003, so we can’t answer this specific question. But my strong belief that Lindsey’s arguments had no appreciable causal impact is, I think, a justified one. Where we might expect to see a likely causal impact is under one of three circumstances. (1) Someone, whether on the margins or elsewhere, comes up with a new meme or way of framing things, which is taken up by other more central actors and disseminated. (2) Someone is relatively central to broad public debates (i.e. is a highly connected node in networks of public debate through e.g. a column in the New York Times or whatever and helps diffuse the meme to previously uninfected people (or to reinforce ‘partly’ infected people). (3) Someone is relatively central to the relevant networks of debate among policy elites and diffuses etc among those. Lindsey seems to me to qualify under none of these categories. His way of framing things repeated already-existing and widely disseminated memes. He did not have a major platform which allowed him to reach out to the general public. Finally, libertarians – including Cato – are at best very poorly connected into the DC foreign policy discussions through which the war meme spread and infected policy makers. They are not part of this network (they have some impact on discussions of international trade, but that is about as far as their foreign policy reach goes – they are primarily domestically focused). This does not mean that there is _no possibility_ he had an impact – meme diffusion is a highly stochastic process. But it does mean that it is, as best as I can discern from casual empiricism, highly unlikely.

To put it another way – if I decided tomorrow to start banging the drums for missile strikes against Iran, the likelihood that I would have any impact on debate is asymptotic to zero (this despite Rich’s claim that I am a foreign policy pundit in the making, and the fact that I have academic international relations credentials etc). I have no wide-scale public audience, and the policy types who do work in this area don’t even know me, let alone take me seriously. If a war with Iran actually happened, with multiple casualties, then I would not have any credible responsibility for the deaths that had occurred. I _would_ have responsibility for having made idiotic claims (and if I had made offensive insinuations about e.g. the inherent bloodthirstiness of Shi’a Muslims, grossly offensive ones too). But that’s a different category of responsibility.
Short version: when someone asks the

bq. Did that play of mine send out
Certain men the English shot

question, the correct answer under nearly every circumstance is ‘no dear. I hope that doesn’t make you feel unimportant.’ Again – that does not mean that people should not be held responsible for their words. If they are dishonest, express vile sentiments (such as e.g. Dan Simmons’ claim that Arabs only understood violence, and we should kill one out of every ten Arab men by lot to prevent September 11 ever happening again), then they should be held accountable for those words. But that is quite different from the claim that they should be blamed for the deaths of tens of thousands of people.

On the

bq. the fact that we can’t measure on an individual basis the contribution of those who repeatedly deal with liars and those who’ve been repeatedly wrong in suspicious circumstances as if they were honest people.

claim, if I am understanding it correctly (the ‘deal with liars’ bit seems to me to probably be a phrasing mistake), we first have to have some evidence that the person is, indeed, a repeated liar. We don’t have any evidence of that that anyone can produce (claims that no-one could seriously have believed the pro-war case don’t work, because many people who should have known better _did_ believe the pro-war case). Treating people as liars without evidence that they _are_ liars seems to me to be a case of giving a dog a bad name, and hanging him (I don’t know if this phrase is used on this side of the Atlantic, but the meaning is clear, I trust).

Rich:

Brink Lindsey’s support of war was a meaningless event in his youth that affected nothing, while my criticism here makes me a one-man ideological enforcement agency.

This pretty much sums up my own perception of what this argument is about, and why I am unwilling to let Henry off the hook so easily.

Henry 145 gives an interesting example: “For example – should the lunatic who set out to kill everyone in the Tides Foundation have succeeded, the propagandist who set out to demonize the Tides Foundation in the eyes of the right (Glenn Beck, I believe, although I could be mistaken) would certainly have had a quite considerable degree of culpability.”

I quite agree with that but you are raising a complex moral question here because presumably, Glenn Beck didn’t call for killing “everyone in the Tides Foundation”. He may have inspired that act but presumably it wasn’t his intention to get anybody killed (at least it would be difficult to prove that). So why is that a more clear-cut case than somebody making unambiguous war propaganda? Also, what about lesser known and less influential pundits parroting Glen Beck? Are they off the hook because they are just repeating what others said? What if 100 pundits are spreading a certain propaganda and somebody acts on it and commits a crime, how many of the 100 pundits are responsible and how do you apportion culpability? Is it 1/100th each or proportional to the readership or do you have to track which one of the 100 the perpetrator actually happened to read or listen to? And if the perpetrator is a whole nation and thousands of pundits contributed to propagandizing the crime, are they all off the hook because the marginal contribution of each one is not measurable? Well that is what you have been arguing. You still think so?

Barry – that’s not, as far as I can see, relevant. All of those things – with the exception of (some) propagandists – have a clear causal connection between action and outcome. If I am guarding the walls, I am doing something that materially and obviously connects to the outcome of keeping the prisoners inside. The issue at hand isn’t _replaceability_ (I don’t believe that I say anything that could reasonably be interpreted as a ‘if he wasn’t doing it someone else would be’ claim), it’s whether there is a reasonably clear causal chain between the action and the outcome. That’s the basis of my argument.

“it’s an attempt to convince yourself that you wouldn’t do the same thing in the same position”

This thread has become simply bizarre. No one is talking about how heroic they would have been had they been around in 1940’s Germany. The events in question took place less than a decade ago.

So we in fact do know what we would or wouldn’t do “in the same situation”. Many of us were around in 2002-2003, and somehow noticed that the Bush administration was giving a different justification for the war every week, and that several of their strongest claims for the supposed imminent threat posed by Iraq (yellowcake anyone?) turned out to be based on a raft of lies.

We noticed this despite the “strange and febrile atmosphere” that the Smart People were apparently helpless against (any possibility that the strange and febrile atmosphere in question was largely of their own creation?).

There are no fantasy heroics going on here, this is what actually happened.

Isn’t the anti-Irq-war position of Cato an example that they aren’t the complete Republican stooges that Rich thought they always were?

Henry, while your argument is strong I think it misses the importance of the contribution of the minor players in the pro-war debate on producing the pro-war environment that the “Smart People” got sucked into. It’s not just Richard Holbrooke who built that environment, and without the apparent consensus of everyone on the right (including the supposedly minor players at the think-tanks with their supposed independence) it would have been a lot harder to generate the kind of right vs. left conflict that seduced “reasonable” lefties into the hippy-punching.

I remember an Australian journalist (Paul Kelly) calling people opposed to the war “cowards” in an interview. You can’t get away with that shit unless there’s a general consensus on one side of the debate that the war is absolutely necessary. And you don’t build that consensus if only a few “significant” “thinkers” are onside.

we can’t hold Lindsey responsible for the effects of anything he wrote

This doesn’t seem to be Henry’s position; he (like others here) seems to differ with you about the actual effects of what Lindsey wrote. But supposing, for the sake of argument, that you’re right about the magnitude of those effects. What would “hold Lindsey responsible” mean? Obviously he can’t be prosecuted, unlike those who actually designed and implemented the policies he (initially) supported. If you or someone like-minded were a prospective employer, you would certainly have a right not to hire him for a job that would enable him to make similar misjudgments. You have a right not to read him or associate with him, or to criticize him in any terms you like. Is this last what you’re asking us to do? If so, then you ought to address Henry’s (and other people’s) response that Lindsey does occasionally write things worth reading. One can’t, after all, rule out that possibility a priori, just because he was wrong about Iraq. Of course one can rule out the possibility that Charles Krauthammer or William Kristol will ever write anything worth reading — not, however, because they were ardent apologists for a criminal war and have never recanted, but because they in fact never do write anything worth reading, and it would be sheer masochism to keep giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Many 20th-century authors (Heidegger, Maurras, Celine, Malaparte, Pound) had despicable opinions, and in some cases did despicable things. But it would be absurd to deny that they all wrote things well worth reading.

I’m going to go back to the accusation that I’m dumbing things down by saying that people are dupes, or that everyone who works for Cato is complicit.

What is the role of Cato? It’s a think-tank controlled by Koch, and does what Koch wants. What then is the role of someone who writes things that I 100% agree with at Cato? It’s to make Koch look good, and let the rest of their agenda pass into the mainstream. It may have positive externalities — but what Koch *intends* is that it help the rest of it pass.

Let’s imagine a person named Jane Goodperson, who works at Cato. Jane is anti-war, and writes solely about civil liberties. Jane has done great things for civil liberties. Is Jane complicit? Of course she is. She’s doing that for Koch, after all. The purpose of her being at that job is for her glory to reflect on them, and to help to conceal their bad deeds.

Bill Gardner, at least, seems to understand this. I assume that his work involves some praiseworthy acts of medicine. But he wouldn’t do them for Philip Morris Hospital. He might say that Koch isn’t as bad as Philip Morris, or that people working at Koch might reasonably think so, but really I think that’s probably due to his ignorance of what Koch has actually done.

Henry was perfectly capable of understanding this in past cases. I think that other reasons have to be looked at for why he can’t understand it now.

holding Lindsey responsible means that when Lindsey argues X, it’s a valid counterargument to say “But Lindsey was partially responsible for killing thousands of people, and should be ignored. Other people who haven’t been partially responsible for killing thousands can make that argument, if it’s worth making.”

No, it’s not a valid counter-argument. If someone has written nothing but hateful nonsense for many years, like Kristol or Krauthammer or Martin Peretz, then one is entitled to ignore them, not because they once wrote hateful nonsense but because they always write hateful nonsense. If someone once wrote hateful nonsense but at other times makes good sense (like Lindsey, according to Henry – and you have no basis for disagreeing with Henry about that, since you refuse to read anything further by Lindsey), then you’d be wrong to ignore him. Note that you’d be especially wrong to ignore someone if you generally disagree with him, since an honest person will pay particularly close attention to arguments against his own position. (See J. S. Mill, On Liberty.)

Holding him responsible means that it follows him around forever.

Yes, fine, as I acknowledged in a previous comment, it should follow him around in relevant contexts, eg, when he’s arguing for US military intervention somewhere. Not if he’s arguing about health care reform or economic stimulus. If you insist on bringing up your opponent’s opinions about non-related matters, you won’t cut any ice whatsoever with your readers or listeners. In fact, you’ll only create sympathy for him or her. Of course, if you don’t care about your effect on your listeners, but only want to demonstrate your own fervor, then go ahead.

Would you want to engage with someone as brilliant as one of these figures? Yes, you might possibly feel that you should. Would you tell people to stop bugging you about whatever despicable things they were doing?

Yes, I would want to engage with anyone brilliant anytime. If I didn’t know about whatever despicable things they were doing, I would thank anyone who told me and then weigh whether I still wanted to engage with the brilliant person. Very likely I would, if it were a matter of engaging with Heidegger about Greek philosophy, Maurras about French literature, etc. If I decided I did, and if the gadfly person then continued to bug me, I would tell him or her to get lost.

geo, it is possible, surely, that you/we could create an equivalent atmosphere by our collusion to that which the pro-war crowd created in 2003. That is, an atmosphere where lying for money is unacceptable, and where everytime a person who supported the war and works for a shill institute (like the Cato) opens their mouth, they are forced to defend their shilling and their warmongering. So that, just as in 2003, every person who objected to the war was forced first of all to say “I know that saddam’s a bad person” and “I’m not supporting Saddam,” someone like Lyndsey has to say “I know my employers are fucksticks” or “I’m not a liar, honestly, and I know my work is compromised, but…”

We could do this and still engage with their work. For example, Henry did a bloggingheads with Lyndsey. Perhaps in that bloggingheads, Henry could have raised the issue of Lyndsey’s untrustworthiness, asked him to defend himself, and wherever issues of the reliability of a fact were to arise, reminded Lyndsey “but oh, you believed that shit George Bush spouted about Uranium in Iraq,didn’t you?” and “oh, but I don’t think we can really give your opinions on foreign policy much credence in light of your prior credulity,” and the like.

This is what happened to us (“us” being the majority of the people in the rest of the world, ordinary people with no access to Koch’s money or their ability to grease the wheels of media and political power, who saw through the Bush administration’s lies in the blink of an eye). We were told we supported saddam, we were “objectively pro-terrorist,” that any deaths were our fault, etc. Occasionally some lucky ones amongst us got to put a case on tv against the war; those people were then called cowards by our adversaries in the political world.

I think it’s possible to create a “febrile atmosphere” now in which the people who aided and abetted that process then are forced to wear it on their chest now. “Look at me, I’m a proud war-mongerer whose intellectual worth needs to be judged at least partly by the fact that I believed the stupid shit that a knuckle-walking idiot told me about Saddam Hussein.” Maybe a shorter badge: “I believed Saddam Hussein had a people shredder. Do you still think I’m smart?”

But it doesn’t happen. Being mistaken about things like this should count for something.

Let’s imagine a person named Jane Goodperson, who works at Cato. Jane is anti-war, and writes solely about civil liberties. Jane has done great things for civil liberties. Is Jane complicit? Of course she is. She’s doing that for Koch, after all.

I still don’t see much of a difference between this and, say, remaining an American citizen and paying American taxes while two – count ’em, two! – stupid wars are going on. Should Rich Puchalsky – or any American – be forever ignored because they are imperialist lackeys? Should those who attempt to renounce their citizenship be the only legitimate voices?

“Let’s imagine a person named Jane Goodperson, who works at Cato. Jane is anti-war, and writes solely about civil liberties. Jane has done great things for civil liberties. Is Jane complicit? Of course she is. She’s doing that for Koch, after all.”

Complicit in the Iraq war? Cato was against the Iraq war. You’re getting your think tanks confused.

substance, I don’t think the tax analogy works well, because the choice in that case is: pay taxes or go to jail. But for wankers at think tanks the choice is: get a different job, or shill for war. I don’t think they’re really comparable.

Also, as individuals, we don’t have the ability to control how much tax we pay, where it goes, how tax laws are set, etc. – this is changed by large numbers of individuals in a polity. However, wankers at think tanks as individuals have a choice about whether to shill for war, and the community they’re fighting to change by their individual action is much smaller than that which you need to change to end war taxes; and the means of changing it (talking to and debating the other wankers) is the same as the problem itself (the wankers talking about war). This isn’t true for changing tax law.

Finally, most Americans – like, sadly, most Iraqis – don’t have anywhere else to go, so they can’t just bug out on the issue.

How unjust to think-tank wankers that you should demand they get on their bikes and look for more respectable work! Perhaps they, too, like so many miners, steelworkers and millhands, just have nowhere else to go?

Or unfortunately…?

substance, I don’t think the tax analogy works well, because the choice in that case is: pay taxes or go to jail.

No, you can move.

I’m heading off for a few days, so will probably not be able to engage in this much more. But it’s the same old same old. Rich – the problem wasn’t that”after a lot of weaseling, [I] admitted to this in principle.” The problem was that you attributed a quite insane general position to me without any evidence. I didn’t address this specifically, because it was one of a number of equally incredible positions that you attributed to me. Without going through each email point by point, you accused me (or) “people like Henry” of
(1) mounting a full-fledged defense of Cato against truth-telling defenders like Rich.
(2) Claiming that history does not exist.
(3) defending the political compromises that Obama made on healthcare
(4) defending hippy-punching (and engaging in it myself)
(5) defending the lousy small stimulus.
(6) defending Obama’s sellout on global warming
and plenty more besides. Perhaps I’m “weaseling” by not mounting specific defenses of my position on each of these positions. Or perhaps they are positions that I don’t hold, and have never held. You have a lot of anger. A fair amount of that anger seems to me to be reasonable on its merits. But I’m not sure why that anger and this welter of accusations is being directed at me. The “people like Henry” thing is an especially weird trope when it refers to “people who are not like Henry” because e.g. they hold diametrically opposed political positions.

You are correct in saying that it is a political choice to create a space where people from left and right can argue together, and that it is a political choice to say that people who were pro-war, and have decided they were completely wrong, can be a part of this argument. It isn’t the only valid political choice. As I’ve said – there are many websites where the discussion specifically excludes people from the ‘other side’ whatever that side can be. There are tradeoffs to that (the risk of groupthink), but benefits too (you need forums like that to enable collective action). But that is not what this site sets out to do. It sets out to enable discussion – a choice which has its own tradeoffs, but a choice that we have made. My problem is not that you want to criticize Lindsey. If he starts supporting another war somewhere, then it is _completely fair game_ to go after him for his support of the last one, and how horribly it turned out. My problem is that you want to see him completely excluded from debate, and seem willing to latch onto any old argument that will justify this, regardless of the argument’s merits. That’s not on, for the reasons that George (who is very probably to your left – you should check out his writings at “http://www.georgescialabba.net”:http://www.georgescialabba.net ) lays out. The advantage to argument with people who have starkly opposed positions is that sometimes you learn – your own positions turn out to be wrong. This is why Mill (who George quotes) is in favor of partisanship.

Finally – I think that even on your own terms, your attack on Cato as necessarily a bad thing doesn’t succeed. Cato isn’t simply an extension of Koch. It does a lot of work on issues that Koch doesn’t care about, such as civil liberties, the police state and surveillance. These are things that are poorly handled by Democratic leaning think tanks, which have gotten a lot quieter about them since Obama came to office, presumably for the obvious reasons. That’s why I’m not as down on Cato as I was e.g. on Tech Central Station – the non-economic stuff is not window-dressing, and actually has an important real world impact. Ask “Glenn Greenwald”:http://www.cato-unbound.org/2010/08/09/glenn-greenwald/the-digital-surveillance-state-vast-secret-and-dangerous/ (who I have disagreements with as you know, but who is not, to the best of my knowledge, in the window-dressing-for-Koch-enterprises business). It would be quite fair, I think, if your priorities lay that way, to say that this stuff is less important than the economic agenda that Cato pushes, just as it would be fair (if your priorities lay in the other direction to say that the civil liberties stuff trumps much of the bullshit that e.g. Steven Milloy used to pump out when he was there). But I don’t think it’s fair to say that it’s pure window-dressing. Politics is a choice of evils (Weber again). And think-tanks, like it or not, play a key role in shaping policy in this country. None of these think tanks are pure. Some are unmitigatedly evil, and should imo be wiped off the map (I would shed no tears for Heritage, AEI or various others). But Cato is a judgment call, depending on your priors. I think it’s an unmitigatedly good thing that e.g. Radley Balko is pounding the beat on police powers (before you ask – I have never met, talked to, emailed or otherwise come into personal contact with him). And I suspect that if not for Cato, he wouldn’t have a position where he could do what he does. Perhaps that’s outweighed by the evils of Koch – but that’s a judgment call.

The US government levies taxes based on your citizenship rather than residency. If you’re a US citizen, it’ll tax your worldwide income, regardless of where you live.

Sure, if you’re voluntarily complying with those tax laws. But if your new residence has no extradition treaty with the US, they’re going to have a little difficulty actually arresting you for tax evasion, aren’t they?

Such inconveniences are merely the price of noncomplicity.

In other words, holding Lindsey responsible means that when Lindsey argues X, it’s a valid counterargument to say “But Lindsey was partially responsible for killing thousands of people, and should be ignored. Other people who haven’t been partially responsible for killing thousands can make that argument, if it’s worth making.”

This is the textbook definition of argumentum ad hominem, *even if* you accept the responsibility claim. (Which I don’t, but because there’s no universally accepted system of deciding who is responsible for what, I admit that dispute is probably unresolvable, and that I should have acknowledged that sooner instead of attempting to impose my own judgments on Rich or anyone.) Being wrong about Iraq doesn’t prevent Lindsey from being right about X, whatever it is. And that would be true even if he hadn’t recanted.

no chris, it’s not argument ad hominem. Pointing out that someone has been repeatedly, stupidly wrong with serious consequences is not argument ad hominem. It’s simply adduction of evidence. People who thought the Iraq war was a good idea made a fucking stupid judgment call (at best) or were blatantly evil murderous motherfuckers, and this was very clear from the start. You don’t get to re-enter polite conversations after you do the latter, and your jugdment on international politics needs to be called into question over the former. Except, it would seem, in “public intellectualia,” where pissing in the punch bowl holds more social weight than, you know, forcefully advocating for the cold-blooded murder of a million people, the displacement of 2 million more, and the destruction of the economy and daily social lives of another 16 – 2o million. Apparently, such opinions don’t count as either signs of abject stupidity or evil.

substance, most people in America can’t move. So it ain’t the same.

People who thought the Iraq war was a good idea made a fucking stupid judgment call … and [their] judgment on international politics needs to be called into question

No one anywhere on this thread has disagreed with that statement.

sg: “People who thought the Iraq war was a good idea made a fucking stupid judgment call … and [their] judgment on international politics needs to be called into question.”

geo: “No one anywhere on this thread has disagreed with that statement.”

All right, then I’ll add to it. I quoted a paragraph from Lindsey’s no-more-9-11s essay above. I’d say that anyone who could write that paragraph is a third-rate thinker. It’s not just their judgment on international politics that needs to be called into question. It’s their judgment.

I’d say that anyone who could write that paragraph is a third-rate thinker

It would have been the easiest thing in the world to check, Rich. You could just have asked Henry to cite something non-third-rate of Lindsey’s. Or you could have looked yourself. If the first half-dozen or so things you read by Lindsey on other subjects were all third-rate, then you’d be justified in a tentative judgment of third-rateness, or at least in challenging Henry to justify his different judgment. But instead you simply decided that no further investigation was necessary — Lindsey was surely, necessarily third-rate, worth no attention on any subject. Now I myself haven’t read anything by Lindsey, so I can’t be sure which of you is right. But having a certain amount of confidence in Henry’s judgment, based on many hours of reading his stuff on this blog, I’d say you’ve left yourself out on a limb.

Pointing out that someone has been repeatedly, stupidly wrong with serious consequences is not argument ad hominem.

True. But concluding that therefore they are wrong *now* is argumentum ad hominem. Seriously, it’s the textbook definition, look it up or something. People who are wrong about some things can still be right about others. That’s why argumentum ad hominem is a fallacy.

Or maybe you just think the strict rules of logic should be relaxed in favor of some kind of Bayesian evaluation where you can consider the source? Lindsey says X, Lindsey is usually wrong, therefore probably not-X? I don’t see how that justifies failure to engage X on the merits — if anything, it only underlines the necessity of doing so if X is of any importance, since you surely can’t take Lindsey’s word for it.

Rich @213: If I were an opponent of Nazism (as I like to think I would have been), then I would have been obliged to oppose Nazism, when and where I judged most effective. I would not have been obliged to do nothing else, in any circumstances, except oppose Nazism. Greek philosophy is a legitimate, even praiseworthy, pursuit, and Heidegger was one of its greatest interpreters. If Heidegger had tried to suggest during our discussion that Greek philosophy was merely a prelude to glorious National Socialism, then of course I would have felt obliged to protest. If, on the other hand, he were saying brilliant things about Greek philosophy that had nothing whatever to do with National Socialism, then I probably wouldn’t have felt obliged to protest. This would not have precluded my being just as dedicated and effective an opponent of National Socialism as someone who disrupted the discussion by yelling repeatedly at Heidegger.

The debate has reached a new low in Substance’s total substanceless claim:

“I still don’t see much of a difference between this and, say, remaining an American citizen and paying American taxes while two – count ‘em, two! – stupid wars are going on. Should Rich Puchalsky – or any American – be forever ignored because they are imperialist lackeys? Should those who attempt to renounce their citizenship be the only legitimate voices?”

With standards like that, no moral argument can be had. We are all sinners and need to repent, whether I am a members of a Nazi SS death squad or a dissenter who happens to live in a country the government of which is doing wicked things against my will. As I have said before, the crux of this argument seems to be the difficulty some here have with the term responsibility. It’s apparently too much dialectics for some debaters here to acknowledge that there can be different degrees of responsibility, that the degree depends among other things on whether the actor acts voluntarily or not, what choices were available and what constraints limited the actor. I agree that taxpayers, especially in a sort of democratic country, bear some responsibility to what happens with their tax money but to say that there is no difference in degree between involuntarily paying for war and voluntarily advocating that war is pure nonsense. Just as I agree that we all bear some responsibility for Global Warming but that it makes a difference whether or not we consciously minimize our environmental footprint, whether or not we actively support a political solution to reducing GHG etc. The dichotomy between either denying responsibility outright or pretending that everybody is equally responsible because each of us is constrained by being part of a political and economic system that none of us can change on our own is totally outlandish and I am at a loss to understand what is really going on here, why people here are making these obviously absurd claims that deny political reality and moral sense. And it is ironic that we who reject that false dichotomy get accused of “Manicheanism” (Henry 60).

I have another moral case study to throw in while we are at it. How do we apportion the responsibility (or culpability if you like) of a member of Congress who voted for the war? Since there was an overwhelming majority, no single member had “veto power” (the standard put forth by chris 61) over the war. A single vote switch wouldn’t have changed the outcome. It is not possible to prove a direct causal relationship (the standard put forth by Henry 129) between the vote of an individual member and the decision to go to war. So where does that leave us? No Congressperson can be held responsible for anything they vote for except in the unlikely case that the outcome depended on that one vote. No Congressperson, no voter is ever responsible for anything they vote for! Now that is a remarkable discovery that is likely to surprise some moral philosophers. Henry should rush to write that up in a paper.

“But those are Rich’s standards of complicity as far as I can tell.”

Really? Rich says that we are all equally culpable for the Iraq war? Where does he say that? Please enlighten us. (If you will, please use these: “”, instead of just making baseless allegations.)

chris at 214, I think you’re confusing logic and public ethics. Sure, logically I should listen to every single thing that a person says and argue with it on its merits. But practically no-one does that. Often I and most of my peers will be reading the work of people like Lindsay in areas where I am not myself an expert. So then I have to make a judgement about his honesty as an interlocutor. And the two main facts that I have at my disposal are that a) he supported the Iraq war and b) he worked for Cato. So that tells me all I need to know about his honesty and integrity. I now know that a) none of the “facts” he presents in support of his case can be believed or trusted, and that b) he almost certainly hasn’t done proper, thorough research on his case.

As an example of this, consider Roger Scruton’s screed against the WHO and Tobacco Control. You could engage it on its merits, but you’ll just spend an hour or two of your life reading a filthy pamphlet – a better alternative would be to say “oh, paid to write this by Big Tobacco?” and use it to wipe your arse. Having established once that Scruton can’t be trusted, you save yourself a few hours of his horrid prose in future.

Now, if I were talking to him about something specifically in his field – aesthetics, I think? – then it would be different (probably). But it’s unlikely (to take geo’s example) that if I were living in Nazi germany I would be engaging Heidegger on greek philosophy. I’d be reading an article he had written in support of some kooky theory about plays written by American negroes, or defending the exclusion of jews from economic life. Knowing that he supports ludicrous racial theories is enough to discount his work out of hand.

The same goes for Lindsey, unless you’re engaging him in his main field of expertise, and that field is also your field of expertise. But the only way less politically-engaged people than me can know whether or not to trust his work, is if a large body of public intellectuals establish the boundaries of his trustworthiness, and remind everyday readers (and public intellectuals engaging outside of their field of expertise) exactly to what extent he can be trusted, and how clearly he thinks.

I think if I were alive in the 30s my opposition to Nazism would definitely be in the form of a sociopolitical community that identified as anti-Nazi. And in deed I would want these associations to be anti-Nazi enough to encourage even the attempt at effective social ostracism of agressive right wing nationalists.

This would at least be the case for me if i were in non- occupied nation (everywhere in Europe for much of this decade. I would enjoy the pursuits of philosophy and the like if so dong didn’t compromise my relationship to the left community I had chosen.

Heidigger put his feet on the wrong side of the fence, and the fence is more important than ancient Greek philosophy.

If I’m alive in the 30’s, I gotta figure that’s how it’d go down.

Now if I’m in an occupied country, that’s more difficult. The attempt at social ostracism could ostracize oneself to no forseeable political benefit. And so, hey, Greek philosophy is pretty cool.

Okay, so I can say this: I want a leftism that is like water. It seeks all available channels to cut into the rock of human cruelty. If I have an opportunity to seek the lower ground (to extend the metaphor) I will do so . Any diversion (Greek philosophy) is contrived.

But that itself is an ideal to strive for. So good on ya Rich Pulasky, yer one helluva guy.

Rich, remember that I (or this hypothetical person alive in the 1930s) am a committed and effective opponent of Nazism, who is also passionately interested in Greek philosophy. Remember that Heidegger is not merely another person interested in Greek philosophy, but one of the 20th century’s most original critics of Greek philosophy. Remember who he is: a philosopher who dabbles in Nazism, not a Nazi who dabbles in philosophy. Remember that Heidegger limits himself during this discussion entirely to philosophy — not a word about National Socialism. Remember also that I may yet denounce (or may already have denounced) Heidegger for his Nazi sympathies. Finally, remember the situation: the listeners have come to hear about Greek philosophy, they already know what they think about Nazism, and they already know about Heidegger’s Nazi sympathies (or at least will know after the gadfly’s (by the way, “gadfly” is not a disparaging term — on the contrary) first intervention and can then leave if they want to. Those who stay are not going to learn anything from your repeating the declaration in a loud voice; on the contrary, they will become increasingly irritated with you and will be more inclined to sympathize with strong measures against “disorderly leftist rabble,” as they will no doubt think of the disrupters. In this case, the disrupters will have about the same net political effect as another group of disrupters who throw rocks through the windows of parliamentary buildings.

Can we bring the discussion closer to home? Suppose Chomsky were lecturing somewhere on linguistics and the philosophy of mind. Suppose a small group of Cambodian immigrants went to his talk and accused him (falsely, of course) of defending Khmer Rouge barbarism. If true, that would be a very grave error of judgment. But wouldn’t the audience be entitled to say: “Thank you for bringing this up; we will investigate it; but we have come to discuss philosophy tonight and are unwilling to abandon that purpose and spend the evening instead discussing the controversy about Chomsky’s writings on Cambodia.”

Another example: John Updike supported the Vietnam War. Suppose he gave a talk about novel-writing techniques; would it be reasonable, after informing the audience that Updike supported the war, to insist that everyone leave or that the evening’s original topic be abandoned and that we instead discuss the war?

All we are saying, Rich, is: stay calm, be patient, give your comrades the benefit of the doubt, and above all, try to think of what will really work to accomplish our shared goals, rather than just relieve our feelings.

Finally, don’t forget about my comment at 212. Anything in it?

George, since you would like a response, I’ll say that I see nothing wrong with disagreements about the effectiveness of shunning as a tactic. All tactics are situationally appropriate, or not, and perhaps that would be the wrong one for the situation. What really surprises me is that some people just flatly don’t understand the concept.

Let’s take your Updike example as an example. It confuses the time of intervention. Let’s say that a literature professor was invited to host Updike for lectures on novel-writing techniques. If he or she made an announcement that he or she had been invited to do so, but had declined because he or she could not at this time have such a discussion with a supporter of the war, there would have been no disorderly whatevers at the door. The time of decision, for this intervention, comes earlier.

And let’s remember the context of this thread! We have here a known case in which a corporate interest is buying cover for its bad acts through funding seemingly beneficial activities in its name. They could be discussions of Greek philosophy if that was still what the target audience respected. Instead, they are defenses of civil liberties. Not understanding this doesn’t show my Manicheanism or desire for purity or whatever, it’s just naive. Not even naive, since it has been explained — did people bother to read the New Yorker article? — it shows every sign of that determined unwillingness to understand that shows a professional interest at stake.

As for 212, as far as I know, no one has yet mounted a defense of Lindsey on anything but the grounds that he exists and therefore should be engaged with.

I should write something for piglet, who has been suffering nobly: clearly I don’t think that responsibility smoothly covers everyone. The analogy between Cato and America doesn’t hold for so many reasons that I can’t even list them. 300 million people vs 100 pundits? The fact that you’re born into America vs chosen for Cato for a role, like a player on a sports team? The role of necessity vs choice?

But people should consider structural factors too. I think that nation-states should be considered ecologically, in the sense that they are all tempted to the same abuses of power, limited only by their resources at the time. Saying that Americans are uniquely bad is just American exceptionalism in reverse. Moving to another nation-state only means that you then take on the responsibilities of whatever that country is doing. And, unless you’re a certain kind of refugee and the neighboring states want to keep you stateless, remaining stateless over a long period of time is something that only the truly wealthy can do.

The example brought up by the odious Sebastien — someone who still falsely claims that the East Anglia Emaillers were guilty of something — isn’t even worth addressing. But the general case of global climate change can’t be addressed by individual, voluntary action: it can only be addressed by changing the base of installed infrastructure. There is math to back this up that is beyond the scope of this thread.

Geo @226,

Rich, remember that I (or this hypothetical person alive in the 1930s) am a committed and effective opponent of Nazism

That’s entirely irrelevant, George. Can you not read? Hearken unto the word:

So, yeah, I really should just leave them alone. These people are not the left, no matter what theories they may hold, and it’s useless to try to treat them as such

The left is a Church of One, George, and you are not that One. That One is a humourless cadre primly admonishing Rosa Luxemburg that she must not dance, and his current incarnation is Puchalsky.

Emma Goldman, not Rosa Luxemburg. You really don’t belong to the Left!

Let’s imagine a person named Jane Goodperson, who works at Cato. Jane is anti-war, and writes solely about civil liberties. Jane has done great things for civil liberties. Is Jane complicit? Of course she is. She’s doing that for Koch, after all. The purpose of her being at that job is for her glory to reflect on them, and to help to conceal their bad deeds.

All this appeasement .Why? What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality

So perhaps a certain leniency is sometimes warranted?

Yeah, IM, I was going to go with “If I can’t dance with Nazis, I don’t want to be part of your revolution,” thus proving that I can make at least a lame joke. But then I realized that she’d mentioned Rosa Luxemburg, and it didn’t seem that funny any more.

Glenn Greenwald worked at Cato? Did not know that. Oh maybe that’s because it’s not true. He let Cato hire him to do a one-shot research paper, and I guess in my role as humorless cadre that means I now need to condemn Greenwald. Or, you know, not.

But, you know, read whoever you want, that’s what I’ve always said. It does seem relevant, though, when people ask why the foreign policy pundits who got everything so wrong about Iraq are still so influential and aren’t being shunned, to point out that none of their fellow pundits shun anyone.

Glenn Greenwald worked at Cato? Did not know that. Oh maybe that`s because it’s not true. He let Cato hire him to do a one-shot research paper

Stop nitpicking. He is just a contractor! doesn’t change that much, especially because he is defending his CATO associations aggressively all the time. He seems of the opinion compared to war and detention etc. defending mainstream democrats CATO is rather harmless. But take that up with him.

Yes, Id did mention a certain John Cole, now an cherished part of the blogging left. And don’t talk about the war!
So he can change his mind about the war but Lindsey can’t? Because one is a professional and the other an amateur? Are you just inconsistent or shifting the goal posts?

I am inconsistent too: I can’t anything Frum writes seriously. Even if he is now another sane conservative in good lefty standing. Still, should you not tolerate the inconsistency of others, o soft minded enforcer?

IM, I think that it’s an important distinction whether someone is a paid pundit or an amateur with a blog. Why? Because the whole “we treat each argument individually” thing is inadequate once you admit to basic political facts, such as: propaganda exists, and is intended to create real-life effects. Corporations and other interests pay pundits to create propaganda. People from corporate-controlled operations are not really individual actors.

So, for instance, why is liberaltarianism “dead” now that two people have left Cato? Well, I’m guessing, here. But you’d think that Lindsey and Wilkinson could keep writing about it wherever they were, couldn’t they? I rather suspect that the whole point of liberaltarianism was that people who think of each other as being in coalition naturally tend to compromise with each other’s views. So the point of it was to get the far more numerous liberals to accede to various kinds of economic right-wingery, which Koch has interests in, in return for the help of some tiny number of libertarians on social issues, which Koch doesn’t care about. But it started to conflict with their far more successful Tea Party operations, and Lindsey and Wilkinson were too identified with it to be useful any more, so, two hirelings overboard.

So, yeah, I know that a number of tiresome people have been calling me a one-man enforcer, and now you expect an enforcement plan. But this thread really isn’t about John Cole. It’s about a think tank that was never and is not now insulated from a right-wing interest that told its people what to do.

either the Iraq War was either a plot accomplished by 3 individuals in the Bush administration and no one else, or that the Zeitgeist did it and we can’t pick out anyone in particular.

I well remember something Fallows wrote, back when I was watching the runup to Iraq in horrified fascination: He quoted an unnamed insider as saying, “If we could put about 18 people under house arrest for six weeks, we could stop this from happening.” So apparently there is a case to be made for your first alternative, though the number is somewhat larger.

Certainly decent folk would want to have nothing to do with those 18 people (Kristol can stand for all of them). Equally certainly, refusing to associate with anybody who ever supported the war would drastically restrict your networking. What I don’t see is the basis for putting this Lindley on the left side. Is it because Cato paid him to have certain opinions? But everybody on this thread was saying that his opinion on the war was contrary to Cato’s position. Is the assumption that he wasn’t really for the war, and Cato told him to say he was, by way of double-bluffing?

(I never heard of Lindley before and I don’t particularly care what he thinks about anything. But if you are going to organize a shunning campaign against somebody, your reasons really ought to be clearer than they are after all this back and forth.)

roac, I don’t really care about Lindsey in particular either. I do think that he suffers from a particularly toxic combination of both having worked for Cato / Koch, and having supported the Iraq War in what I consider to be a brutal way — see the link / quote above. (These are, as far as I know, unconnected: he used Cato resources to agitate for war, but I don’t think Koch cared one way or the other at that point, or rather I’d guess that they didn’t mind having an iron in both fires. Koch doesn’t own a security company, so it’s not one of their core interests.) As I’ve written before, I think he comes in somewhere towards the bottom of a list of the top 100 pro-war pundits, so that while he’s not in the top 18 he’s certainly close.

But what I really can’t stand is the resistance to the very idea of holding people accountable. Sure, blame Bill Kristol: that’s very convenient if you never meet Bill Kristol. But as soon as you talk about someone in someone’s social circle, it becomes “But he’s a nice guy in my social circle! You can’t shun *him*.” Followed in short order by “You must be a horrible one-person ideological enforcement squad, and you don’t understand that we just don’t shun people here. We leave that to people at declasse places like Kos; here we evaluate arguments only, and discuss matters across partisan lines. That keeps us free of groupthink.” Of course, Bill Kristol’s colleagues are saying the same thing, and that’s why no one is ever actually shunned.

So it’s turtles all the way down, so to speak. No doubt whatever left-ish pundits operate at Bill Kristol’s level are saying “Why blame Bill? He wasn’t even in the Bush administration! We can’t refuse to engage with his arguments just because he took a particular policy position.”

So really, Lindsey is just another moderately horrible person who was partially responsible for the deaths of thousands. It’s the people here who are being moral cowards about it. Shun him, don’t shun him — but don’t give me the latest iteration of the “we are above that” BS and pretend not to understand that our whole society suffers from this same syndrome. Don’t pretend not to understand why people would distrust everyone who works at Cato once they learn that Koch controls it. If people are going to participate in the same moral blindness that means that Bill Kristol will never lose his job, then at least admit to it.

Oh, one last thing: I also think, in Lindsey’s case, that we could at least honor the anti-war people who spoke out against him in real time, couldn’t we? They were ignored then; they are being ignored now. If they speak out for Lindsey and say that they welcome him to the fold now that he’s rejected his former sentiments, I’d gladly welcome Lindsey as well.

It has been very well documented (e.g., by Frontline) that members of the press — i.e., reporters writing not on the opinion pages but in the ‘news hole’ — were, with a few exceptions, remarkably credulous and uncritical w/r/t to the Bush admin’s arguments and “evidence” in the run-up to the Iraq war. So not just pundits, policymakers, and politicians were to blame, but the fourth estate, the body that’s supposed to help keep them honest.

bq. I guess I’m going to have to hurt my Manichean cred by saying that I flatly refuse to condemn Greenwald for anything.

and

bq. But as soon as you talk about someone in someone’s social circle, it becomes “But he’s a nice guy in my social circle! You can’t shun him.”

make for an interesting comparison. As does your suggestion that:

bq. But [Sebastian is a] Crooked Timber model citizen: Henry … never gives him pissy little lectures about how he should go somewhere else.

Perhaps you should ask Sebastian whether this claim is, in fact, true. There is a difference, though. On those occasions when I have despaired of Sebastian, it’s because I have thought that he could and should do better. On those occasions when I despair of you, it’s because I worry that you can’t.

I don’t think that it does any harm to spell out the various understandings of what CT should be about every once in a while.

Sure. I’m just putting my vote on the record.

I have no idea why Henry thinks that Greenwald is in my social circle.

I’ve given up on the idea that Henry and the people like him can do any better. The proud, parochial nonsense of “what CT is about”! — as if that wasn’t what every pundit was about. Henry and the people like him will provide a comfortable cocoon for the pro-war people from Kristol on down, and ensure that they never, ever get held actually responsible for anything. Sure, some protest may be heard over at dKos-like places, but who cares. The people who the pundits actually have arguments with will defend them against those mean hecklers and ensure that no interruption to the professional rounds ever takes place.

So Henry really is right. It’s a waste of my time to be here.