Henry

I see that Megan McArdle has responded to my response with two posts, one quite voluminous. I don’t want to belabour this any more than it needs to be belaboured, so I’ll do my best not to be prolix. If you dig beneath the lengthy exposition and lumbering sarcasm, her contentions seem rather straightforward and easily summarizable.

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I’m reading and enjoying Steven Poole‘s _Unspeak_ at the moment, but was a little disappointed not to find one of my least favourite bits of unspeak, the term “Islamofascist,” in the index. It’s what Lewis Carroll’s Humpty-Dumpty (surely the patron saint of unspeak) calls a portmanteau word, and indeed there’s something of the badger, something of the lizard, and something of the corkscrew about it. I’m also dipping into various volumes of E. Haldeman-Julius’ _Questions and Answers_, courtesy of Scott McLemee, and was a little startled to find Haldeman-Julius using a quite similar term in the 1930s:

bq. We thus see that the people most subject to Catholic-Fascism’s idea of censorship is most given to crime … True, we have our crime problem in this country, but Catholic apologists should be the last to throw this fact into the face of those who oppose Catholic-Fascism and its policy of suppressing heterodox literature.

And so on.

Now Haldeman-Julius and his friends (most prominently former Franciscan priest, Joseph McCabe ) certainly had a thing about Catholicism, but it seems to me that the term Catholic-Fascism was rather more defensible in the 1930s than Islamofascism is today. You had the practical example of Franco’s regime in Spain, and Salazar’s in Portugal. Both were fascist; both had strong elements of Catholic clericalism (and Church support). Islamofascism … not so much (you could certainly make a case that Baathism was fascist, but it wasn’t really Islamic).

Teresa Nielsen Hayden writes about finding an old sociology textbook in a second hand bookstore.

bq. _Bits that are familiar from age to age_: predictably, the book’s big on the idea that, until recently, traditional values held society together and enforced morality; but now that we’ve become an atomized society, other mechanisms of control will have to be found. People say that today, and I remember them saying it when I was a sprat, so it’s nice to find out that they were saying it in 1939. …

bq. The real reason I picked up the book: It discusses stuff you no longer see stated that bluntly. … the real prize was a section that turned out to have been quoted (approvingly) from Harold Lasswell’s Propaganda Technique in World War I. … We really don’t see people saying stuff like that in clear any more. Of course, being me, I’d be happier if we did.

When I read this I immediately thought of Charles Tilly’s work. First, because Tilly’s book, _Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons_ ( Powells, Amazon) is, among other things, about how 19th century worries about the atomization of society have fundamentally shaped the concepts of 20th century sociology. Second, because I think Tilly’s writing is an excellent example of how sociology can speak in clear in both of Teresa’s senses. It’s written in straightforward, uncomplicated English with a minimum of jargon, and is admirably blunt when discussing matters that ought to be discussed bluntly. There’s a good example available online in a slightly iffy scan – his wonderfully brutal short essay, War Making and State Making as Organized Crime. I also like these lines from his curriculum vitae.

bq. Among Tilly’s negative distinctions he prizes 1) never having held office in a professional association, 2) never having chaired a university department or served as a dean, 3) never having been an associate professor, 4) rejection every single time he has been screened as a prospective juror. He had also hoped never to publish a book with a subtitle, but subtitles somehow slipped into two of his co-authored books.

(there are a couple of other gems in the cv if you’re prepared to dig)

Linda Hirshman wrote what seemed to me to be quite a dreadful op-ed for the _Washington Post_ over the weekend, defending her claim that stay-at-home mothers are betraying the feminist movement, and (I really don’t think I’m exaggerating here) suggesting that her critics were dominated by a congeries of vomit-eulogizing housewives and Christian fundamentalists. And, which I suspect was the main point of the exercise, touting her new book (Hirshman’s professed surprise at the controversy that she’d created didn’t ring true at all to me – I read her original article as a quite deliberate exercise in bomb-throwing). I don’t want to start a discussion over the merits of Hirshman’s arguments; I’m quite sure that this would degenerate into the usual bloodbath . What I’d like to do instead is something that I tried a while back on Israel/Palestine issues without much success – to have a meta-debate about _why_ it is that this is such an emotive topic both for women who have decided to stay at home to raise kids and women who’ve gone to work instead (I note that the element of choice here is mostly only present for middle class and upper middle class women, but that’s another debate). So to be clear – what I’m interested in is why the bombthrowers like Hirshman (and Caitlin Flanagan on the other side of the debate) have become the dominant voices. I’m _not_ interested in back-and-forths about the merits of the two sides of the argument (we’ve had that in response to quite innocuous previous posts such as this one and it hasn’t been very helpful) – rather in argument about why this is such a loaded and painful subject matter in the first place, for women who have made either choice. I’ll keep an eye on the comments section and – be warned – will vigorously delete comments which seem to be wandering off-topic in an unhelpful direction, which seem interested in laying the blame on one side of the debate etc etc. People may sincerely hold such views, and may even be right under the gaze of Eternity, but for the purposes of this argument, I’d like to take these claims as being stipulated. One place to start is this FT article (likely subject to rapid linkrot) from the week before last, which concludes:

bq. The real problem, it seems to me, is the notion that we can’t all be right if we are making different choices. My mother taught me never to say anything un-pleasant about the food other people chose to put on their plates. It might not look good to me but that doesn’t matter – it’s not my plate.

Why does it matter so much what is on other people’s plates? Why do we so often take other people’s choices as being value-judgements on our own in this area of social life? Have at it.

OK, it’s dumpster-diving, but I was quite taken with the writing style of this post on the Arrogance and Evil of Crooked Timber.

bq. I’m reading through more and more of the comments now, and the hideous intellectual dishonesty of the leftists continues to alternatively make my blood boil in anger, and run cold in fear of the kinds of totalitarian “reforms” they would make if they ever seized control of society.

The boiling blood running ice cold and then boiling up again makes for quite an arresting metaphor. But then, don’t watery liquids simultaneously boil and freeze in the vacuum of deep outer space? (perhaps the author is trying to tell us something about where he’s dialing in from).

Megan McArdle has a go at me for criticizing the _Economist_ in my last post. Fair enough that she should want to stick up for her employer, but her argument seems to me to be (a) an attempt to duck the issue, and (b) preposterous.

bq. Note that The Economist, whose reporters extensively research and fact check their claims, is automatically full of [expletive deleted]. A New York TImes columnist who turns in 700 words twice a week consisting, in this case, apparently largely of reprinting the press releases of the Smithfield plant union organisers, is an unimpeachable source. Opinion columnists: reliable fonts of disimpassioned analysis. Reporters who spend weeks working on a story: partisan hacks. … This is not to slam opinion columnists, who I often enjoy. But having written reported stories, and opinion columns, I know that the standards for the latter are a tad more loose. No one ever challenges an opinion columnist to be balanced, fair, or even defend his facts, unless they’re of the “The Holocaust never happened!” variety. Reported pieces, on the other hand, get checked down to the spelling of the names, and then gleefully interrogated by editors and other reporters who disagree with you. When I see an opinion piece, I know that all the inconvenient facts have been left out so they won’t annoy the reader. When I read a reported piece, for all the complaining about the MSM in the blogosphere, I know that the editors and the writer are at least nominally interested in the truth, not the conclusion–at least provided that they work at a mainstream paper, and not one of the money-losing political mags where the editors have to keep the donors happy.

This is an argument from authority, a kind of argument with which Ms. McArdle has a rather unhappy history. More to the point – it’s a bogus argument from authority. McArdle’s claim is that newspaper reporters are more authoritative than op-ed writers, because they don’t leave out “all the inconvenient facts,” and because they’re “at least nominally interested in the truth, not the conclusion.” Now this is a claim that I’m prepared to buy, up to a point, with newspapers that maintain a clear separation between editorial content and reportage. The _Wall Street Journal_, for example, does some first rate economic reporting, even if its editorial pages are a cesspit. But as a defence of _The Economist_, it isn’t even laughable; it’s pitiable. _The Economist_ has never sought to disguise the fact that it’s a magazine with a strong pro-free market agenda, which pervades not only its editorial content, but its reporting. It doesn’t try to present both sides of the question and never has; its reportage is shot through with opinionated assertions and undefended value judgments about the need for “reform” of lamentably social-democratic West European countries, to marketize the education system &c&c&c. Nor does it tend to report developments which might call its preferred policy stances into question with any great degree of enthusiasm. Now there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that in principle – I’m obviously in favour of strongly opinionated political writing, or I wouldn’t do it myself. But it certainly doesn’t put _Economist_ reporters in a very good place to criticize op-ed writers and political magazine journalists, or more generally to assume a lofty position from which they may criticize the pell-mell of ideologically driven debate beneath. The activities that op-ed writers and _Economist_ reporters are engaged in aren’t nearly as far removed from each other as Ms. McArdle might wish to suggest.

Which brings us to the more particular matter under discussion. Herbert’s piece rested on a set of factual claims – if she wants to take issue with the article, she should, one would think, concentrate on whether these claims are in fact correct, rather than appealing to general arguments about the inferiority of op-ed writers. My original post suggested precisely that “inconvenient facts have been left out so they won’t annoy the reader.” As I claimed, if you want to take an undocumented immigrant worker’s experience in Smithfield Foods’ meatprocessing plant as a proxy for the Mexican-American dream, it’s hardly irrelevant that Smithfield Foods has an established track record of abusing aforementioned undocumented immigrant workers’ rights, and threatening to report them to immigration authorities if they should dare to organize themselves. If this isn’t an “inconvenient fact” for the Economist‘s preferred narrative, I’m not sure what would be.

The Economist really should have gone elsewhere for this week’s Horatio Alger story about undocumented immigrants making good in the American economy.
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Thought that this recent Julian Sanchez post provided an interesting way to think about the back-and-forth misunderstandings over dsquared and Harry Hutton as eliminationist Coulteroids. The key bit …

bq. So it seems like you might find racist/religious/sexist/etc epithets or jokes in two very different kinds of context: First, sincerely, among actual racists, sexists, and other bigots. Second, in groups where there’s a strong taboo against those actual attitudes, but the people communicating are sufficiently confident of themselves and each other on that score that boundary-pushing results in that all-clear humor reaction. The problem on the Internet, of course, is that you often end up with a forum that feels like a small close knit community but is actually available to thousands of casual readers—a tension I expect we’ll be negotiating for a long while yet. Anyway, that might be one reason you find the kind of rhetoric the Feministe folk were so appalled by in particular among the blogs and chat boards of the left, where people are both especially likely to be conscious of speech taboos and confident that everyone’s actually got the right sorts of views.

(although I should make it clear that I don’t think it’s the whole explanation for what Sanchez is talking about – I suspect that some purportedly leftwing blog commenters _do_ have genuinely misogynistic views etc).

The Washington Post comes out against net neutrality today, trotting out a bullshit telco industry talking-point as if it were established fact.

bq. The advocates of neutrality suggest, absurdly, that a non-neutral Internet would resemble cable TV: a medium through which only corporate content is delivered. This analogy misses the fact that the market for Internet connections, unlike that for cable television, is competitive: More than 60 percent of Zip codes in the United States are served by four or more broadband providers that compete to give consumers what they want — fast access to the full range of Web sites, including those of their kids’ soccer league, their cousins’ photos, MoveOn.org and the Christian Coalition. If one broadband provider slowed access to fringe bloggers, the blogosphere would rise up in protest — and the provider would lose customers.

It ain’t the “advocates of neutrality” who are being absurd here. The claim that “60 percent of Zip codes in the United States are served by four or more broadband providers that compete to give consumers what they want” is based on FCC statistics that are widely recognized (except by industry hacks) to be useless for this purpose. As this Government Accountability Office report discusses, the FCC zipcode survey doesn’t provide any data on how many subscribers are served by particular broadband providers within zipcodes. It indiscriminately includes satellite broadband service, which isn’t a significant option for most consumers (and is only just about broadband in any event), in zip codes where there is at least one subscriber to the service. Furthermore, it lumps together (a) data on broadband services that cater to specialized business needs and (b) data on consumer broadband, as if they formed one and the same market. The result is that it grossly overestimates the degree to which there is actual competition in consumer broadband markets. The GAO estimates that when you exclude irrelevant providers, the median number of household providers in each zipcode is two. The claim that market forces will miraculously protect consumers and resolve the network neutrality problem is unsustainable; there probably isn’t a competitive market in most municipal regions in the US, let alone rural areas. Perhaps the Post editors weren’t aware of this, but I suspect that this is because they didn’t think it was part of their job to find out. Garbage journalism, pure and simple.

One of my most-disliked cliches is the term Kafkaesque – most things that are described as being so really aren’t. But it’s hard not to think of _The Trial_ when reading this.

bq. A National Security Agency program that listens in on international communications involving people in the United States is both vital to national security and permitted by the Constitution, a government lawyer told a judge here today in the first major court argument on the program. But, the lawyer went on, addressing Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the Federal District Court, “the evidence we need to demonstrate to you that it lawful cannot be disclosed without that process itself causing grave harm to United States national security.” The only solution to this impasse, the lawyer, Anthony J. Coppolino, said, was for Judge Taylor to dismiss the lawsuit before her, an American Civil Liberties Union challenge to the eavesdropping program, under the state secrets privilege.

Mark Schmitt has a good article in this month’s _The American Prospect_, which is now available on the New America Foundation’s website. He argues that we’re probably seeing a secular shift to a more partisan and polarized politics, with less emphasis on bipartisan coalition building, and more on party coherence. The interesting bit is his take on interest group politics.

bq. It has become an article of faith on Democratic blogs such as DailyKos that progressive interest groups betray their own causes by sometimes endorsing Republicans. The Sierra Club and NARAL endorsements of Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee have been particular points of controversy. But it’s not that NARAL and the Sierra Club are idiots. Up to now, it made perfect sense for them to endorse Chafee. You reward your friends, especially when they have stood up to pressure from within their own party. But at a certain point, rewarding friendly Republicans crosses the line into desperately trying to prop up a few so that you can still seem bipartisan—at the price of legitimating a majority whose highest priority after tax cuts is the evisceration of environmental regulation.

While I agree with Mark’s conclusions, I suspect that there’s more going on here than he mentions. Another reason why progressive interest groups might want to endorse Republicans occasionally is because this increases their bargaining leverage vis-a-vis Democrats. If you want to get Democrats to take your agenda seriously, it helps to be able to make credible threats that you’ll support the other guys unless you get your way. One way to underline the seriousness of your threats is occasionally to endorse moderate members of the opposing party. If Mark is right (I think he is), then the ability of progressive interest groups to make these threats will shrivel away as moderate Republicans lose office. Hence, such groups are likely to lose a lot of their clout. This doesn’t necessarily mean that all interest groups are going to lose out. I suspect that interest groups which draw their bargaining leverage from threats to support more ‘orthodox’ candidates in primaries, along the lines of Grover Norquist’s crowd on the Republican side, are going to do quite well under the new system. If so, then these will further weaken incentives towards bipartisanship, and help reinforce party discipline on both sides of the divide.

(Link via Political Theory Daily Review )

After telling us that we shouldn’t worry about global warming because the _Denver Tribune_ predicted climate change in 1874, David Kopel leaps to the defence of noted loon, William Gray, in his weekly column for the _Rocky Mountain News_.

bq. … former Vice President Al Gore claims that scientific skeptics of global warming are merely being paid off by big oil companies. But in fact, Colorado’s most prominent skeptic is Colorado State University professor of atmospheric science William Gray, who has directly harmed his own financial interests by speaking out … [a]s detailed in a major profile in The Washington Post, … while the Boulder Daily Camera reprinted the story of Colorado’s controversial scientist, The Denver Post – which has access to Washington Post articles – did not. … The News and The Denver Post do recognize Gray as an expert on atmospheric science, and have published dozens and dozens stories citing his hurricane forecasts and analysis … Yet in the News and Post combined, one can find only a few paragraphs even mentioning Gray’s analysis of global warming. … by little noting the evidence presented of eminent experts such as William Gray, the papers are presenting a skewed and misleading perspective on the scientific data.

Kopel curiously fails to mention Gray’s insights into the politics of global warming, which receive prominent mention in the aforementioned article.

bq. Gray has his own conspiracy theory. He has made a list of 15 reasons for the global warming hysteria. The list includes the need to come up with an enemy after the end of the Cold War, and the desire among scientists, government leaders and environmentalists to find a political cause that would enable them to “organize, propagandize, force conformity and exercise political influence. Big world government could best lead (and control) us to a better world!” Gray admits that he has a dark take on human nature: “I have a demonic view on this.”

Cue the black helicopters (perhaps, given the subject at hand, to the music from “Thus Spake Zarathustra”)

In short, Kopel’s entirely correct in his claim that it isn’t only hacks who deny the mounting evidence for global warming. It’s cranks too.

Despite his modesty, we’re going to miss Ted hugely; if nothing else, as Kieran pointed out two years ago, Ted has been responsible for many of our most widely read posts. Among the posts I’ve particularly enjoyed or found thought-provoking over the years are his piece on MEChA, and his _National Review_ classics, Punk the National Review and Today's Activities on the National Review Cruise. Another Timberite suggests Please Call Your Senators about Torture Today. Others may have other posts (including ones from before Ted joined CT) that they prefer- feel free to mention them in comments.

Siva Vaidhyanathan takes inspiration from the recent NAFTHE decision to boycott Israeli academics who don’t disassociate themselves from their country’s policies.

bq. Please boycott me. While you are at it, boycott all other American professors. Do not invite us to conferences. Do not publish our work. Do not read our blogs (after this post, of course). We have a lot to answer for. I am an American academic who has not done enough to prevent my government from launching an illegal and counterproductive invasion of a sovereign country. On my watch, my country has also imprisoned thousands of innocent people without charge and without instigating a process for demonstrating their harmlessness. It has engaged in massive surveillance of communication both overseas and domestic without regard for domestic laws or the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. Many of my fellow American academics have failed to prevent our government from doing these and many other bad things. So we deserve to be punished. Clearly, we are craven collaborators.

This is a far better response to the silliness of the motion than Larry Summer’s over-the-top claim that the boycott was motivated by anti-Semitism, which grants the authors of the motion a level of world historical significance than they sorely lack. Their self-importance smacks less of Julius Streicher than the Skibbereen Eagle. Steven Poole’s post on the sorry affair is also worth reading.

Update: as this is degenerating into the usual pro/anti Israel fight, I’m not allowing any further comments.