Nick Barlow has the details on the new political party “Veritas”, launched by former TV presenter Robert Kilroy-Silk (Yanks; kind of like Jerry Springer meets Tucker Carlson, uptown!). I hope he will form some sort of bloc with the Ulster Unionists, simply because I’ve been saving up an “Orangeman” joke for that eventuality for the last three years.

Below the fold I reproduce (with minor editing) an old D-squared Digest post, explaining why these parties are doomed, and why it’s a big mistake for Kilroy et al to extrapolate from their strong showings in European and local council elections to any hope of not getting carted out at a General Election. This analysis generalises, by the way, and that is why (full disclosure time) I have a chunky bet on Oona King to keep her seat in a two-way fight against George Galloway. As and when a spread betting market opens up, I will be a seller of Kilroy-Silk’s chances, in reasonable size.

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Heavy blog readers know that Glenn Reynolds has picked an obscure wanker and dubbed him “The Authentic Face of the Left”. I can scarcely imagine a more dignified and convincing form of argument; not since a particularly devastating eighth grade game of “That’s Your Girlfriend” have I been so ashamed. (Hilzoy is not so contrite, for some reason.)

But has Reynolds picked the right target? It takes a very particular individual to represent the authentic face of roughly 40% of all Americans. I think that we can do better.

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Via “Political Theory Daily Review”:http://www.politicaltheory.info/, a “review”:http://context.themoscowtimes.com/story/139588/ of Robert Conquest’s new book, _The Dragons of Expectation_ which apparently makes some rather outrageous claims in the course of a general attack on leftist academics and internationalists. I haven’t read the book yet (I’m trying to get my hands on a copy),[1] but if the reviewer is quoting him accurately, Conquest argues that a fair portion of the blame for September 11 can be laid at the feet of left-leaning professors. The reviewer quotes from Conquest’s introduction:

bq. “And we are told that a number of members of the Middle Eastern terror groups had originally been in the local communist movements … The members of [the Real IRA and the Shining Path], as with those in Italy or, for example, the Naxalites in India, were almost entirely recruited from student elements who had accepted the abstractions of fashionable academics. And the September 11 bombers were almost all comfortably off young men, some having been to Western universities and there adopted the extremely anti-Western mind-set.”

According to the reviewer, Conquest doesn’t bother even to try to provide any evidence in support of this accusation.

There’s an interesting juxtaposition between this and the “disgusting efforts”:http://instapundit.com/archives/020810.php of Glenn Reynolds and others to use Ward Churchill’s comments as a means to smear the left. On the one hand, Conquest’s language and claims are less inflammatory and offensive than Churchill’s. On the other, Conquest is one of the right’s most senior and respected figures, a fellow of the Hoover Institute, and a key player in the Anglo-American right’s intellectual network. Churchill, in comparison, is a relative nobody who represents no-one except himself. I’ve always had a fondness for Conquest; he was dead right on Stalinism, and he comes across as a very human figure (and a first rate composer of limericks and light verse) in his letters to Kingsley Amis. But if he’s seriously trying to claim, on the basis of no apparent evidence, that leftwing professors in Western universities shoulder some of the blame for September 11, he should be deeply ashamed of himself. It’s a vicious, disgraceful slur, and it’s every bit as unacceptable as the claim that the West and the US had September 11 coming to them. Still, I don’t think that Reynolds or any of his cronies will be following their advice to the left and disassociating themselves from Conquest (indeed, judging by Reynolds’ dishonest and hate-filled post, I wouldn’t be surprised if he agrees with Conquest’s claims).

Update: to be quite clear (there’s already one “rather bizarre misinterpretation”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006239.php out there in the blogosphere), Conquest isn’t referring in this passage to Western ideas percolating through into radical Islam in some indirect fashion. First, he draws a link between “the abstractions of fashionable academics” and the propensity of the students accepting those abstractions to then become terrorists. Then, in the very next sentence, he asserts a direct connection between the fact that some of the 9/11 terrorists attended Western universities, and the fact that they absorbed an anti-Western mindset. In the absence of any evidence of a connection between what the 9/11 terrorists were taught in Western universities, and what they then did, this is a slur, clear and simple.

Update 2: “Armed Liberal” “replies”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006252.php (or, more precisely, purports to reply) to my post.

fn1. If, when I get the book, I find that the reviewer has seriously misrepresented Conquest, I’ll very happily apologize – however, given the unambiguous slur in the quote above, I don’t expect that I’ll be in a position where I need to.

Somehow I missed “this appalling sequence of photographs”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/middle_east_shooting_in_tal_afar/html/1.stm of a shooting in Iraq a few days ago, probably because they were running in newspapers outside the U.S. on inauguration day. I want to know whether any of them — especially “this one”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/middle_east_shooting_in_tal_afar/html/3.stm — ran anywhere in the U.S. media?

Look, I know I’m asking for trouble. I don’t want the comments to degenerate into angry whataboutery. All kinds of terrible things happen — purposely and by accident — in war zones. These photos are just awful. That’s all.

We’re dealing with a flood of trackback spam this morning. Sorry for even more inconvenience than usual. We will get around to upgrading eventually, even though my past self wisely tells me “not to”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001967.html.

I’m very excited about the launch of “Inside Higher Ed”:http://www.insidehighered.com/, a new web-based publication with “news, opinion and career advice and services for all of higher education.” This is, of course, not entirely dissimilar from what the “Chronicle of Higher Education”:http://chronicle.com/ has been offering for many years, but there are some very important differences. The Chronicle has some great writers, but it’s primarily a print-based publication, and it shows. Most of the interesting web content is only available to subscribers. This is highly frustrating for bloggers, who don’t, as a rule, like to link to articles that most of their readers can’t access. Individuals within the _Chronicle_ are pretty understanding about this, but there is only so much that they can do. _IHE_ is beginning from a very different model, one which I think is much better designed to capitalize on the explosion of web-based discussion over the last three years. All their content is going to be free, which means that bloggers can link to their stories without a second thought. Furthermore, they’re deliberately seeking to integrate _IHE_ into the debates that are happening among blogs, highlighting and picking up on the more interesting discussions. They’ll also have a jobs service (which will be the bread-and-butter of the website), and a weekly email digest.

In short, I reckon that _IHE_ is going to be an extremely valuable resource for bloggers and non-blogging academics. It will provide the kinds of reporting and detailed analysis that bloggers themselves aren’t much good at. It’s worth noting that the people behind _IHE_ include Scott Jaschik, who was editor of the _Chronicle_ during its glory days, Doug Lederman, who has done some superb academic reporting and editing at the _Chronicle_ and elsewhere, and “Scott McLemee”:http://www.mclemee.com/id4.html, who will be their ‘Essayist-at-Large.’ Scott McL has his first “column”:http://www.insidehighered.com/views/intellectual_affairs up today, where he describes the blogosphere as

bq. that agonistic realm routinely combining the best qualities of the academic seminar with the worst traits of talk radio

With any luck, _IHE_ will mean less talk radio, and more grounded discussion. As I’ve said, I’m excited.

As noted in previous posts, there has been a lot of triumphalism among pro-war bloggers about the success of the elections in Iraq and, even allowing for a low turnout in Sunni areas and the difficulties that lie ahead, it’s certainly the best news we’ve had for some time. But I’d be interested to know how many of these bloggers supported democratic elections a year ago, when Bremer was pushing a bizarre system of regional caucuses? A limited Google search found sympathy for Bremer’s plan from Belgravia Dispatch , den Beste and Winds of Change, but I couldn’t locate any premature democrats in the pro-war blogosphere. However, the collaborative power of blogreaders is better than Google, so I invite links. Ideally, I’d like examples of prowar bloggers rejecting Bremer’s plan and supporting Sistani’s call for elections. I’m happy to concede that anyone in this class is entitled to a bit of triumph today.

Update A better Google search “bremer sistani elections support blog” finds this from The Brothers Judd and this from Norm Geras. I’m not surprised to find Geras, whose support for the war has been based on more defensible arguments than most. I don’t know much about the Brothers Judd but they go up in my estimation for this. Still the general pattern is pretty clear. Most of those who are now crowing about the elections backed Bremer’s attempts to block them, while those who supported elections all along are mostly found among opponents of the war.

Crooked Timber aren’t the only lefties to be attacked for failing to celebrate the Iraqi elections before the sun hit the yardarm yesterday morning. Intrepid sleuth-columnist, “Justin Darr”:http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/darr/050130, of Renew America, is on the case. He outs “Stephen Bainbridge”:http://www.professorbainbridge.com/2005/01/im_a_what.html, that notorious “radical”:http://www.professorbainbridge.com/2005/01/soros.html and bête-noir of the “Republican establishment”:http://www.professorbainbridge.com/2005/01/howard_dean_hat.html, and Stephen Green, the saturnine Svengali behind Bolshevik agitprop collective “Vodkapundit”:http://www.vodkapundit.com, as undercover members of the “Let’s Pretend It Didn’t Happen Faction” of the allied Internet Liberal Bloggers of America.

bq. a group who broke with the traditional liberal habit of talking endlessly about anything so long as it can be twisted into a childish penis reference about Vice President Cheney, and said nothing.

Still, Mr. Darr is more charitable than Ms. Malkin – he acknowledges that there may be an innocent explanation for the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy’s failure to blog on Iraq by lunchtime.

bq. Perhaps it was unfair of me to look into their sites on Sunday afternoon when so many liberals are just beginning emerge from the drug induced haze of their traditional weekend medicinal marijuana benders.

I suppose I should have expected the likes of “Michelle Malkin”:http://www.michellemalkin.com/ to treat the Iraqi elections as an opportunity to take a pot shot at “the Left.” As you know, we on The Left^TM are all for for more death and suffering in Iraq because it improves our case for universal health care and better prescription drug coverage. Like an excited kid on Christmas morning, Malkin wasn’t able to wait all day. She restrained herself till lunchtime (U.S. east coast time) on Sunday before indicting us along with a few other blogs: “Left goes into Hibernation”, “Crooked Timber is Silent on the Iraqi Elections“. “Silent”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/003167.html, “silent”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/003169.html, “silent”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/003170.html. You can practically hear the wind whistling through the trees around here. An excerpt from our non-existent commentary on the election appears on the Op-Ed page of Tuesday’s Dallas Morning News¹, presumably as a big ole chunk of white space. I suppose we were hibernating, really, as long as you think “Hibernation” means “Doing some other things on Sunday (in our own time zones) before catching up on the news.”

fn1. Irritatingly detailed registration required. Try “bugmenot”:http://www.bugmenot.com/.

A while back I posted about my plans to teach a class in which each student would be required to maintain his or her own blog. We are now halfway through the quarter (really) and so I thought it would be a good time to get some outside readers to take a look at the students’ blogs. If you happen to have a moment and wouldn’t mind surfing over I am sure the students would be delighted to get some comments from people not enrolled in class. TheRockBlog.com has a link to each of the blogs in the right-hand menu.

As you will see, the quality of student posts differs quite a bit. This is not particularly surprising since one can expect some level of variation in the work of students for most classes. To give a bit of background on the content of the blog entries, students are required to post to their blogs each week discussing at least two of the reading assignments covered that week. Students can use their blogs to post other material as well. They are also required to post a comment on a peer’s blog each week. The syllabus also includes some additional blogging assignments (finding and discussing various online content).

Judging from midterm feedback, it sounds like most students are enjoying the blogging experience although some find commenting on others’ blogs a bit tedious. At the same time others find it disappointing that they are not getting more feedback so it’s hard to satisfy everyone. Having students blog about the readings is certainly helpful for an understanding of how they are processing the material. Their blog entries have guided discussion in several class sessions.

I’ve learned a lot from this experience and plan to write up a detailed description of the course logistics later. For now, feel free to take a look at how the student blogging is going by visiting some of their sites.

“This report”:http://edition.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/01/31/students.amendment.ap/index.html of a survey of more than 110,000 (!) students at 544 high schools has been getting a lot of play. The survey found that one in three high schoolers think the First Amendment “goes too far”; that three quarters believe that flag-burning is illegal; and that 36% of them thought newspapers should get “government approval” before publishing stories in the newspaper.

The White House issued a statement congratulating American students not just for their views on constitutional law, but also for their “accurate characterization of the relationship between the Executive branch and the White House Press Corps.”

OK, I just made that up about the White House. But the study is real. Further reading of the “full report”:http://firstamendment.jideas.org/downloads/future_final.pdf reveals the usual smorgasbord of opinion that surveys like this typically bring out. For instance, substantially more teenagers believe that “musicians should be allowed to sing songs with lyrics others may find offensive” than believe that “newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.” Even better, whereas only 49 percent thought that newspapers should be able to report without government approval, 58 percent said that _school_ newspapers should be able to report controversial issues without the approval of school authorities. I guess it all depends on who you think The Man is — the Prez or the Principal.

Since Crooked Timber’s first publication in 1953, “Ask a Nineteenth-Century Whaling Expert” has consistently been one of its most popular features. We are pleased to bring you the novelist Kenneth Gardner, author of Rich Man’s Coffin.

I’m baffled at the economics of nineteenth-century whaling. In Moby-Dick, Herman Melville says that a whaling expedition would be a success if a crew of 40 men captured the oil from 40 whales in 48 months. Each whale produced about 40-50 barrels of oil. Presumably this oil had to be cover the approximate costs of four years’ labor, plus the costs of operating the ship, plus a sizeable profit for the investors in these risky ventures.

How could whale-oil have been so valuable? I understand that it was scarce, that illumination is highly desirable, and apparently it smelled nice. But there were substitutes, weren’t there?

Ted B., Houston, TX

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– The biggest news today, the election in Iraq, seems to have gone better than I would have dreamed. It’s no secret that I don’t think that the Bush administration has much to be proud of. But they deserve credit, along with the courageous Iraqi voters, for the first real elections in half a century. When Bush said that the terrorist hostility to the elections showed the emptiness of their vision, he was exactly right.

Iraq isn’t out of the woods. There may come a time when we look back and see how the elections made inevitable the Iraqi civil war/ next brutal strongman/ rise of our robot overlords. However, let the record show that, as of 1/30/05, I certainly didn’t have any better ideas.

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The “Iraqi elections”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4220551.stm have gone off successfully, in the sense that the turnout was good and the violence relatively contained. That’s very good news. Now comes the hard business of establishing a real government. I’m sympathetic with “John’s view”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/003167.html that it might not be such a bad thing if the U.S. took a “Declare Victory and Go Home” attitude, even though that’s one of the scenarios people were most worried by before the invasion. Getting out would leave the government in a position to at least try to run its own country, instead of inevitably playing second-fiddle to the U.S. occupying forces. I’m not sure any more that this is likely to happen, though.

The best possible outcome of the weekend’s election is a successful completion of the present government’s term followed by another real election. It’s often said that the key moment in the growth of a democracy is not its first election but its second, because — as Adam Przeworski says somewhere — a democracy is a system where governments lose elections. The question planners need to be asking is what are the chances that Iraq will be able to do this again in four or five years without the presence of U.S. troops and with the expectation that whoever wins will get to take power. This partly depends on whether some functioning government can really be established within the country, and partly on whether the U.S. wants a working democracy in Iraq (with the risks that implies) or just a friendly puppet state.

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