by Henry Farrell on November 9, 2004
Adam Posen at the IIE has an interesting article in today’s FT about the political motivations and consequences of Bush’s economic policy.[1] For me, the key quote:
bq. However, the Bush administration is putting its political staying power ahead of economic responsibility – indeed it is weakening the independence of those very institutions on which Americans rely to check economic radicalism. For example, the current Republican congressional leadership is trying to override the constitutional design whereby the Senate acts as a brake on the executive branch and on the self-interest of “majority faction”. Bill Frist, senate majority leader and George Allen, the Republican senate campaign committee chair, said their unprecedented direct campaign against Tom Daschle, the defeated Senate minority leader, should warn moderate Republican and Democratic senators not to be “obstructionist”, even though that is precisely what the Founding Fathers intended the Senate to do.
bq. … Markets tend to assume that the US political system will prevent lasting extremist policies so, even now, observers discount the likelihood of the Bush administration fully pursuing – let alone passing – this economic agenda. If the thin blue line of Democrats and the responsible Republican moderates in the Senate bravely fulfil their constitutional role, perhaps the damage will be limited. If not, we can foresee the US economy following the path to extended decline of the British economy in the 1960s and 1970s and of Japan in the 1990s.
I think that there’s an important message for the anti-Bush opposition here, if it can only articulate it clearly and simply. The current administration claims to be both conservative and strict constructionist; it’s neither. In fact, it’s trying to short-circuit the basic constitutional checks and balances of the US political system in order to ram through its agenda. The US apart, presidential democracies are extremely fragile, in large part because presidents tend to grab all power to themselves. This is exactly what the Bush administration is doing, both in its sweeping constitutional arguments about the extent of presidential privilege, and in its efforts to impose strict discipline on the Senate. This is something that shouldn’t only be worrying to lefties – it’s something that should be of deep concern both to serious conservatives, and to libertarians who are worth their salt.
fn1. No hyperlink because it’s behind their paywall.
by Kieran Healy on November 9, 2004
In the comments to “John’s post”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002842.html about a jailed spammer, “George Williams”:http://ghw.wordherders.net/ notes that “If we outlaw spam, only outlaws will send spam.” This is exactly right. The solution is to put industrial-strength spamming technology into the hands of ordinary citizens. The resulting deterrent effect would reduce the flood of spam to almost nothing, as no rational spammer would risk immediate retaliation in kind. Of course, no-one would be _required_ to own huge email lists, spambot factories or “relay-rape”:http://www.comedia.com/hot/jargon-4.2.3/html/entry/relay-rape.html kits, but enough decent citizens would legally conceal them on their person and use them as needed that the problem would take care of itself very quickly. Moreover, actual use of spam technology would be very uncommon. A survey[1] I did a few years ago while not quite on the faculty of the University of Chicago showed[2] that simply brandishing a DVD of the software was enough to deter would-be spammers 98% of the time. In the American West of the early 19th century, where this approach prevailed, letter-writing was far more common than it is today, but spam was virtually unknown. Also indoor plumbing.
fn1. The data are unavailable for reasons “too complex”:http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/guns/Lott/survey/ to go into here. You would be amazed how easy it is to lose every last shred of evidence showing you conducted a major piece of social research.
fn2. When appropriately, um, weighted.
by Harry on November 9, 2004
This is old news for many, but some may have missed it in the blanket election coverage. Target has decided not to allow the Sally Army to collect outside its doors this winter. I have no particular affection for the Salvation Army, but I shop with my kids a lot, and I like them to see people colecting for charity in the midst of the commercial horrors of Christmas. Since I raise them in an atheist household I also believe that I have an obligation to ensure that they are exposed to a wide range of non-atheist viewpoints and practices, and welcome them seeing positive images of religious life. I also resent the power that large corporations like Target have over the public space. Some critics of this decision suggest lobbying Target to include the SA among its charitable partners; I don’t, because I see no reason to filter individual charity through corporate entities. Instead, I fired off an email, expressing disappointment, to Guest.Relations@target.com. I invite you to do the same, and perhaps to encourage others. The text of my email is below the fold: please modify according to your situation.
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by Chris Bertram on November 9, 2004
No sooner does “Des von Bladet”:http://piginawig.diaryland.com/index.html leave a comment mentioning Marshall Sahlins than I click on a link in a document Henry sent me and get taken to the “Creative Commons”:http://creativecommons.org/ site, where there’s an “interview with …. Marshall Sahlins”:http://creativecommons.org/education/sahlins on the topic of pampleteering on the internet. Sahlins has republished (and e-published) a number of pamplets from his “Prickly Paradigm Press”:http://www.prickly-paradigm.com/catalog.html , including his own “Waiting for Foucault, Still”:http://www.prickly-paradigm.com/paradigm1.pdf (PDF), which contains some great observations. Here are two:
bq. *Relevance*
I don’t know about Britain, but in America many graduate students in anthropology are totally uninterested in other times and places. They say we should study our own current problems, all other ethnography being impossible anyhow, as it is just our “construction of the other.”
bq. So if they get their way, and this becomes the principle of anthropological research, fifty years hence no one will pay the slightest attention to the work they’re doing now. Maybe they’re onto something.
And
bq. *Orientalism (dedicated to Professor Gellner)*
In Anthropology there are some things that are better left un-Said.
by Chris Bertram on November 9, 2004
Will Wilkinson’s “thoughts”:http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/archives/2004/11/who_likes_leisu.html on the (alleged) European taste for leisure over work had me scurrying over to my bookshelf to find a copy of Marx’s _Grundrisse_ . Will surmises that the real reason that Europeans work shorter hours than Americans is that European taxes are too high. After all, anyone who is “economically rational” would surely work more if only the rewards were there, wouldn’t they? So goes human nature according to libertarians. Well, no Will, they might work _even less_ if they could satisfy their consumption needs with fewer hours at the grindstone. As Kurt Vonnegut “says”:http://www.vonnegutweb.com/vonnegutia/interviews/int_technology.html , human beings “are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.” Anyway, “that quote”:http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch06.htm from Marx:
bq. _The Times_ of November 1857 contains an utterly delightful cry of outrage on the part of a West-Indian plantation owner. This advocate analyses with great moral indignation—as a plea for the re-introduction of Negro slavery—how the Quashees (the free blacks of Jamaica) content themselves with producing only what is strictly necessary for their own consumption, and, alongside this ‘use value’, regard loafing (indulgence and idleness) as the real luxury good; how they do not care a damn for the sugar and the fixed capital invested in the plantations, but rather observe the planters’ impending bankruptcy with an ironic grin of malicious pleasure, and even exploit their acquired Christianity as an embellishment for this mood of malicious glee and indolence. They have ceased to be slaves, but not in order to become wage labourers, but, instead, self-sustaining peasants working for their own consumption.
Good for them!
by Chris Bertram on November 9, 2004
Today it is fifteen years since the breaching of the Berlin Wall. The BBC has “its reports and some video footage”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/9/newsid_2515000/2515869.stm . Reuters have “a good item”:http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=617515§ion=news on the continued polarisation of the city. The Independent “analyses”:http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=580905 the mismanagement of the transition. The New York Times writes of “ambivalence”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/international/europe/08cnd-germany.html on the part of former East Germans. Further comment from “FAZ”:http://www.faz.net/s/Rub117C535CDF414415BB243B181B8B60AE/Doc~EC65261560A134ECFAA3A5F1FF14A0B51~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html , “Deutsche Welle”:http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1388098,00.html , “Le Monde”:http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3214,36-386315,0.html . A great day for human freedom, but 9 November is also a day of “shame and reflection” as Gerhard Schroeder puts it, since the anniversary of the end of the wall is also that of “Kristallnacht”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht in 1938.
by John Q on November 9, 2004
by Henry Farrell on November 8, 2004
One of the problems of writing about current affairs is that your claims are often overtaken by events. So it goes for the “article”:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/files/story2707.php that Dan Drezner and I have in the current issue of _Foreign Policy_. We said (accurately at the time of writing) that blogs in Iran have provided a partial substitute for reformist newspapers that have been shut down, and that “government efforts to [censor the Internet] have been sporadic and only partially successful.” The Iranian blogosphere is one of the very few inarguable cases of how the Internet can sometimes create more pressure towards democratization. However, almost immediately after our article went to press, hardliners in Iran “began to crack down”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/international/middleeast/08iran.html?ex=1257570000&en=f66adc94fd502c39&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland on reformist websites and blogs. Now that the anti-reformist elements in the government have decided to take action, I suspect that the outlook for political blogs in Iran isn’t very good, although outside protests and negative publicity may help limit the extent of the backlash (it’s “worked”:http://www.ojr.org/ojr/glaser/1073610866.php, at least in part, in the past).
by John Q on November 8, 2004
With Fallujah being pounded to bits, jihadi and insurgent attacks everywhere and a state of emergency, this may seem like a bad time to discuss the Iraqi elections, but there’s no reason to suppose that there’s going to be a better one.
In the Washington Post, Marina Ottaway develops concerns I’ve expressed previously about the possibility that the Iraqi election will degenerate into a Yes-No vote on a unified slate of candidates with a predetermined sharing of the spoils (thanks to Jack Strocchi for the link). Apparently the US Embassy/shadow government is backing this idea. It seems unbelievable that anyone on the US side could see this as a good idea (of course, it makes great sense for Allawi who would be wiped out in a competitive election), but this kind of thing has been the pattern at every previous stage of the occupation.
by Daniel on November 7, 2004
I have a number of fantastic pieces of unsolicited advice for the Democrats, which I will no doubt be trotting out over the course of the week. Idea the first, however, is something that’s been on my mind for the last few years.
It’s time for the UK to face facts, agree that we have very little in common with Europe and a lot in common with the USA, and join the United States. Not only would this be good for Britain, the addition of 60 million voters, substantially all of whom are politically to the left of John Kerry, would presumably solve a few problems for you lot too.
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by Henry Farrell on November 7, 2004
One of the things that I find most depressing about discussions on Crooked Timber and elsewhere is that it seems to be absolutely impossible to have a civil argument about Israel and the Palestinians. I’m now very reluctant to post on Israeli or Palestinian politics, as, I suspect, are my co-bloggers (and very probably bloggers elsewhere). For some reason, it seems to be difficult for supporters and critics of Israel’s policy to argue reasonably with each other – or at the least, the unreasonable voices very quickly swamp the reasonable ones. Why? And why do arguments on this issue become so much more heated more quickly than on other issues, given there is at least some potential for agreement (barring the crazies on both sides, most people seem to be prepared to accept some kind of two state solution)?
NB – lest this post become an example of what it’s seeking to criticize, I’m going to be especially ruthless in deleting comments that I think are unhelpful or that lay the blame all on one side in an overheated way.
Update: to be clear about my deletion policy for this post – if all you have to say is that (a) the treatment of Palestinians is part and parcel of the plot to oppress brown-skinned peoples everywhere, or (b) that Palestinians are inherently untrustworthy and all bent on destroying Israel, or anything even vaguely along these lines then please take your comments as already stipulated – whatever their intrinsic merits, they’re part of the dialogue of the deaf that I’m complaining about, and will be deleted.
by Belle Waring on November 7, 2004
The provisional Iraqi government has declared a 60-day state of emergency in the run-up to an all-out assault on Falluja (pop. 300,000) by US Marines.
Heavy explosions were heard in Baghdad as government spokesman Thair Hassan al-Naqeeb announced the state of emergency over the entire country except Kurdish areas in the north.
“It is going to be a curfew. It is going to be so many things, but tomorrow the prime minister will mention it,” he said. Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi will give more details Monday, he said.
Al-Naqeeb declined to say whether the announcement signaled an imminent attack on the insurgent stronghold Fallujah, saying, “We have seen the situation is worsening in this area. Any obstacle will be removed.”
“So many things.” I can hardly wait to hear more. For some reason this reminds me of the quote from Arafat when asked why he had to have eight different security services: he looked surprised and answered, “Why, Hosni Mubarak has 12.” Middle Eastern politics are so reassuring. Here’s to hoping the state of emergency lasts only 60 days.
by Henry Farrell on November 7, 2004
As a complement to “Kieran’s post”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/002820.html, Michael Gaster, Cosma Shalizi’s and Mark Newman’s “electoral map”:http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/286.html where area is proportional to population is fascinating, as well as weirdly beautiful – like butterflies exploding. Gaster-Shalizi-Newman also have a really interesting “analysis”:http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/election/ of the distribution of votes for for the Republican candidate – go read it now.
Update: according to Cosma, the histogram on his site showing 300 odd counties with 99% Democratic support was the result of a coding error – however the map is accurate.
!http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~farrell/cartcolors.png!
by Kieran Healy on November 6, 2004
“Mark Schmitt asks”:http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2004/11/the_right_quest.html a good question:
bq. The right question, I think, is not whether religion has an undue influence, but why it is that the current flourishing of religious faith has, for the first time ever, virtually no element of social justice? Why is its public phase so exclusively focused on issues of private and personal behavior? Is this caused by trends in the nature of religious worship itself? Is it a displacement of economic or social pressures? Will that change? What are the factors that might cause it to change. I need some reading suggestions here.
Well, here are four from the Sociology department. Bob Wuthnow’s “After Heaven: Spirituality in American Since the 1950s”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520222288/kieranhealysw-20/ref=nosim/ might be a good place to get a sense of the shift from what Wuthnow calls “place-based” to “practice-based” spirituality in America. His recent “Saving America? Faith-Based Services and the Future of Civil Society”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0691119260/kieranhealysw-20/ref=nosim/ looks at the social-service role of religions. Mark Chaves’ “Congregations in America”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674012844/kieranhealysw-20/ref=nosim/ is built around the first nationally representative survey of U.S. congregations and emphasizes how _small_ a role politics and social services play in the lives of churches. And “The Quiet Hand of God: Faith-Based Activism and the Public Role of Mainline Protestantism”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0520233131/kieranhealysw-20/ref=nosim/, edited by Wuthnow[1] and John Evans, offers a survey of recent trends in the political involvement of the Mainline. (Full disclosure: Bob was one of my advisors, Mark is head of my department, and John is a friend of mine from grad school.) But I’m not a sociologist of religion, so there’s probably a lot of other relevant stuff out there I don’t know about.
fn1. Bob can write books faster than most people can read them.
by John Q on November 6, 2004
In the aftermath of the elections, it doesn’t look as if anyone in government will be calling on me for frank and fearless advice[1] any time soon. So this seems like a good time to get my records in order. My piece on time management elicited some follow-up discussion along these lines, notably here, with followup here . For those who are looking for moderately constructive routine activities in the wake of recent catastrophes, here are some (not very organised) thoughts.
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