by Chris Bertram on January 4, 2004
An issue arises from “comments and discussion”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001085.html on Michael Otsuka’s “Libertarianism Without Inequality”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0199243956/junius-20 that I’d like to take out of that context and discuss as a free-standing matter. It concerns the freedom people ought to have to make binding agreements, and specifically such agreements as marriage. Currently, marriage as an institution is a creature of law and, whatever the promises the parties make — for richer, for poorer, etc — there exist mechanisms such as divorce to terminate the relationship. But surely this ought to bother libertarians? Why shouldn’t people be free to enter into unions that are permanent and from which there is no possibility of exit? Why shouldn’t people simply define the terms of “marriage” as they like?
Liberals have an answer to this one, which is roughly that given the core interests we take people to have, we ought to describe and circumscribe those rights in ways that further and protect those interests. We know that marriages go wrong but also that people being people are likely to deceive themselves about that possibility in their own case. So we seek to protect people against their own decisions, irrationality and lack of foresight and to provide them with ways to salvage their lives if things go wrong. But it is hard to see how libertarians can be that paternalistic. Suggestions?
by Brian on January 4, 2004
Here’s Wolf Blitzer’s current poll question
Do you think any of the Democratic candidates for president can beat George W. Bush?
I honestly don’t know what this means, so I figure I’d throw it over to the LazyWeb. It seems to me that if I answer ‘Yes’, I’m implying that I believe that any of the Democratic candidates for president can beat George W. Bush. And that’s false since I know Sharpton and Kucinich can’t. (At least if we ignore distant possible worlds they can’t.) But if I answer ‘No’ I’m implying that I don’t believe that any of the Democratic candidates for president can beat George W. Bush. And that’s false since I know Dean, Clark, Kerry etc can all handily whip Bush.
The problem is that ‘any’ behaves differently in positive and negative environments. Maybe this is just a presupposition failure, as in “Have you stopped voting Republican?” but I don’t remember seeing it discussed before.
by Chris Bertram on January 3, 2004
Following up a link from “Iain Murray”:http://www.iainmurray.org/MT/archives/000559.html on mad cow disease and the threat it does or doesn’t pose to humans I came across “a column on the subject”:http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-milloy2jan02,1,1799702.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions by Steven Milloy “an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute” and proprietor of “JunkScience.Com”:http://www.junkscience.com/ in the LA Times. Molloy is sceptical of the prion theory and reports of the British experience that:
bq. Though laboratory testing seemed to indicate that BSE and variant CJD were similar, no one could determine with certainty whether and how the BSE epidemic was related to the “human mad cow” cases. There were no geographic areas in Britain with a significantly higher incidence of variant CJD cases, and there were no cases of variant CJD among apparently high-risk groups such as farmers, slaughterhouse workers and butchers.
Two minutes of googling found the report of the British government’s report into BSE and vCJD.
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by Kieran Healy on January 3, 2004
The results are in from the “Listeners’ Law” feature on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, where the show’s audience chose between five bills, with Labour MP Stephen Pound agreeing to propose the winner in Parliament. More than 25,000 people voted. The winner was a “proposal to authorise homeowners to use any means to defend their home from intruders.” It won with 37% of the vote.
Pound clearly had been bargaining for something a bit more enlightened. Press commentators have been smirking at his subsequent discomfort, but his immediate response assures him a place in future anthologies of political quotations. “The People have spoken,” he said, “the bastards.”
The runner-up proposal was of interest to me professionally. It was a “presumed consent” law for organ procurement, i.e., “A Bill to allow the use of all organs for transplant after death unless the individual has ‘opted out’ and recorded that opt out on an organ transplant register.” The synergistic benefits of combining this proposal and the winning candidate into an omnibus package don’t seem to have been discussed. Nevertheless, the presumed consent idea beat out three proposals, namely, “A Bill to ban smoking in all workplaces, to include bars and restaurants,” Prime-Ministerial term limits and compulsory voting, and “Ban all Christmas advertising and the erection of municipal street decorations before 1st December.”
by Brian on January 3, 2004
I have an inexplicable fondness for college ‘football’, but I’m worried about what will happen to the economy Sunday if this NY Times report is correct.
If the [LSU] Tigers win and claim the Bowl Championship Series title, Saban will be paid one dollar more than the highest-paid college coach in the nation, according to an incentive clause in his contract.
Since Saban is a college coach, it seems he must be paid a dollar more than he is paid. Which can only happen if a dollar is worthless, which I imagine would be rather disasterous for well-established economic relations.
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by Chris Bertram on January 2, 2004
Oddbins the off-licence (that’s liquor store to you guys) nearest my home recently got in a largish selection of Belgian beers. I spent a month in Belgium just over a year ago and one of the many pleasures of being there was sampling as many of “their excellent brews”:http://www.belgianstyle.com/mmguide/ as I could. There are many many different styles, but my favourite of all was a Trappist beer (made by monks) called “Orval”:http://www.orval.be/an/FS_an.html . It is not as strong as the other Trappists and has a slight aftertaste of grapefruit (no-one else tastes this!). Every Belgian beer has its own dedicated glass and Orval is no exception – it is one of the most stylish.
As well as the Trappists (“Orval”:http://www.orval.be/an/FS_an.html , “Chimay”:http://www.chimay.be/ , “Rochefort”:http://www.producteursdupaysderochefort.be/nl/prodinfos.php?iduser=anddsr&societe=ABBAYE%20NOTRE-DAME%20DE%20SAINT-REMY ,”Westmalle”:http://www.trappistwestmalle.be/ and “Westvleteren”:http://www.sintsixtus.be/eng/index2.html – the hardest to obtain) there are many distinctive styles such as the Lambics (Gueze Belle Vue) either straight or fruit flavoured, lager-style beers, British-style beers (developed for WW1 Scottish soldiers), dark ales, white beers (such as Hoegaarden) and so on. I’ve been given many different estimates of how many different ones there are (up to 2500!) Wonderful.
by Jon Mandle on January 2, 2004
Here’s the lead of a Washington Post story by Guy Gugliotta and Eric Pianin on Bush’s “Climate Leaders” program to recruit companies to voluntarily reduce greenhouse emissions –
Two years after President Bush declared he could combat global warming without mandatory controls, the administration has launched a broad array of initiatives and research, yet it has had little success in recruiting companies to voluntarily curb their greenhouse gas emissions, according to official documents, reports and interviews.
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by Chris Bertram on January 2, 2004
Readers with long memories will recall that “I commented”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000946.html on chapter 5 of Michael Otsuka’s “Libertarianism Without Inequality”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0199243956/junius-20 nearly a month ago. Chapter 6 is very much a continuation of the theme of that earlier chapter, and addresses a central liberal-egalitarian objection to the conception of legitimate state authority that Otsuka advanced there. Below the fold are some reactions to Chapter 6: feel free to comment if you have read or are reading the book.
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by Chris Bertram on January 1, 2004
We don’t often have photographs on Crooked Timber, but I though it worth making an exception in this case. I spent the afternoon at London’s “Tate Modern”:http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/default.htm where an installation by Olafur Eliasson entitles “The Weather Project”:http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/eliasson/ currently dominates the Turbine Hall through which one enters the gallery. The “sun” bathes everyone in yellow light, figures are reflected in mirrors on the ceiling and steam jets create an atmosphere of shimmering mystery appropriate for an operatic stage set. It is as if we are in the dying days of an aged planet. Go and see it if you can.
by Kieran Healy on December 31, 2003
Here in Australia it has been 2004 for some time. My advice from the future is, buy IBM. Reading around this morning I see Glenn Reynolds going out on a high, high note for 2003, reminding us all why he dropped his tagline “The New York Times of bloggers” in favor of “If you’ve got a modem, I’m shouting in your ear!” Meanwhile Tacitus closes 2003 with a variant on one of the most popular themes of the year, viz, “I’ve noticed a disturbing tendency on the American left…” Yeah, me too. It barely exists. I hope you won’t stop reading Crooked Timber now that Tacitus has shown that “the American left” relies wholly on “murderous racism based on junk economic theory.” Another of our sins is noted by Steven Den Beste, who observes that we at CT think “white men don’t actually matter.” In case you haven’t twigged, CT policy is that white males are only good for use as the sexual playthings of rich and beautiful women. Email me for more details about this.
All of this rhetorical overkill reminds me of a line about the late rants of F.R. Leavis: “In his later books he libelled his literary opponents so scandalously that when he tried to condemn Stalin he had no harsh words left over.” Excitable bloggers take note.
Update: Checking back on this post reveals a comments thread swept up in a wave of huffiness, demands for apologies and assertions of lost credibility. Oh my. I guess I’ll have to work on spelling things out rather than letting the tone make the point. Tacitus says that the “American left” is either an unwitting apologist or a hopelessly naive water-carrier for what is really “murderous racism based on junk economic theory.” That’s why he accuses the “American left” of suffering from “battered wife syndrome” in their supposed denial, downplaying or defence of communist atrocities, and why he orders them to “cut the crap about communism.” If you think there’s nothing wrong with each step of his argument then you will not see the point of my original post, which was intended to show that this reflected reality about as well as the statement “Crooked Timber believes white men don’t actually matter.”
Tacitus’s post would have been a good deal less obtuse (though wrong for other reasons) if he had begun with a generalization he could support. The post refers in passing to identifiable entities (e.g., the Democratic party) that have a history of anti-communism but are still left-wing, and Tacitus probably thinks this immunises him against charges of illegitimate generalization. In fact, it just exposes the strawy nature of his imaginary target. What he really meant was something like “I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in some of the comments to this Calpundit thread,” which seems to have been the inspiration for his post. But I suppose saying a few bloggers got up your nose doesn’t give you the same buzz as indicting a notional “American left” tout court without a shred of evidence.
by Chris Bertram on December 31, 2003
I spent three days over Christmas reading Antony Beevor’s “Berlin”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0142002801/junius-20 . It really is a magnificent account of the final battle of the Second World War [in the European theatre — see comments] and a suitable companion volume to his “Stalingrad”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140284583/junius-20 (which I read at Christmas a couple of years ago). When “Berlin”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0142002801/junius-20 first came out, most of the reviews focused on the book’s detailing of the extensive rape of German women by the invading Soviet soldiers. That is indeed a prominent feature of the book, but there is much much more going on.
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by Daniel on December 31, 2003
One more in our occasional ill-tempered and extremely unfair series keeping track of breathless and/or mendacious “Globalisation” commentary from neoliberal commentators. This time, we take a look at an interview in Reason magazine with Johan Norberg, a Scandinavian who “used to be part of the left but then saw the light and is now back with a book explaining it all” (where have we heard that before). I realise that some will call “no fair” on using a Reason interview, because it’s a bit of a libertarian house mag, but Norberg is unlikely to confine himself to the specialist media going forward, and I thought I’d get my retaliation in first. Besides, as a piece of Globollocks, this one is off the scale.
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by Jon Mandle on December 31, 2003
Not a big deal, you say, that someone hacked their way into a corporate network? According to the CEO, the intruder took advantage of a network security hole “that we were a patch behind on.” Happens all the time, except that this company is VoteHere, which is “developing encryption-based software for secure electronic voting.” I admit I’d feel a little better if they were one patch ahead. Yes, encrypted voting results were stored on the network, but according to the CEO, “there is no evidence that any election was compromised.” Most reassuringly of all, it turns out that the system had only been tested on some “British local elections and nongovernmental tallies such as the Country Music Awards.”
by Ted on December 30, 2003
John Ashcroft has recused himself from the Valerie Plame investigation. Patrick Fitzgerald, the current U.S. Attorney in the Nothern District of Illinois, will be in charge of the investigation
Here’s a press release with a brief bio of Patrick Fitzgerald. He’s been involved in the prosecutions of heroin smugglers, organized crime leaders, and a number of terrorists. More recently, his office prepared the indictment of former Illinois governor George Ryan. We’ll surely learn a lot more about him in the days to come, but at first glance, he seems like the real deal.
Mr. Fitzgerald, if by some unlikely chance you ever read this: I’d like to apologize in advance for what the blogosphere and much of the media are about to attempt to do to you. If you try to do your job, you will learn the meaning of “slime and defend.” Good luck.
UPDATE: Here’s a story gallery about Patrick Fitzgerald from the Chicago Tribune. He sounds like a genuinely vigorous prosecutor:
Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Chicago’s new U.S. attorney, who delivered the biggest message to corrupt Chicago politicians, insiders, grafters and boodlers this town may have ever seen. Fitzgerald’s first big indictment was of insurance executive Michael Segal for alleged insurance and mail fraud. Fitzgerald wasted no time in going after the biggest fish in town, to the shock and astonishment of just about everyone. Segal is not just a pal, but the pal, the top of the heap. His indictment makes the prosecution of Chicago aldermen look like the issuance of parking tickets. This is a hugely symbolic act; its effect will be like watching the bugs scurrying for cover after the rock has been lifted.
This sounds good, too.
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by Daniel on December 30, 2003
New Year, old obsession … Steven Den Beste takes a rare break from telling us that France is shit to analyse US politics. Take a glance at the URL and you will see where he is coming from. Thankfully, he steers clear (just) of the usual and rather unpleasant analysis which seems to treat white male votes as the only “real” votes and support based on “minority” votes as in some way second-rate or not of the highest quality. But he does massively overstate the importance of white males, and the extent to which a 66-33 split of white male votes in favour of the Republicans is a disaster for the Democrats. Factoid: Al Gore did not so far from this in the 200 election (he actually got 36% of the white male vote) and the race was about as even as it could possibly be. A “36 point margin [ie a 68:32 split -dd] over Howard Dean” isn’t an “insurmountable obstacle”; it’s a two point swing away from the neutral point of the 2000 election and quite the sort of thing that could get lost in differential turnout rates. The rule of thumb always used to be that a Republican candidate had to do at least 60% among white males to have a prayer, because of the inbuilt slant of all the other demographics and Ruy Teixeira thinks that the bar is, if anything, raising year after year.
A Bush lead among white women is much more worrying, because that’s a genuine swing movement, but that doesn’t offer nearly as many opportunities for riding out old hobby-horses about the “far left” and the conclusions aren’t nearly so palatable for those of us in the pale and hairy camp. My personal assessment is that the Democrats are indeed, all to hell, but tending to the nation’s largest and whiniest minority hasn’t really got all that much to do with it.
All of which assumes, of course, that you can generalise over a category as large as “white males” (c: 110m Americans). Which you can’t, not unless you don’t mind writing sentences like this one:
To a great extent, this is because white men as a group prefer cowboys to metrosexuals.[1]
Which you have to admit, could be taken a number of ways …
(by the way, when is some TV network going to have the stones to produce “Black Eye for the White Guy”?)
[1] I added the links for satirical effect, although I doubt anyone was wondering.
