Good Quote

I like this quote, which I found here -- so I'm sharing.

“TACTICS is knowing what to do when there is something to do. STRATEGY is knowing what to do when there is nothing to do.”

--Chess Grandmaster Sawielly Tartakower

Oreos

http://www.truemajority.org/oreos/

This is a bit too simple for my tastes but I think it engages people and I think we need to use mockery and symbolism more effectively; this cartoon does a great job on both fronts. My concern is that the the cutsey presentation will insult people's intelligence.

Also, while we had an opportunity to reap a peace dividend shortly after the cold war ended, in the age of terrorism, I think it would be a mistake to present policy choices that take funding from the military and spend them exclusively on social programs. I could take the whole thing a little more seriously if a few of those cookies were added to a pile on containing "loose nukes" or stopping the genocide in Darfur. Both of these are security items that liberals have prioritized and we should call the Right out on this.

On the other hand, I'm arguing with a cartoon.

Words Matter

The term "war on terrorism" has been politically useful for the Right since Bush started using it shortly after the invasion of Iraq. The idea that we are at "war" helped Bush win reelection and is used as the background justification for domestic wiretapping and detention policies that American's might never have otherwise allowed. Denying that "war" is the correct term for the state of conflict we find ourselves in with terrorists is a difficult part of an argument with people on the Right, it leads to the counter argument that liberals don't understand the "post 9/11" world; an argument I don't mind having but it is tedious to get bogged down arguing terminology.

Worse, liberals haven't really had an alternate term to describe the current state of conflict (see!). Well a sensible neocon has come to our rescue (I know that's a little depressing . . .any port in a storm I guess). Francis Fukuyama's essay in the NY Times Magazine refers to the conflict as a "struggle."

We are fighting hot counterinsurgency wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and against the international jihadist movement, wars in which we need to prevail. But "war" is the wrong metaphor for the broader struggle, since wars are fought at full intensity and have clear beginnings and endings. Meeting the jihadist challenge is more of a "long, twilight struggle" whose core is not a military campaign but a political contest for the hearts and minds of ordinary Muslims around the world.

Now calling it a "struggle" while they call it a "war" would've been political suicide a year ago. Voters were still deciding who to support based on their fear of terrorism and fear is too powerful a motivator to be countered with semantics. But the the political landscape will be dominated by Iraq and terrorism for the next decade so liberals better figure out another way to describe it if we want to convince people that our solution is better than the Right's. "Struggle" alone may not suffice as a sufficiently evocative term but it lends itself to many adjectives: "long struggle," "worldwide struggle," "historic struggle," even "violent struggle." All these terms capture the enormity of the task but are more honest and less Orwellian.

The larger point in Fukuyama's essay is that the Bush policy has failed and it's failed in part because Bush overreached by seeing the "new struggle" against terrorism and Islamo-facism as a "war." Wars are not fought against particular tactics--which is what terrorism is--or against ideologies--we didn't fight Communism as an ideology, we fought the nations that practiced a version of it which threatened us directly--wars are fought against opponents. Terrorism, and that variety of its wielders who loathe America and the principles of modernism and democracy, on the other hand are things which we must struggle to defeat. It is a struggle in part because unlike a war, we will not know when we have won until long after we already have.

Jacoby on Hate Crimes

Jeff Jacoby's piece in the Globe earlier this week reveals some of what is wrong with Conservative thinking on social policy issues. Let's deal with the obvious stuff first.

There are some factual inaccuracies.

1) Jacoby suggests that Leftist organizations simply ignore hate crime-like incidents when the victims are not members of minority groups.

But a quick Google search for hate crimes shows that the website civilrights.org which. among other things, reports on hate crimes, lists hate crimes against whites as comprising about half of all all race motivated hate crimes.

Of the 7,947 hate crime incidents reported to the FBI in 1995, sixty percent - 4,831- were motivated by race. Of these, 2,988 were anti-black, 1,226 were anti-white, 355 were directed against Asian-Americans or Pacific Islanders, 221 were directed against multi-racial groups, and 41 were directed against Native Americans or Alaskan Natives.
http://www.civilrights.org/publications/reports/cause_for_concern/p8.html

2) Jacoby dismissively quotes the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Mark Potok, as saying that "anti-Christian hate crimes are rare" but Jacoby can only cite one instance of an anti-Christian hate crime (a Church burnings by a Satanist) and his objection is merely that the SPLC doesn't list that event as a hate crime on its website. But Satanists really are (thankfully) a pretty rare breed of wacko and it would be foolish to start tracking them for hate crimes. (Why you ask? For one thing it would probably encourage them. We have enough to track the hate group wackos who have established a following, let's not fuel any new ones by giving them notoriety).

Aside from Jacoby's misrepresentations of fact, there's the simple idea that our justice system serves to arrest and prosecute criminals and protect the public. By specially tracking and prosecuting crimes committed against people who've been victimized because of their race, creed, orientation, etc. we neutralize the fear that a member of a group might feel due to the fact that a member of their group had been singled out for attack.

Does that sound like special treatment? It's not. Try this thought experiment.

Imagine you're a white 30-something male who lives in Southie (South Boston). You turn on the evening news and learn that a 17 year old black male has been attacked by a gang of white men. You're a decent human being so this fact bothers you on several levels: morally, emotionally, etc. But it does not create in you an immediate fear for your own safety. After all, you're 30 and white and the person who was victimized was young and black.

But a young black man would be justified in fearing for his immediate safety after hearing about the attack. It's to counteract that focused sense of fear that we enact hate crime laws. We want to reassure people who are members of a group that has been attacked that the crime will be dealt with as much focus as possible.

This Country has a history of violence against Black Americans so any new instance of violence against them resurrects that history. Also, minorities are . . . well . . . a minority of the population. As such they are justifiably worried that they will be ignored when they are victimized and it makes sense for the government to reassure them that the government will take their concerns seriously. The extra attention also serves as a deterrent to those who might target certain groups--racial minorities, gay people--because they believe the government will be less enthusiastic about solving crimes against them.

This seems pretty simple to me. Why can't Jacoby and others see this?

From the Jon Stewart Show - Monday night

This is damn funny.

Jon Stewart: "I'm joined now by our own vice-presidential firearms mishap analyst, Rob Corddry. Rob, obviously a very unfortunate situation. How is the vice president handling it?

Rob Corddry: "Jon, tonight the vice president is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Wittington. According to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time there were quail in the brush.

"And while the quail turned out to be a 78-year-old man, even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face. He believes the world is a better place for his spreading buckshot throughout the entire region of Mr. Whittington's face."

Jon Stewart: "But why, Rob? If he had known Mr. Whittington was not a bird, why would he still have shot him?"

Rob Corddry: "Jon, in a post-9-11 world, the American people expect their leaders to be decisive. To not have shot his friend in the face would have sent a message to the quail that America is weak."

Jon Stewart: "That's horrible."

Rob Corddry: "Look, the mere fact that we're even talking about how the vice president drives up with his rich friends in cars to shoot farm-raised wingless quail-tards is letting the quail know 'how' we're hunting them. I'm sure right now those birds are laughing at us in that little 'covey' of theirs.

Jon Stewart: "I'm not sure birds can laugh, Rob."

Rob Corddry: "Well, whatever it is they do ... coo .. they're cooing at us right now, Jon, because here we are talking openly about our plans to hunt them. Jig is up. Quails one, America zero.

Jon Stewart: "Okay, well, on a purely human level, is the vice president at least sorry?"

Rob Corddry: "Jon, what difference does it make? The bullets are already in this man's face. Let's move forward across party lines as a people ... to get him some sort of mask."

Good Story on the Influence of Blogs

Tim Little over at Bluemassgroup directed me to this article on the influence of blogs and other netroots paraphernalia.

To sum it up: the article says that Liberal/Progressive blogs may be to the 2006 campaign what talk radio was to the 1994 campaign. Blogs are egalitarian and transparent and thus reflect the best instincts of both Liberalism and democracy.

I agree and to add one of my own preoccupations to this analysis: blogs operate on an evolutionary principle. The evolutionary competition that blogs must survive makes them inherently "fit" to influence opinion and advance ideas. Blogs have virtualy no entry costs (anyone can start one) and must exist in a crowded environment (not only the Interent but all the other sources of media info and entertainment); so anyone can get in the competition but only a few will ever be influential. Those that persist and succeed have had to occupy a niche and fullfil a need better than all the others. This process lends itself to moving forward with only the most well articulated and coherent ideas.

Sounds like the ideal way to craft a campaign message.

The Bush Budget and the End of Conservatism

When President Bush unveiled his budget earlier this week it may have marked the beginning of the end for Republican hegemony. It was a good run but finally policy is running smack into politics for the Republicans and the freeride is over.

Let me explain.

Conservative Republican dominance of US politics is a result of a few key things:

-Liberalism had achieved many of its goals: civil rights, the mainstreaming of environmentalism, feminisim and civil libertaries, the success of anti-poverty programs (morally if not actually), etc. With these goals accomplished Liberals became defenders of the status quo and lost their zeal for revolutionary politics. Moderates (the average middle class voter) lost his willingness to vote with reference to enlightened principal and felt free to vote his own self-interest. In a wealth Country such as ours voting purely out of self-interest means voting for really big tax cuts and big new spending programs.

-Demographic shifts moved cultural attitudes to the Right. As the baby boomers get older they become ever more conservative in their cultural attitudes. The "coarsening of culture" perception seems to be genetically programed to kick in around age 40 and the genes that cause its development will not yield to reason.

-Liberalism has no great moral principal to champion and expectations for a moral cause are unrealisticly compared to the civil rights era. Most of the work that remains for Liberalism is the tedium of finalizing the gains from the last era. Work like this attracts only the most committed or the most vested. In either case, they are unattractive leaders for the majority of voters.

But even this parade of circumstantial maladies would not allow Conservative dominance were it not for the Republicans' savy in crafting a new campaign message. Campaigns are won with broad themes. Candidates try and give voters a sense of the principles that guide them and the goals that motivate them. Up until the late 1980's it was fairly easy to predict the campaign themes of any given Republican candidate and any given Democratic candidate. Republican candidates would campaign on principles of limited government and goals like lower taxes and fewer government regulations. Democrats, of course, would campaign on more activist government and, though they may have hated to say it too frequently, higher taxes.

The parties' respective campaign themes had been formed in the early 20th Century and both parties continued to use them until midway through the 1980s. Their themes represented each parties core values and it is fair to say that both parties did reasonably well with them. That is, each party had its core of voters and they just had to catch enough of the swing voters in any particular election to get a majority of votes and win the election. Capturing the swing voters in any particular year has more to do with luck than anything else: the Cold War was a set of events that benefited Republicans for their Hawkish foreign policy while the economic boom after World War II benefited Democrats. Neither of these events could be controled by either party but in each case they benefited one party over the other because they could be used to bolster their respective ideologies.

What happens next to allow Republicans to gain dominance is either the cynical and dishonest manipulation of the public for short term electoral gains or the cynical and dishonest manipulation of the public for long term electoral gain. It depends on your perspective.

As I said earlier, you used to be able to predict the campaign themes of the candidates: Republicans wanted to cut taxes and Democrats didn't. This was an honest debate. Each side would make its case and the public would decide which it wanted: an expansion of government programs to ____ (take your pick: provide health care for the poor, fund job training for the poor and the displaced middle class, improve schools, the list goes on). Or no such expansion of government AND a tax cut (or at least no new taxes)

The Republicans seemed t0 do pretty well under this arrangement. They stood on principle and if the public wanted something else, they died on principle. Then they got crafty.

Republicans realized that they could campaign on cutting taxes AND increasing spending. I know . . . that's nutty . . .no one will fall for it . . .and it's blatently dishonest and manipulative. But it works. At least for a little while.

Reagan cut taxes and spending dramatically in 1980 but reversed himself the next year and recinded some of those tax cuts and restored much of the spending he'd cut while further increasing defense spending. The result (although it took a few years and personally I think government actions have very little effect on the overall economy) was an economic boom in the latter half of the 1980s and Reagan's reelection.

Of course this led to massive federal deficits and "Bush I" had to raise taxes to deal with them and was challenged from the Right during the parties primary for his honesty. Clinton raised taxes as well but the economy was recovering anyway and things went swimmingly from there on.

But the lesson that Republicans took from this was that cutting taxes and increasing spending is a sure way to get reelected. This would seem to be one of those obvious truths that everyone knows but believes: (1) you can't get away with it because voters will see it as a sham and (2) will only work for a few election cycles before deficits will require draconian spending cuts which will take all the luster from the ruling party's feel good tax and spending policies.

So that's where we are now. The Republicans passed a capital gains and dividend tax cut in December of last year that reduces goverment revenue by 80 billion. Bush's budget cuts (to take one example) to the Medicare program amount to 35 billion over the next 5 years. The math doesn't add up. Conservatives know Bush hasn't proposed cuts that are nearly significant enough to accomplish his stated goal of cutting the federal deficit in half over the next 10 years (a paltry and insufficient goal anyway) and they are saying it. But Congress is even less likely to approve significant spending cuts than the President, who after all doesn't have to worry about getting reelected.

All those Republicans who were elected (and reelected) over the last 10 years because Conservatives were pleased with the tax cuts and patiently awaiting the strangulation death of government spending programs will now find that actually cutting those programs bothers the swing voters and is not really possible without a fundamental shift in the way Americans think about government. Their choices: make the cuts and lose the next election because swing voters think you're hard hearted, don't make the cuts and swing voters will think you're irresponsible or raise taxes and lose Conservatives.

It was fun while it lasted. Or as Malibu Barbie might say, "Governing is hard."

Abortion: Policy and Politics

This dialogue between Katha Pollitt and Will Saletan is a good example of the intersection of philosophy, policy and politics that I'm hoping this blog will address.

Econ 101 for the WSJ

You need to Know the Costs to Comparison Shop

You'd think the prestigious WSJ (subscriber only) would have better economists writing their Review and Outlook column. Or maybe they are just dishonest.

The column on Feb. 1, 2006 is on health care and one line is so shockingly wrong it even jumped out at me. The WSJ writes, "Though it represents one-sixth of the U.S. Economy, health care is the one industry in which the purchasers actually have no idea what anything costs. An individual market for health insurance would allow more freedom of choice while making consumers more cost conscious" See the error? The sentences contradict one another. How will consumers become more cost conscious if they don't know what anything costs.

Perhaps they mean that the reforms Bush is proposing will make costs more transparent and thus consumers will know what medical care costs but that is just foolish to believe. Transparency in health care is a fine idea but the nature of health care spending is such that it will always be difficult to comparison shop for medical treatments. Even the best health care consumer website can't quantify the intangibles of choosing a doctor to remove a potentially cancerous mole (for example). There are just too many externals to consider If you're family doctor recommends a particular dermatologist but a health care consumer website says he is on the more expensive end of the list of docs who perform this procedure, how is this information going to help you--remember this is a potentially cancerous mole--feel like taking a chance? I didn't think so.

To be fair, Conservatives are legitimately confused about how to deal with the health care spending issue. Instinctually, they believe the issue is not properly before the government but that is a problem with their philosophy not their policy.