Just a Little Bit of Torture?

Via Charles Pierce, I found Jonah Goldberg's unimpressive defense of the use of torture. Goldberg opens,

For a long time I resisted the word “torture” when discussing the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used against high-value captives in the War on Terror. I don’t think I can do that anymore.

Let's be blunt, here. There's only one reason somebody like Goldberg would shy away from the use of the word "torture" and it's because he's a coward. The facts were out there. The Senate report adds some shocking details, but if you weren't willing to call "torture" by its name until you learned that it may have involved hummus, you were either choosing not to look at the facts or you were scared of alienating your patrons and followers. In his new defense of torture, Goldberg makes clear that he believes the techniques we knew to be involved in "enhanced interrogation" were torture:

What some of these detainees went through pretty obviously amounted to torture. You can call it “psychological torture” or something to that effect, but such qualifiers don’t get you all that far.

So, then, he's a coward.

Goldberg immediately walks back from his concession of the obvious:

It’s true that torture is to some extent in the eye of the beholder. Everyone can agree that hot pokers, the rack, and the iron maiden qualify. But loud music, sleep deprivation, and even waterboarding? At first, maybe not. But over time, yes. Torture can be a lot like poison: The dosage matters.

To me, that paragraph seems internally inconsistent. The initial argument is that there can be sincere disagreement over whether certain practices constitute torture. But rather than advancing that argument, Goldberg switches to one of degree -- that certain techniques only become torture if they're applied in a repeated or prolonged manner. Goldberg's on the record here. If he has scruples, they're newly discovered:

Within this broad range, arguments over what is or is not torturous are to be had. The most debated technique is “waterboarding,” which terrifies its recipient into believing he is drowning. Apparently, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded until he gave us a bounty of information. Technically, the McCain amendment would ban such treatment.

Goldberg knew at that time that Mohammed was waterboarded repeatedly, yet he had no problem suggesting that waterboarding might not actually be torture and that it should not be prohibited. Goldberg also displayed an inability to comprehend the moral and legal issues behind torture:

But, as Charles Krauthammer notes in the current issue of The Weekly Standard, there’s reason to believe even McCain would endorse a “sliding scale” that would allow the Khalid Mohammeds to get roughed up under certain circumstances. In other words, McCain makes the sorts of distinctions mentioned above–he just doesn’t want them written into law. Indeed, under the “ticking time bomb” scenario, McCain believes the president should willfully break the law McCain has authored. That’s a pretty Kerryesque position: He’s for it, except when he’s against it. So much for absolutism.

Krauthammer proposed banning torture but with exceptions that would subsume the rule -- he would allow for torture in the "ticking time bomb" scenario, and for what he calls "slow fuse" suspects such as Mohammed. Even if you don't follow Krauthammer's definition of "ticking time bomb" so broadly as to include a situation where the enemy has captured a soldier, the difficulty of its implementation should be obvious: If you don't know what information a suspect has until after you torture him, you're going to end up torturing people who have no information, who may have been deliberately fed misinformation for you to elicit, and who you presuppose are going to lie to you. You, as a torturer, also don't know either if or when the lie becomes the truth.

You risk getting an avalanche of information that buries the truth. You risk getting several versions of the truth, with amendment or new "details" added at every turn simply to get the torture to stop. In a non-ticking time bomb scenario, such as a soldier's being held hostage, you may have the luxury of repeatedly returning to your suspects to torture them again and again, until they give you better information... assuming they have it. But in an actual ticking time bomb scenario, you won't know if you have the right person, you won't know if you're getting accurate information, and you may in fact end up chasing red herrings of your own creation rather than following valid leads.

It's not clear that Goldberg accepted, or even understood, Krauthammer's distinction between the "ticking time bomb" and the "slow fuse". Krauthammer endorsed torturing somebody like Mohammed on the assumption that he's going to have useful information that he won't otherwise provide to interrogators -- and because he doesn't believe that suspected terrorists are deserving of basic human rights or dignity. Krauthammer's exceptions are so broad that his proposed limited prohibition of torture would not prevent any torture. His conception of the "ticking time bomb" is so broad as to encompass pretty much any possible, future terrorist attack or the location of a captures soldier. It's difficult to believe that he would object to the use of torture to find arms stashes, or to find people higher on the food chain, all in the name of preventing imminent terrorist attacks -- because terrorists are always plotting the next attack. Any detainee is thus reasonably treated as a "ticking time bomb" -- and if, for some reason, you can't make that case, you can simply apply the subjective measure that you think the person is "high value" and can be tortured to obtain whatever information he holds.

Although it seems obvious, Goldberg was completely unable to grasp the distinction between the positions of people like McCain and Kerry, and the unprincipled arguments of somebody like Krauthammer. Kerry and McCain were prepared for the possibility that the mythic "ticking time bomb" might actually be found, with the President being called upon to authorize torture in violation of the law. A President who could not make the case would be subject to impeachment, and he and those following his orders could face criminal charges. Such an approach should all-but-eliminate the possibility of a Bush-Cheney torture regime, as their programs would be plainly unlawful. Krauthammer, on the other hand, would have been perfectly happy to give that regime the full blessings of the law.

Goldberg is upset with the idea that once something is identified as torture, it should be deemed off-limits:

One of the great problems with the word “torture” is that it tolerates no ambiguity. It is a taboo word, like racism or incest. Once you call something torture, the conversation is supposed to end. It’s a line no one may cross. As a result, if you think the enhanced interrogation techniques are necessary, or simply justified, you have to call them something else. Similarly, many sincere opponents of these techniques think that if they can simply call them “torture,” their work is done.

Pierce points out the stupidity of Goldberg's points of comparison:

This is a guy who has made a comfortable career out of the notion that liberal fascists use "racism" as a club to bludgeon conservatives into silence when those conservatives are only trying to have a discussion about values and the public schools. Is he implying here that people use the words "incest" and "torture" in the same way? Do liberals cry "incest" when conservatives are only trying to talk about the gene pool out of which have emerged their hot cousins?

But more than that, Goldberg again displays the same sort of cowardice that plagues not just his musings on torture, but most of his work. He just told us that he was tremulous of using the word "torture" to describe torture, yet he's now suggesting that all it takes to get us back to where we were a few years ago is a properly applied euphemism. There is no similarity between suggesting that torture should be illegal, and using a euphemism to describe acts you know to fall under the definition of torture in order to try to sidestep legal and moral issues. Beyond that, Goldberg knows that torture opponents are not simply articulating a definition and declaring their job to be done:

The problem is that the issue isn’t nearly so binary. Even John McCain — a vocal opponent of any kind of torture — has conceded that in some hypothetical nuclear ticking-time-bomb scenario, torture might be a necessary evil. His threshold might be very high, but the principle is there nonetheless.

As previously explained, McCain would have the torturer and those who authorized his acts face possible prosecution, defending his breach of a torture prohibition based upon a strong argument of necessity. McCain would have the torturer clearly demonstrate courage in his convictions, a concept that appears to be outside of Goldberg's comprehension.

And nearly everyone understands the point: When a greater evil is looming in the imminent future, the lesser evil becomes more tolerable. This is why opponents of the interrogation program are obsessed with claiming that it never worked, at all.

Here, again, Goldberg is unable to maintain internal consistency. He cannot simultaneously hold up John McCain as the iconic opponent of the torture program, while pretending that McCain is "obsessed with claiming that it never worked." While some do take the position that torture "never" works, most opponents of torture recognize that you may be able to gain useful information from torture -- but with much of that information subject to being elicited through rapport-based interrogation without the moral issues of torture, or the confounding problem of useful facts being buried in an avalanche of lies and misinformation pouring out of a suspect who will say anything to make the torture stop.

Goldberg also steps right past the obvious, that proponents of the torture program have a very long history of lying about the program and the intelligence they gathered. They lied about the scope of the program. They lied about its effectiveness. They lied about the utility of information they gathered. Knowing that their actions would shock the conscience of the nation, they systematically destroyed the evidence. You would not expect that level of deceit, exaggeration and cover-up from people who sincerely believed in their program.

Lt. Col. Douglas A. Pryer, U.S. Army, wrote an essay for Foreign Policy, entitled, I don’t believe a word of what torture advocates say—and neither should you.

Predictably, torture’s acolytes are already responding: The report was a Republican witch hunt led by Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein. Facts were selectively culled by partisan staffers in order to paint the program in the worst possible light. Other staffers could’ve selected different facts and reached completely opposite conclusions. Sure, there were problems with the program, but these techniques really did “work.” They saved lives. Someday, the truth will be revealed, and the men and women who performed this “hard, dirty work” for good ends will be lauded as the true heroes they are. In the mean time, trust us regarding this program’s success. WE KNOW.

Hogwash. I’ve never believed a word of what torture’s advocates say, and neither should you.

The author, who managed interrogation operations for the 1st Armored Division (1AD) in Baghdad from Jul-Nov 2003, asked that several of his prisoners be "re-interrogated" at Abu Ghraib,

Now, this is important: not once during this period did my Division receive any useful intelligence from Abu Ghraib. We received a few reports that Abu Ghraib interrogators seemed to think contained useful intelligence, but they contained nothing of substance that wasn’t contained in earlier reports. It was a mystery to me then why our interrogators in Baghdad produced actionable intelligence nearly every day but those at Abu Ghraib produced nothing of value—not little of value, NOTHING of value.

He opines,

But while trying to make sense of my own experiences, I’ve also read extensively on the subject, and all that I’ve read reinforces the same conclusion: torture is an immensely impractical intelligence-gathering tool. Professional interrogators who have become truly expert at employing rapport-based approaches decry torture’s effectiveness as an intelligence-gathering tool. Yes, you sometimes get the truth, but this truth is rarely substantial and is typically buried in what I’ve heard professional interrogators call “the longest list of lies in the world.”

Those who claim that torture has more chance of success than rapport-based approaches have limited (if any) direct experience with these approaches. They’re rarely real interrogators....

When the 9/11 attacks took place, nearly 3000 Americans lost their lives, and so many Americans lost their minds, U.S. Army interrogation doctrine (as expressed in the 1987 Intelligence Interrogation manual) had it right: “Experience indicates that . . . the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.” Unfortunately, this doctrine—which reflected the practical experience of generations of interrogators—was thrown away by arrogant amateurs who thought they knew more than the professionals.

He points out that there's more to the debate than "does it work",

The question of "does it work" aside, there are HUGE strategic drawbacks to torture, such as how it undermines the rule of law, corrupts those who use it, undercuts military training, cedes moral high ground to our nation’s enemies, creates distrust among allies, sows dissension at home, serves as a source of recruits and donations for our nation’s enemies, creates irreconcilable enemies, and makes the ultimate goal of any conflict—its peaceful resolution—increasingly difficult.

Quite simply, for a mature democracy in the information age, there may be no surer tool for prolonging conflicts and shaping defeat than employing torture.

By pretending that opponents of torture begin and end their argument with, "It's wrong", Goldberg conveniently avoids addressing any of the more difficult arguments against torture.

Goldberg then brings in the false analogy:

And this suggests why the talking point about drone strikes has such power. Killing is worse than torture. Life in prison might be called torture for some people, and yet we consider the death penalty a more severe punishment....

It’s odd: Even though killing is a graver moral act, there’s more flexibility to it. America killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people in World War II, but few would call that murder because such actions as the firebombing of Dresden were deemed necessary to win the war.

In other words, we have the moral vocabulary to talk about kinds of killing — from euthanasia and abortion to capital punishment, involuntary manslaughter and, of course, murder — but we don’t have a similar lexicon when it comes to kinds of torture.

It would be interesting to hear Jonah Goldberg's description of the military justification of the firebombing of Dresden, which I expect would be about as deep as his understanding of Mussolini's connection to fascism -- "Oops, I forgot Mussolini was a fascist".¹

Goldberg is obviously no student of history, but if he were he might have learned that the allied commanders who ordered such acts as the firebombing of cities in Japan knew that their acts were legally dubious and knew that they would likely result in war crimes charges if the Allies lost the war. That is the very sort of accountability that John McCain wishes to bring to torture -- to have the person making the order do so in contemplation that his decision could result in his spending many years in prison (or, in the case of war crimes, the hangman's noose), something that also likely plays into the public acceptance of the necessity defense.

Also, in war the question is almost never going to be, "Should we fire a missile or should we conduct a precision raid to kill or extract an enemy leader or terrorist". While it may be true that, in hindsight, a terrorist might prefer to be tortured and imprisoned over being blown up by a drone, perhaps along with members of his family, that only becomes relevant if the putative target of a drone strike decides to turn himself over to U.S. forces.

Goldberg is essentially arguing that, having accepted that torture is wrong, we need a new euphemism for torture, or at least for the modest amount of torture that Goldberg would have us see as something other than torture. Actually, the issue of whether or not an act constitutes torture can be made reasonably clear, using a definition such as Lt. Col. Pryer's, "Today, I judge any tactic designed to inflict physical or mental pain severe enough to 'break' someone to be 'torture.'". Goldberg might want us to believe that offering a criminal suspect a cup of coffee during an interrogation is an insidious form of sleep deprivation, tantamount to making him stand without sleep and forcibly waking him every time he dozes off, but I suspect that most others can see the difference between an interrogation that goes on arguably past the point when a suspect should be allowed to sleep and intentional sleep deprivation.²

Moreover, in the former case the suspect can argue in court that the circumstances of the interrogation became unduly coercive -- and that is made easier if it's clear that interrogating officers were intentionally depriving the suspect of sleep in order to continue the interrogation of a suspect whose mental faculties were breaking down. There is no point to trying to use Goldberg's "little bit of torture" approach, as torture is only useful if the suspect breaks. Once you make the decision to torture, there's no level at which your actions do not constitute torture.

I don't want to overstate things here. Sometimes a suspect can be inspired to provide self-incriminating information based upon threats or statements that are coercive, but are not deemed to be torture. The federal government has a reputation for threatening to bring charges against a primary suspect's spouse, or possibly other family members, when pressuring a suspect to confess to a crime or to accept a plea bargain. Suspects detained for interrogation may be told that a co-defendant is making a confession that implicates them, and that if they don't confess they'll get a more severe penalty. I don't think that Pryer is referring to causing a suspect to break his silence, or break from a prior narrative, when he speaks of "mental pain severe enough to 'break' someone" -- but I would not be surprised if he argued that you would be much more likely to get reliable information from criminal suspects if you successfully use rapport-based techniques, particularly if he's familiar with false confession cases.

Goldberg then presents the argument, "Our torture is different, because our motives are pure,"

When John McCain was brutally tortured — far, far more severely than anything we’ve done to the 9/11 plotters — it was done to elicit false confessions and other statements for purposes of propaganda. When we tortured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, it was to get actionable intelligence on ongoing plots. It seems to me that’s an important moral distinction. If I torture a fiend to find out where he left a child to suffocate or starve in some dungeon, that’s a less evil act than torturing someone just to hear them renounce their god or country. Also, KSM was not some innocent subjected to torture to satisfy the grotesque desires of some sadists. He is an unlawful combatant responsible for murdering thousands of innocent Americans.

This may sound like nothing more than a rationalization. But that is to be expected when you try to reason through a morally fraught problem.

What it sounds like is both an oversimplification and a rationalization. While it is true that torture states use torture in order to obtain statements useful for propaganda purposes, as well as to generally intimidate the public, it is not true that they thus never use torture to gain intelligence about criminal, dissident, or terrorist activity, or to try to obtain useful intelligence from enemy soldiers. I suspect, also, that their torturers are every bit as good at rationalizing their conduct as is Goldberg when it comes to his insistence that when Americans torture they have only the purest of motives.

Here, again, Goldberg avoids addressing the actual positions of torture opponents. People like John McCain fully embrace the idea of American exceptionalism, and are going into this debate with the assumption that our motives in using torture will be pure. Unlike Goldberg, however, he has enough understanding of both history and the realities of torture to recognize that the use of torture should nonetheless be extremely rare, and that the legal framework for the use of torture should force decision-makers to consider both the need for torture and all reasonable alternatives before authorizing its use.

--------------------------------
Footnotes:

1. Goldberg's actual statement,

Mussolini was born a socialist, he died a socialist, he never abandoned his love of socialism, he was one of the most important socialist intellectuals in Europe and was one of the most important socialist activists in Italy, and the only reason he got dubbed a fascist and therefore a right-winger is because he supported World War I.

Goldberg's defense of his error is that he "misspoke", a claim that may be true but, if so, is akin to somebody professing to be an expert on the Middle East conflicts while forgetting, even momentarily, about Mohammed's connection to Islam. Actually, given that Mussolini railed against socialism, it would be a bit like such an "expert" arguing that Mohammed unsuccessfully tried to stop Islam.

2. One wonders what distinctions Goldberg would draw that would render the techniques of torture to be, in his view, non-torture. Is there actually a degree of waterboarding that could be deemed anything but torture? Would he defect rectal feeding -- "As long as you don't use any more hummus than you get in one of those airline snack packs" -- or would he concede that some techniques are always torture even if used only to a limited degree?

Those Unsustainable Deficits....

Incredible,

Based on the math, it is hard to justify a $250 million valuation for The Washington Post. The company reported it lost nearly $50 million for the first half of the year on its newspaper operation that generated $138.4 million in revenue. Of the $50 million loss, nearly $40 million was a noncash pension expense. So you could argue that the company lost only $10 million on operations. But it lost $33 million in the first half of 2012, too, also including pension costs. Circulation fell about 7 percent in the first half of 2013.

This is the paper that employs George "The Ichneumon Larva" Will, Charles "The Greek" Lane, Charles "Stein's Law" Krauthammer and Robert "Shoddy Quality" Samuelson? One imagines those four have already agreed to massive cuts in their pay and benefits. (And then one wakes up.)

Movement Toward Gay Marriage and the Myth of Roe v. Wade

Although I rarely find Charles Krauthammer to make a meaningful contribution to a public discussion, and his column on the DOMA decision isn't really an exception, he is repeating some unimpressive arguments raised often enough that it may be worth attempting to push them back. Before I get to the current column, I'll travel back in time seven years to some of his prior musings on the subject. Back then, Krauthammer was pushing the anti-gay marriage canard that if you allow gay marriage it inevitably follows that you should legalize polygamy:

In an essay 10 years ago, I pointed out that it is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights. After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one's autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement -- the number restriction (two and only two) -- is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.

Right there, Krauthammer give us pretty much all the evidence we need that his thinking on this issue is weak, and that he doesn't understand the legal issues involved in the case. I don't want to assume to much, but I would hope that even Krauthammer would concede that to apply a similar argument to anti-miscegenation laws would be an "epic fail".

After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) the same race, and if, as advocates of interracial marriage insist, the race requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one's autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement -- the number restriction (two and only two) -- is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.

I know that opponents of marriage equality argue vociferously that "allowing gay marriage is completely different from allowing interracial marriage", but the reason that comparison comes up is because of arguments like Krauthammer's. By his "logic", there is no distinction - if you don't allow discrimination in which of two, unmarried adults can get married, you cannot defend restricting the institution of marriage to two unmarried adults.

The response of many opponents of gay marriage is that being gay is not a protected category - it's not on the short list of factors that the state is supposed to scrupulously avoid using to discriminate between citizens - and thus the reasoning behind Loving does not extend to gay marriage. That because the discrimination is not based upon a protected class such as race, religion, national origin, color, (in their opinion) sex, or another such category, that the courts should not concern themselves with the question. Krauthammer does not appear to be working from the "protected category" argument, because "married vs. unmarried" isn't on that list.

The language of DOMA permitted the Supreme Court to resolve the case from a different angle - that Congress intruded into an area of law traditionally left to the states (domestic relations) in order to impose restrictions and disabilities on a class of people, and thus ultimately violates basic due process and equal protection principles applicable to the Federal Government. What frightens opponents of marriage equality is that the court all but said that there is not even a rational basis for opposing gay marriage - that should the issue be squarely raised. Given that the two leading arguments against gay marriage (and you'll forgive me if I missed a third)¹ are "tradition" and various forms of "gay sex is icky", it's not surprising that they are concerned that a future court might find there to be no rational basis for the continued state-level prohibition.

Perhaps Krauthammer accepts that the arguments against gay marriage are fundamentally weak. Perhaps, like many gay marriage opponents, he starts channeling Rick Santorum - never mind that the same "slippery slope" argument applies to anti-miscegenation laws (and were probably applied to that particular marriage equality argument in certain parts of the country). The slippery slope argument can be raised about any change, and its use is usually fallacious. In this particular instance, no surprise, it is fallacious.

We can start with this: When you have two unmarried individuals, the marriage contract is between them and them alone. If you then say, "We don't care if you're married already, you are free to marry an additional spouse," you risk infringing the rights of the existing spouse. And if you require that spouse's knowing consent to the new marriage - or should I say, all spouses - you're conceding a significant difference between the marriage of unmarried people and the marriage where one or more of the parties to the marriage is already married. Adding additional spouses is not, as Krauthammer blithely asserts an "individual choice" because the marriage already involves more than one individual. States have created bodies of law addressing the rights and duties of married couples, property division upon divorce, child custody upon separation or divorce, what property is part of the marital estate, pension and inheritance rights, access to health insurance benefits, taxes, housing laws, eligibility for social services.... When you add additional parties to the mix, every single one of those laws would need to be revisited and would become ridiculously complex.

There's a reason why the few nations that permit polygamy restrict that right to the male partner, and given him most of the rights within the marriage including in relation to assets and the children - because once you move toward an egalitarian arrangement it becomes extraordinarily difficult to create legal institutions around multi-partner marriages. In those cultures, the marriage is a constant that revolves around the man. Women can enter or leave the marriage. But if you attempt to create egalitarian multi-partner marriages you create a context in which the marriage can continue even after one or more partners leaves. You could end up with a marriage in which the original parties to the marriage are no longer involved, a 'divorce' that creates two or more new 'marriages' in its wake, and claims to custody or visitation from a wide assortment of moms and dads.

If you're not willing to directly address the weakness of the argument for proscribing gay marriage, perhaps it's not surprising that you've given even less thought to the weakness of the slippery slope argument you throw up as a shield. But whether or not you support polygamy, you cannot avoid the fact that there is a rational distinction between categorizing people as "married" versus "unmarried", and you cannot avoid acknowledging the complexity of rebuilding our nation's laws to accommodate marriages involving multiple parties.²

Krauthammer agrees that gay marriage poses no threat to "traditional marriage", so his argument really is one of fairness,

Posit a union of, say, three gay women all deeply devoted to each other. On what grounds would gay activists dismiss their union as mere activity rather than authentic love and self-expression?

That's a group choice, not, as he earlier posited, an individual choice. Here, Krauthammer is shifting the question from "is there a rational basis for the state to treat unmarried people differently from married people" to "If we allow gay marriage, is it unfair to people who want polygamous marriage." The "logic" here appears to be that it's better to be unfair to large numbers of people than it is to be unfair to smaller numbers of people, without regard to whether the distinction can be explained or justified - and that argument ultimately betrays the fact that Krauthammer's argument lacks a logical foundation. His argument boils down to, "It may be unfair to gay people to not allow them to marry, but allowing gay marriage would not end the unfairness to polygamists that they can't engage in multi-partner marriages, so we shouldn't do it.

As for gay marriage, I've come to a studied ambivalence. I think it is a mistake for society to make this ultimate declaration of indifference between gay and straight life, if only for reasons of pedagogy. On the other hand, I have gay friends and feel the pain of their inability to have the same level of social approbation and confirmation of their relationship with a loved one that I'm not about to go to anyone's barricade to deny them that. It is critical, however, that any such fundamental change in the very definition of marriage be enacted democratically and not (as in the disastrous case of abortion) by judicial fiat.

"...if only for reasons of pedagogy"? How... compelling. To me, that does not sound like an expression of "studied ambivalence" - it sounds like a preference for the status quo and the willingness to disregard the consequences of his policy preferences on any class of people who aren't Charles Krauthammer. As for the conclusion about judicial fiat... call it foreshadowing.

For a guy who wants us to see him as "ambivelent" on the subject of gay marriage, Krauthammer seems to have little conflict - beyond that one-time nod to the pain suffered by his "gay friends", but all of his arguments come down on the other side. For example, he imagines that gay marriage will lead to a "war on religion", picturing a religious college that is sued for denying a married, gay couple the opportunity to live in married student housing. Never mind that the school could avoid being a casualty of this imagined war simply by refusing federal money - a notion that I guess Krauthammer finds far more disturbing than discrimination against gay couples. Krauthammer complains, "It will be sued everywhere in the country if it’s declared to be a constitutional right, because it would imply that anybody who opposes it does it only out of bigotry, for no other reason". Given that the only other reasons for opposing gay marriage that Krauthammer has acknowledged are "pedagogy" and that "allowing gay marriage would be unfair to polygamists"... I suppose he makes a valid point. To assume that all marriage opponents are anti-gay bigots can be said to be making the mistake of attributing to malice something that at times will be better explained by ignorance.

Krauthammer's ambivelence is cast further into doubt by his recent column on the subject. Krauthammer proposes that there are only two possible grounds for holding DOMA to be unconstitutional, federalism and leaving the institution of marriage to the states, and equal protection. Krauthammer sees the two justifications as irreconcilable, and thus that it's inevitable that the Supreme Court will rule that all states must allow gay marriage. I'm not sure whether I should take that to mean that Krauthammer is implicitly conceding that there's no rational basis for laws prohibiting gay marriage, or if he's unable to fathom why the court does not find "reasons of pedagogy" to be an adequate basis for discrimination.

From a technical standpoint, Krauthammer is conflating a decision holding that the federal government cannot arbitrarily curb the rights of a group of people with an emphasis on interstate recognition of marriage, with state legislation that is entirely intrastate in nature. Krauthammer complains about equal protection,

In states with same-sex marriage, Washington must give the same federal benefits to gay couples as to straight couples because to do otherwise is to discriminate against the gay couples. After all, they are equally married in their states. For Washington to discriminate against them is to deny them equal protection of the laws. Such discrimination is nothing more than irrational animus — and therefore constitutionally inadmissible.

Except the Supreme Court was commenting not on state laws for or against gay marriage, but on a federal law that targeted married gay couples and stripped them of a basic legal protection - to have their lawful marriages respected by other states. As the Court put it, "The Act’s demonstrated purpose is to ensure that if any State decides to recognize same-sex marriages, those unions will be treated as second-class marriages for purposes of federal law." There's nothing inherent in the Windsor decision that removes from a state the right to forbid same sex marriages within its borders - but that state will no longer have a federal statute that it can point to as a justification for disregarding the validity of gay marriages lawfully entered in other states.

In other words, Krauthammer's argument only holds if he believes that there are no better arguments for opposing gay marriage than those proposed by the defenders of DOMA. I'm not sure if I should take this as an implicit abandonment of his notion that gay marriage can be forbidden "for reasons of pedagogy", but it's safe to infer that he does not expect the Supreme Court to find a law premised upon his position to have a rational basis.

As Krauthammer sees it, the problem with this decision is that it paves the way for a future decision that will require all states to permit gay marriage.

Which is exactly where the majority’s [equal protection] rationale leads — nationalizing gay marriage, the way Roe nationalized abortion. This is certainly why David Boies, the lead attorney in the companion Proposition 8 case, was so jubilant when he came out onto the courthouse steps after the ruling. He understood immediately that once the court finds it unconstitutional to discriminate between gay and straight couples, nationalizing gay marriage is just one step away.

I know there's a "conventional wisdom" that holds that but for the opinion in Roe v. Wade we would have had a national debate that would have led toward reproductive freedom across the country, and that the reason we have a continued debate over abortion rights is because the Supreme Court cut that debate short. The only problem with that argument is, well, everything. Roe v. Wade is controversial because it's at the center of the abortion rights debate, but despite decades of controversy and opprobrium it was, is, and remains consistent with public opinion. To the extent that Roe foreclosed part of a debate, it was not the part that would lead toward the expansion of reproductive freedoms for women, it was the effort to restrict and outlaw abortion procedures. Scott Lemieux argues,

In general, the comparison of abortion politics before and after Roe v. Wade is most consistent with the expectations held by skeptics of judicial exceptionalism. Clearly, the legitimation hypothesis is not applicable in the abortion case. The court’s intervention certainly did not resolve the abortion issue in any meaningful sense, and the public certainly did not accept the court’s verdict as the final word on the issue. On the other hand, there is also little evidence that the court’s action would have produced more countermobilization than a similar policy enacted by Congress or state legislatures. The pro-life movement was a powerful force before Roe, and the decision did not demonstrably change either the tone of abortion discourse or the distribution of public opinion on the issue. There is no evidence, specifically or generally, that policy-making by the courts is thought of as inherently illegitimate by the public. It should be re-emphasized that these empirical findings do not mean that there was no countermobilization against Roe.... Certainly, abortion politics are more salient at the level of presidential politics in 2003 than they were in 1972 when George McGovern declined to take a position on the issue. The comparison of abortion politics before and after Roe, however, compels the strong inference that it is the nationalization of abortion politics represented by Roe, and not the legalization of [abortion], that is the key variable in explaining this shift. Hypothetically, had Congress passed (and been constitutionally able) to pass legislation with similar policy content, there can be little question that abortion would have become a more salient issue in presidential politics as well.

Lemieux's argument, as exemplified by his reference to McGovern, is also consistent with the fact that it was not until the Reagan era, and its effort to turn the religious right into a permanent Republican voting bloc, that being "pro-life" became a litmus test in the Republican Party.

Krauthammer is not demonstrating concern that this theoretical cut-off of debate predicated by decisions like Roe or Windsor will prevent the development of abortion rights and gay marriage as national legal rights. For example, if he's truly concerned about federalism, why didn't he blow a gasket about DOMA, a law that allowed state legislatures to avoid trying to create laws and policies consistent with their own constitutions and the U.S. Constitution. What meaningful debate did we have in the decade after the passage of DOMA?

Krauthammer's selective focus on court decisions that lead toward gay marriage, and his (at best) disinterest in state and federal legislation and ballot initiatives that attempt to impede or prevent movement toward gay marriage, suggests that his opposition is to the expansion of rights and not to the means by which those rights are expanded or protected. In this specific case it seems less that Krauthammer's actual objection is to the fact that the Supreme court intervened, and is more to the fact that he is unable to articulate a single reason why the Court's decision was incorrect.
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1. A third argument might be, "If gay marriage is allowed, the result will be to weaken the traditional institution of marriage." The primary problem with that argument is that there's no evidence to support it, not even from jurisdictions that permit gay marriage. If you don't care whether your argument is supported by evidence, you could as easily argue that gay marriage will bring on a Martian invasion. Either way, in the absence of evidence you're blowing smoke.

2. Krauthammer claimed, "This line of argument makes gay activists furious" - no, Charles, this is what "furious" looks like; odds are that was people pointing and laughing.

Mamet's Plays vs. Political Commentary

I've seen David Mamet interviewed, so I know he's no slouch. He seems to be writing his political drivel in earnest, so I can't say that he's a fraud. So what does that leave me with? Some form of narcissism crossed with life in a self-imposed bubble. Back when Mamet "came out" as a conservative, he did so through an essay that reflected a surprising lack of depth and intellectual rigor. But the surprise is not that a smart person can be foolish, or that his initial comments on a subject that he has consistently overlooked will demonstrate the fact that he's new to the issues. The surprise is that somebody whose work suggests that he grapples with serious issues would be so inept at grappling with actual issues.

Five years later, Mamet shows no more sophistication as a political thinker than he did on day one, and if anything his positions are even further removed from objective fact and history. My inference is this: Mamet is good at picking up on serious issues, and of creating fictional scenarios that expand upon those issues, but he's not particularly good at relating his scenarios to reality. Meanwhile, he restricts himself to a circle of similarly minded people who gush over his brilliance, but have no greater knowledge or capacity for analysis than he does. That appears to have been true when he was coasting through life giving essentially no thought to politics except for occasionally fuming that NPR was too sympathetic to Palestinians.

Paul Waldman opines,

To be clear, the point isn't that Mamet is conservative, even though it's true that the overwhelming majority of artists are liberal, so that makes him unusual. The point is that he brings to his political analysis none of the things that make him a good playwright. It would be one thing if Mamet was, let's say, a widely admired painter or photographer who turned out to have simplistic political views. Visual artists sometimes disappoint their fans by not being particularly eloquent when they're called upon to discuss their work, but words are not their tools. A playwright, on the other hand, spends his time studying and manipulating language, ideas, and characters. That someone who has produced insightful art about corners of American life and the human condition more broadly would then turn around and offer political analysis with all the sophistication of the twelfth caller to Sean Hannity's radio show this afternoon is profoundly puzzling.

But it's a good reminder of something: Political writing is a craft, just like writing plays. Pretty much everyone who has ever read a newspaper thinks they could do it as well or better than those who do it for a living, but most of the time they can't. David Mamet spent a lot of time and energy working on his craft, but the fact that he got famous doing it doesn't mean he has any opinions about or analysis of politics that anyone would gain anything from hearing.

I agree with the latter part more than the former. That is, I agree that somebody who has great gifts in one area may lack gifts or skills in another. But I think the things that make Mamet an interesting playwright and screenwriter are the same things that make him a terrible political analyst.

I have enjoyed a lot of Mamet's work, but I have the impression from some of his work that he tell into the same sort of trap that we have seen with other writers, that of thinking he's smarter than his audience. Works like The Spanish Prisoner succeed based upon the strength of the acting, the "solution" to the protagonist's problem was obvious and I find it a bit painful at times to watch "brilliant" characters do one stupid thing after another when the solution is right before their eyes - and when the character finally figures it out, rather than applying a logical ending (not very dramatically interesting) he resorts to the deus ex machina. Even in works I like a lot more, such as The Verdict, Mamet demonstrates little patience with reality. When he needs to force an outcome, his characters do what is necessary to force the outcome - absurd evidentiary rulings, a "feel good" jury verdict without regard for what would happen on appeal. But in Mamet's better dramatic work, the deviations from reality are a form of poetic license. It's not important that the courtroom scenes are often absurd, because the goal isn't realism - Mamet is showing us the flaws of the characters, the arbitrariness of the legal system, how a case can turn more on the personality of the judge than on the law and facts.... And sometimes he's just spinning a ridiculous yarn about one con game or another, with uneven results.

To me, it seems that Mamet is doing the same thing in his political commentary that he does in his scripts, but that he has somehow lost track of the difference between spinning an entertaining yarn that happens to address some important issues and speaking about the real world. Much of Mamet's fiction leaves me with the impression that he does little research, that he's not interested in interviewing experts or poring over books to try to determine if his stories are plausible or if he could accomplish the same dramatic effect while hewing closer to what actually might happen in real life. His political writing displays a similar disdain for research - he'll go with the common wisdom, the buzz from his sycophants and adherents, with reality being less important than belief, perhaps justified by the narcissistic conceit that "If my friends and I believe it, it must be true."

From his political "conversion",

The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.

From his latest screed,

The Founding Fathers, far from being ideologues, were not even politicians. They were an assortment of businessmen, writers, teachers, planters; men, in short, who knew something of the world, which is to say, of Human Nature. Their struggle to draft a set of rules acceptable to each other was based on the assumption that we human beings, in the mass, are no damned good—that we are biddable, easily confused, and that we may easily be motivated by a Politician, which is to say, a huckster, mounting a soapbox and inflaming our passions.

Has Mamet truly grown less informed about government over the past five years? Perhaps he floats in a circle of ignoramuses, and their ignorance is catching. Or perhaps he doesn't want to let the facts, even facts he has previously acknowledged, get in the way of his story. I recognize that many of Mamet's factual errors, such as his ignorance of Marxism, may simply be that - repeating the conventional wisdom of his new circle of peers, a reflection of the aforementioned conceit, "If we believe it, it must be right." But with mistakes like "The Founding Fathers... were not even politicians" it's difficult to imagine that Mamet even cares about whether his assertions of fact are correct. For the story he's telling, it's better that the founding fathers be non-ideological non-politicians so, just as with the fictional characters of one of his plays, he changes the facts and personalities to fit his story.

Another flaw of Mamet's political analysis? His logic is terrible. One small example,

As rules by the Government are one-size-fits-all, any governmental determination of an individual’s abilities must be based on a bureaucratic assessment of the lowest possible denominator. The government, for example, has determined that black people (somehow) have fewer abilities than white people, and, so, must be given certain preferences. Anyone acquainted with both black and white people knows this assessment is not only absurd but monstrous. And yet it is the law.

Except government rules are not "one size fits all". Even if they were "one size fits all," that would not necessitate that a "any governmental determination of an individual’s abilities" (whatever Mamet means by that) "must be based on a bureaucratic assessment of the lowest possible denominator". Mamet statement about race is absurd. It appears that he's alluding to affirmative action and civil rights laws, but those programs are not predicated upon a government determination "that black people (somehow) have fewer abilities than white people". They're predicated upon this nation's history of institutionalized racial inequality and racial discrimination. Based upon Mamet's false and absurd distortions, anti-discrimination laws become "monstrous", proof that the government can't believe what everybody knows, that the races are equal in every respect. And yet, in a wonderfully ambiguous flourish "it" is "the law".

Mamet continues,

President Obama, in his reelection campaign, referred frequently to the “needs” of himself and his opponent, alleging that each has more money than he “needs.”

But where in the Constitution is it written that the Government is in charge of determining “needs”? And note that the president did not say “I have more money than I need,” but “You and I have more than we need.” Who elected him to speak for another citizen?

We can start from, is Obama's statement true or false? Does Mamet believe that the President has insufficient money to meet his needs? Does he believe that Mitt Romney is struggling by on his quarter billion dollar fortune, barely able to keep the heat on in his five houses? From any reasonable standpoint the President was correct. But facts are boring, right? So Mamet goes off on a tear about how the Constitution does not place the government in charge of determining "needs". And after that non sequitur whines that the President is speaking for another person. As if Romney denied the charge. As if any person with a brain between his ears would dispute the charge. And then what he seems to think is his pièce de résistance, his brilliant and irrefutable point, "Who elected [the President] to speak for another citizen?" (Well, you see, David, we live under this system of government referred to as a representative democracy, and we do in fact elect our representatives to speak for us.) And yes, it gets worse from there - for the President to suggest that Romney has more money than he needs is the same thing as the government imposing "one-size-fits-all", never mind that the President was speaking about treating different classes of people (notably the ultra-rich) differently than the average working stiff. And there is no difference between that and slavery.

Mamet makes one ridiculous assertion after another.

What possible purpose in declaring schools “gun-free zones”? Who bringing a gun, with evil intent, into a school would be deterred by the sign?

The purpose of the law, of course, is to allow the police to stop and detain, and when appropriate prosecute and imprison, somebody who brings a firearm into the gun-free zone. If it's not illegal to have a gun in a school zone, the police are constrained in their ability to act before the gun is drawn.

We need more armed citizens in the schools.

Why? Because Mamet says so? And this is a universal truth? A school with a gang problem will be a better and safer place if every kid above the age of 18 has the right to bring a gun to school?

Walk down Madison Avenue in New York. Many posh stores have, on view, or behind a two-way mirror, an armed guard. Walk into most any pawnshop, jewelry story, currency exchange, gold store in the country, and there will be an armed guard nearby. Why? As currency, jewelry, gold are precious. Who complains about the presence of these armed guards? And is this wealth more precious than our children?

Actually, no, in most such stores there are no armed guards. But where they are, it's to protect against robbery. Fundamentally, Mamet knows the difference between children, money, precious metals and jewels - not one of the scam artists in any of his plays or movies has mused over whether it would be better to scam somebody out of a valuable patent, tens of thousands of dollars, $millions in gold, or their kids. I doubt we would have to explain to Mamet that just because banks transport cash and securities in armored cars, it does not follow that we need to replace the nation's school buses with armored cars. Businesses don't invest in bulletproof glass and armed security because they are protecting against obscure risk and enjoy wasting money, but because due to the nature of their operations they are under genuine risk of armed robbery.

Q. How many accidental shootings occurred last year in jewelry stores, or on any premises with armed security guards?

I'm not sure how many of the shootings were accidental, but it would seem quite a number - often by somebody who disarms the security guard. ("In 23% of shootings within the ED, the weapon was a security officer’s gun taken by the perpetrator."). As if we needed further confirmation that Mamet does no research and has little interest in facts. Mamet believes that all that is involved in having armed security in schools is "the cost of a pistol (several hundred dollars), and a few hours of training (that’s all the security guards get)" - reflecting his deep ignorance both of the cost of gun ownership and maintenance, and of the actual and continuing training required to make sure that the person with the gun has the necessary skills to use it safely and appropriately.

Did I mention Mamet's inaccurate claim that the President "just passed a bill that extends to him and his family protection, around the clock and for life, by the Secret Service". Does Mamet even know how a bill is passed? That the House of Representatives is controlled by Republicans? Apparently not. Mamet makes the absurd assertion that by recognizing that the President and his family have different security needs than the average American, the government is "regulat[ing] gun ownership based on its assessment of needs", which is... Marxism. Wait - you thought Marxism was when the government treated all people as if they were the same, and that "one size fits all" solutions were tantamount to slavery? That was paragraphs ago. Things have changed. And is Mamet seriously suggesting that the only solution that avoids Marxism is to either extend Secret Service protection to everybody in the nation, or to leave the President unprotected? To the extent that you try to find logical coherence in his arguments, yes, in fact he is.

Getting back to Mamet's plays for a moment, some defend his often stilted, stylized dialog as being "how people talk in real life." I've met a lot of people in my life and none speak in the manner of the characters of, say, House of Games. But the manner in which Mamet spins into a verbal frenzy, taking the President's true statement about Romney's wealth and, in a matter of a few sentences, equating it with slavery? Perhaps the reason I don't think Mamet's dialog is realistic is that I can't hear the voices in his head.

Waldman's commentary on the craft of political analysis is fair to a point, that people underestimate what is involved in writing good political commentary, but if we look at the most commercially successful political analysts of the day we often see little of that craft in their work. If I open a newspaper, I might find Charles Krauthammer opening a column with a dig at the President's use of a teleprompter, an absurd, racially-tinged attack that long ago passed its expiration date. I might find George Will spouting off about how climate change is a myth, with no more interest in the facts than Mamet. And if I flip open a Newsweek... make that click open... I might find... Mamet.

Sorry to say, the biggest money makers in the world of political commentary are charlatants - Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and the like - and many of the faces pushed upon us by the "respectable" media are well past their prime, or were never up to the task. Many of the best political analysts would struggle to get a column published by a major newspaper or to get invited to sit among the talking heads on a televised panel or news show. The shocking part is less that Newsweek is so eager to gain readers that it posts an editorial that is on par with an episode of "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo". The shocking part is how many people who you would think would have more respect for themselves eagerly line up to play the role of Honey Boo Boo.

It's a Conspiracy, I Tell You!

"We're through the looking glass here, people. And down the rabbit hole. And we've just had some kind of mushroom...."

Charles Krauthammer and Glenn Beck are on the same page: General Petraeus is the victim of a vast, left-wing conspiracy. As they say, "Great minds...."

I can't wait to learn about how Eric Cantor is actually a Democratic Party mole, or what "they" have on Darrell Issa that would prevent him from issuing a subpoena to Petraeus.

The Bush-Blair "Freedom Agenda"

Charles Krauthammer bloviates,

Today, everyone and his cousin supports the "freedom agenda." Of course, yesterday it was just George W. Bush, Tony Blair and a band of neocons with unusual hypnotic powers who dared challenge the received wisdom of Arab exceptionalism - the notion that Arabs, as opposed to East Asians, Latin Americans, Europeans and Africans, were uniquely allergic to democracy.

To the extent that Krauthammer is arguing that Tony Blair personifies the G.W. Bush "freedom agenda", and how it relates to Egypt, I agree completely.

Tony Blair has described Hosni Mubarak, the beleaguered Egyptian leader, as "immensely courageous and a force for good" and warned against a rush to elections that could bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power.

The former prime minister, now an envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, praised Mubarak over his role in the negotiations and said the west was right to back him despite his authoritarian regime because he had maintained peace with Israel.

Yes, when G.W., Tony Blair and their merry "band of neocons" stood for freedom they stood squarely behind people like Mubarak. And they stood in the way of Arab democracy not because they didn't believe it would be embraced, but because those pesky Arabs might have elected the wrong people.

And that pretty much sums up the rest of Krauthammer's column - the Arab world needs democracy, so for now we should prop up dictators and hope that they start creating the necessary institutions and opportunities such that elections can take place once the Arab world is no longer Islamic.

And Then Along Comes The Ever-Predictable Charles Krauthammer....

There's not much point in reading a Charles Krauthammer column. He's as repetitive as Richard Cohen and 99% of the time you know what he's going to say by the time you finish reading the headline. Today, of course, is no different. His column is entitled "Massacre, followed by libel" - which is, apparently, the closest he can come to echoing the theme presently being pushed by people like Sarah Palin that anybody who draws a connection between violent rhetoric and violent action is committing "blood libel". (I wonder if Krauthammer will write a column decrying that irresponsible, inflammatory use of language... Sorry, I'm kidding - it's a Republican speaking, so I actually don't.) And that's before you consider that Rep. Giffords is Jewish. Do these people think?

Which brings us back to Krauthammer who, for a smart person, does remarkably little thinking. Which is probably why he so frequently resorts to dishonest, logically flawed arguments. For example, he starts out with the accusation,

The charge: The Tucson massacre is a consequence of the "climate of hate" created by Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Obamacare opponents and sundry other liberal betes noires.

Except that's not the charge. You'll find few examples of anybody with any prominent making anything that resembles the charge. The closest actual example I've seen produced is a blog post to the Huffington Post by Gary Hart, somebody who long ago faded from the popular consciousness. And the criticism is not that people can't engage in free speech, but something that the vast majority of politicians and commentators on both sides of the aisle demonstrate through their conduct - that when you're a prominent leader of an American political party, you should choose your words carefully. You won't find Mitch McConnell bandying about phrases like "blood libel" or using campaign slogans such as "don't retreat, reload", because he knows it's beneath him, that it's bad for the party and that it's bad for the political culture. The debate is about a handful of people who presently are the unofficial opinion leaders or potential political leaders of the Republican Party who think it's really cool to use violent rhetoric, and to give unqualified support to candidates who echo or expand upon their rhetoric.

Let's keep in mind also that the criticism of Palin's rhetoric is anything but new. The angry response of people like Krauthammer and Pat Buchanan didn't emerge when, for example, Rep. Giffords was discussing the break-in at her office, the crosshairs imagery used by Palin, and violent rhetoric.

Where was Krauthammer's over-the-top anger at Giffords for daring to say "...for example we're on Sarah Palin's targeted list. But the thing is, the way she has it depicted has the cross-hairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize that there are consequences to that action." If he truly believes that criticism of violent rhetoric merits his present umbrage and the hysterical "blood libel" accusation he appears to echo in more sanitized form, why not then?

Let's imagine that a political leader depicts a set of targeted political seats by depicting them on a map overlaid by rifle crosshairs and setting forth below the specific candidates who are targeted for defeat, accompanied by a "Don't Retreat, Reload!" campaign theme. Now let's imagine that a psychopath, whatever his motivation, goes to a campaign event featuring a politician and starts shooting people including that politician and, when he runs out of bullets he... attempts to reload. And now let's imagine that somebody says, "You know what? Whatever was going through that guy's mind, this is 100% consistent with the violent rhetoric the political leader was using." What part of that is inaccurate?

There are many honest responses to that observation - after all, correlation is not the same thing as causation. Throwing a temper tantrum because somebody made the observation? That not only isn't an honest response, it invokes "The lady doth protest too much."

It's not surprising that Krauthammer chooses to recharacterize the accusation, creating a hollow man that he can more easily refute. He accuses "Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, the New York Times, the Tucson sheriff and other rabid partisans" of drawing a direct causal link between the rhetoric of people like Palin and the shooting. Krugman?

It’s true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled. But that doesn’t mean that his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having nothing to do with the national climate.

Last spring Politico.com reported on a surge in threats against members of Congress, which were already up by 300 percent. A number of the people making those threats had a history of mental illness — but something about the current state of America has been causing far more disturbed people than before to act out their illness by threatening, or actually engaging in, political violence.

So Krugman believes that we need to look at the actions of Loughner in the context of our society, and consider the huge increase in violent threats against Members of Congress as perhaps the result of violent rhetoric? Krauthammer is free to disagree, but he did not make the accusation that Krauthammer is trying to put into his mouth. Olbermann? He said nothing about causation. The New York Times?

It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman’s act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. But it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge. Many on the right have exploited the arguments of division, reaping political power by demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats. They seem to have persuaded many Americans that the government is not just misguided, but the enemy of the people.

No claim of causation - in fact, the opposite. If Krauthammer wants to defend the described rhetoric of right-wing political leaders on its merits he has the column space to do it - but I'm not expecting he'll try. Hollow men are so much easier to fight. The Sheriff?

"I think it's time as a country that we need to do a little soul searching." Dupnik said. "Because I think it's the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business, and what we see on TV and how our youngsters are being raised. This has not become the nice United States of America that most of us grew up in."

So the Sheriff makes a curmudgeonly statement about how the country has changed since he was a kid, and that the current culture plays a role in incidents of violence like the one at issue, and Krauthammer thinks it's fair to edit out everything but his statement about vitriolic rhetoric? Ah yes, it's Krauthammer. Of course he does.

Predictably, Krauthammer next digresses into the personal history of Loughner and, for a psychiatrist, does a remarkably poor job of discussing mental illness. Krauthammer knows that somebody who is the grips of paranoid psychosis is indiscriminate about where he picks up the elements that feed his beliefs. Assuming Krauthammer's armchair diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia to be correct, you don't have to try to find some form of correlation between Loughner's pre-psychosis political beliefs and his latching onto such notions as the gold standard or violent rhetoric from other sources, because they were consistent with his delusions.

Perhaps also, Krauthammer spends too much time in an echo chamber. Too much time tuning out anybody who dares to disagree with him and listening only to sources that reinforce his pre-existing beliefs. Humans, after all, have that tendency. Perhaps Krauthammer's columns are so banal because he's not trying to do anything but preach to the choir. I admit that I find some amusement in the notion being advanced by a range of right-wing commentators that Loughner could not possibly have been affected by right-wing political statements because he wasn't a right-winger. Believe it or not, if you take the time to listen to the arguments made by well-intentioned people on the other side you'll find that some of them not only have merit, but are persuasive. Yes, sometimes your reflexes kick in and your mind slams shut, but if you can make the effort to prise your mind back open just a little bit you may be surprised.

What's up next? What a surprise, the tu quoque. Take it, Scott Aiken. For all of the effort that Krauthammer and other right-wingers have invested in trying to find examples of left-wing violent rhetoric, they've come up with next to nothing. Nobody but Keith Olbermann has argued that the mention of guns should be drummed out of political discourse. Nobody has disputed that military or martial allegories are commonplace in politics. But as I previously mentioned, there is a line that about 99% of politicians won't cross. If we're honest about it, Palin's rhetoric would quickly exclude her as a potential leader of the Democratic Party. If we're honest about it, so would her lack of qualification. Yet despite some prominent Republicans who have expressed concern in the past about both her qualification and her public manner, she's raking in millions of dollars, is embraced by the Republican party, and is viewed as its possible if not probable presidential nominee. Ouch.

So no, a line about not bringing a knife to a gun fight, or using barely discernible crosshairs in a TV ad about how your opponent has been "targeted" by the Department of Justice for investigation - an ad few in the nation saw from a different election cycle? Not even in the same ballpark as the rhetoric of Palin, or her choice to stand behind Sharon Angle and her suggestion of "Second Amendment solutions" to losses at the ballot box, or the more colorful examples from this election. Shooting a legislative bill - a stack of paper - after talking about "targeting it"? I think it's quite a stretch to suggest that the bill was a stand-in for a person, particularly given that such an interpretation would have the candidate shooting at an allegorical member of his own party. But let's call it equal. Why isn't the left up in arms¹ about the accusation? Why is the right so defensive of rhetoric so over-the-top that 99% of its political leaders won't use it - and, as previously mentioned, why take umbrage now when the criticism has been leveled for many months?

As for Krauthammer's closing line? Ad hominem abusive. A fitting way to end a poorly reasoned article.
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1. Sorry, Keith, if that's too much of an allusion to guns.

Anger at Junk Touching

There are three reasons for objecting to the new TSA security measures, one of which I consider to have substantial merit, one of which I don't believe has been adequately addressed, and the last of which, at least to me, isn't particularly compelling.

First, there's the question of whether the screening enhancements actually do anything to improve airline security and, if so, whether they can be justified on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis. As of yet the TSA has proved wholly unprepared to substantiate any material benefit from the new screening methods, let alone a benefit that would justify the cost. (For that matter, the TSA hasn't presented much evidence on the cost-benefit front for existing technology, and its placement of air passengers into long lines as they wait for security creates a glaring vulnerability.) When you challenge scanners and frisks on a cost-benefit basis,

It's not about doing something "instead" of the current system—it's about not doing things that are wasting money and time and not making us safer. It's quite possible that we're already as safe as we're going to get—and every subsequent airport security "improvement" is just reducing our freedom without improving security.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with expecting that the government will provide a rational justification for either an expenditure of billions of dollars or an intrusion on the privacy of its citizens. Put both together, and people have every right to object when the government is unprepared to demonstrate a meaningful security benefit.

The second issue is whether the new body scanners are safe. With due respect to their exposing passengers to no more radiation than the additional exposure they might experience on a typical air flight, I believe people have a right to be concerned about additional exposure, particularly if they are prone to skin cancer or if they're concerned about their (or their children's) lifetime exposure. "The FDA says it's okay" isn't very comforting - the FDA was asked in general terms about radiation levels, not body scanners. Let's see the science, and some scientific reassurance of how we can have certainty now, given that we don't have a lot of experience with exposure to this type of radiation.

Even if we assume that the machines are safe when they come out of the box, how well will the machines be maintained, tested and operated to ensure that radiation levels remain at factory levels? After all, problems of radiation overexposure can happen in a clinical setting. Finally, in the unlikely event that the TSA actually requests that it evaluate the scanners, why should I believe the FDA wouldn't succumb to political pressure, particularly in light of its recent decision-making?

The third argument is, in essence, "This makes me uncomfortable." I'll grant, some people have more cause than others to feel uncomfortable. Some people cannot go through the scanner, or have prosthetics or medical devices such as insulin pumps that will result in a frisk even if they go through the scanner. But if the cost-benefit case is made, the scanners are safe, the TSA continues with its belated plan to minimize what is displayed to the technician in the scanning booth, and concerns over the alleged selection of "cuties" for more intensive screening are adequately addressed, it's difficult to see how this level of intrusion isn't reasonable. Not at all in the immature "shut up and take it" sense espoused by the L.A. Times, but in the sense that the case will truly have been made that this makes air travel materially safer. It's to TSA's continuing discredit that it is unprepared to make its case, apparently on the assumption that the L.A. Times sentiment would carry the day.

There's a variant of the discomfort argument, "No one should have to suffer this type of indignity." Except as many have pointed out, people do suffer this type of indignity quite regularly, most notably minority males in "high crime" areas who may be stopped, frisked and released with some regularity - and with a very low rate of detection of weapons or other contraband.

The authoritarians who argue "shut up and take it" bother me because, as usual, they are happy to surrender the rights of others in the name of security without even asking that the state provide evidence that security will be improved. The latest example I've found is from Richard Adams who is willing to include himself among those whose junk gets touched, but on the basis of terrible reasoning:

Personally, I'd like to take a flight knowing that the plane is less likely to be blown up or hijacked and rammed into a building full of people. Alternatively, I'd like to be able to work in a tall building in New York City, Washington DC or even London without having a 747 flown into it.

Don't want to be scanned in an airport security line? Really? Easy: don't fly. Nobody is holding a gun to your head forcing you to take that flight to Aruba. Although if security is relaxed because of the idiotic uproar of recent days, then you might get a gun held to your head on-board the flight instead.

Everybody would like to know that "the plane is less likely to be blown up or hijacked", but that doesn't mean that every security measure taken will in fact make that possibility less likely. And with due respect to arguing from fear, if a gun could get onto a plane despite existing security measures, these new measures aren't at all likely to improve the situation.

It's bizarre that a nation that has largely rolled over and acquiesced in allowing its government to tap its phones and internet traffic – the Patriot act, a far graver assault on civil liberties – should get so exercised about this instead.

First, many people have objected to the "security state" developments in the U.K. and U.S., but "shut up and take it" arguments from people like Adams have drowned them out. Second, the use of excessive security measures in one context does not justify the use of excessive security measures in a second context. Third, as I've previously indicated, a lot of the acquiescence toward security excesses in other contexts is that it's invisible - it's either happening to other people, or it's happening in such a manner that you don't even know your privacy has been encroached. It may well be hypocritical to acquiesce to intrusions in other contexts while objecting this time, but being a hypocrite doesn't make you wrong.

Further, if the contexts are analogous and Adams truly believes that the Patriot Act represents government overreach that's being replicated in this context, he should be arguing against the overreach. If he doesn't believe the situations are analogous, he's reaching for an example he knows is irrelevant merely so he can sneer that those who disagree with him are hypocrites.

While Adams makes a valid point about the inadequacies of racial profiling, he continues in relation to Charles Krauthammer's recent column,

The scariest part of Krauthammer's piece is this: "This has nothing to do with safety - 95% of these inspections, searches, shoe removals and pat-downs are ridiculously unnecessary." Which means that five per cent are necessary, according to Krauthammer. One in 20? In that case, security isn't anywhere near tight enough. More to the point, deterrence is a major purpose of airport security. How many people it catches is immaterial.

Adams' first mistake is his treatment of Krauthammer's only the fly statistics as being somehow scientifically determined. His second mistake is an interpretation of what Krauthammer is stating in relation to the 5% of passengers he sees as needing more intensive screening. Krauthammer's argument is that TSA could easily exclude 95% of passengers from the category of "even slightly probable to engage in an act of violence, terrorism or hijacking on an airplane," and that the TSA should thus focus its efforts at identifying and intensely screening the remaining 5%. He's not arguing that 5% of airline passengers are dangerous - not even close.

Let's say you're looking for a needle in a haystack. You propose using a metal detector to try to identify the haystacks that might contain a metal object, and searching those haystacks first. Somebody else howls, "No - we need to put all of the hay from all of the stacks into one giant stack before we even can even begin to look." You may not find the needle the first way, assuming there even is one, but the second way creates an enormous inefficiency. Krauthammer's point, in essence, is that we're better off trying to identify the 5% of the "haystack" that is at all likely to pose a threat rather than putting everybody into that "haystack" - an approach that creates a great deal of inefficiency, generates an astronomical number of "false positives" (bins and bins full of 3.2 oz tubes of gel, nail files, etc.) and may not do much to actually improve security. Yes, it's possible to dispute whether Krauthammer has the right approach to identifying the people who pose a threat - racial profiling won't do it - but is it not in fact the case that the vast majority of air travelers pose no risk to the air flight, and that we can reasonably screen 95% of passengers into a "very low risk" category for purposes of pre-flight security screenings?

Adams' argument that airport security is about deterrence, not about how many suspected terrorists are actually intercepted, begs the question. He's in essence arguing that we can justify the expenditure of billions of dollars and the intrusion of privacy of people who pose no threat simply to put on a good show. Let's not even consider whether the new measures have a greater deterrent effect than the status quo. Let's not bring up the question of whether focusing intensive screening on the small subset of passengers who might actually pose a threat to an air flight would have equal or greater deterrence. Think of the body scans and frisks as a glorious form of performance art.

Nobody Wants to Touch Charles Krauthammer's Junk

Charles Krauthammer, predicable as always, doesn't think it's fair that the TSA might waste its time touching his junk, should he fly the friendly skies:

That riff [about Asians in security lines from the film "Up in the Air"] is a crowd-pleaser because everyone knows that the entire apparatus of the security line is a national homage to political correctness. Nowhere do more people meekly acquiesce to more useless inconvenience and needless indignity for less purpose. Wizened seniors strain to untie their shoes; beltless salesmen struggle comically to hold up their pants; 3-year-olds scream while being searched insanely for explosives - when everyone, everyone, knows that none of these people is a threat to anyone

There is, of course, some truth to this. When you read about TSA putting a small child through an intensive search every time he flies because his name matches that of somebody associated with a terrorist group, you know something is wrong with the system. But Krauthammer misses the point of searching a three-year-old - it's not because the three-year-old may be smuggling something dangerous, but because a three-year-old could be exploited by an adult. Krauthammer's indignance arises from his presupposition that all we really need to do is screen Arabs and people with Muslim names and let everybody else walk through - instant safety. Except that wouldn't catch a Richard Reid. Or a Jose Padilla. Or a John Walker Lindh.

Nor, for that matter, are Muslims the only terrorists in the world - far from it. Nor, for that matter, is terrorism the only reason to hijack a plane. We didn't roll out airport security due to fear that somebody would try to blow up a plane or use it as a weapon. Early hijackings involved diverting a plane from its intended destination to a new location picked by the hijacker or holding the passengers for ransom. Krauthammer's old enough that he should easily remember, back in the day, how many planes were hijacked to Cuba. And he should be able to recall that the hijackers weren't Muslim.

The idea that racial profiling would be effective is absurd. As the examples previously given indicate, the terrorists already know who gets additional attention and, when possible, try to put somebody on a plane who is as far as possible outside of the profile. If it weren't for the fact that human beings tend to become more stubborn and less interested in dying for a cause as they get older, al-Qaeda and similar outfits probably would be trying to recruit grandmothers into the fold, preferably those with nice, European sounding names. The type of profiling Krauthammer favors is overinclusive - most Arabs and Muslims pose no threat on an aircraft - and underinclusive - many people who do pose a threat, including some known terrorists and al-Qaeda sympathizers, would not fall into the profile, and when available they're the ones most likely to be used by al-Qaeda in a plot against an airplane. And let's not buy into a delusion that just because our present focus is on al-Qaeda, we couldn't be targeted by a different group with a different profile. The Tamil Tigers weren't Muslim, aren't Arab, and used female suicide bombers - and fortunately they didn't target the U.S., but they should serve as a reminder that you shouldn't pretend either that no non-Muslim threat exists or that the status quo will never change.

Am I overanalyzing? Adam Serwer is more succinct:

Conservatives like Krauthammer aren't angry that the TSA is infringing on individual liberty, just that it's infringing on their individual liberty.

In fairness to Krauthammer, though, travelers with physical limitations such as his - people who cannot stand unassisted in the scanner - can apparently look forward to having their junk touched every time they travel.

Elizabeth Warren, "Simplistic and Hyperbolic"?

Sins Fred Hiatt and his crew, of course, would never commit. Seriously,

We have qualms about Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor President Obama has put in charge of setting up the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. The new body, which will have a half-billion-dollar budget and wide regulatory power over mortgages, credit cards and the like, was her brainchild. It emerged from Warren's zealous campaign against what she called the "tricks and traps" of the banking industry, which has made her a hero to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Like many such activists, however, Ms. Warren can be simplistic and hyperbolic.

It seems like a cheap shot, and the fact that no member of Fred's editorial board had the guts to sign the column reinforces that impression. I have not followed everything Professor Warren has said, and pretty much anybody can be simplistic and hyperbolic at times. Even Washington Post columnists.¹ But seriously, not even one "for instance"?

For that matter, if "simplistic and hyperbolic" is a big problem for you, no qualms over running this? Those problems are balanced out by its surfeit of platitudes and partisanship?
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1. Arguably, "simplistic and hyperbolic" is Charles Krauthammer's preferred style of writing.

Charles Krauthammer on Obama's "Distraction"

One of the joys of Charles Krauthammer columns is, once you've read for or five of them, you can save time by just reading the headline - because he's entirely predictable in his prejudices as well as in his opinions and (general lack of) support thereof. Today is no different - President Obama is "distracted" which, given the President's focus on issues such as the economy, health care, the environment and the like, can really only mean that he's not interested in pursuing Krauthammer's war agenda for the Middle East and Asia. That peace initiative thing, trying to mediate the intractable conflict between Israel and the Palestinians? Not worthy of mention - it's not part of Krauthammer's war agenda (and we know what Krauthammer thinks of Palestinians). And sure enough, no surprises. But Krauthammer does offer a few gems.

But Obama sees his wartime duties as a threat to his domestic agenda. These wars are a distraction, unwanted interference with his true vocation -- transforming America.

The wars are a threat to the President's domestic agenda, they damaged the former President's domestic agenda, and as long as they continue they will threaten and damage the domestic agenda of future presidents. More to the point, why wouldn't the President of the United States of America want to devote a significant amount of time and energy to his domestic agenda. He is, after all, the President of the United States.

Although there is no question but that President Obama is taking the war in Afghanistan far more seriously than did his predecessor, Krauthammer predictably fails to credit him for that. The problem is that the President is not willing to write a blank check for endless war, nor is he willing to allow the Afghan and Iraqi government to continue to avoid taking responsibility for their nation and their future. As is always the case with Krauthammer, he offers no solutions - no explanation of how the administrations of Iraq and Afghanistan that he appears to view as feckless will suddenly man up if they believe we're going prop them up with no accountability and no deadlines. Krauthammer's a psychiatrist by training, so surely he's familiar with Einstein's quip about insanity.

If we acknowledge that the President of the United States is supposed to address the issues facing the United States, and that it is in the advantage of the United States to bring the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to a close at some point in the future, as usual, Krauthammer's complaints are exposed as hollow.

Unfortunately, what for Obama is a distraction is life or death for U.S. troops now on patrol in Kandahar province.

If I believed Krauthammer gave a second's thought to the welfare of the troops other than as a rhetorical tool to be directed at his political foes, I might try to be more charitable here. But even if I were to offer Krauthammer that charity, does he truly think that the troops in Kandahar are safer there, engaged in a never ending war and occupation, or by having that war end in a responsible manner such that they may go home?