Still Crazy Illogical After All These Years

I've commented on the dimwitted argument by people that it's hard to believe don't know better, that any negative movement in the stock market is somehow the fault of a Democratic politician. For example, George Will.

Right-wing law professor Jim Lindgren made that insipid argument four years ago. Today he doubles down.

If Lindgren believes this type of claptrap, it would seem you can teach law while having a very poor grasp of logic. If he does not, that type of games-playing is beneath him.

Revenge is a Dish Best Served Half-Baked

As did his sending John Sununu out a few days ago to once again inject race into the election, Mitt Romney's absurd distortion of President Obama's "revenge" statement smacks of desperation. After all, who hasn't heard that this, that or the other thing "is the best revenge" - Living a good life is the best revenge, succeeding is the best revenge. Anybody who gives that type of comment two seconds of thought can figure out its meaning.

As Greg Sargent says, Romney's insulting the collective intelligence of the American electorate. I understand why Republican operatives and hacks act as an eager echo chamber for that type of demogoguery - it's their job - but I have to admit, I was surprised to find this by Jim Lindgren.

It is not surprising that President Obama, a strong proponent of doing more to equalize incomes, would speak about voting as the “best revenge.” After all, as I explored in “What Drives Views on Government Redistribution and Anti-capitalism: Envy or a Desire for Social Dominance?” (available at SSRN), strong proponents of income leveling are more likely than strong opponents to admit that when they are angry, they plot revenge.

You start with a distortion of a comment by the President, add your own crackpot theory, half-bake it, and I guess that's what comes out?

Does Lindgren actually believe what he wrote, or is he looking for an excuse to tout his paper and happy to jump on the bandwagon of deliberate distortion in order to plug his own work?

No Newt is Good Newt

David Brooks laments how the Tea Party movement has corrupted poor Newt Gingrich,

The Tea Party style is beginning to replicate itself in parts of the conservative world. Dinesh D’Souza’s Forbes cover article, “How Obama Thinks,” contained the sort of untethered assertions that have become the lingua franca of this movement. Obama got his subversive radicalism from his father’s grave, D’Souza postulated: “He adopted his father’s position that capitalism and freedom are code words for economic plunder.” The fact that Newt Gingrich embraced this offensive theory is a sign of how severely the normal intellectual standards have been weakened.

Another version of this, from Jim Lindgren at the Volokh Conspiracy.

While the Democratic attack on Boehner may or may not work this year, contrary to some Republican commentary, such attacks CAN work. I remember 1995–96, when Dick Morris’s campaign on behalf of Bill Clinton against Newt Gingrich destroyed Gingrich’s credibility, an attack from which Gingrich has still not fully recovered.

Oh, right, poor little Newt - the "intellectual" star of the Republican Party who for some completely unexplainable reason can't stop himself from saying and doing anything that he believes will advance his political aspirations or line his pockets. (No small wonder Lindgren turned comments off for that post.)

Nobody has done a better job of damaging Newt's undeserved reputation as an "intellectual leader" than Newt.

Those Darn Blog Readers

Jim Lindren references an Ann Althouse post on blogging, adding,

I share Ann's affection for bloggers who are trying to observe and understand what they are writing about, rather than always writing op-eds with a thesis they are trying to prove (which is one reason that I enjoy reading her blog). Unfortunately, I find that many blog readers prefer strongly thesis-driven posts, which they can either echo or attack point by point.¹

Spare me.

If you're truly trying to think through the issues, you should be grateful to have commenters who, whether they're right or wrong, try to take your arguments apart. If your arguments don't hold up, you can rethink them for another day. If they do, congratulations. But don't go whining to me that blog readers challenge your ideas, particularly your bad ones. At least if you're pretending that blogging is an exercise in thinking.

This line of thought brings to mind the power imbalance in law school, and how some law professors relished a power imbalance that forced students to conform to their ideas (no matter how bad) in order to get a good grade. Being a law school professor is a great job for a glass jawed "intellectual". But blogging takes place in the real world, where even law professors occasionally have to take their knocks.
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1. (Law professors tell their students, "I'm teaching you to think like a lawyer." Most practicing lawyers are familiar with motion practice in which one lawyer submits a motion and brief to a court, strongly arguing a point of law, and opposing counsel tries to take it apart, point by point. Appeals work in a similar manner. And if you've ever had a "hot" panel when you've argued an appeal, the judges on the panel can make bloggers who try to "Fisk" your arguments look like pikers.)

Why Aren't There More Conservative Law Professors?

You would have to have a very poor grasp of logic to come up with a nutty idea like this:

Obama clinches; Dow Jones Average drops 72 points in 9 minutes. ... This is not a particularly large drop (it's less than 1%), but the probable trigger was much clearer this time than for market responses to other primary wins and losses.

But apparently law professors aren't required to understand the difference between correlation and causation.

The Latest from Jim "Foxworthy" Lindgren

The curent subject is a little bit different than last time, but the punch line is the same.... If you disagree with Mr. Lindgren's politics... you might be a racist.

Whiny Crybabies

I know that James Lindgren disagrees with the study which suggests that conservatives were whiny crybabies as children, even if perhaps asserting statistical arguments which are no less dubious, but his blogging colleagues are doing him no favor with their endless whiny posts about how hard it is to be a conservative.

Oh, crikey.... Just when I was thinking Ilya Somin's posts were somewhat reasonable....

Some of those who claim that campus intolerance of conservatives and libertarians is not a significant problem argue that right of center students are themselves obnoxious, intolerant, and so forth. If there really is an overrepresentation of such people among outspoken campus right-wingers, this fact may itself be the result of PC intolerance. If speaking out in favor of un-PC viewpoints can lead to social ostracism, an obnoxious jerk is less likely to be deterred by this danger than a conservative who is generally nice and popular. After all, the jerk is probably already widely disliked, while his more popular counterpart has much more to lose from any PC backlash to his remarks.

A recent post on what to me seems like a childish grudge match leads to this:

Just wanted to drop you a line to tell you how much I enjoy your blog and also commend you for standing up to Brian Leiter. Without articulate spokesmen like yourself, upcoming conservatives wouldn't have a chance of survival in today's leftist-dominated universities. Good work.

You know, I just can't bring myself to feel sorry for tenured professors, most of whom were privileged enough to go to schools like Harvard and Yale, when they whine for decades afterward about how horribly oppressed they were in their college years. If they have a valid complaint, judging from the typical post on the subject, it seemingly should be that they managed to spend that much money on their bachelor's and graduate degrees at top colleges yet didn't develop better critical thinking skills.

Political Ideology and Racism

Over at the Volokh conspiracy, contributor James Lindgren (who is quite adept with statistical analysis software and the data at issue) contends that white Democrats are significantly more racist than are white Republicans:

Eugene,

To your list I would add that, over the last 30 years, typical white Republicans in the general public have been significantly less traditionally racist than typical white Democrats.

For example, in the 1996-2004 General Social Surveys, 11.9% of white Democrats think that differences in black/white success are due to black inborn disability, compared to only 9.1% of white Republicans. Similarly, 14.5% of white Democrats favor laws against racial intermarriage, compared to 12.2% of white Republicans.

In the two decades before 1996, these differences tend to be much stronger. Republicans have traditionally been less traditionally racist.

So, although there is a shift in traditional racism toward members of the Republican Party, members of the Democratic Party have been still more racist over the last decade--though the Republican Party may overtake it soon. Only if one uses "modern racism" measures that conflate opposition to big government with racism do Republicans usually score as significantly more racist than Democrats.

Given the tiny percentages at issue, it is astonishing that Lindgren would try to assert significant racism or lack thereof on the basis of his recited figures. But beyond that, if the data truly supports his claims, why is he the only one making these claims? Would Karl Rove truly sit on such explosive data, as the Republicans attempt to make headway among this nation's minority populations?

Although I don't have access to the same tools as Lindgren, it is possible to perform a basic reality check on his assertion through Berkeley's SDA Archive site. Using the "Frequencies or crosstabulation" tool, looking at the General Social Surveys, 1972-2004 Cumulative File, focusing on Lindgren's hallmark of racism, the question of inborn ability [RACDIF4], limiting results to white respondants [RACE(1)], and weighing results with a non-response adjustment [WT2004NR], I see the following results:



When I look at expression of admiration for blacks [ADMIRBLK], I see the following results:



By Lindgren's measure (and let me again emphasize that I disgree with his measure), if Democrats can be said to be significantly more racist than Republicans, conservatives (and moderates) would appear to be vastly more racist than liberals.

When I look at Lindgren's argument that Democrats are more likely to favor laws against interracial marriage [RACMAR], he's right - the survey indicates that strong and moderate Democrats and strong Republicans are more likely to support such laws:



But when liberal and conservative ideology is examined, it seems that strong support for such laws comes from people who describe themselves as moderate, polically conservative and strongly conservative, while political liberals are significantly less likely to support such laws:



Perhaps the difference between the two results is explained by the fact that political moderates are more likely to self-identify as Democrats than they are as Republicans:



I don't agree with Lindgren's extrapolations from the data - I don't think his data supports his claims, and I think he knows it. I know that at least one statistics guru passes by this blog on occasion - I would love to hear an expert opinion on this, as a final word on my clumsy analysis as presented above.