Freedom of Speech

Public figures - typically celebrities and politicians - in the United States sometimes complain about the Times v Sullivan standard for slander actions, pursuant to which they must demonstrate "actual malice" before they can recover damages for false statements printed about them. ("Actual malice" means that the statements are made despite "knowledge that statements are false or in reckless disregard of the truth".)

Other nations don't follow the same rules. In fact, few other nations offer publishers similar protections, and most offer far less. This has resulted in what is now referred to as "libel tourism", where the rich and famous seek out a nation where a work is published or distributed, but which offers few protections to publishers, and brings suit in that nation.

The United Kingdom has been the subject of such "libel tourism" in recent years and, according to the London Guardian, this has resulted in a decision by the U.K. subsidiary of Random House not to carry House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, a book about the connections between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family.

Unger's thesis is that the eagerness of US politicians to tap into Saudi money over the years may have compromised Mr Bush's determination to fight terrorism: "Never before has an American president been so closely tied to a foreign power that harbours and supports our country's mortal enemies."

How far Unger's thesis is credible is something that the US reading public will be able to decide for themselves. The book is becoming a bestseller in US election year. In Britain, however, the deputy chairman of Random House denied that the decision to suppress it was "pusillanimity or unnecessary self-censorship".

The article includes some complaints from the Deputy Chairman of Random House, criticizing the U.K.'s libel laws as "draconian" and "disgraceful", "stifling legitimate freedom of speech".

The principle behind the U.S. approach to "public figures" is that a public figure is in an excellent position to respond to any criticism, fair or unfair, and thus needs fewer protections than a similarly situated private citizen. This has certainly been borne out in practice. A "defamed" celebrity can appear on several, perhaps dozens, of talk shows and conduct similar numbers of interviews to respond to accusations. A private citizen has no similar opportunity to reply. And despite the fact that some nefarious rumors get published, celebrities seem to weather the occasional storm quite well.

Meanwhile, the U.S. public gains access to information which, when true, can be quite valuable - and when false or misleading, can nonetheless trigger important public debate and discussion. No, not the nonsense in the Enquirer, but books like Unger's. Given the societal costs and benefits, perhaps other nations should consider sending the tourists back home.

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Jobs

In today's Post, David Ignatius writes about the "jobless recovery", suggesting that things aren't as bad as they seem because unemployment is higher in many other industrialized nations. (I am not sure how the unemployment rate in Germany provides consolation to unemployed Americans, but there you go....) But what really caught my eye about his piece was this:

Americans work harder, too. That's the theme of a new study by economist Edward C. Prescott -- "Why Do Americans Work So Much More Than Europeans?" -- published last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Prescott finds that Americans spend about 50 percent more time working than do the French, with roughly similar comparisons against Germans or Italians. Not only do Americans work more hours, but they produce more per hour than any major country except France, where his statistics show workers are 10 percent more productive than Americans. (Prescott's estimates are based on figures for 1993 to 1996; they only count hours worked in taxed market jobs, so they miss the underground economy.)

Twenty years before, Prescott notes, it was the Europeans who worked more. Data gathered for 1970 to 1974 show that the French and the Germans each worked an average of 5 percent more than did Americans; the British worked 27 percent more. Prescott's explanation for the change is pure "supply side." He argues that Americans work more now because tax rates are lower -- allowing them to keep more of what they earn.

Ignatius presents no analysis of that conclusion, which I think is totally "out to lunch". When I was working a "wage slave" job, I worked overtime hours not because I was impressed by the low tax rate applied to my paltry wages, but because I needed the money. During periods of self-employment, I have at times worked lots of hours to maintain my business - even though there is nobody paying "matching taxes" on my wages and the taxman's bite into my earnings seems particularly large. When I have been otherwise employed, it has been at "white collar" jobs, exempt from overtime, where I worked well above a forty hour week because... that was the expectation, if I wanted to keep the job.

I truly cannot imagine that many Americans are working unpaid overtime in their white collar jobs because they feel so rewarded by America's lower marginal tax rates. I can't imagine many people in $8-$12/hour factory jobs, or even lower-paid service industry jobs, hoping for overtime because of their marginal tax rates. Perhaps when one's income is stratospheric, the idea of keeping one step ahead of the bill collector is alien. But it seems to me that most Americans who work lots of hours do so because their employers don't give them any option, or because they truly need the money.

Is there anybody out there who puts in an extra hard day at work because of this country's tax rates? Please share.

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Conservative Fiction

Joel Mobray, who TownHall.com brags "his start with" them, idiotorializes:

As we’re learning from the 9/11 commission, if the United States hadn’t squandered its many opportunities to kill Osama bin Laden before 2001, there’s a good chance 3,000 Americans would not have perished on September 11th.

What credible or informed person would make such an assertion? This loosely knit organization, and its plan for 9/11 which was years in the making, would have toppled like dominoes had its leader been killed? To support his nonsense, Mobray adds,

Israel is finally starting to figure out that terror is a top-down plague, not some grassroots “uprising.” If only they had killed the head of Hamas and his minions years ago, many of the 377 innocent Israelis Hamas slaughtered might be alive today.

Perhaps Mobray somehow missed the fact that assasssination is not a new tool in the Israeli anti-terrorism kit - it's one they have applied for years? With former Prime Minister Ehud Barak bragging of his covert missions to assassinate Palestininans, when serving as a young commando in the IDF - most notably the 1973 assassination of three organizers of the Munich Olympic Games massacre? That being about five years before Israel made the choice to fund Hamas in the hope that it would grow and thereby weaken the secular PLO, instead of stamping it out in its formative stages? (And let's not forget that it wasn't Israel who first started the "top down" notion that executing leaders of resistance groups in the Holy Land would end their violence - Britain created that model. And Britain arrested and executed a lot of people without ending either terrorism or resistance to the Mandatory Government.)

In 1938 alone the number of Palestinians killed in action by the British was conservatively estimated at not less than one thousand, while 54 Palestinians were executed by hanging, and 2,463 Palestinians were detained. The Palestinian population at the time did not exceed one million. In spite of all these measures the Palestinian rebellion continued unabated during 1938, and several areas of the country, including the Old City of Jerusalem, fell under rebel control.

Additionally, Israel's history suggests that assassinations are often followed by a spike in violence, which in theory will precede a lull. In "big picture" terms, we're still waiting for the lull. In "real world" terms, an assassination of Bin Laden might have accelerated the 9/11 attack plan - while there is considerable evidence to demonstrate his knowledge and approval, there does not appear to be any evidence that Bin Laden was actively involved in that plot.

Mobray also displays abject ignorance over North Korea:

If we had dropped a daisy cutter on Kim Jong-Il’s North Korean palace in 1994 instead of signing a worthless nonproliferation treaty, more than two million North Koreans would be alive today—and they’d be breathing freedom. Would some civilians have died? Of course. But nowhere near two million. Not even close.

Well, we can start with the thirty-seven thousand or so troops we had stationed near the DMZ, and about half a million South Koreans in Seoul. (We couldn't have moved our thirty-seven thousand troops without triggering a "preemptive" strike by the North, because they know that we would only move them to remove them from harm's way in an anticipated battle.) North Korea probably could also have lobbed some missiles into Japan. But hey - that's still less than two million. Unless you count the North Koreans, South Koreans, and U.S. soldiers who would have been killed in the subsequent war which only somebody like Mobray would be too dumb to anticipate following such a strike.

But I guess all is fair in the Brooks/Safire school of editorializing, where all opinions are valid, and you can make stuff up as long as you do so to make a joke or if it may "resonate" as true.

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Friedman Explains Himself....

If you've been reading Thomas Friedman in the New York Times over the past few years, you've probably seen a great deal of ego, a great deal of self-justification, a great deal of after-the-fact rationalization, and a diminishing association between what he writes and claims and what seems to be happening in the real world. Today he explains,

I have a confession to make: I am the foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times and I didn't listen to one second of the 9/11 hearings and I didn't read one story in the paper about them. Not one second. Not one story.

Lord knows, it's not out of indifference to 9/11. It's because I made up my mind about that event a long time ago: It was not a failure of intelligence, it was a failure of imagination. We could have had perfect intelligence on all the key pieces of 9/11, but the fact is we lacked — for the very best of reasons — people with evil enough imaginations to put those pieces together and realize that 19 young men were going to hijack four airplanes for suicide attacks against our national symbols and kill as many innocent civilians as they could, for no stated reason at all.

It's "stuff and nonsense", of course, and a rather pathetic excuse for not bothering to examine and analyze actual facts, events, and testimonies.

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Moderate Republicans

A conservative former Member of Congress reaches out to the Bush Administration, apparently not realizing that it's not his party any more.

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Shooting the Messenger

I'll admit that I haven't read Richard Clarke's book, but I did hear him interviewed on Fresh Air, and I also heard part of his testimony to the 9/11 commission. I have also read the press briefing released by the Bush Administration in the hope of smearing him. And I am aware of the accusations that he is hopelessly partisan, wants to make money, etc., ad nauseum.

But when I hear Clarke speak, he is far more nuanced and far more balanced than his critics pretend. His worst claims about both the Bush and Clinton administrations have been previously aired by others. And his critics never, ever focus on the facts of Administration actions and policies before 9/11. As Peter R. Neumann notes in today's Times:

Consider an article in the January/February 2000 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine by Condoleezza Rice, titled "Campaign 2000 — Promoting the National Interest." Ms. Rice, spelling out the foreign policy priorities of a Bush White House, argued that after years of drift under the Clinton administration, United States foreign policy had to concentrate on the "real challenges" to American security. This included renewing "strong and intimate relationships" with allies, and focusing on "big powers, particularly Russia and China." In Ms. Rice's view, the threat of non-state terrorism was a secondary problem — in her to do list" it was under the category of "rogue regimes," to be tackled best by dealing "decisively with the threat of hostile powers."

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that there was relatively little interest in Al Qaeda when the Bush team took over. For most of 2001, the national security agenda really consisted of only two items, neither of which had anything to do with the terrorist threat of radical Islam. First, the administration increased its efforts to bring about regime change in Iraq, which was believed to be the prime source of instability in a region of great strategic importance. ... The second goal was a more competitive stance toward China.

A week before 9/11, various Republicans were advancing White House policy by declaring the immediate necessity of a multi-billion dollar "missile defense" system, while key Democrats, perhaps most notably Joe Biden, were asserting that the much greater risk was of a terrorist attack.

To date, the only hard factual assertion the Bush Administration challenged has been Clarke's claim that he met with the President on September 12. After insisting time and time again that he was lying about that meeting, the White House has revised its story: "We are not denying such a meeting took place. It probably did.". Oh yes - and after Dick Cheney insisted that Clarke didn't know what he was talking about because he was "out of the loop", Condoleezza Rice had to set the record straight.

The most concerted attack on Clarke is now that he supposedly (may have) contradicted himself - with the accusation coming from Bill Frist, who later admitted that he didn't even know if there were contradictions at all, let alone any of a serious nature - but his critics don't even bother to call on the Bush Administration to disclose the facts which would definitively establish if Clarke is right or wrong. Dennis Hastert claims that some members of the 9/11 commission already have Clarke's former testimony. If that is true, obviously nobody on the 9/11 commission will be misled by any discrepancies, real or imagined. And we have the latest idiotorial on the subject from David Brooks, where Clarke is condemned because he praised the Bush Administration for taking certain anti-terrorist actions - which, apparently, means that he can't criticize any other acts or policies which he might regard as failures or shortcomings - and because Brooks thinks he is more critical of the Bush Administration's failures than of the Clinton Administration's, although Brooks does not dispute that Clarke documents the failures of both administrations. That's it, folks - that's the indictment.

And yes - that means that while the prior testimony was "too sensitive" to even disclose to the full committee before Clarke's testimony, it is suddenly not worthy of such classification when the Bush Administration decides it may help with their very public smear campaign against Clarke. National security, it seems, takes a back seat to the Bush Administration's smear campaigns. (In fairness, there is an alternative hypothesis - the Bush Administration has maintained as classified many documents highly relevant to the commission's investigation in order to conceal the true record, despite there being no present need to maintain them as classified documents, and thus feels no national security concern about releasing various parts of that record for public relations purposes.)

So it appears that again we are offered by the Bush Administration selected snippets of selected documents, the bulk of which remain classified, meant to distract us from the facts. And Condoleezza Rice will testify... well, not really testify, but she will answer certain questions... in private... as long as she doesn't have to swear to tell the truth. And they dare suggest that Clarke is the deceptive one?

"I don't know necessarily what the difference is" between a private interview and public testimony, presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said. "She's going to tell it exactly how it happened," he said.

Well, gee, Scott.... Perhaps you are that stupid, but the rest of us can tell the difference between a private interview and sworn, public testimony.

The worst offense to some Administration insiders, apparently, is that Clarke had the courage to do what they have refused to do for more than two years - he apologized. The nerve of the man.

I know - everybody and his brother's talking about this. But it was bugging me, so I vented.

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Well, how about that....

As it turns out, one of the reasons David Brooks comes up with broad generalizations which support his various arguments is... ... he makes them up. But he thinks that's okay:

"What I try to do is describe the character of places, and hopefully things will ring true to people," Brooks explained. "In most cases, I think the way I describe it does ring true, and in some places it doesn't ring true. If you were describing a person, you would try to grasp the essential character and in some way capture them in a few words. And if you do it as a joke, there's a pang of recognition."

So it's okay to get your facts wrong on the New York Times editorial page if it "rings true" or if it is a "joke".

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The Pledge

I sometimes find it difficult to believe how many absurd arguments are being advanced about the Pledge of Allegiance.

Today, the Washington Post argues that "the court swept aside repeated -- albeit nonbinding -- statements by justices that the reference to God in the pledge does not rise to the level of a church-state problem. " Well, I haven't seen a list of those statements, or even of the Justices who supposedly made the statements, but does the Post really want to go there? I wonder how many Justices made statements during the period between Plessy v Ferguson and Brown v Board of Education... and Plessy that "separate but equal" did not rise to the level of a constitutional problem? How many justices expressed similar opinions before "separate but equal" was upheld in Plessy. The Supreme Court does not, and has never, judged its cases on the basis of the informal statements of justices over a period of time, be it days, years, or decades. If the Washington Post's editorial board doesn't understand this, they should consider hiring somebody competent to write and review their material.

Another argument which I find rather strained is the notion that the passage of a few decades of itself will transform potentially unconstitutional language into a secularized custom or tradition, thus removing any necessity of First Amendment analysis. Certainly there are traditions which have been treated in that manner - the prayers at the opening of Congress, or even the Supreme Court's famous "God Save this Honorable Court" - but we're talking about a much longer history and settings which are not coercive. It is more than reasonable for the Supreme Court to examine not only questions of "tradition", but also the circumstances under which Congress ordered the pledge changed, and whether they would permit a similar Congressional Resolution to stand if such a change were ordered today. It would be appropriate to look at the acts and statements of present politicians, including the President, when evaluating if the contentious words should be viewed as state-sponsored prayer - I think it is difficult to look at the statements of President Bush on this issue without recognizing that he favors the words "under God" for the same reasons as did Eisenhower. If that is in fact the case, then it would seem that the passage of years haven't served to effect any transformation.

Finally, I find absurd the argument, largely advanced by the right, that the Supreme Court should rule in a particular way because the majority of Americans want it to rule that way. That argument has historically been ridiculed by much of the right - and rightly so (no pun intended) - as judicial activism and "legislation from the bench". The Supreme Court is not supposed to be a barometer of public opinion. It is supposed to be issuing its decisions based upon the laws and Constitution of the United States. No matter how it rules, some people will detest its ruling - but its job is nonetheless to issue a sound, well-reasoned opinion that ideally will stand the test of history.

(By the way, I am sure that there are some equally absurd arguments being proposed by opponents of the present Pledge, but I haven't seen them covered in or repeated by the media. If you know of any, please share them in the comments and I'll give them equal time.)

Part of the problem is that the Supreme Court has, to date, failed to enunciate an adequate test for the boundaries the Establishment Clause. Granted, that's not an easy task - but the Court can't even seem to settle upon a rule, let alone a rule that doesn't require numerous exceptions. Perhaps the Court will take this opportunity to clarify the law. But I somehow doubt it.

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Religious and Secular Education

Today, Dennis Prager tells us that everybody in America is brainwashed. First, he argues,

Ask some non-religious liberal friends how they would describe a person who attended only fundamentalist Christian or ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools from preschool through graduate school. "Brainwashed" and "closed-minded" would be their most likely answers, and they would often be right. Most people assume that any person who is exposed to only one way of looking at the world for all of his or her life can hardly be regarded as open-minded.

So even though he's talking about evil "non-religious liberal" people", he concedes that in this context "they would often be right". He then proceeds to argue that the same holds true for people who attend only secular schools:

If a person is to be considered brainwashed for having only received a religious education, a person who has received only a secular or liberal (as in politically liberal) education should be regarded identically.

Well, no. Because a good secular education doesn't carry any particular ideology, and is consistent with the holding of religious beliefs. Unquestionably, any course of studies (religious or secular) will contain some amount of bias, but of itself that's not "brainwashing". The purpose of a sectarian education is to advance a particular religion, in most cases in addition to (and in some cases instead of) providing a broader education in reading, writing, and 'rithmatic. A particular religion and religious agenda will be advanced. In the secular world, classes may be taught by people with a wide range of political and religious beliefs, and in many cases those beliefs will color their teaching, and the student is exposed to a much broader range of ideas. Religious instruction intends a bias toward religious matters, and toward a particular religion, and it is considered to be a positive result if the preferred biases take root in the student body. Secular education has no similar agenda. While any course of education will result in biases, graduates of secular institutions have opinions across the political and religious spectrum - and secular institutions traditionally regard that as a good thing.

Further, as is often the case, children who attend secular schools often also attend religious instruction outside of school hours. Sunday School and Hebrew School, for example, are common. There is no equivalent for children in religious schools - they don't attend Saturday or Sunday classes which teach the science of evolution, for example, if their particular religion asserts a literal interpretation of Genesis. Prager continues,

In fact, when secular people and those on the Left deny this, it actually illustrates that they probably have been brainwashed. The secular/Left immersion they underwent has been so effective that it has rendered them incapable of realizing that they have been so immersed.

Again, Prager misses the boat. He asks that you pose the question to a group of people with a particular mindset, anticipates the answer based upon that mindset, and makes the circular argument that this somehow proves his larger point. Yet even Prager knows that if he were to pose that same question to a person who had attended only secular schools, but who was of a religious or neo-conservative mindset, the answer would be very different. Find somebody along the lines of Ann Coulter, and you might even hear the person brag about how the public schools "tried" to brainwash him, but how he overcame the insidious tendrils of secular humanism.

Without any basis for his assertion, Prager next asserts that most secular people have had no exposure to religion or religious subjects, while most religious people have had exposure to secular influences. Meanwhile, Prager tells us, religious schools usually teach subjects like reading and math - sometimes taught by secular teachers - and many religious people watch network television and Hollywood movies, presumably filling their lives with secular values. But even assuming his first point is correct (and in my experience, it is not), the type of "secular" exposure he is describing is far from a secular counterpoint to religious teachings. It is in no way analogous to formal education, and does not involve the type of power structure, authority and expectations imposed upon students by any given school system (secular or religious). Obviously Prager would not argue that somebody who watches The Simpsons is receiving a religious education - despite the strong family and religious values advanced by that show. But he would argue that it provides an education in secular values? Oh, the hypocrisy.

Prager continues with his unsupported (and absurd) assertions:

The same holds true for liberals and conservatives. Virtually every conservative reads a liberal newspaper, watches liberal newscasts, reads liberal magazines, and has been taught in liberal schools by liberal professors. Few liberals have read a conservative newspaper (there are almost none anyway), read a conservative magazine, studied in conservative schools or been taught by a conservative professor (of whom there are also almost none).

While I could point Prager to my own personal experiences, anecdotal evidence, or to surveys of media preferences or viewer misconceptions, but what would be the point? If it weren't previously obvious that he is "making stuff up as he goes along", it certainly is now.

Prager concludes,

Just as many liberals and secularists can only imagine a religious person being brainwashed, not a liberal or a secular one, they likewise can only imagine religious extremism, never secular extremism. One can easily be too religious, but never too secular. Yet, we have far more secular extremism than religious extremism in our society.

The ACLU is one such example. The organization recently threatened to sue the National Park Service over two little plaques at the Grand Canyon that had Psalms written on them. That most Americans do not consider a lawsuit over something so trivial a manifestation of extremism only proves how effective the secular brainwash is.

If Prager were informed (or if he is informed and chose to be honest), he would acknowledge that throughout its history the ACLU has defended our rights and freedoms at their margins - taking up the small cases and the unpopular causes, to stop encroachments on our civil rights and liberties before they affect the masses. If Prager were honest, he would have presented at least one more example: The legal activities of the NRA. You know, those "secular" NRA types who will litigate against even "tiny" encroachments on the right to keep and bear arms. Also, if Prager were honest, he would acknowledge what David Brooks described only yesterday - the role of the devoutly religious in advancing the fight for civil rights and freedoms. Or he might have acknowledged that "conservatives", including his beloved "conservative media", have been known to bring absurdly frivolous lawsuits. At least the ACLU's suit has merit. And, with all due respect to Prager's defense of all things Biblical, perhaps he should take a deep breath and realize that although the Constitution is a secular document, there is an enormous value to society in defending and upholding its precepts.

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Biblical Wisdom

In Today's New York Times, David Brooks suggests that we should applaud the insertion of "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance because of the manner in which religion has enriched our nation. (Never mind that the socialist minister who wrote the pledge didn't add the words "Under God", and and objected to changes to his work: ""He thought (the changes) spoiled the poetry of it," John Bellamy [grandson of the author] said. "He was a pretty stern guy. Everybody has some sense of humor, but I don't think he had much."")

Brooks' argument boils down to this: He read a book, "A Stone of Hope", which argues that the civil rights movement would not have succeeded as a secular movement, agreed with its thesis, and thus feels free to apply the same thesis to every single event and occurrence in world history.

If you believe that the separation of church and state means that people should not bring their religious values into politics, then, if Chappell is right, you have to say goodbye to the civil rights movement. It would not have succeeded as a secular force.

But the more interesting phenomenon limned in Chappell's book is this: King had a more accurate view of political realities than his more secular liberal allies because he could draw on biblical wisdom about human nature. Religion didn't just make civil rights leaders stronger — it made them smarter.

Here, of course, we encounter a major flaw in Brooks' analysis. The Bible is not the only source of analysis of human nature, and the depiction of human nature many derive from the Bible is far from complete and may well prove incorrect.

While, as Brooks argues, the Bible's stories can be read even by secular individuals as allegories about human nature, the lessons to be drawn are often subject to debate - yet religious adherents of a particular viewpoint are often not interested in that debate, instead asserting a particular interpretation as "correct" and claiming that all other interpretations are wrong. For no small part of this nation's history, "God-fearing, church-going Christians" were slave-owners, and were assured by their ministers not only that slavery was consistent with the Bible, but that it was ordained by the Bible. Many members of the Ku Klux Klan were also devoutly religious - even as they terrorized and lynched their darker skinned neighbors. Any analysis of the role of religion in the civil rights movement should also consider the role of religion as a counter-force - the role of religion in the perpetuation of slavery and in opposition to the civil rights movement.

At some point it should become clear that while the civil rights movement (and women's suffrage movement - which again had to overcome religious authorities who asserted that the Bible dictated that women were to be in a servient role) benefited enormously from its association with devoutly religious individuals, and many significant players in the movement got through some very dark times by relying upon their faith, the post hoc analysis of the role of religioin offered by Brooks ignores the fact that the religous values at issue were far from universal.

Brooks then proceeds with an argument that is simply absurd: that "biblical wisdom may offer something that secular thinking does not - not pat answers, but a way to think about things." Perhaps when in college Brooks avoided courses on philosophy and even political theory on the basis that they weren't sufficiently practical. But it is difficult for me to imagine how any graduate of even a mediocre college could make such an assertion with a straight face. Brooks attempts to explain his bizarre assertion:

For example, it's been painful to watch thoroughly secularized Europeans try to grapple with Al Qaeda. The bombers declare, "You want life, and we want death"- a (fanatical) religious statement par excellence. But thoroughly secularized listeners lack the mental equipment to even begin to understand that statement. They struggle desperately to convert Al Qaeda into a political phenomenon: the bombers must be expressing some grievance. This is the path to permanent bewilderment.

Okay.... so now the problem is that religious "fanatics" adhere to their mindset in defiance of all reason, and are not willing to entertain ideas or concepts that conflict with their worldview? And if that is the case, is it not inconsistent with his prior argument? The adherents of religion at issue don't exactly stand for progress on the civil rights front, after all. And what is his solution - a war of religions, where one set of religious ideologues attempts to extirpate another, as the sole solution dictated by their "biblical" understanding of human nature? Perhaps he wants to schedule joint Bible study sessions between U.S. political leaders and members of Al Qaeda? (So I don't have to explain it later in the comments, that last question was sarcasm.)

Brooks also argues that Europeans have a monolithic mindset, have no understanding of religion, and thus cannot grasp that you cannot reason with religious "fanatics" (his word). If I were inclined to again be sarcastic, I would point out that some of the Europeans at issue view the likes of GW "Jesus is my favorite political philosopher" / "God wants me to run for President" Bush and John Ashcroft ("Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends his son to die for you.") as religious fanatics - so, by Brooks analysis, they can justifiably conclude that there's no point in trying to reason with them? I might also point out that one particular European, um, secularist? takes strong issue with the Bush Administration's approach. (But what could a European possibly know about the Bible?) But, more seriously, what is he suggesting that the Europeans - who for the most part have vastly more experience than the U.S. in dealing with extremists and terrorism - should do? Surely not "accept the truth of fundamentalist Islam" - but then we're back to the fact that there's more than one way to interpret the Bible.

And we must also confront the fact that if strong religious views transform Muslims into irrational fanatics, as Brooks clearly suggests, perhaps Brooks is contradicting himself in suggesting that religion holds the greater answers to human nature and the problems of society.

Brooks closes with the suggestion,

The lesson I draw from all this is that prayer should not be permitted in public schools, but maybe theology should be mandatory. Students should be introduced to the prophets, to the Old and New Testaments, to the Koran, to a few of the commentators who argue about these texts.

From this perspective, what gets recited in the pledge is the least important issue before us. Understanding what the phrase "one nation under God" might mean — that's the important thing. That's not proselytizing; it's citizenship.

First, obviously, Brooks is either blithely ignorant or chooses to ignore why the type of "comparative religions" class he proposes is not more widely available in United States public schools. Simply put, there are many areas in this Country where large numbers of people cannot accept the secular notion that religion - and more specifically, Christianity - can be an academic subject, with "competing" religions treated alongside the one they prefer, as if the others have merit. (And some school districts use "Bible as Literature"-type classes as a subterfuge for proselytization.)

Brooks' final words don't really make sense in the context of his larger argument. If he is arguing that the words "under God" should be offered not as religious indoctrination but as a history lesson, why should they be recited in the Pledge as opposed to being taught in a "history of religions" class? Besides - who does he think has a clearer notion (right or wrong) of what it means to be "one nation under God" - the typical U.S. Christian, or one of the Islamic "fanatics" he previously mentioned?

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... But I Know It When I See It ...

The London Guardian today asks, "Why is the most popular artist in Britain still shunned by its publicly funded galleries?" Perhaps, then, a joint exhibit with the works of one of America's most popular artists?

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And there you go....

The right-wing reactionaries who accuse Clinton of ignoring Al Qaeda and who attempt to blame his administration for 9/11 should perhaps read what Condoleezza Rice has to say:

The al Qaeda terrorist network posed a threat to the United States for almost a decade before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Throughout that period -- during the eight years of the Clinton administration and the first eight months of the Bush administration prior to Sept. 11 -- the U.S. government worked hard to counter the al Qaeda threat.

During the transition, President-elect Bush's national security team was briefed on the Clinton administration's efforts to deal with al Qaeda. The seriousness of the threat was well understood by the president and his national security principals.

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What Took Them So Long?

The Washington Post editorializes about Bush and Kerry,

There are real differences here. As Mr. Cheney said, Americans may have the clearest and most meaningful choice on national security in any presidential election during the last 20 years. But that choice should be about how the United States can win the crucial battles now underway -- not whether they should be fought.

It took a year for the Washington Post to figure that out?

Yes, folks, it is important to discuss potential military actions before they occur - and important lessons can be drawn from the way we entered Iraq. It is important to discuss strategies toward continuing military actions - and important lessons can be learned from the Bush Administration's failure to heed advice that departed from what it wanted to hear, to admit its (many) mistakes, or to be candid with the American people about its present strategy for either the Iraq war or the "war on terror". But you can't turn back time.

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Scalia's "Conflict"

In a small Michigan town, a local businessman brought a small claims suit against a man who had failed to pay for services rendered. The judge found for the businessman, then observed in regard to the defendant, "Do you have your checkbook with you? I have a feeling that if I let you walk out of this courtroom, the plaintiff is going to have a hard time getting you to pay this judgment." The defendant indicated that he had his checkbook. The judge instructed him to write a check satisfying his debt to the plaintiff. Then, as the parties were leaving the courtroom, the judge called out to the Plaintiff, "Hey Joe - do you want to go fishing this weekend?"

But, I guess that's okay.

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The War on Terror

While I have heard it mentioned in passing, the news media seems to be giving almost no attention to the fact that the Madrid bombings occurred below the radar screen of the world's intelligence agencies. Nobody seems to have picked up even a hint of the plan before it was implemented.

If Bush is going to claim any degree of forward momentum in the "war on terror", it seems to me that his administration should explain this (latest) colossal intelligence failure. If the biggest "advance" in "homeland security" since 9/11 is that the terrorists have learned to plan and implement attacks of this magnitude without detection, we're in real trouble.

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The Fog Of War

Back when I was in law school, a classmate challenged a professor about a long-standing rule of law, suggesting that it was bad policy. The professor wrote the number "50" on the blackboard, and commented, "When fifty states, fifty jurisdictions...", then added a "1" below the "50", "and the District of Columbia", paused momentarily, added another "1", "and the federal courts disagree with you, you have to ask yourself if the problem is with their reasoning or with yours." (The professor took some comeuppance in good graces a couple of weeks later, when he proposed his own rather unique legal theory and the classmate asked, "How many jurisdictions agree with you on that, Professor?")

Last night, I saw The Fog of War, which outlines various lessons Robert S. McNamara learned through his life, particularly in relation to his wartime experiences and mistakes. The film was perhaps a bit soft on McNamara, permitting him to cast his past pretty much as he saw fit, and permitting him to avoid some tough questions or areas of inquiry. However, I was left with the impression of a very bright and capable man who has now spent decades analyzing mistakes by his nation - mistakes in which he played a central role - and has drawn a set of conclusions which should be heeded by world leaders. I can't imagine Rumsfeld sitting through this film as, despite the comparisons between his and McNamara's management styles, Rumsfeld does not appear to have the type of mind that is capable of introspection and of learning from history. But I wish he would at least try.

McNamara has recently expressed dissatisfaction with the Bush Administration's approach to Iraq:

"We're misusing our influence," he said in a staccato voice that had lost none of its rapid-fire engagement. "It's just wrong what we're doing. It's morally wrong, it's politically wrong, it's economically wrong."

While he did not want to talk on the record about specific military decisions made Mr. Rumsfeld, he said the United States is fighting a war that he believes is totally unnecessary and has managed to destroy important relationships with potential allies. "There have been times in the last year when I was just utterly disgusted by our position, the United States' position vis-à-vis the other nations of the world."

Having viewed the film, salient rules that the Bush Administration is breaking include:

Failure To Listen To Our Allies - McNamara, like my law professor, believes that we need to be cautious when our allies disagree with our actions, as they did in Vietnam. He argues that if we cannot convince nations with similar values to support our cause, we need to take a step back and examine our own reasoning. The Bush Administration has proudly taken the opposite approach - expressing open contempt for our long-term allies when they disagree with it, and insisting upon unilateral action even where it might be possible to achieve multilateral action with a bit more time and diplomacy. When you insist upon going in a direction your allies view as foolish, you may end up holding the bag. We need our allies' support for the post-war reconstruction and democratization of Iraq, yet Bush's tactics have frustrated our efforts to bring our allies on board. (And we're now in danger of seeing the withdrawal of nations from our so-called "coalition of the willing".) In McNamara's words:

And if we can't persuade other nations with comparable values and comparable interests of the merit of our course, we should reconsider the course, and very likely change it. And if we'd followed that rule, we wouldn't have been in Vietnam, because there wasn't one single major ally, not France or Britain or Germany or Japan, that agreed with our course or stood beside us there. And we wouldn't be in Iraq.

Failure to Empathize with the Enemy - McNamara recounted how the Vietnamese believed their war against the U.S. was a war to end a century of colonialization and, while dismissing that belief as absurd from our standpoint, observes that the Vietnamese perceptions played an enormous role in their willingness to fight and die in staggering numbers. We believed that we were fighting for their freedom, yet they believed we were fighting for their enslavement to a brutal colonial master. We believed we were blocking the influence of communism, particularly through Vietnam's neighbor, China. They had been fighting China for, in the words of one former leader, 1,000 years, and had no intention of living under China's influence. Similar misconceptions appear to exist between what we intend through our occupation of Iraq, and what many of the locals (and people in neighboring nations) believe we intend - and absent our breaking through the misconceptions, we will continue to fight a difficult and often uphill battle.

Our judgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders.

The film also recounted Lyndon Johnson's position on appeasement versus war - and his observation that (whenever possible) we didn't want either. Isn't that still true?

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The Carrot And The Stick

Today's Times editorializes that the Bush Administration must do more than participate in regional conferences with North Korea, where nothing seems to be achieved, and must outline what it will offer to North Korea if that nation abandons its nuclear weapons program. A similar approach seems to have worked with Libya, although Libya's weapons program was nowhere near as advanced as North Korea's, and Libya seemed far more eager to reintegrate into the world economy.

There is some truth to what the editorial suggests - catching more flies with sugar, and all that. But isn't that more or less what Clinton attempted - securing promises from North Korea that it would freeze its nuclear weapons program in exchange for international aid? And what was the result again? Oh yes - North Korea accepted the aid, told its people that it was tribute paid by a cowardly and decadent West, and continued its weapons programs.

A diplomatic solution would be wonderful - but such solutions require some level of integrity on both sides. And there is little evidence of the necessary integrity on the part of North Korea.

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Big Government, Big Budget, Big Deficit Republicans....

Ask for fiscal discipline and Republican backbones melt like butter.

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Social Promotion in New York Schools

With both an article and an editorial on the subject, lamenting Mayor Bloomberg's effort to end social promotion in the city's public schools, the New York Times takes the position that social promotion should be continued. Perhaps as a result, it is only in the last paragraph of the article on the subject that the following truism is raised:

Mr. Levine, of Teachers College, said both social promotion and holding children back were mistakes. "There is no win here," he said. "If you don't promote the kid, what happens is higher chance of drop-out, and also they're going to get the same instruction they got last time. If you promote them, you have a kid who hasn't mastered the previous material who is now being asked to master more advanced material."

It's easy to complain that social promotion is "necessary" to avoid social stigma and increased drop-out rates, but the New York Times fails to editorialize in favor of the costly intervention necessary to try to bring the failing kids up to grade. Pretending that there is no cost to promoting kids who are likely to end up underperforming throughout their public school careers, is not a solution - it's a variant of the same problem.

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Such a Lonely Word....

What do you do when you have a President who is scared of press conferences and reporters? Apparently, you hire actors, stage some fake press events, and release the video as if it is real.

TV news reports in America that showed President George Bush getting a standing ovation from potential voters have been exposed as fake, it has emerged.

The US government admitted it paid actors to pose as journalists in video news releases sent to TV stations intending to convey support for new laws about health benefits.

The doublespeak term for this type of fakery, apparently, is "Video News Release".

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