Before Charles Lane Accuses Others of Hypocrisy, Perhaps He Should Look Up the Definition

I've commented in the past about accusations of hypocrisy, and how they are often misplaced. It's not hypocritical for Warren Buffett to pay only the taxes required by current law, while simultaneously arguing that taxes on the wealthy should be raised. Even assuming that the material facts are identical, it's not necessarily hypocritical for somebody to take a different position than the one they took years or decades earlier, as sometimes people change their minds. It's not hypocritical to stop protesting an action or issue that once drew you out to the streets, every time that issue comes up -- you can continue to feel strongly about the issue while succumbing to issue fatigue, recognizing that your protests are not having any effect, or moving onto other issues or priorities that get in the way of organizing protests and rallies.

Still, accusations of hypocrisy abound. Certainly there are times that they are warranted, but often they're the hallmark of a lazy columnist. Falling into that latter category, Charles Lane is waving his finger at "liberals".

Building the Keystone XL pipeline, to speed the flow of crude from Canada’s oil sands to refineries in Texas, would be “game over for the climate,” says NASA-scientist-turned-climate-activist James E. Hansen. Heeding Hansen’s words, environmentalists have sworn to stop the project, which requires U.S. government approval.

Perhaps we should note, up front, that not all environmentalists are liberals, and not all liberals are environmentalists.

Yet large, bipartisan majorities of the House and Senate support Keystone XL, as does 60 percent of the American public, according to the latest USA Today poll.

And... that has absolutely nothing to do with whether the project is environmentally wise.

Today, it is still on hold, because Tuesday night 41 Senate Democrats voted against ending debate on a bill to green-light Keystone XL, thus thwarting what might have been a disastrous exercise of democracy.

Perhaps it escaped Lane's notice, but that is not the first-ever use of a filibuster in the Senate. As Lane himself noted in a prior screed,

Republican opposition to Obamacare may be hypocritical, irrational and opportunistic — especially GOP opposition to the exchanges, which the party previously favored in various forms. And, yes, the modern filibuster takes counter-majoritarianism to an extreme even the Framers probably didn’t contemplate.

But the Constitution lets the Senate write its own rules.

The fact that Senators who are part of an institution that has created and upheld the filibuster actually employ a filibuster is in no way hypocritical. Even if we assume (in defiance of the facts) that each and every one of those Senators would vote for straight majority rule in the Senate, it would not be hypocritical of them to employ the actual rules of the Senate when voting on legislation.

In short, the filibuster may have just saved the planet, at least for now.

Or so it must be believed by Keystone XL’s opponents — even though they include some of the same people who decried the filibuster, not unreasonably, as an obstructionist, anti-majoritarian evil when Republicans employed it against President Obama’s health-care reform, cap-and-trade and other progressive legislation.

Here, through his link, Lane suggests that Markos Moulitsas is a hypocrite for opposing the filibuster and... he doesn't offer a link, but perhaps Moulitsas praised the Senate vote somewhere? As with Warren Buffett and his taxes, even if Moulitsas is overjoyed that the pipeline bill was filibustered, it's not hypocritical for him to advocate changing the Senate's rules while nonetheless encouraging Senators to use those rules to advance policy positions he favors. The concept isn't even slightly difficult to grasp -- it is possible to believe that something is bad on the whole such that it should be eliminated, even when recognizing that it has potential value under certain circumstances.

When I saw the film, Shattered Glass, I had some sympathy for the Charles Lane played by Peter Sarsgaard, a well-meaning guy who got duped by one of his employees. But the Charles Lane who writes for the Washington Post seems to have a different problem -- he seems to be lazy and indifferent to the facts, the sort of approach to journalism that can allow somebody like Stephen Glass to get away with feeding him the most absurd fabrications as long as they don't conflict with his preconceptions. When you click through the link to the actual statement by Markos Moulitsas, Lane's exemplar of a hypocrite, you hear this:

There's a huge movement, and I think it's going to happen, to change the filibuster rules from requiring sixty votes to requiring forty "no" votes. Right now if you want to filibuster you don't even have to show up, you know, the onus is on the "pro" side to round up the sixty votes. So when you turn it to forty votes you gotta have those forty people there, and if one of them has to go to the bathroom, boom, you call cloture, and that's that.

Moulitsas was not calling for the elimination of the filibuster -- he was calling for the perpetuation of the filibuster, but with a change in how you vote for cloture. Given that Lane knows that forty-one Democrats voted to filibuster, and he should know that Moulitsas favors a filibuster rule that would sustain a filibuster based on those forty-one votes, his insinuation of hypocrisy has no basis in reality. It's instead an example of Lane getting his facts wrong. And with that example having been dredged up from September 10, 2010, either Lane couldn't find an actual example of a statement from a liberal that would support his thesis, or he got lazy.

Majority rule is not the only progressive principle some progressives seem ready to sacrifice on the anti-Keystone altar.

First, are we talking about "liberals", are we talking about "progressives", or does Lane view the term as interchangeable? Either way, I am not aware of any consensus among either group that we should eliminate representative democracy in favor of direct democracy.

If we're simply talking about Senate rules, to put it mildly, there is no consensus among liberals or progressives that the filibuster should be abandoned. Some believe that it should be eliminated, but others (as with Lane's exemplar progressive, Markos Moulitsas) favor continuing the filibuster but changing the rules to make it less of a tool for obstruction, and still others would leave well enough alone. Meanwhile, it was not so many years ago that Republicans on the floor of the Senate made frequent calls for a "straight up or down vote" when confronted with the filibuster. Some of that opposition may have been opportunistic, but the fact is that the recognition that the filibuster is anti-democratic and could benefit from reform is not something that is unique to the political left.

Remember the corrupting influence of money on politics? Billionaire Tom Steyer has spent millions on TV ads backing environmentalist Democrats and trashing the pipeline itself, thus purchasing outsize influence in the White House and the Democratic Party.

Although this should go without saying, campaign finance reform has traditionally been a bipartisan issue, once championed by none other than John McCain. As should also go without saying, proponents of campaign finance reform have not proposed that no money be spent on political advertising. But beyond that, we're back to Warren Buffett and his taxes. You can believe that wealthy individuals and corporations gain an outsized voice in politics and government through their direct and indirect contributions, while nonetheless believing that you should take full advantage of the existing laws to advance your causes. There is no hypocrisy in advocating for a change in the law while operating under the existing laws, and it would be extraordinarily foolish to refuse adequate funding for your political goals out of principle when the likely consequence would be that your opponent would win. Heck, Steyer even spoon-fed that reality to those who are a bit slow on the uptake, and Lane quotes the explanation:

“On issues as critical as climate change, we will take action and work within the system that we’ve got until we can change it,” Steyer pragmatically told Forbes magazine.

How can Lane read that statement yet fail to understand that it's not an example of hypocrisy?

Next up, infrastructure,

Most of the time, liberals tout the job-creating potential of critical infrastructure projects, based on the indirect “multiplier effect” that even short-term construction can have on economic growth.

Perhaps lane doesn't realize that with his opening qualifier, he hobbled his argument before it left the starting gate. There is a vast difference between supporting infrastructure projects most of the time, and supporting them all of the time. We should note, also, that many conservative voters recognize the need for and benefit of infrastructure projects -- but that doesn't mean that either side has to embrace every infrastructure project, that they cannot prioritize certain types of project over others, or that they cannot object to an infrastructure project that they deem wasteful or harmful.

For Keystone XL, though, different rules apply.

Apparently, to lane, "different rules" means roughly the same thing as "the same rules".

We are instructed, by Daniel Weiss of the Center for American Progress, among others, that the $8 billion project will create “only” 3,900 “direct” one-year construction jobs and a mere 50 permanent ones. Forget the 42,000 jobs that a State Department analysis said would be “supported” by the project.

Here, rather than pointing to the actual State Department report, Lane links to a post from the Washington Post's Wonkblog. That blog post indicates that "About 3,900 of [the] jobs would be temporary construction jobs", and that once built, "the pipeline would support 50 jobs". In other words, Lane is complaining not that the one person he mentions got the facts wrong, but that he should have provided additional facts.

When you go to the written statement of Daniel Weiss, you find that his reference to the number of jobs that would be created by the Keystone XL pipeline was specifically addressing the number of permanent jobs that would be created. While Lane can certainly argue that a greater discussion of temporary jobs would make the statement more complete, surely he can understand that temporary jobs are not of great significance to an assertion about permanent jobs. After all, if he cannot make that distinction, he is guilty of the same offense he attributes to Weiss -- Lane does not mention that either that the 42,000 indirect jobs would be temporary, continuing only during the construction of the pipeline.

Lane is also engaged in a sleight of hand. The people -- liberal and conservative -- who favor infrastructure projects have done so in no small basis upon the position that although a typical infrastructure project is relatively short-term, we need to invest in our nation's decaying infrastructure and that the short-term boost in employment can help stimulate the economy. As previously stated, this was never an endorsement of any infrastructure project. In fact, the proposed focus has typically been on public infrastructure.

But as Lane knows, those commenting on the very small number of permanent jobs that will result from pipeline construction are addressing a different issue. They were attempting to rebut exaggerated claims by pipeline proponents about the number of jobs the pipeline would generate, and to point out the indisputable fact that the pipeline will create an inconsequential number of long-term jobs. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the people making these observations about Keystone XL would not say exactly the same thing about other major infrastructure projects.

Construction unions understand that employment in their field is inherently temporary in the sense that it ends when the building is built. They strongly favor Keystone XL. Yet this reliably Democratic middle-class constituency is also being thrown under the anti-Keystone bus.

Wow... crocodile tears for union worker.

It's even slightly surprising that unions whose members would benefit from construction jobs favor construction projects. I would not be surprised if there was significant union support to build "the bridge to nowhere". The question of whether a particular faction supports a project does not answer the question of whether the project is wise or appropriate. Further, given that only a few short paragraphs ago Lane was grousing that progressives have forgotten their principle of "majority rule", Lane wants to have it both ways. If it's hypocritical and an affront to progressive principles to not abide by the judgment of the minority, how can it be simultaneously an affront to progressive principles to not allow a vocal minority to impose its will on the majority? Does Lane not find it obvious that it's one or the other?

The least attractive violation of progressive values by Keystone XL opponents’ was their attempt to recast this joint project of Canada and the United States in xenophobic terms.

Oh, this should be good....

One Steyer-financed ad warned that China is “counting on the U.S. to approve TransCanada’s pipeline to ship oil through America’s heartland and out to foreign countries like theirs.”

So... based on one ad that virtually nobody in the nation has seen, Lane has concluded that progressives have embraced xenophobia.... (Has Lane ever noticed the Republican Party's treatment of issues like immigration?)

The only basis for this claim was that state-owned Chinese companies have a modest investment in Canada’s oil sands. The Post’s Fact Checker, Glenn Kessler, awarded the ad four Pinocchios, noting that “it relies on speculation, not facts, to make insinuations and assertions not justified by the reality.”

That's it, then? One ad, financed by one individual, seen by virtually no one? It's difficult to imagine how Lane could build a stronger case.

Speaking of the planet, perhaps the only person on it who still hasn’t made up his mind about Keystone XL is President Obama, though his dithering has recently given way to expressions depressingly reminiscent of those in the Steyer ad.

In reality, President Obama has expressed that he is waiting for private lawsuits over the pipeline's proposed path to be resolved, and for the State Department to complete its analysis of how the pipeline will affect the environment, before taking a position on the pipeline. It's easy to understand why some might want the President to take a firm position, pro- or con-, before all of the facts are in. It's also easy to see why the President would instead choose to remain neutral pending either the outcome of litigation and studies that might prevent the pipeline's construction, or the presentment by Congress of legislation for his signature. Lane chooses the pejorative, "dither", but there is no reason to believe that the President is being even slightly indecisive on the question, as opposed to playing a careful political game on a hot button issue.

And yes, obviously, his suggestion that the President is xenophobic is absurd.

“Understand what this project is,” he said at a news conference in Burma last week. “It is providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land down to the Gulf [Coast], where it will be sold everywhere else.” Their oil. Our land.

Does Lane disagree that the oil belongs to Canada? Does he disagree that a pipeline that will run across the United States is accurately described by the President as crossing "our land"? If Lane actually believes that the President's statement reflects xenophobia or anti-Canadian agitation, he should seek psychiatric help.

Yet his own State Department’s exhaustive review of the project found that re-exports of the oil, either as crude or in refined form, were unlikely.

This time around, Lane links to the actual State Department report. However, he is not being honest about the report's conclusion:

It is likely that increasing amounts of WCSB crudes will reach Gulf Coast refiners whether or not the proposed Project goes forward (products from this processing will be used in both domestic markets and for export). As a result, future refined product export trends are also unlikely to be significantly impacted by the proposed Project.

The report does not suggest that export won't occur. It suggests instead that enough Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) crude will reach the Gulf, with or without the pipeline, that net exports are unlikely to be affected.

Lane's second link is to a Reuter's analysis of the President's statement, which it declares to "ring[] only half true".

"Some of it will stay in Gulf, some of it will leave," said Sarah Emerson, president of Energy Security Analysis, Inc. in Boston. "I don't think anyone would have built if they thought the oil was just going to stay in the Gulf Coast, that is like bringing coal to Newcastle."

It would be fair to accuse the President of overstatement. However, once again Lane is guilty of the very offense he attributes to others -- he is misrepresenting the State Department's report and is implying, in defiance of the facts and his own sources, that export is unlikely to occur.

Hypocrisy and rhetorical flimflam are standard in politics, and liberals are not the only guilty parties in the Keystone XL battle.

At this point, Lane has identified zero examples of hypocrisy. Not a one. It's not even clear that he understands the meaning of the word. As for "rhetorical flimflam", it's a colorful way of describing something that is inherent to politics. To observe, even with colorful language, that politicians are guilty of practicing politics seems somehow banal.

Keystone XL proponents have undoubtedly tapped corporate coffers to fund their share of exaggerations about the project’s benefits.

Lane speaks of this as if it's an assumption, not a fact. It's a fact.

And of course climate change is real and must be addressed.

Which doesn't mean that Lane isn't going to insist that the President state a firm opinion, or insult him for declining to do so, while we await the environmental impact report.

But in this case progressives are not only being intellectually dishonest and traducing their values, they’re doing so pointlessly: This end doesn’t justify these means.

Really, other than waving his hands a lot, all Lane has documented is that one wealthy person produced one TV ad, approved by nobody but himself and seen by virtually no one, that has an element of xenophobia; and that the President has implied that more of the WCSB crude will be exported than is likely to be the case. And in producing that tepid indictment of "liberals", he has misstated the facts, misrepresented the positions of people he has held up as hypocrites, and misunderstood the basic issues under debate.

Far from being “game over” for the planet, Keystone XL would not boost greenhouse gas emissions significantly, according to State Department experts. With or without Keystone XL, Canada’s oil sands will still be turned into crude oil and shipped, often by rail, to markets in the United States and elsewhere. The environmental movement’s energies — not to mention Steyer’s millions — would be far better spent elsewhere.

Lane's implication is that the crude is going to be extracted, shipped and used, so environmentalists may as well shut down and go home. Sometimes, even a fight for a losing cause can bring about results that benefit the losing side -- a better educated, more aware public, the exercise of greater caution when proposing and planning future projects with significant potential environmental impact, and the like. Also, while Lane writes off the possibility, perhaps those environmentalists don't intend to call it quits if the pipeline is not constructed. But, frankly, it's not his place to tell environmentalists how to expend their energies or to tell Steyer how to spend his own money.

In their tendentious effort to deny these realities, progressives risk violating yet another cherished principle that, in their view, distinguishes them from the right: that of letting facts and science, not ideology, determine policy.

And here Lane is back to his earlier trick of conflating the terms "environmentalist" and "progressive" -- as if there are no conservative environmentalists nor any progressives who don't oppose the pipeline. And in relation to letting the facts and science dictate policy, what was it that Lane said only a few sentences ago?

And of course climate change is real and must be addressed.

So which is it -- is this a situation in which climate change is real and must be addressed, or a situation in which that science is already known and weighs in favor of the pipeline? If Lane's theory is that the oil will be extracted and used, rendering the existence of the pipeline irrelevant to the debate, he's missing the actual goal of the environmentalists opposed to this project -- they don't want that oil to be extracted or used at all. That's not because they are ignorant of science and climate change, or because they are refusing to consider the science when forming their positions on WCSB crude -- quite the opposite. Given that Lane is now endorsing making decisions based on science, it also seems odd that he wants the President to get ahead of the environmental impact analysis for the Keystone XL pipeline. It's almost as if Lane is privileging ideology over science.

Campaigning for a symbolic victory over the fossil-fuel industry, they may end up with a pyrrhic one — if any.

It goes without saying that the environmentalists could lose their fight against the pipeline. But it also goes without saying, even with due respect to Lane's accusations of imagined hypocrisy, if the environmentalists who oppose the pipeline prevail they will not view their victory as pyrrhic. More likely, they will be energized for their next battle.

Do you know what would have made Lane's column better? If, rather than launching a poorly reasoned screed about "liberals", "progressives" and "environmentalists", that did little more than reveal his sloppy, lazy fact-checking, he had tried to lay out the case for why the pipeline is a good idea. He might have tried to explain how the pipeline compares to other possible infrastructure projects in terms of need, job creation and long-term benefit. He could have attempted to address environmental concerns, rather than brushing them off. Too much to ask?

Bill Maher vs. Islam

A couple of weeks ago, Bill Maher closed his show with a monologue that was primarily a critique of those on the political left who don't join him in an unequivocal condemnation of Islam.

The concept that appears to be at the root of Maher's rant is cultural relativism, not in the sense of trying to interpret actions and behaviors in light of a person's culture, but in the sense that you should not view one culture as better or superior to another, and that there is no objective measure of right and wrong that can be applied between cultures. It's a belief that few hold in theory and that is unworkable in practice, but it is associated with parts of the political left. If in fact somebody is arguing that it's awful that Mel Gibson made a sexist statement, but that Saudi Arabia's treatment of women is acceptable because we should not judge their culture, it's reasonable for Maher to argue that they're objectively wrong and that Saudi Arabia's misogynistic systems are a far greater problem than something Mel Gibson says while drunk. He could also point out that in condemning Mel Gibson they're not giving fair weight to his cultural background, and by their own unworkable standard they should refrain from judging him.

Maher also makes a valid point when he suggests that celebrities can become the victims of what amounts to a feeding frenzy, with a poorly thought-out comment, an unfortunate resort to a childish insult, or even the expression of reprehensible beliefs, resulting in opprobrium and consequence that may be disproportionate to the offense. Maher no doubt takes that type of reaction personally, given how quickly he lost his job after he made an impolitic comment on the relative courage of the U.S. in bombing foreign nations to the 9/11 bombers. However, such is the price of celebrity -- if you want to make tens or hundreds of millions of dollars as a celebrity, at least if your target demographic is not the same as Duck Dynasty's, you had best learn to guard your tongue or be prepared to apologize when you make a racist, sexist or homophobic comment.

From that foundation, Maher goes wrong: He attributes a fringe belief to liberals in general. He denies the obvious fact that it is possible to simultaneously oppose wrongs that occur both at home and abroad. He ignores that it is reasonable for people to focus on domestic issues and issues that they've actually heard about as opposed to foreign issues or problems that occur at the periphery of, or outside of, their awareness. And, in relation to his targeting of Islam, he paints with far too broad a brush, conflating offensive minority practices that have their origins in tribal society and pre-Islamic culture with Islam.

Maher opened his monologue with a criticism (and joke) about the President:

President Obama keeps insisting that's ISIS is not Islamic. Well, maybe they don't practice the Muslim faith the same way he does. But if vast numbers of Muslims across the world believe, and they do, that humans deserve to die for merely holding a different idea or drawing a cartoon or writing a book or eloping with the wrong person, not only does the Muslim world have something in common with ISIS, it has too much in common with ISIS.

Maher is going for a laugh, and his is a comedy show, so even if it weren't Maher it would be too much to expect that the Obama Administration's position would be framed in a fair context. The Administration is going through great pains to avoid any suggestion that its attacks on ISIS are based upon its religious beliefs, and to disclaim the notion that it is waging a war on Islam or intends to defeat the Islamic faith as opposed to an extremist group that it believes distorts the faith for its own ends. The comment about Obama's practice of Islam is a decent laugh line, and Maher's intended audience understands that Maher doesn't buy into the conspiracy theories that suggest that the President is secretly Muslim, but it is important to note in a non-comedic context that the Obama Administration's positions on ISIS have a basis in global politics that has nothing to do with being politically correct.

Maher's comparison of the Muslim world at large to ISIS is an example of the spotlight fallacy crossed with the hasty generalization. The principal actions of ISIS, along with the groups history of violence against Muslims, is ignored in favor of spotlighting some positions associated more generally with radical Islam, in order to conflate the general practice of Islam with the beliefs and actions of an organization that was once deemed too extreme for al Qaeda. That type of generalization is consistent with Maher's historic commentary on Islam, and his history of (at best) indifference to the rights of even secular Arab groups in relation to non-Arab actors.

There are vast numbers of Muslims in the world, many of whom live in despotic nations with extremist religious leadership, so it's no surprise that Maher can recite that there are "vast numbers" of Muslims who hold views that are offensive to a progressive western democracy. Maher is critical of religion across-the-board, and would no doubt acknowledge that people believe odious things in the names of other religions. To the extent that he is arguing that, due to the extraordinary levels of extremist belief within parts of the Muslim world, Maher is correct that a danger exists as a result of that extremism that does not presently exist in relation to extremism in other religions. It's not that you can't find people of any faith that hold odious views or commit hideous acts in the name of their faith, or that you cannot find pockets of extremism in which most members of the community hold those odious views, it's that the ratio of extremists to non-extremists is vastly lower.

With Maher, it seems that the analysis ends right there. He may acknowledge that extremism was higher in the past, and that much of what we see in the Muslim world is not dissimilar to medieval Christianity, but he shows little interest in examining why religious extremism has faded in the other major religions, even as it has expanded in parts of the Muslim world. That is, he refuses to address the historic, military, sociological and economic factors that contribute to extremism. Is there a problem inherent to Islam, or would similar levels and forms of extremism arise in others of the world's major religions in similar contexts -- such as occurred with the Tamil Tigers, a faction that grew out of a population that is largely Hindu.

Maher's next statement is simply an endorsement of progressive democracy,

There's so much talk -- you can applaud -- there's so much talk about wiping out ISIS. You can't, not with bombs. You can only expose that something is a bad idea like extended warranties. Cultures are different. It's okay to judge that rule of law isn't just different than theocracy, it's better. If you don't see that, you're either a religious fanatic or a masochist, but one thing you certainly are not is a liberal.

There seems to be some hollow manning going on in that argument -- the fabrication of a rhetorical opponent who does not actually exist, then swatting down an argument that nobody is actually making. I think it's more than fair to say that liberals should not be endorsing theocracy -- I'm simply not aware of any liberals who are endorsing theocracy. If in fact such a liberal exists, they deserve the rap across the knuckles that Maher delivers to them. But I'm not sure that any exist, and to the extent that they do they are so insignificant in number that they're unworthy of mention.

Maher is correct that ISIS won't be defeated with bombs. I've personally analogized ISIS to the liquid metal terminator from Terminator 2, and the scene in which the terminator is frozen with liquid nitrogen and shattered into millions of pieces. As soon as the pieces start to melt, they aggregate back into the terminator. The people who aggregate to form groups like ISIS are no different -- bomb them and degrade them, and you may well make ISIS less significant, but its adherents will immediately start aggregating into new groups that may turn out to be as bad or worse. That said, telling them that they're backward misogynists who have no place in a modern world, although correct, is going to be completely ineffectual.

Maher continued,

To count yourself as a liberal, you have to stand up for liberal principles. Free speech, separation of church and state, freedom to practice any religion or no religion without the threat of violence. Respect for minorities including homosexuals, equality for women. It amazes me how here in America we go nuts over the tiniest violations of these values while gross atrocities are ignored across the world.

The first response to that statement seems obvious: When you live in the United States, when you can participate in the U.S. political process, when it's your friends, neighbors and countrymen who are the targets of a wrong, when voicing your concerns could actually make a difference, you will likely be more inclined to act or speak out. Moreover, you have a greater duty to speak out when a wrong is occurring in your name. The second response to that is, seriously? This is Bill Maher, the guy whose weekly "New Rules" ridicule issues that are often among the most trivial facing society? This is Bill Maher, whose choice of a Congressman to target for defeat is based upon issues that are largely domestic, and was largely due to the Congressman's support for private colleges:

The comedian recited a litany of items that he said [Congressman John] Kline was wrong about, including voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act, his vote during the partial government shutdown, denying funding for climate change research, and failing to adequately address the rising student debt. Maher charged that Kline, chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, is ”the champion of for-profit colleges”

I'm not accusing Maher of hypocrisy, just of a bit of myopia, in that as a matter of routine he personally takes very strong stances on trivial issues. If you were to rank Maher's criticisms of Kline against his specified criticisms of Islam, it would be more than fair to ask, "Why are you obsessing about student debt when people are getting killed in other parts of the world for holding the wrong ideas?" Similarly, why does Maher spend so much time talking about how ridiculous U.S. marijuana laws are, when people are facing long prison terms and even being executed for possession of drugs in other nations, including decidedly non-Muslim nations like Singapore and Thailand? The quite obvious answer is that it is possible to oppose a domestic law or political agenda while also opposing worse practices overseas.

Why does Maher's show focus primarily on U.S. news and culture? Because he's speaking to his audience. Why did he make his $1 million dollar donation to the Democratic Party? Because he hopes to effect domestic political change. Nothing is wrong with any of that. It's okay for Maher to make jokes about Taylor Swift and Sarah Palin, to advocate marijuana legalization, and to close his show with a rant that in the greater scheme of things is trivial, while at the same time deploring the absence of democracy and human rights in parts of the Muslim world. It's okay for him to focus his time, attention, and political contributions on things he may be able to influence or change, rather than focusing on more serious issues upon which he can have no impact.

Maher complained,

Jonah Hill yells "suck my dick faggot" at the paparazzi and an entire nation goes into Twitter outrage until he is forced to perform that most debasing of acts -- the talk show apology tour. Meanwhile, in 10 countries actually sucking a dick can get you stoned, and not a good way.

This statement reflects one of the prices of celebrity -- if you say or do something stupid, you are apt to attract a lot of negative attention and you may have to apologize in order to protect your career. The reaction may well be disproportionate, but such is the life of a celebrity. Given the option of apologizing or retiring from an extraordinarily lucrative public life, celebrites tend to apologize. Further, as the Duck Dynasty clan has established, if you want to make anti-gay statements there is an audience that will be receptive both to your beliefs and that will applaud your refusal to apologize. Is that the audience that Maher prefers? Is that an audience he believes would be more apt to stand up for the values he hopes become established across the world?

And that brings us to something Maher fails to mention: The nation that has received the most attention in recent years for its anti-gay laws and policies is Uganda. Uganda is not a Muslim country. Uganda's ugly anti-gay laws are driven by a Christian movement that in turn is driven by U.S.-based anti-gay ministries. Russian hostility to homosexuality has also worsened in recent years. I suspect that Maher's list of "ten countries" is the same list offered here, which includes nations that make no distinction between forms of extramarital sex (all qualifying the participants for the death penalty) and nations that could theoretically execute somebody for engaging in homosexual acts even if they aren't in fact doing so. Should a U.S. citizen be more concerned about the U.S. activists who are agitating anti-homosexual sentiments in Africa, to the point that for a time homosexuality was a capital offense in Uganda and remains punishable by life in prison, or by puzzling over whether the UAE imposes the death penalty only for homosexual rape as opposed to all homosexual acts in the absence of any actual executions?

All of that is to point out the obvious: anti-gay bigotry exists across the world, is anything but unique to Islam, and some of the worst anti-gay actions are occurring in non-Islamic nations at the behest of U.S. Christians. There is absolutely nothing wrong with condemning anti-homosexual bigotry among any particular religious or cultural group, and there is also absolutely no reason you need to rank the acts from least to most offensive, or sort them by religion, before you condemn a bigoted law, act or statement. It may not seem fair to Maher that some who grew up in an era where "gay" was a common schoolyard taunt to learn, the hard way, that it's no longer an acceptable epithet, but that's the way our nation has evolved -- and surely Maher would concede that evolution toward full acceptance of gay Americans into society is a good thing.

Maher continued his complaint,

We hear a lot about the Republican war on women. It's not cool. Rush Limbaugh called somebody a slut. Okay. But Saudi women can't vote or drive or hold a job or leave the house without a man. Overwhelming majorities in every Muslim country say a wife is always obliged to obey her husband. That all seems like a bigger issue than an evangelical Christian bakery refusing to make gay wedding cakes.

That, of course, is more of the same. Contrary to what Maher suggests, it is possible to hold that Republican efforts to roll back reproductive rights and freedoms is "not cool", and that a prominent radio host should not be calling a woman a "slut" merely because she argues that health insurance should cover prescription contraceptives, while also believing that Saudi Arabia's treatment of women is abhorrent. On a global scale, certainly the oppression of women in many other societies around the world is a "bigger issue" than whether a local business discriminates against gay people, women, ethnic minorities, Jews, or any other citizen. But as I've already pointed out, that doesn't mean it's wrong to speak out against a small or local injustice -- and in fact, that's often the place where your voice is most likely to have an impact. Frankly, the entire issue is a red herring -- Maher offers no reason to believe that those who believe that businesses should not discriminate against their customers are accepting of Saudi Arabia's oppressive laws, let alone that, if asked, they would say that discrimination by a small business against a wedding cake customer is worse.

Maher next inadvertently highlighted one of the weaknesses of his criticisms of Islam:

Ninety-one percent of Egyptian women have had their clitorises removed; 98% of Somalian women have.

That's horrible, and it shouldn't happen, but here's the thing: Female genital mutilation is a practice that exists principally in parts of Africa, and is not a mainstream Islamic teaching. It is not surprising that the practice continued with the introduction of Islam or that some proponents of FGM believe it is a religious teaching, and we do need to address the reality that the practice has even spread to the west for the most part within Muslim communities. It is certainly no surprise that FGM, a fundamentally misogynist practice, exists largely within nations that hold misogynist views. But a billion Muslims live in South and Southeast Asia, where FGM is not part of the culture or religion.

Experts say the practice stems from social pressure to conform to traditions passed down for centuries -- one that predates not just Islam but also Judaism and Christianity. (The origins of the practice are subject to some dispute, but some scholars say it may correspond to areas of ancient civilizations, in which the cutting of females "signalled controlled fidelity and the certainty of paternity," the UNICEF report states.)

In areas of high prevalence today, "this is perceived to be the normal and correct way of bringing up a girl," Moneti said. "If a girl is not cut, she may be considered impure and not marriageable, and she and her entire family may be ostracized."

While it stems from neither Christianity nor Islam, some women in Chad, Guinea and Mauritania report a "religious requirement" as a benefit of cutting. Some communities consider a clitoridectomy -- one type of female genital mutilation -- as "sunna," which is Arabic for "tradition" or "duty," according to the UNICEF report. However, it is not a requirement of the Koran and has been specifically rejected by some Muslim leaders in Egypt.

We can certainly criticize FGM, and should do so, but we can do that without insulting the majority of the world's Muslims for whom FGM plays no role in their lives or religion.

Maher continued,

Ayaan Hirsi Ali grew up in Somalia and was one of them. She was scheduled to speak at Yale last week but the school's atheist organization, my people, complained that she "did no represent a totality of the ex-Muslim experience." Meaning what? That women like mutilation? You're atheists. You should be attacking religion, not siding with people who hold women down and violate them which apparently you will defend in the name of multiculturalism and then lose your shit when someone refers to Chaz Bono by the wrong pronoun.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali lost a considerable amount of support when she switched her target from FGM to Islam at large. While I can appreciate her anger, given her life story, her message was more effective when it was focused on actions that virtually all Americans agree are outrageous. The Atheists at Yale clearly don't agree with Maher's position that the role of an Atheist is to attack religion -- they appear to view religion as something that people should be free to exercise, or not exercise, consistent with their own beliefs. The Yale group penned a relatively innocuous statement,

As a diverse group of undergraduates with a membership that includes ex-Muslims and atheists from Islamic cultures, we do not believe Ayaan Hirsi Ali represents the totality of the ex-Muslim experience. Although we acknowledge the value of her story, we do not endorse her blanket statements on all Muslims and Islam. We believe Ayaan Hirsi Ali represents a sadly common voice in the atheist community that attacks and provokes, rather than contributes to constructive criticism or dialogue. We remind our fellow atheists, Humanists, and agnostics of the rich history of dissent within our community, and do not believe belonging to this community necessitates an endorsement of all community members and their beliefs.

Maher may prefer the type of atheist who "attacks and provokes", but there's room in this world for atheist who are tolerant of religious belief. Maher's appeal to ridicule being duly noted, nothing in the organization's statement suggests tolerance of FGM, or that they would not have welcomed Ali to speak to her personal experiences including her strong condemnation of FGM if she had not shifted her focus to condemning Islam in general.

Donald Sterling isn't allowed to own a team because he told his mistress not to post pictures with black guys. Okay.

With that statement, Maher took us back to the world of entertainment. The problem that caused Sterling to have to sell his team was not that he was a racist, a philanderer, or a crass individual. The problem was that with his personality and beliefs having come to light, he threatened the income stream of a multi-billion dollar sports entertainment enterprise. While it's fun to play rhetorical games about whether we should be more tolerant of intolerance, in that type of situation it comes down to money. It's not really any different that losing an endorsement deal or movie contract because your all-American image becomes tarnished by the discovery of a series of affairs, because it turns out you run dog fighting rings in your spare time, because you go on a drunken anti-Semitic rant, or anything else you should know better than to do if you want to maintain your public image and popularity.

But if we're giving no quarter to intolerance, shouldn't we be starting the mutilators and the honor killers or will that divert us from the real problem that when Mel Gibson drinks he calls women sugar tits?

It's not a question of where we start, nor is it the false dichotomy that Maher presents -- as I previously pointed out, it is possible to condemn somebody in this nation for making a racist, sexist or anti-gay comment while opposing and condemning greater evils in other nations. And here, again, Maher confuses culture and religion. Honor killings should be deplored wherever they occur, and they do occur in some Muslim nations and communities, but they're also a huge problem in India. Again we are speaking of a cultural practice that arose independently of Islam, and is not in fact part of Islamic (or Hindu) faith, even if its adherents believe there is a religious mandate. Would it not make more sense to argue that a practice should be ended not only because it is not required by religious belief, but is in fact an act that contravenes the actual teachings of a religion, than to attribute that act to a religion in defiance of the fact that most adherents to the faith already reject the practice?

As I've previously suggested, I support the condemnation of oppression, bigotry and misogyny -- but I have no illusion that my statements on one issue or another are going to change the world. My criticism of Saudi Arabia would be read by a handful of people, none of whom have any influence on the Saudi government. Even Maher's criticism, which reach millions, have no impact on Saudi Arabia. As a nation, we prioritize a cooperative relationship with the Saudi regime, one that allows us to have military bases in Saudi Arabia, one that helps to keep the world's oil flowing, over pressuring that nation to improve its treatment of women, step back from Wahhabism and the export of radical Islam, or even to step back from its support of groups that act against U.S. interests. When it comes to slowing the expansion of radical Islam, or rolling it back, I see the importance of addressing cultural, political and economic issues that provide a fertile breeding and recruitment ground for radicalism. The thirty-year transition through which Iran went from being at the extreme of Islamic radicalism to being the nation now viewed as a potential reasonable partner for the stabilization of Iraq and Syria is not a reflection of how much Iran has changed -- it's a reflection of how much worse things have become throughout much of the Middle East -- and that's certainly not a result of the recent arrival of Islam. A better approach than Maher's is to take a look at Islamic nations that are more politically inclusive and democratic, or periods of time in which the nations presently falling into civil war and increased radicalism were more secular and inclusive, and ask, "What is different? What has changed?"

When you look at the region in that light, you can see how oil wealth, the echoes of colonialism and the Cold War, the historic tolerance of oppressive dictatorship, and the ill-conceived plan to try to replace Iraq's oppressive government with a progressive democracy through the application of force, have all contributed to the present mess. Maher himself occasionally pulls out archival pictures of bin Laden's family, dressed in western garb. The question is not so much whether Islamic nations can become more western in nature, or more accepting of democracy and western values. The question is not whether Islamic nations can reject honor killing or the mistreatment of women. The question is, having seen considerable progress toward that goal, why we have since seen such profound backsliding toward fundamentalism.

Facts Make the Tea Party Veer to the Political Left on Spending?

This isn't new, but I just came across it.

In fact, a sophisticated poll covering 31 budget items as well as revenue sources conducted around the 2010 elections found that, even then, Republican, Democratic and independent voters all agreed on much higher taxes and much deeper defense cuts as the most striking elements of how the budget should be crafted....

...[S]upport for government spending has varied somewhat cyclically since the[ 1964 election], but only within a relatively narrow range, as recorded by the gold standard of public opinion research, the General Social Survey [data archives here].

The GSS asks about more than two dozen specific problems or program areas, asking if the amount we’re spending is “too little,” “too much” or “about right.” Not only do most Americans think we’re spending too little in almost every area — most conservatives also think the same. Indeed — hold onto your hats — even most conservative Republicans feel that way as well....

The researchers also found broad agreement across party lines. Their first report noted, “Among a total of 31 areas, on average Republicans, Democrats and independents agreed on 22 areas — that is, all three groups agreed on whether to cut, increase or maintain funding. In 9 other areas there was dissensus.” That’s not to say there weren’t differences. Republicans cut much less from defense — $55.6 billion for core defense (versus $109.4 billion) — and much less overall — $100.7 billion (versus $146 billion) — than Americans as a whole. But even so, the position of Republican respondents overall was still dramatically to the left of the political conservation in Washington....

[Tea Party members were] more conservative than Republicans overall, but they still come across as wild-eyed socialists compared to their D.C. representatives:

Those who described themselves as “very sympathetic” to the Tea Party (14% of the full sample), as would be expected, raised taxes and revenues less than Republicans in general, and less than Democrats and independents. Even so, on average, Tea Party sympathizers found a quite substantial $188.2 billion in additional revenues to reduce the deficit ($105.2 billion in individual income taxes).

This sort of information makes it more understandable why the Republicans have proved to be such poor fiscal stewards when they hold power. They demagogue about taxation and spending, but prioritize budget increases in areas such as military spending and revenue reduction via tax policy that favors the wealthy and corporations. When it comes to actual budget cuts, they can read the polls as well as anybody else. In specific regard to Medicare and Social Security,

Combining GSS data from 2000 to 2012, and asking about Social Security and spending on “improving and protecting the nation’s health” (GSS’s closest match with Medicare), liberal Democrats thought we were spending “too little” rather than “too much” on one or both by a margin of 87.1 percent to 2.4 percent — a ratio of over 36-to-1. But all other groups of Americans held the same view, even conservative Republicans — just not by the same overwhelming amount. They “only” thought we were spending “too little” rather than “too much” by a margin of 59.2 percent to 13.1 percent — a ratio of 4.5-to-1. With figures like that — all well to the left of Democrats in D.C. — it’s no wonder that conservatives in Congress always talk about “saving” Social Security and Medicare, and forever try to get Democrats to take the lead in proposing actual cuts.

The Republicans are not willing to lose the next election by savaging domestic spending in a manner necessary to even make up for their spending increases and tax cuts, let alone make cuts dramatic enough to put the budget into balance or to create a surplus and spend down the debt. Instead, when they take power, we get Dick Cheney-type comments that "deficits don't matter". Instead, if you want a balanced budget, they offer the worst of both worlds -- tax policies that reduce revenue and spending policies that increase the overall budget, resulting in a significant increase in the nation's debt.

Political Partisanship and Hypocrisy

There's a particular brand of conservative punditry that goes roughly along the lines of,

1. Liberals used to oppose X when Republicans were in charge;

2. Liberals now support Y, or at least aren't vocally supporting it;

3. X and Y are the same thing;

4. Therefore liberals are hypocrites;

5. "Republicans rule, liberulz dr00l!"

I am going to pick on Ross Douthat, not because his is the worst example of the phenomenon - go read a random column by Mark Thiessen and you'll see he's far from it - but because it illustrates (and to an extent acknowledges) some of the problems with that type of column. I must also wonder, do columns structured in this fashion convince anyone of anything? Are their authors preaching to the choir? Phoning it in, using cheap tricks to pad out a column that otherwise wouldn't merit more than a few sentences? Hoping to tap into Ann Coulter's readership? With Thiessen I get the impression that he is incapable of perceiving that his arguments aren't well-supported, but with Douthat I get the sense that he knows what he's doing.

Douthat opens his column,

When George W. Bush was president of the United States, it was an article of faith among liberals that many of his policies were not just misguided but unconstitutional as well. On issues large and small, from the conduct of foreign policy¹ to the firing of United States attorneys,² the Bush White House pushed an expansive view of executive authority, and Democrats pushed right back — accusing it of shredding the constitution, claiming near-imperial powers³ and even corrupting the lawyers working in its service.

That was quite some time ago. Last week the Obama White House invoked executive privilege to shield the Justice Department from a Congressional investigation into a botched gunrunning operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The previous week the White House invoked powers that President Obama himself had previously claimed to lack, unilaterally revising the nation’s immigration laws by promising to stop enforcing them against a particularly sympathetic population....⁴

[A]part from [Obama's] disavowal of waterboarding (an interrogation practice the Bush White House had already abandoned), almost the entire Bush-era wartime architecture has endured: rendition is still with us, the Guantánamo detention center is still open, drone strikes have escalated dramatically, and the Obama White House has claimed the right — and, in the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, followed through on it — to assassinate American citizens without trial.⁵

Douthat claims first that this supposed shift of "liberal" support represents "predictable hypocrisies when one side passes from critiquing authority to embodying it". There are, of course, many problems with this type of reflexive accusation of hypocrisy:

1. It's not hypocritical to change your mind. Sometimes the benefit of a policy that seems ill-advised becomes more apparent over time, the excesses that might occur under an expansive interpretation of the policy are avoided, or the cost of switching to a superior policy rejected by a prior administration exceeds the benefit of its belated implementation, so you accept the world the way it is and move on. (In the context of his essay Douthat notes, "Sometimes it was the original partisan critique that was overdrawn" - although he tends to view any criticism of the Bush as "partisan" even if it came from conservative or libertarian quarters.) If "I changed my mind" is proof of hypocrisy, the Republicans are about to nominate one of the biggest hypocrites in the history of politics. But a genuine change of heart is not hypocrisy.

2. An opponent's hypocrisy does not prove you right. Douthat's argument highlights this fact. If we're talking about "partisan about-faces", with the party in charge changing its position based solely upon its assumption of power, we're speaking of the compromise of principle in the pursuit of power. That tells us nothing about the relative merits of the competing policy positions.

3. You should not confuse issue fatigue with hypocrisy. It is not particularly difficult to muster or provoke outrage, but it's difficult to sustain outrage. As people get used to the status quo, as other issues arise, people lose track of past outrages that are no longer part of the public conversation, and are no longer being covered by the media. Were Douthat to have actually read the better critiques of Bush's expansion of political power, whether from liberal or conservative sources, he would have found warning after warning to the effect that once a controversy passes it is unlikely that any future President will give up powers obtained by his predecessor.

4. People become accustomed to the status quo. Related to issue fatigue, once a period of grief or outrage has passed, people tend to become accustomed to their new circumstances. Douthat should know that - no small part of conservatism is a resistance to change, and once you are accustomed to the status quo anything else represents a change.

One of the weaknesses of this type of argument, somewhat acknowledged by Douthat and often exemplified by Thiessen, is triumphalism: the declaration that your opponent's hypocrisy, real or imagined, somehow vindicates your position. That's a much easier approach to take than making a convincing, substantive argument in favor of your position, but from a substantive standpoint it's nothing more than hot air.

Douthat in effect shines a spotlight on the weakness of the "hypocrisy" argument when he claims,

Today those incentives are strongest for Democrats — visible in their support for Obama’s more dubiously constitutional forays, and also in the widespread liberal attempt to explain his struggles by casting him as a Gulliver tied down by an antiquated system of government.

Hyperbole aside, Douthat's observations of Obama's "more dubiously constitutional forays"⁶ are the continuation of Bush-era security policies, invoking executive privilege (with no explanation of how thet assertion might be a "dubious constitutional foray"), and "revising the nation’s immigration laws by promising to stop enforcing them against a particularly sympathetic population". That's some pretty weak tea.
----------------
1. If by "the conduct of foreign policy", Douthat is referring to starting a war of choice in Afghanistan, creating black hole prisons, torturing prisoners in U.S. custody and the like, well, yes... that was controversial. Contrary to Douthat's suggestion, "Republican" and "conservative" are not synonyms, and this was not a context in which liberals and conservatives lined up neatly on opposite sides of the argument. There were and are plenty of conservatives who deplore Bush's foreign policy, who deplore the manner in which Congress has effectively shifted war-making authority to the President, and who don't believe that fighting wars of choice to reinvent nation states that pose no direct threat to us represents either good foreign policy or a wise use of taxpayer dollars. Douthat also knows that the Democratic Party on the whole either acquiesced or supported many of Bush's policies.

2. I expect that Douthat is referring to the Bush era U.S. Attorney scandal because, for the first time, the Obama Administration has invoked executive privilege and that was the tool Bush used to hide his reasons for firing U.S. Attorneys who for the most part appeared to be doing their jobs properly - apparently due to their refusal to initiate or bury criminal charges based upon the suspect's party affiliation. But there's nothing new about an assertion of executive privilege.

There's also nothing wrong with being suspicious of a President's assertion of executive privilege - the President is not entitled to a presumption of innocence and I think we'll enjoy a healthier political environment if the President is concerned that a resort to executive privilege will bring both attention and heat than one in which people shrug and accept that they may never learn the truth about a controversy. Arguably that skepticism is more likely to manifest itself as melodrama or demagoguery if the President comes from the other political party, but if that's the price of a healthy level of skepticism so be it.

3. The concept of "the imperial presidency" was popularized by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. back in the early 70's to describe the growth in Presidential powers over the course of U.S. history. As for its more recent use, would Douthat see the following as an example of an over-the-top attack on a President for supposedly "claiming near-imperial powers":

[The President] exercised the powers of the imperial presidency to the utmost in the area in which those powers are already at their height — in our dealings with foreign nations. Unfortunately, the record of the administration has not been a happy one, in light of its costs to the Constitution and the American legal system. On a series of different international relations matters, such as war, international institutions, and treaties, [the President] has accelerated the disturbing trends in foreign policy that undermine notions of democratic accountability and respect for the rule of law.

Wow - what a perfect example of somebody attacking the President as adopting policies that are not only misguided but also unconstitutional, of claiming near-Imperial powers. Except you know what? That was John Yoo, architect and perennial defender of some of the Bush Administration's greatest excesses, demagoguing against Bill Clinton at the dawn of the Bush presidency. Yoo stands as a very good example of the partisanship Douthat claims to be describing, as now that Bush is out of power he has returned to prior form.

Also, is the following an expression typical of "liberal" concern about G.W.?

The Constitution’s text, structure, and history will not support anything like the doctrine of presidential absolutism the administration flirts with in the torture memos....

As revealed by the torture memos, in the administration’s theory, Congress is powerless to prevent the president from doing whatever he believes to be necessary to win a war. And, as it turns out, Congress is also powerless to prevent the president from starting a war, if he believes that war is in the national interest. Administration officials have repeatedly advanced the claim that the president’s powers include the power to decide, unilaterally, the question of war or peace....

In fairness, the administration did eventually secure a use-of-force resolution from Congress, all the while denying that any authorization was needed. But, given the administration’s broad view of the president’s war power taken in conjunction with its arguments in the Padilla case and the torture memos, the administration’s position can be summed up starkly: When we’re at war, anything goes; and the president gets to decide when we’re at war....

The administration’s conduct in the wake of Katrina suggests that its reflexive response to any crisis—whether real or hypothetical—is the same: we need more power. That is a dangerous reflex.

Only if you believe that the Cato Institute represents liberal ideology.

4. Although Douthat later claims, "It was conservatives who pointed out the dubious constitutionality of Obama’s immigration gambit", he fails to direct us to a compelling constitutional analysis. A quick search found any number of responses from opinion and political leaders that make broad allusions to the separation of powers, but nothing substantive. Similarly, Douthat whines, "Among liberals, it was taken for granted that the worthy ends were more important than the means", but he's hollow manning. He does not, and apparently cannot, identify any significant proponent of a position he's pretending to be representative.

5. While Douthat comments in relation to rendition, drone strikes, and the targeting of U.S. citizens deemed allied with enemy forces,

[The Obama Administration's] moves have met some principled opposition from the left. But the president’s liberal critics are usually academics, journalists and (occasionally) cable-TV hosts, with no real mass constituency behind them.

Douthat seems to miss the fact that the arguments against that type of policy aren't new, and that while a new excess such as the Bush Administration's torture policy can evoke a reaction, that reaction is rarely going to be sufficient to inspire the reversal of the policy. There were many philosophical and practical arguments made against the use of torture, and while the Bush Administration initially rejected both it appeared to ultimately accept that torture was impractical. What does Douthat deem to be a "real mass constituency"? As I recall, even after being abandoned as a failure, Bush's torture policies were supported by close to 60% of the public.

Douthat intentionally omits the fact that it is Congress, not the President, that prevents the closure of the Guantánamo detention center - a closure favored not only by President Obama but, by the end of his term, by President Bush.

6. Douthat might argue that his conclusion does not necessitate his expressing an opinion as to whether the various "dubiously constitutional forays" he describes are proper or improper exercises of executive power. His language suggests that he is falling into the partisan trap that he describes - even after suggesting that past opposition to Bush's policies represents overdrawn opposition and how a new president's continuation of once objectionable policies may exemplify how power educates rather than corrupts, he can't keep himself from describing Obama's continuation of those policies as constitutionally dubious.

Shifting Public Opinion

One of Bill Maher's consistent complaints about the Democratic Party is that it fails to shift public opinion on important issues. He perceives the Republican Party as able to shift public opinion. In some sense this is true - if you look, for example, at climate science or healthcare reform, the Republican Party has been very successful at confusing the debate, misrepresenting the facts and science, and shifting public opinion in favor of the interests it represents. It's as if they're emulating the tobacco industry executives who used to consistently lie about the safety of cigarettes, while paying off Members of Congress who supported them. (Sorry... making campaign contributions, right on the floor of the House. Gotta use the right euphemism.) Actually, that's exactly what they're doing.

But even in that context it's not as if they're working in a void - there are always Democrats who are happy to hop on board the gravy train. You cannot count on a "mainstream media" owned by billionaires with their own political agendas (and no, I'm not just talking about Fox) to want to clarify the issues. And even if the information is "out there", most people don't have the time to research the facts - they rely upon the representations of "trusted" third parties who often, unfortunately, don't deserve their trust - even if they have the skills. And let's not forget confirmation bias - it's much easier to convince somebody of something the first time around, but once that belief is set they will tend to discount any information that challenges their existing belief. Everybody at times falls victim to confirmation bias.

There's an ugly reality to politics, in which finding a narrative that works is more important than telling the truth. It's the same thing that happens in a trial, when the attorneys for the two different sides make very different arguments about the meaning of the same set of facts, but with more feedback. In a trial the lawyer tries to figure out from a juror's expressions, reactions, eye contact, and other indirect clues whether or not the juror is receptive to an argument. In politics there are opinion polls, media reactions, and now social media, all of which provide advance hints and near-instant feedback.

You can see what I'm talking about, right now, in the presidential campaign. Both sides throw out accusations and innuendo meant to discredit the other, in the manner of throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. If the assertion doesn't resonate, it's time to rework it or try something else. If the accusation rebounds, it's dropped. If it works, a new plate of spaghetti is prepared based upon that winning strand, and the process starts again. See, e.g., Romney's latest, fumbled attack - a slightly reworked version of the attack that various political opponents have been attempting against Obama for more than four years. (Are you hungry for warmed over, four-year-old spaghetti? Yum....)

When you hear somebody who espouses more radical positions on the political left complain that the President is not effectively advocating for that position, upon investigation you will usually find that they are overstating the probable impact of such advocacy, that the person is ignoring the fact that Congress is unwilling to act (less of an issue if the other party is in control, but a potentially significant P.R. issue if the president's own party won't follow his lead), and also overestimate public support for the proposal. I do think that there is power in the President's ability to stand before the nation and present arguments about public policy matters, but I believe that the impact is gradual - and won't always be successful. I think that Presidential actions on gay rights issues have helped shift public opinion over time, but we're talking decades. The bully pulpit is not a source of instant gratification.

But, you respond, sometimes an argument resonates with the people and enables a President (and Congress) to implement a significant policy change, or to pass what was previously controversial legislation. Well, yes, but when that happens it's almost always within the context of an emergency. Sometimes the emergency is real, sometimes in retrospect it sounds like "We've always been at war with Eastasia", but I won't deny that it can be a very effective tactic.¹

When you're trying to shift public opinion, it helps if you have a strong foundation for your position. If you're really dealing with something new, you may be able to lay the foundation before your opponent responds and gain a significant advantage over him.² When Ronald Reagan demagogued about the welfare state, it didn't matter if there actually were Cadillac-driving welfare queens, because the public was looking at decades of massive public expenditure in the "war on poverty", money flowing from them to the "undeserving other", with clear evidence that many projects had failed and many others had not succeeded. That also stands as an example of a shift over time - it took another decade for the most significant welfare reforms to become law.

You're most likely to succeed in shifting public opinion when there's broad public acceptance of the foundation of your argument. The argument that we need to balance the budget resonates because most people want the budget to be in balance. The argument that spending large amounts of money in a renewed "war on poverty" would be a waste resonates, because most people believe that past similar efforts were on the whole a waste of money. The argument that unions are, on the whole, bad resonates because - for a broad range of reasons - most people are skeptical of unions and their present contribution to society.³

Ideally, politicians would approach issues like this:

1. Our nation is facing [issue] that we need to address.
2. Possible solutions to [issue] are [responses].
3. Although there is some disagreement upon which response is the best, we're working to figure out and implement a response that will adequately resolve the problem.

For a simple example, consider past "fixes" of Social Security - tweak tax rates and ages of eligibility, and at least on paper it's good to go for another half century or more. But that doesn't happen because neither party actually wants to cut benefits - at least not for current recipients or those who will soon receive benefits - because those people vote. And one party doesn't actually want to fix the current system - they want to privatize it or eliminate it. There is thus little attempt at an honest discussion, while pundits who know the back story tut-tut about how serious the issue is without explaining why it's not addressed.

How do you fashion an appeal that is likely to work? That is likely to get the public to advocate for policies that don't advance, and perhaps even harm, the greater public welfare or their own self-interest? The Catholic Church helped us out by creating a short-list of triggers: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride.

1. This is a time of war.
2. No patriotic American would criticize the President in a time of war.
3. Critics of this war, therefore, are not patriotic.

1. Taxes are bad.
2. My opponent wants to take your money to pay for [programs that benefit others].
3. I won't raise taxes under any circumstances, so you should vote for me.

1. We need to protect children.
2. My opponent wants gay people to get married, to have families, to teach in schools, to have the opportunity to seduce your children or make them gay.
3. I will protect your family and our way of life.

1. The other side says that free government insurance is necessary, using that child as an example.
2. That child has granite counter tops in his home.
3. Therefore, the program is really about taking your money to give free stuff to people who are already richer than you.

I'm not endorsing this approach, either to campaigning in general or in "tossing red meat to the base", but when done correctly (so to speak) it works. One of the reasons that Democrats aren't as effective with this type of argument is that people who align themselves with the Democratic Party - and more importantly, those who give money to the Democratic Party - find it distasteful. Another is that a lot of left-wing concepts are designed to appeal to our enlightened side - charity, sacrifice, patience.... "No - what's in it for me"?

When a rich Democrat argues that he supports higher taxes, even though he will may tens of thousands, perhaps millions, more in taxes himself, the Republican response is to suggest that he has a hidden agenda or to repeat the ludicrous argument that, if he truly meant that, he would already be voluntarily paying extra money to the IRS. Because... appeals to our darker nature are more effective and, frankly, the people who are most receptive to arguments that appeal to our baser nature know their own motivations, and are thus apt to project them onto others.

Another problem is that a lot of left-wing ideas are premised upon the belief that with the right argument, the right circumstances, the right... something... we can all be better, more enlightened people, happily working for the common good. You are going to do much better in creating and implementing solutions to problems, and in convincing the public that your proposals are workable, if your reform is not dependent upon improving human nature.

Finally, with intentional oversimplification, the political right tends to have a blind spot when it comes to military action, and the political left tends to have a blind spot when it comes to "great society" projects. "Don't worry about the cost - we can afford it, and it will probably pay for itself." The right has the advantage, because shooting things and blowing them up produces an immediate, visceral reaction. "Go team!" The left has the disadvantage that such programs involve appeals to our better nature, fly in the face of a history of what are perceived as similar, failed efforts, and can be challenged by resort to the aforementioned cheap rhetorical tools - appeals to spite and envy, appeals to ridicule, etc.

In short, in my opinion, if you want to shift public perception on an issue:

1. Start with a strong foundation - working with, not against, something the public already believes;

2. Propose a solution consistent with human nature - one that can be understood and accepted by our selfish, sometimes irrational minds;

3. Recognize that some of the most effective tools are unseemly - and that your choice may be between making a more effective dishonest argument and a less effective honest argument.

4. Even if you stick to principle, you should not expect that your opponent will be similarly principled.

5. Expect the process will take time - years to decades - if it works at all.

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1. "This is a terrible emergency, brought about by irresponsible members of the financial industry. We must bail them out, protect their salaries and bonuses, and get them back to 'business as usual' as quickly as possible, whatever the cost to the taxpayer." "This little vial could hold enough Anthrax to cause immediate chaos - and Iraq may have tons of it."

2. The Swift Boat Liars did this to John Kerry, who apparently believed that their incredible accusations would be compared by others to the factual record, but ended up on the defensive for the rest of the campaign.

3. One of the difficulties faced by those who would like to help support organized labor is that unions have played a terrible P.R. game, and that the core purposes of a union - advocating to improve a worker's wages, hours and working conditions - do in fact raise the cost of business and create resentment among non-union workers. Also, the excesses of major unions in past years carry an echo.

When Society's Interests Clash With Religious Freedom

Via LOG, a "libertarian" argument positing that "Liberals Must Oppose the Contraception Mandate". The essay gets off to a weak start with an argument about coercion,

Defenders of the mandate insist that a woman’s reproductive liberty is significantly restricted if her employer refuses to pay for contraception. This is false. To see why, abstract. Is A’s liberty to X restricted if A’s boss refuses to pay for X? Especially when X is cheap and readily available? And when A can choose another employer? And when A’s government could provide X directly without using force against a voluntary association? No, no, no, and no.

The most obvious response to the author's position is that he is displaying tunnel vision. He sees this as an issue relating only to birth control and is concerned only with the rights of Roman Catholic employers. Given how thoroughly the religious liberty issue has been discussed, I am surprised that the author has yet to consider the bigger picture: The Christian Scientist employer who doesn't want insurance to cover eyeglasses, blood transfusions or antibiotics. The sincere fundamentalist of any number of religious faiths who doesn't want to pay for insurance that would allow health care practitioners to treat people of the opposite gender, or perhaps suffers genuine distress at the fact that hospitals aren't gender-segregated and wants to rule out any treatment of a person at a mixed-gender hospital. Why do we not respect their religious freedoms?

Once you accept that any form of comprehensive health insurance coverage is going to violate somebody's religious beliefs. If we're actually talking about sincerely held religious beliefs, the question of how many people hold the belief or how strongly other religious groups disagree with the belief should be irrelevant. Once we cross the threshold and decide that we can draw a line between where an employer's religious freedom ends and where an employee's right to comprehensive insurance coverage begins, there's absolutely no reason to privilege one set of religious beliefs over another.

We have drawn a line that favors religious organizations in relation to their actual religious operations, where they are free to engage in a broad range of actions in the name of religion that would be forbidden in the public sphere, but have found it reasonable to hold that when a religious organization extends its operations into the secular world that exemption no longer applies. That's a perfectly reasonable, defensible compromise position, balancing the rights of religious organizations with those of the secular world. If a religious organization find the accommodation of the secular world to be too onerous, it may choose to restrict its actions to the religious sphere and not be affected by the greater society's rules and norms. Or it can enter the secular world, but choose not to offer health insurance to its employees.

Further, from a logical standpoint, we're not actually talking about a boss being forced to pay for contraception. We're talking about an employer that is voluntarily offering health insurance as part of an employee's compensation (and getting a tax break as part of that bargain). A libertarian should, by all rights, object to an employer attempting to attach strings to how an employee spends her wages - what business is that of the employer's? Similarly, the fact that insurance covers birth control does not translate into every employee's obtaining and using birth control. It simply means that, along with other prescription medications, birth control is covered by the insurance plan and available to employees who want it on the same terms as other prescriptions covered by the plan.

It is rather attenuated to argue that the employer is somehow directly paying for benefits that are offered through the employee's health insurance plan. For that matter, by the very nature of insurance, it's not actually true. Let's say that we're talking about a five person store, with insurance costing $8,000 per year for the employees. One employee is diagnosed with a devastating cancer, resulting in a seven figure medical bill. Is the employer "paying" that bill by virtue of having provided health insurance as an employee benefit?

Also, unless the employer is offering health insurance with no copays or coinsurance, and is turning down all government subsidies, and ignoring the fact that any health insurance offered would remain part of the employee's compensation, why is it not at least as honest to say that any particular treatment or medication an employee receives is "paid for" by the employee, the government or by taxpayers? Why is it only the employer's contribution th. at counts?

The question of whether a medication or procedure is "cheap" or is available through other sources is a red herring. Many antibiotics are cheap. Many vaccinations are available through subsidized programs at a cost significantly below what would be billed to an insurance company. I could walk into an urgent care clinic and get a DPT shot for a relatively modest price. And if you're going to argue that the cost to the insured is so trivial that it makes no material difference to her that a particular medication or treatment is or is not covered by insurance, you need to drop the pretense that the impact of including that medication or treatment in an insurance plan is material to the cost of the plan.

Even in a good economy, the idea that an employee can simply quit and find a new job every time an insurance plan fails to cover a particular medical need is risible. As if jobs are simply "there for the taking", particularly at the bottom end of the job market where this is most likely to be an issue. As if a prospective employee has the opportunity to scrutinize the full range of benefits that may or may not be offered by any given employer's health insurance plan before being hired. As if employers and employees have anything approaching equality in their bargaining power.

Given that the criticism is offered as a libertarian argument, it's difficult to know what to make of the suggestion that instead of "using force against a voluntary association" the government should create it's own insurance program to offer medical benefits that offend any given employer's religious sensitivities. Should the government have responded to housing discrimination, some of which is defended by landlords as being predicated upon their genuine religious beliefs, by building rental housing and places of public accommodation across the nation, or at least those parts where certain minority groups found themselves excluded from the "free market"?

Really, though, if we ignore the history of the Affordable Care Act and pretend that some form of "public option" insurance or a national supplemental insurance plan are politically realistic, does the author expect that the debate would disappear? Would it not be far more realistic to anticipate that the same people who are objecting to the inclusion of birth control in employee health benefits would be complaining that their taxes are being used to provide birth control to women? Would it not be fair to infer that libertarians would decry any such insurance program as violative of libertarian principles, likely using the pretty much the same set of objections offered in objection to the inclusion of birth control in employment-based health plans?

The author concludes by conflating a tweet by Cher (yes, really, she is apparently his best example) to the effect that this is part of a "Right wing’s effort to Subjugate women", with the contention that "Authoritarians contend that if A refuses to buy X for B, that A uses coercion to prevent B from buying X." As should be needless to say, he's missing the forest for the trees. Cher's tweet is not about this particular issue, but is about her perception of a significant push by the religious right to subvert women's rights and equality. Also, it's a non sequitur to leap from Cher's statement to the implication that she is some sort of "authoritarian", let alone the hollow man argument that "authoritarians" as a class hold the belief described.

The author continues by taking issue with the very idea that there can be a "collective imperative" - the recognition of a collective interest of society - that outweighs the wishes of an individual. That's true to libertarianism, but is the sort of argument that helps explain libertarian's failure in the marketplace of ideas. Virtually everybody in a society recognizes that there are societal needs and imperatives that require individual compromise. Those who don't, frankly, haven't given the issue any amount of mature thought. You can find good thinkers who are heavily influenced by libertarianism in how they approach the question of where lines should be drawn, but you won't find a single good thinker who believes you can have a society that draws no lines. Note that the author presents out his rejection of "a collective imperative" as a fundamental truth, but if you reject the author's conceit - as pretty much every liberal or conservative is going to do - his argument collapses.

Again referring only to the Roman Catholic Church, the author complains,

[Harvard College administrator Erika] Christakis downplays the significance of the RCC’s religious liberty on the grounds that people have to do things they don’t like all the time. But she fails to distinguish between coercing people into doing things they dislike and forcing them to engage in serious immorality.

Again, nobody is forcing a religious organization to enter the secular marketplace. If a religion is so uncomfortable with the secular world that it chooses to restrict its operations to the purely religious, it has that right. And within that sphere it can discriminate against prospective employees of different faiths, use its bona fide religious beliefs to engage in race and gender discrimination, and refuse to offer insurance coverage for medications and treatments it finds objectionable. We were previously asked to pretend that employees have complete freedom to pick and choose employers that offer the full set of health benefits they desire, with no externalities that influence their employment opportunities or choices. Now we're to pretend that religious organizations have no choice but to enter secular markets in which their religious beliefs will be tested.

Also, the measure of what constitutes "serious immorality" varies by religion. By focusing solely upon one issue and one church, it's easy to pretend that this is a minor issue and that ceding to the beliefs of a religious organization imposes no significant cost upon either society or the women affected by the policy. But if you are sincere in the argument that this is a matter of religious freedom, and are sincere in the belief that society has no interest that can be asserted, let alone one that can overcome a religious belief, you will cause significant hardship to certain members of society, and will marginalize other individuals and groups. It's libertarianism in action, certainly, but anathematic to a healthy, inclusive society.

The author objects to the notion that an employer's religious-based choice not to offer coverage for contraception constitutes the imposition of its religious values on its employees. The author engages in weak manning here, seeking out an obscure argument that's easy to challenge in lieu of addressing the larger issues. But it is fair to observe that you can reach a threshold in a society at which point a gender or minority group can be deprived of basic rights and liberties by virtue of the majority's exercise of its religious beliefs. While it is fair to focus on the tree - that it's not per se coercive for an employer to offer an insurance plan that does not include contraception - when you take off your blinders and start considering the full range of religions and religious beliefs you can easily see how the author's argument supports the very coercion he contends does not exist in this narrow context.

The author concludes again by missing the forest for the trees, arguing that if it's acceptable for employers to discriminate based upon their religious beliefs within the context of their religious operations, it should be equally legitimate for them to discriminate within the context of their secular operations. Needless to say, the case law that supports the former position does not support the latter.

The LOG author poses the question of,

...whether it is within the bounds of acceptable discourse to say that liberals must oppose something that most actual liberals fail to oppose. I of course do think so.

Of course it is within the bounds of acceptable discourse to encourage people to reconsider their beliefs - to suggest that if they believe X, Y, and Z, it should follow that they believe W. But let's just say, there's a huge gulf between the implication that somebody has not thought through their position or is being hypocritical, and making the case that they are in fact being inconsistent or hypocritical. And it is more than fair to point out that in this context, the case was not made. Heck, the author can't even make up his mind whether he's talking about liberals or authoritarians, and it's not clear that he is attaching any greater meaning to either term than "people who disagree with me".

Nothing Says "Sexist" Like Fighting Sexism

John Casey reads Peggy Noonan so you don't have to.

David Brooks and the Class Divide

David Brooks has been reading Charles Murray, so it's time for another of his another "tenth grade quality book book reports".... Call it an oversimplification if you will, but having built his reputation (so to speak) on a sloppily reasoned book suggesting that African Americans struggle because they have low IQ's, Murray has a new book contending that poor white people struggle for sociological reasons. Brooks, of course, makes no mention of Murray's history, instead lavishing his new book with praise.

His story starts in 1963. There was a gap between rich and poor then, but it wasn’t that big. A house in an upper-crust suburb cost only twice as much as the average new American home. The tippy-top luxury car, the Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz, cost about $47,000 in 2010 dollars. That’s pricy, but nowhere near the price of the top luxury cars today....

Worse, there are vast behavioral gaps between the educated upper tribe (20 percent of the country) and the lower tribe (30 percent of the country). This is where Murray is at his best, and he’s mostly using data on white Americans, so the effects of race and other complicating factors don’t come into play.

Get that? Murray's limiting his data to white people allows him to be "at his best", lest "complicating factors" such as race and, um, "other" confuse his thesis. Perhaps by showing, for example, that The Bell Curve is every bit as bad as its critics contend.

Two things to note at this point: First, Murray's story is that of "white people", and second... why 1963? Did the world begin in 1963? Weren't there white people in American prior to 1963? Or did what Brooks describes as Murray's "incredible data" reveal to him that if he started his story in any other year it would be weaker or completely undermined. We could, for example, compare unemployment rates during the Great Depression to those of today, but that wouldn't work so well for Murray's thesis that white society has somehow grown apart. So, why not pick the peak year for the argument that America used to look somewhat like Ozzie and Harriet, and go from there.

Brooks, predictably, accepts Murray's arguments as proof of his own theories about the nation, and that social norms that emerge from a snapshot reflect the norm of human history up through the present era. Now... something is causing the country to "bifurcate[] into different social tribes" and the rich don't spend enough time associating with the poor. What's more, people tend to marry within their social and economic class. Shocking, really. Except that's the story of human history. To the extent that a couple of world wars flattened things out for a while, we've never lived in a country or world in which class and money didn't matter and didn't affect social relationships and behaviors.

Today, Murray demonstrates, there is an archipelago of affluent enclaves clustered around the coastal cities, Chicago, Dallas and so on. If you’re born into one of them, you will probably go to college with people from one of the enclaves; you’ll marry someone from one of the enclaves; you’ll go off and live in one of the enclaves.

With the difference between now and the rest of history being the location of the enclaves? Does Brooks believe that "in the good old days" an Eton boy would go to Oxford, graduate, then marry a scullery maid and settle in Yorkshire? Does he believe that families with surnames like Roosevelt, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Delano, Carnegie and Astor are known for their humble abodes, modest lifestyles, and marriages with members of the working class?

Brooks overtly breaks from the right-wing dogma that "liberal elites" are ruining the country's morals.

Republicans claim that America is threatened by a decadent cultural elite that corrupts regular Americans, who love God, country and traditional values. That story is false. The cultural elites live more conservative, traditionalist lives than the cultural masses.

That assertion is consistent with my position that, on the whole, people who disfavor legislation of morality are better at moderating their own behaviors and impulses as compared to those who view it as a necessity, and don't want others peering into their bedrooms. The Republicans who want to legislate morality are speaking to a population that is more than happy to pretend that "liberals" are condescending to them, even when the opposite is at least as often the case, and feels, for whatever reason, that people cannot be trusted to behave in a socially acceptable manner unless they are placed at risk of serious consequence, most notably pregnancy or jail.

Brooks, as you might expect, overstates his case for the moral righteousness of the "cultural elite", as it's easier to get married, stay married, remarry after divorce, and remain within the confines of what Brooks would deem a "conservative, traditionalist" life if you are wealthy, or at least financially stable. Nonetheless, this is probably the most honest criticism I've seen Brooks offer of his party - that it's rhetoric about liberal elites is pure demagoguery.

In the name of false equivalence, what the left hand giveth the right hand must take away:

Democrats claim America is threatened by the financial elite, who hog society’s resources. But that’s a distraction. The real social gap is between the top 20 percent and the lower 30 percent.

Funny, although you certainly do hear about the uppermost echelons of wealth these days, most economic analysis I see still looks at wealth quintiles. The "Occupy" movement gave additional attention to the top 1%, with the real story of being the 0.1%, but that's a different story than the one being spun by Brooks.

If Brooks wants to make the claim that "Democrats claim America is threatened by the financial elite", perhaps he could do us the favor of identifying the Democrats of whom he speaks. While there's definitely concern on the political left that tax policy favors the wealthiest Americans, that concern has the virtue of being true. While there's concern on the left that the last three decades have seen the wealthiest Americans siphon corporate profits for their own benefit while workers' wages have stagnated or declined, that also has the virtue of being true.

Perhaps Brooks believes what he is implying, that human nature has somehow changed such that economics are irrelevant, but it seems to me that he's offering a red herring. For most of human history there has been great disparity between the wealth of the rich and poor, and throughout that time there has been suggestion that many or most of the poor are undeserving, victims not of society but of their poor values. I suspect Brooks knows he's offering a canard, because he proceeds to acknowledge the role of economics in the present state of society:

The liberal members of the upper tribe latch onto this top 1 percent narrative because it excuses them from the central role they themselves are playing in driving inequality and unfairness.

The central role being what? Brooks has already told us that the "cultural elites" stand as good role models for hard work and moral behavior. What's left but economics? The top 20% are faring quite well, thank you very much, even as other quintiles have struggled.

From this point, Brooks devolves into what might be called "claptrap":

Members of the lower tribe work hard and dream big, but are more removed from traditional bourgeois norms. They live in disorganized, postmodern neighborhoods in which it is much harder to be self-disciplined and productive.

But Brooks told us earlier,

In the lower tribe, men in their prime working ages have been steadily dropping out of the labor force, in good times and bad.

How can Brooks argue both that "members of the lower tribe" as a class are simultaneously dropping out of the workforce and working hard? Surely it's one or the other.

Really, it seems fair to say that most people work hard, particularly those in menial jobs in which their bosses view them as expendable and easily replaced, but that the fundamental problem is a lack of jobs, and more notably a lack of jobs that people with less education and academic inclination can use as a stepping stone to the middle class. Brooks may want to pretend that this is a matter of sociology - that all we need to do is imbue the poor with the proper values and they'll be working hard and forming stable families - but you cannot honestly compare 1963 to the present without admitting that you're comparing a period of boom times for blue collar workers with a modern era in which anti-union measures, automation and outsourcing have decimated the blue collar middle class.

I doubt Murray would agree, but we need a National Service Program. We need a program that would force members of the upper tribe and the lower tribe to live together, if only for a few years.

Yet another version of, “Even though I didn’t want to, didn’t have to, and personally did not do what I’m suggesting, in order for more people to grow up with my values I think all young people should have to spend years of their lives jumping through hoops I will now arbitrarily define.” Public service, national service, military service, menial jobs.

In other words, even though Brooks tells us that the problem is not an "underdog morality tale in which the problems of the masses are caused by the elites", the way to fix the problem is to force young people, rich and poor, to spend years of their lives performing some form of community service while living in some form of MTV-style "Real World" communal housing. That will surely fix everything.