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Saturday, May 01, 2004
Fog of War
There has been a good deal of consternation around the blog world over the apparent withdrawal of the Marines in Fallujah, to be replaced by an Iraqi security force. I believe a lot of us sense that Fallujah is important, not because it is typical of the situation in Iraq, but because it is the closest thing to having a face that the insurgency has. We need the Iraquis to believe that their self-government is inevitable. If we can clean up a situation like Fallujah, then maybe people will think we will clean up the situation everywhere. It is therefore troubling to see us handing over power to the Iraquis, who so far have shown little ability to handle intense combat situations.
The easy assumption here is that this is yet another Rumsfeld fantasy that we can avoid the difficult work of nation building by just having the Iraquis take responsibility for themselves. This may still prove true, but I have my doubts. It seems irrational that the Marines would simply walk away from the present situation, after seemingly making such careful progress through the city. Such a volte-face doesn't even fit a Rumsfeld fantasy.
Belmont Club, which is becoming a daily read for me, has another take on the matter. From his analysis, which I won't try to recreate, the Iraqui security force is not a replacement for the Marines but a force that will be working under the command of the Marines in order to identify and disarm the insurgents. This makes sense in itself and in relation to Rumsfeld's ambitions, since a successful initiative by the Iraquis, even with the Marines holding their hands, will encourage future police operations.
The truth remains to be seen, but the situation spotlights again how useless democratic processes are in a time of war. We simply know too little as citizens to be able to evaluate the performance of our political and military leaders. Not that there is a better alternative.
Eddie 10:12 AM
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Another Question
I've been talking lately about the notion of political rights to my Intro classes, and using the Declaration of Independence as an example. It is a long-standing question about why Jefferson replaced Locke's right of property with the infamous "pursuit of happiness," but I have a different question. What is the difference between the right to liberty and the right to the pursuit of happiness? Is my right to liberty not necessarily identical to my pursuit of happiness?
If we think of rights as legitimate demands we can make upon society, and that others in society can make upon us, then it should be possible to think up cases where we would appeal to one right rather than another. If it isn't possible, then it would seem like the rights are redundant. In the case of Locke's division of rights, this isn't difficult. If I am in constant danger from my fellow citizens, I can appeal to my right to life to enlist aid. If I am constantly put under house arrest or restricted from pursuing a particular career, I can appeal to my right to liberty. And if the government is taking my land and other goods for its own use, I can complain about an infringement of my right to property.
I am unable, however, to think of a case where an infringement upon the right to liberty is not also an infringement upon the pursuit of happiness, or vice versa. What then did Jefferson think he was saying?
I am too occupied to research the question with any great seriousness, but I have looked around a little and talked to some colleagues, and have come up with the following unsatisfying possibilities:
1. Jefferson thought "property" sounded too crass, but it is pretty much what he had in mind anyway. I don't doubt that Locke's familiar formulation would press itself upon the mind of all of the Founders, but this response seems to turn "the pursuit of happiness" into mere rhetorical flourish. This is always a fall-back position, I suppose, but it is not very satisfying to think that Jefferson would sacrifice coherence for something that just sounds good.
2. "Liberty" refers to a right that is more political, and public, while "the pursuit of happiness" refers to more private ends. This is actually coherent, but I'm not familiar with Locke or the Founders using "liberty" so narrowly.
3. "The pursuit of happiness" provides a teleological element that Locke's list omits. Well, I'm all for giving an account of human ends, but this answer still leaves Jefferson's list as incoherent, because presumably happiness is the ultimate end for the rights to life and liberty as well. In other words, the list of rights would, by this account, lack parallel structure. Surely if Jefferson wanted to make a teleological point he could have done so elsewhere in the Declaration.
4. "The pursuit of happiness" is just a catch-all phrase to cover a range of rights not covered by life and liberty. This makes sense except that Jefferson had already stated that the rights listed are among a possibly larger group of inalienable rights.
I'm losing my faith. Any help would be appreciated.
Eddie 7:21 PM
Friday, April 23, 2004
Solid South
Following a link from Sullivan, I took a look at this site that indicates who, in a given area, has made contributions to a Presidential candidate. I looked at every standard zip code in the Macon area and could not locate a single person who has given money to John Kerry's campaign. Most of the donations were for Bush, but there was also a healthy smattering for Edwards and Dean, a few for Graham, and even one for Sharpton! I would expect that some of these Democratic supporters will end up contributing to the Kerry campaign as well, but this evidence would indicate that there is little native interest in him down here. No wonder he has largely written off the southern vote.
Eddie 8:36 AM
Sunday, April 18, 2004
About Time
The past four weeks my wife has been largely immobile due to a couple of foot surgeries, so I have been spending a lot of time with my infant son. He has lately become interested in books, even though he doesn't yet speak. One book after another, we flip through the cardboard pages. Anyway, I have enough experience now to realize that I am finally part of an aggrieved segment of society: fathers. A great many of these books depict loving relations between mothers and children, but fathers are hardly to be seen. The indignity! And what kind of message is this sending to our children? I think I'll start a support group and a political action committee.
Eddie 8:46 PM
Thursday, April 15, 2004
On Edge
The New Republic seems to be preparing itself, and its readers, for its endorsement of John Kerry. This is no great surprise, I suppose, but it would be nice for a magazine that, for twelve years, has bemoaned the unwillingness of Bush Sr. to take the war to Saddam Hussein to give a little more credit to Jr. for actually doing so. Of course, Jr. wasn't spot on with the WMDs, and Ashcroft is creepy, so why make the readership angry and defend a Republican? Besides, Andrew Sullivan and Mike Kelly used the magazine to help undermine Clinton's presidency, so there are past sins to atone for.
An interesting example of this budding affection for Kerry is an article by Franklin Foer in the April 12 & 19 issue, entitled "Teenage Wasteland." Foer dug up some information on Kerry's high school past and reaches a surprising conclusion: Kerry is an outsider to the upper crust establishment. The evidence: although Kerry went to one of the most elite prep schools in the country, it turns out the Kerry family didn't have nearly as much money as others in the school, so Kerry was constantly made to feel like he didn't fit in with everyone else. He had to work summer jobs while his classmates vacationed in Europe.
From a distance, the article gives a persuasive explanation for Kerry's ambition and his testiness. Kerry has always been trying to prove himself, and always resentful of criticisms made against him. Foer, however, wants to place Kerry in a sympathetic light, so he tries to make this high school drama into a dynamic of class warfare. It is telling that Foer expects his readers to have such a natural resentment of the American aristocracy that they would sympathize with the struggles of a minor aristocrat against those higher up the food chain. And apparently he expects his readers also to give credit to Kerry's extreme work ethic, as if it were a virtue to try to prove yourself to a crowd you otherwise despise.
What really caught my attention, however, was a description Foer makes of the hoity-toity that seems to him a criticism:
Unfortunately for Kerry, his boarding-school comrades regarded ambition as a cardinal sin. His schoolmate Stanley Resor says, "A lot of people resented his ambition." Achievement wasn't frowned upon. But you were supposed to downplay your accomplishments, to make them look effortless. At Yale, during the blue-blood heyday, the attitude was symbolized by varsity athletes, who wore their letter sweaters inside out to de-emphasize their achievement--never mind that the sweaters' interior stitching kept the letters perfectly clear to all observers.
So, instead of winning him respect, Kerry's hard work earned him the derision of his classmates. In fact, St. Paul's created an entire folklore about Kerry, much of it embellished. More than anything, they mocked Kerry for styling himself after John Kennedy, imitating the president's voice and haircut, as well as exploiting his identical initials. "He signed his papers JFK," says Macdonald. According to Pell, Kerry would practice writing his initials on his blue jeans and "just kinda went around telling people that he's going to be president." What irked so much about this comparison? To them, this ambitiousness was selfish and self-indulgent. As they liked to joke, JFK means "Just for Kerry."
...Strangely, the decline of the New England boarding schools' prestige has hardly diminished their capacity for producing politicians, from Middlesex's William Weld to St. George's Howard Dean to Andover's George W. Bush. In fact, the political strength of this group has a lot to do with their adherence to boarding-school mores. Instead of acting like "Horatio Alger on the make," they have embodied the old aristocratic spirit of "effortless achievement." They've successfully convinced the public that they are not conventional Washington politicians guided by personal ambition. During his campaign for Kerry's Senate seat, Weld famously jumped into the Charles River, highlighting his devil-may-care attitude toward politics. For his part, Bush has made an art form of his ability to efface his ambition, even saying during the 2000 campaign that he'd be fine if he lost the race. Inevitably, this effortless style elicits praise from the press: These boarding-school pols are "comfortable in their own skin."
While the boarding-school style may lend itself to campaigning, the striver's style has a decidedly mixed record. A whole other genre of politicians has been penalized for trying too hard, as Al Gore will testify. And now the classic gripes about the striver are being lobbed at Kerry yet again. According to the reporters on the trail, not to mention the Bush campaign, Kerry's great character flaw is his ambitiousness, manifesting itself in a willingness to say whatever it takes to please crowds. The New York Times' David Halbfinger wrote last month, "[Kerry] may tailor his stands to an audience or even run away from past positions." By trying too hard to win audiences, he is said to project a phony persona. As the political consultant Donna Brazile told The Washington Post last year, "It's like someone put him in clothes that don't fit."
There's an irony in this criticism of Kerry. In their profiles, journalists attribute his "aloofness" to his Brahman heritage and chalk up his "stiffness" to his patrician style. But this diagnosis misunderstands the true nature of the elite nurtured by places like St. Paul's. The media actually wants Kerry to become more patrician, not less; to discover his inner wasp; and to adopt a carefree attitude. In a way, it's profoundly unfair. He has spent a lifetime overcoming the St. Paul's ethos. But, now, that's exactly what's demanded of him.
Profoundly unfair! Kerry has suffered, and worked hard, so who are we to want something different? Playing upon our average guy, democratic sensibilities, Foer shows disdain for a quality that aristocracies promote and others envy: gracefulness. Making your accomplishments "look effortless" is exactly what it means to be graceful. Grace gives beauty to accomplishment, but it goes beyond a mere judgment of taste. As Nietzsche wrote, "excess of strength is the only proof of strength." The person trying too hard is showing his limits as much as his power, and it is likely that he is biting off more than he can chew. To operate at the edge of one's strength is to handle things shakily and without reserve.
However "unfair" it might be, there is good reason for people to want poise in their leaders, even if they lack such poise themselves. We want leaders who won't be terribly thrown by the world's events, and who have enough confidence in themselves to not take too seriously the inevitable barbs that will be thrown at them.
It is a commonplace within our democratic sensibilities to praise constant striving. We are told to try our hardest and to give 110%. We could stand to learn something from an older, more aristocratic point of view. Give 80% instead. You'll do it better and be better able to respond to the unexpected.
Eddie 11:20 PM
Thursday, April 08, 2004
Alienation
About three weeks ago, I was waiting in a doctor's office when a young woman entered with her children and a friend. After admiring the doctor's fish tank for awhile, she said, "That makes me hungry."
I realized then that I have never become hungry by looking at an animal. I do, however, look at the pictures put in restaurant menus -- classy places! -- to see if I want a hamburger or chicken sandwich. And, I am quite certain that if I were to kill an animal, clean it and cook it, that I would have no appetite at all.
Perhaps the division of labor has gone too far.
Eddie 4:46 PM
Sunday, April 04, 2004
Talking Heads
Have human beings always told lies? It is impossible to know, I suppose, and common sense would suggest they have, but I would speculate otherwise. Speech is what binds us most intimately together, and to tell a lie is similar to going into exile, which I imagine the primitive mind would have considered most abominable. If I would be allowed the assumption that the psychological development of an individual today provides clues to the history of our species, then I would take as evidence, from watching my daughter in elementary school, that "fitting in" is among our most basic drives.
It is hard for us to imagine the horror of making oneself invisible because we do it all the time. Civilization is all talk, demanding such regular contact with others that we gladly impose exile upon ourselves for simple peace of mind. We have become creatures with souls, making us not very trustworthy. Nonetheless, I find it edifying to try to place myself back in that primitive mind where there is so little mediation between what is thought and what is said. How refreshing, such blunt crudity! Perhaps this explains my affinity for rednecks, who remind you, on the hour, that they say what they mean and mean what they say. Vico wrote that all myths are true, by which he meant not that they are all factual, but that they all spring from a heart ignorant of deceit.
If you've followed my line of speculation, I think you will be struck by the ugliness of manipulative speech. What could possibly be worth it? I imagine that, to the primitive mind, being falsely understood is akin to being dead, like a ghost still mingling with the living. When speech becomes simply an instrument of power, there has been a terrible confusion of means and ends.
High school (and college) debate provided me with a profound experience of a world where speech is only manipulative. Winning is everything. This means that there is no value in being open to persuasion and no sense in trying to persuade others. You don't even try to persuade the judge of the merits of your case; rather, you try to persuade the judge of the merits of your defense of your case. But how, in this competitive environment, could any statement be taken as true or even plausible? If there isn't some level of trust, where does one find any confidence in what is being said?
Debate handles this in part by adopting peculiar rules of evidence, such as published sources carrying strong weight, regardless of the integrity of the source. It also handles this by a strange, Chicken Little conservatism that reflexively runs from every possibility of the extreme. Do you think the way we fund schools should be changed? Well, that could lead to nuclear war, or Malthusian famine, or something else equally preposterous! Ultimately, however, debate handles the issue of evidence by giving special emphasis to arguments that have gone without response. If an argument is "dropped" by someone, then it makes it really easy for the judge to decide in favor of the team that didn't do the dropping. To avoid this consequence, it is paramount to say something about everything, if for no other purpose than to muddle the issues you don't have a clear response to.
An amazing part of the debate experience too is how often you think that you are right. Again, not about the issue itself necessarily, but about your superiority in presenting your case. No matter how implausible the arguments themselves may be, it is always easy to convince yourself that you deserve the win, and that to lose would be an act of injustice.
Putting these points together, debate creates an environment where people are encouraged to just keep talking and where everyone thinks that they have talked the best. Like lawyers in a courtroom, debaters are coached to always speak with confidence. Under these awkward conditions, it is difficult for a judge to properly evaluate conflicting claims, so it is important not to give the judge an easy way out by presenting an image of self-doubt.
Politics works the same way. Winning is everything, so all speech is manipulative. No matter what the issue, just keep talking. Since everyone expects your opponents to try to make you look bad, their efforts are largely discounted as being normal partisanship. The only incrimination that matters is self-incrimination. A leaked memo or an awkward pause in a television interview count for a lot. Having the members of your party turn against you counts for quite a bit too: Nixon fell once Republicans started to distance themselves, while the solid wall that the Democrats put up in front of Clinton most likely kept him in office. With the current administration, the most damaging attacks have come from former administration officials, not because their claims are especially credible but just because of their being former administration officials. This explains too why it was important for Clarke to let people know that he has voted Republican.
Waiting for someone to incriminate himself is clearly an inane standard for measuring truth, but the problem goes beyond that. Manipulative speech undercuts the fundamental human desire to be seen. Insofar as the political order depends upon our mutual recognition, these political acts of manipulation should be seen ultimately as anti-political acts. While there are great pressures from all political parties to increase voter turn-out, our political order is kept intact because most people don't participate in the culture of Washington D.C. and their state capitols.
As a final note, I should say that I consider myself an excellent liar. I don't do it often, and rarely in important matters, in part because it is too hard to keep up with the stories. Like Montaigne, my memory isn't that good. Nonetheless, when it seems to suit the moment, I can say whatever needs saying. My thoughts are generally kept a safe distance from my speech (and be grateful for it!), so it is hardly a struggle for me to think one thing and say another. Still, I admire Achilles, who said that he hated the man who kept one thing in his heart yet spoke another. How nice if we could feel shame even in the presence of our enemies.
Eddie 3:12 AM
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