The Essayist #22: Politics and the Oedipus Effect

The Greeks believed in destiny. Unlike Old Testament prophets, Greek oracles weren't interested in changing behavior. If the gods let you know that something was going to happen, then that thing was going to happen. That thing was not going to change, no matter what you did. The message was not "Check yourself," but "Brace yourself."

Oedipus proves this perfectly. His parents, and then he, were told that Oedipus would murder his father and marry his mother. Everything that Laius, Jocasta, and Oedipus did to prevent this guarunteed that it would happen. By abandoning baby Oedipus on a hillside, Laius and Jocasta guaruntee that Oedipus grows up not knowing who his real parents are. By getting away from the people he thinks are his parents, Oedipus puts himself into his true parents' path. As Camille Paglia put it in Sexual Personae: "Oedipus, fleeing from his mother, runs right into her arms."

The Essayist #21: With The Rich And Mighty, or Is Roman Polanski as Smart as Michael Vick?

[The following was originally posted at my livejournal last October. It is the Definition of "Overtaken by Events". Polanski has skated away scot free again, and while Vick has once more, albiet briefly, become a "person of interest". Nevertheless, in the light of Whoopi Goldberg once more rising to the defense of her fellow entertainers, it needs to be said again.]
An alien or archaelogist from the future, seeking to re-create what early-21stcentury humans meant by “controversy” could do worse that to make the Polanski case his study. All the elements abound: famous men, young girls, taboo sex and quaint drugs, rumours of judicial malfeasance, the drama of exile, competition for the status of victim, etc. If I cared, I would be enthralled.

But I do not care, and indeed plan to explain my not-caring in some detail. This being the case, one may fairly ask why I bother to put fingers to keyboard to pontificate on the subject. And I will fairly answer that my lack of caring is a feature, not a bug. It grants that most precious of journalistic bona fides, objectivity. So before I make comparison between Michael Vick and Roman Polanski, bear with me through the following Declaration of Disinterest:

The Essayist #20: The Right of Revolution

An oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters.
-Henry Clay

Every revolution contains within it something of evil.
-Edmund Burke

       With which of these two elegant quotations would the average person agree? The difficulty of the question becomes more apparent the longer it is considered. In the West, where the American and the French Revolutions constitute the birth-cries of the modern age, we feel an obligation to assent to the former. Yet any serious study of the French, Russian, or even the American Revolutions will compel us to give at least credence to the latter. We may shrug it off by retorting that revolutions are not made with rose-water, but this is the more persuasive with the understanding that whatever revolution we live under need not be repeated and will not be undone. In other words, we may ignore the blood of our birth so long as we need not be born again.
       But is revolution permanence? Have we established political structures so rooted in truth as to be past changing? To an extent, democracy is justified on answering, “yes” to this question: when the people rule, they need not revolt. But it is hardly a novelty to point out that majority rule can be tyrannical; James Madison pointed this out repeatedly. And if a majoritarian tyranny comes into existence, a revolution could surely be justified in destroying that democracy. Couldn’t it?
       Or could it?
       This essay will argue that every political system exists not for its own sake, but to protect a certain value that its framers held as essential to justice and order. This may seem obvious, but consider again its implications with regard to our current and beloved political ideal: democracy is not an end in itself, but a means to protect society. If it fails in that end, it may be reformed, altered, or even destroyed. No system of government is absolute; every state has an escape clause.

The Essayist #19: Rand Paul is not a Bigot, Just a Dumb Libertarian

In the wake of Rand Paul putting his foot in it, Ace does yeoman's work explaining in exact detail why the 1964 Civil Rights Act is not unconstitutional.

The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments were specifically enacted with the purpose of eradicating slavery and duly -- constitutionally -- empowered Congress to pass legislation in furtherance of this purpose. To say such laws are "unconstitutional" is simply in error -- previous to the lawful and constitutional passage of those amendments, such laws would have indeed have been unconstitutional and an unlawful overreach of granted Congressional power.
After their lawful passage, however, Congress did have that authority.

And the reason that Congress decided that it need that authority was because certain states were violating the rights of their citizens, of failing to do the thing governments are created to do. The Constitution thus comes  more fully in line with the principles espoused in the Declaration of Independence.

Peasants in feudal society weren't technically slaves, but they were peons, persons with sharply-curtailed rights and certain obligations (including deference) to their social betters/masters. I think a fair reading of "slavery" includes the idea of "peonage," too. Unless there is some critical constitutional point here to be vindicated, I do not see any defensible purpose in arguing these amendments outlawed slavery but gave full constitutional blessing to regime of enforced peonage.

Precisely. Slavery and peonage are offenses against liberty, that can only be maintained by the use of force. As Governments exist to secure liberties, our government should be willing and able to act against one person's attempt to destroy the liberty of another. Hence, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a necessary and constitutional redress against 400 years of slavery and peonage.

Would it have been better if it was not necessary? Assuredley. Are there things about the way the Civil Rights Act as been used that I consider wrong, and offenses to liberty? Without doubt. But the law, as intended, has no legal or ethical flaw.

The Essayist # 18: Islamic Idol

I have never understood the Muslim sensitivity with regard to Mohammed. Islam finds the notion of the Incarnation ridiculous ("Far be it from His glory to have a son," saith the Quran), yet for all intents and purposes treats its human prophet as though he were divine, hence unfit for graven image. The logic behind proscriptions against idolatry dwells in confusing an image of God for His reality; a sculpture of a calf, however golden, cannot be the King of the Universe. Muslims have long accused Christianity of dancing with polytheism in regards to the Trinity, of divinizing Jesus of Nazareth; how they fail to see the degree to which they do the same escapes me.

The Essayist #17: The Oppressor is Named.

Back when I was in college, I thought long and hard about the inherent oddities of my position: there I was, the military brat, the second of my surname to go to a university, and I was studying to become...what, exactly? A Foreign Service Agent? A perma-student? What was my productive work? Where did I belong? With my leftyish friends, embracing Derrida and Foucault, or with the kids in the College Republicans who tended to hold me at arm's length, and at any case never got drunk on Monday nights playing Diplomacy while extensively quoting Monty Python?

Twelve years, 7-8 jobs, and a long time earning my living as a teacher later, and I know what I am; precisely the term Lenin used when he arrived at Finland Station: a man of letters. An intellectual. But this discovery has not lessened the tension of my life one bit.  I am, as I was then, a rebel against my class.

But can such a class actually exist? Have not the intelligensia existed since the rise of the Sumerian scribes? Yes, and yes. And I'm not the first to say so. The Volokh Conspiracy here quotes the critical-theory journal Telos on the rise of New Class theory:

The Essayist #16: Today's Special Comment -- Keith Olbermann is a Racist Swine.

I know, I know, fish in a barrel, cheap shot, giving him attention he doesn't deserve, yadda yadda. Don't care. For reasons passing understanding, while flipping through the channels last night, I left it on MSNBC long enough to catch Olbergruppenfuhrer's Special Comment, all about how anyone and everyone who has any affinity for the Tea Party movement is merely a Klansman in drag.

That means you, honky.

The Essayist #15: The Real Da Vinci Hoax

Last night Family Guy had a minor minor sub-plot involving DVC, as sure a sign as any that we've hit the coveted point of over-exposure and will beging jumping sharks. What was interesting was how tame the gag was; Lois raves to some un-seen girlfriend over how much she loved it, Stewie grabs it, spends the night reading it, and falls asleep into his porridge. That's it. Gag at the people who denounce the book and then get sucked into it? Probably. But hardly a commentary. We leave that to South Park.

An entire industry has arisen in the wake of DVC by devout Christians into refuting its historical claims: that Constantine "invented" the divinity of Christ at Nicaea, that the Bible as we know it is a purged text, a fiction imposed by Constantine, and, most incredible of all, that Christ was husband to Mary Magdalene and fathered children with her, and that his descendents include the Merovingian kings of France. To this I will add no further input, except to point out that secular historians place the authorship of most of the so-called "alternative" or Gnostic Gospels as no earlier than the 2nd century, AD, and the authorship of the canonical Gospels in the latter half of the 1st century. Beyond that, the debate seems pointless.

But this is not the "Real" Da Vinci Hoax to which my title alludes. The historical claims of Brown's book are, as I said, as old as the 2nd Century, and they have had recurrences in the past, as with the Cathars in the Middle Ages. It's an enemy the Church has to deal with from time to time, in its struggle with the identity of Christ that has been with it since the beginning. Somehow, the Church finds a way to put it down.

No, the real hoax being perpetrated on the public is that Dan Brown is a good author, and that the Da Vinci Code is a good book. I cannot find an explanation for how otherwise intelligent people would not only accept this premise, but willingly transmit it to others, raving about the wonders of it. Admittedly, I came in biased, and perhaps hyper-critical, but even I was at least prepared for Brown to give me a ripping good yarn, a page-turner, if a theologically pulpy one. He did no such thing.

I could find not one element of good writing in this book. The dialogue is hackneyed, the characters one-dimensional, and the plot entirely predictable. Even the Twist at the end surprised me not at all; I had predicted it approximately halfway through the book. The main character, Robert Langdon, a professor of symbology at Harvard, serves no purpose other than to be a mouthpiece for the Brown's views of Christianity (and they are his, for he writes a sad little statement of "Fact" for a prologue, contending that the Priory of Sion exists, and thus, all the other claims of the novel are to be taken as true). Hardly a chapter goes by without Langdon, in answering a question from stock-ingenue Sophie Neveu in multi-paragraph form, until Brown stops even the pretense of dialogue and removes the quotations, lecturing directly to the reader with all the smugness of a bored adjunct professor. Nor is it ever explained how a symbology professor knows so much about the supposedly secret Priory of Sion without himself being a member. The whole novel seems to believe that the Deep, Dark, Secret Truth is something all educated people are aware of (Sire Leigh Teabing, Langdon's tag-team partner in babble, states this rather baldly) which rather undercuts the drama.

Minor characters are no better. Perhaps the most ludicrous idea in the Da Vinci Code is that there is any such thing as a devout Catholic in Paris. Brown proceeds from the notion that in France Christianity is more than a religion, it's a birthright, and as the stand-in for this notion gives us as the stubborn police captain Bezu Fache, a figure out of Beau Geste, who inexplicably says English idioms like "do something right for a change" to fellow Frenchmen.

Adding to this catalog of Don'ts for Novel Writing is the fact that Brown seems not to have done his homework. When one writes a novel about uncovering great secrets of history, it behooves one to get ones historical details accurate. Brown seems not to have bothered with simple fact-checking. For example, he describes Godefroi de Bouillon, the supposed founder of the Priory of Sion, as a "French king." He was no such thing. Godefroi the Bouillon was a count, and a leader of the First Crusade, and by all accounts a pious man. He is counted among the Kings of Jerusalem, but he did not himself bear that title, because he disdained to wear a crown of gold where Christ had worn a crown of thorns. Instead, he made do with the style of Defender of the Holy Sepulchre. To call him a French king is entirely misleading.

Another howler occurs when Brown/Langdon has the Knights Templar established by knights of the Second Crusade, after recieving their permission from Baldwin II of Jerusalem. That would have been a neat trick, inasmuch as Baldwin II(r. 1118-1131) had been dead for fifteen years when the Second Crusade (1147-1149)happened. Both military orders (Templars and Hospitallers) did come about during Baldwin's reign, true, but it had nothing to do with the Second Crusade. If Brown had taken a momentary glance at a few history books, he would know this, but as he seems to believe that the history he writes is possessed of more "truthiness" than contemporary records, he gets basic, verifiable facts wrong. All of which leads one to take all other ideas with a grain of salt.

But the final insult is the way the entire story becomes much ado about nothing at the end. I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say that the rug gets pulled from under the readers, and the promised Holy Grail towards which the novel has been aiming evaporates into the morning mist. Such is de rigeur in Grail lore from time immemorial, of course; despite their suffering and holiness, the seekers rarely get their hands on the Grail at the end. But when it happens in Parzival it's a commentary on the sinfulness of man, and when it happens in Monty Python, it's a parody. Brown's post-modern transformation of the Grail from a world-shattering secret cache of information to an esoteric exercise in neo-paganism ("The quest for the Holy Grail is the quest to kneel before the bones of Mary Magdalene. A journey to pray at the feet of the outcast one.") is nauseatingly hollow, and a literary cop-out unseen since the days of Henry Miller.

To sum up: dull characterizations, bad dialogue, stupid factual errors, and a lame climax. And he's sold millions of copies worldwide, raided Hollywood, and been name-dropped on trendy shows.

All because we just can't accept a celibate Savior.

The Essayist #14: Mexican Wars

My ancestors came to this country at varied times and for varied reasons, and all of them belonged to groups that, at some time or other, were regarded as dangers to the Republic. The Germans were suspected of disloyalty during both World Wars. And the Irish were the Mexicans of the 19th Century, a horde of uneducated, malnourished, uncultured swine, spreading Popery and syphillis, and depressing the wages in the major Northeast cities (New York, Philadelphia, Boston, etc.) down past the level to which even black workers had become accustomed.

I get all that. I do. Yet this still does not make me favor the goals of those who marched in Los Angeles this past week.

Generally, I'm a pro-immigration, pro-assimilation, pro-melting pot kind of chap. Every successful immigrant group in America has added to, not detracted from, our culture and economy, long-term. I want everyone who wants to come here and join our reindeer games to be permitted to do so, regardless of color, creed, or language, provided they agree to the following, non-negotiable Rules of the House:

1. Learn to speak English well enough to communicate with most people who live here, at least when in public.

2. Put your prime loyalty to This Our Republic, above any other foreign commitments (sending money to your grandmother in the Old Sod is jolly fine, sending money to organizations that demonize and seek to damage the U.S. is not)

3. There is no 3. You may now pay taxes and vote like the rest of us.

The Mexican Immigration problem is in nature different from any of the other ones we have previously dealt with (in truth, each one is as different as the countries from which they stream here). The difference lies not in the culture of Mexico, nor in a particular defect of Mexican immigrants, but in the past.

The border with Mexico has always been porous. For 19th Century Outlaws, Mexico was Safe at Home, Olly-Olly-Oxen-Free. Banditry and paramilitary troublemaking along the border is nothing new: Pancho Villa's raid into Texas prompted President Wilson to send the U.S. Army deep into Mexico after him (they came up empty). The border is desert for Washington's sake, desert and a river whose banks will shift if it rains hard enough (as they did in 1941, moving 5 miles to the north and creating a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court, which was obliged to rule in favor of Mexico because the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo established the river as the border).

Then there's the fact that the U.S.-Mexican border is the result of the last international war on the North American Continent. In 1848 one-third of Mexico became the southwest United States, as provided for in the aforementioned Treaty of Guadelupe-Hidalgo which ended the war. Mexicans who thus claim that they are standing on their "homeland" make a statement that many are inclined to credit, especially given the ambiguity with which the U.S.-Mexican War has been viewed by Americans, from the 1840's forward. Republicans like Lincoln and Grant regarded it as a "war of conquest" pushed by proto-Confederates to create land for more slave states, but this did not prompt them to return the lands to Mexico. The problem has been with us ever since.

None of this, however, means that we can any longer afford to tolerate the situation; to call a problem old is not to accept its continuance. In the first place, while the Mexican War may not have been the most morally shining moment in our history, neither is it the Malevolent Rape of Innocent Mexico that our history books seem to suggest. The Mexican Government is at least as responsible as the U.S. Government for the War's Outbreak: their stubborn refusal to accept the Texas Republic and their short-sighted attempts to dispute the border gave the U.S. the cause that it needed: regardless of the oft-repeated "Manifest Destiny", it is hard to see how a war could have come about, even under President Polk, had not Mexico believed they could regain what they had lost, and attempted to do so.

Moreover, in victory the United States government was generous: the Mexican Cession was given not as conquered to conqueror but in return for $15 million (equal to what Jefferson paid for Louisiana), plus another $3.25 million of debt to Mexican citizens living north of the new border that the U.S. agreed to assume responsibility for. These same Mexicans were guarunteed citizenship and full property rights. No indemnities were paid, no massacres committed. This is hardly history's cruelest conquest.

Second, the United States is under no obligation to accept any immigrants from anywhere; our past notwithstanding, we are the third most populous nation on earth (a distant third, granted, behind China and India, but double the size of the next one on the list); we have no shortage of people, nor any real need for more. A government's first obligation is to its citizens, not to those who may become citizens, if they feel like it.

While I don't know how I feel about a "guest-worker" program, philosophically, there isn't too much daylight between myself and George Will. I likewise believe that an intelligent immigration reform package should include the following:

Secure the Border. Fences, walls, the whole nine yards. This is a security as well as an economic issue. Along with those huddled masses are drug lords and foreign thugs. They need to be kept out as well (an overhaul of security at all entry points would be welcome as well).

Make Legal Immigration Easier. A points system like that of Australia would give immigrants legal status (and thus, a means of identification and monitoring), a simpler means of reaching the end goal, and thus, encouragement to get there.

Zero Tolerance for Reconquistadors. Anyone proclaiming that the Southwest be returned to Mexico or that whites be expelled from any part of the Americas should be arrested for fomenting insurrection, if a citizen, and deported with a permanent 'no entry' mark next to their name if not. The history between the U.S. and Mexico makes such statements a "Clear and Present Danger" as far as I'm concerned. Anyone standing in Los Angeles who seems to think he's in Mexico should be returned to Mexico, that he may discover the difference.

Assimilate, Assimilate, Assimilate. There was no bi-lingual education for the Germans, the Italians, the Swedes, the Poles, or anyone else. I don't see what makes Latinos so special that they can't follow the same path. But more than language, it's time to instill in immigrants a love of the country they're joining, as a republic of free men and women from around the world, not as a cash cow. America is more than the New York Stock Exchange, more than Wal-Mart, more than Hollywood. We must remember this, and we must so teach our new brothers and sisters.

If we can do this, we'll have the means for turning all these Mexicans into Mexican-Americans, and eventually just plain the latter. Enough of guilt, enough of malaise, enough of flagellation for the degree to which America is not Eden. It never will be, and if we can forgive ourselves for that, we can discover again a people worth keeping.

The Essayist #13: On the Perils of Collective Englightenment

Catholic Light has a fairly typical broadside 'gainst the failure of the Left to stand up for its beloved Free Speech, but with a bonus; he actually points out what the purpose of free speech is:

At its noblest, this was a recognition that no human institution could long survive without honest criticism, protected from reprisals such as arrest or confiscation of property.

Seen in this light, freedom of speech is not a grace for all forms of expression, but a guaruntee that he or she who speaks for the purpose of pointing out folly or proposing a new cours of action will not be attacked. Argument, the process of persuasion and counter-persuasion, is not only permitted, but expected of all who would take part in public affairs.

One could call this the great inheritance of the Englightenment. But one would have to be careful. The Left no longer believes in one of the main tenets of the Englightenment, that the Englightenment was universally applicable. Structuralism has made the Enlightenment nothing more than the ersatz tribal religion of the Modern West, no more inherently valid than Sharia. If conflict is to be avoided, follows the logic, respect for all belief systems must be practiced.

It used to be that conservatives favored doing nothing as much as possible. "If ten logs are rolling at you," remarked Calvin Coolidge, "nine of them will fall into a ditch before they get you." Now it is the socialist who favors sitting tight and waiting for all this Islamic bither-bother to just pass over. Apologize for your insensitivity, and everything will be all right.

One wonders how the 18th-century philosophes would have reacted to such. Some, like Voltaire, would be eminently predictable. But what about others? Would Rousseau have so strenuously defended free speech against the offended masses of more, *ahem* "natural" people (as everyone not European was supposed to be)? Or would he be on the side that says that the Islamic rage must be understood in light of the West's own record of enslavement?

More Catholic Light:

Cowardice is only part of the explanation for the Left's silence. They also believe that the Darker Peoples are less than fully human, and can't be fully blamed for any of their actions. This crude racialism permeates and corrupts their moral sense on most social issues. Foremost, and most shamefully, many Leftists sympathize with the Islamofacists' goal of destroying the West.

The two groups don't agree with each other on every issue -- the Western Left practically regards gay sex as a sacrament, and Islamofacists wouldn't mind stoning gays to death. The latter group's views on "the status of women" are notoriously retrograde. In their fundamental view of Western civilization, though, their critiques are roughly the same: it is dangerously corrupt, exercises a malign influence in the world, and its power should be thwarted at every opportunity.

I wonder how well-thought-out this all is. I wonder if the kind of perverse incentives created when non-muslims are expected to show the same respect for Mohammed that Muslims are, has been considered. I don't think it has. Enlightenment seems to have become like Salvation in the minds of its heirs: something done for us a long time ago, to which we owe neither effort nor thought. Where does the mind belong in such a world?

Pursuant to Essayist #12:

A classic example of reductionism, courtesy of Slate. It begs many questions: is a police threatening harsh treatment at the hands of other prisoners in jail "torture"? Is using bright lights to disorient and disturb thought processes "torture"? Is playing good cop/bad cop "torture"? If not, why not? They're all coercive, and they're all aimed at getting information, or a confession, out of what may be an innocent person. Where is the line drawn? And if the line can be drawn, and clearly, why is it risible to argue that the line should be drawn elsewhere?

I'm not holding my breath for answers.

The Essayist #12: Torture and Reductionism

As our Secretary of State tours Europe and lets the cat out of the bag regarding where our "black sites" are (and, by association, who gave us permission to establish them), the torture debate still hasn't reached anything like a mutual exchange of ideas. The MSM has gone into full eye-rolling mode, blithely skimming by Administration attempts to define "torture". The assumption is made without ever being stated that a) all coercive interrogation is torture, b) all attempts to define it otherwise are non-starters.

Charles Krauthammer, naturally, has a different point of view. First, he makes an important distinction: between a military prisoner of war...

First, there is the ordinary soldier caught on the field of battle. There is no question that he is entitled to humane treatment. Indeed, we have no right to disturb a hair on his head. His detention has but a single purpose: to keep him hors de combat.

...and a terrorist...

A terrorist is by profession, indeed by definition, an unlawful combatant: He lives outside the laws of war because he does not wear a uniform, he hides among civilians, and he deliberately targets innocents. He is entitled to no protections whatsoever. People seem to think that the postwar Geneva Conventions were written only to protect detainees. In fact, their deeper purpose was to provide a deterrent to the kind of barbaric treatment of civilians that had become so horribly apparent during the first half of the 20th century, and in particular, during the Second World War. The idea was to deter the abuse of civilians by promising combatants who treated noncombatants well that they themselves would be treated according to a code of dignity if captured--and, crucially, that they would be denied the protections of that code if they broke the laws of war and abused civilians themselves.

He goes on to describe two circumstances under which terrorists may be subject to coercive interrogation: 1) the oft-repeated Ethics 101 dilemna of a bomb in an urban area and one person who knows where it is and how to disarm it, and 2) a high-level terror commander (Krauthammer uses Khalid Sheikh Mohammed), who can name names and places. He calls for interrogation to be banned by U.S. military personnel and to belong only to, as he puts it, "highly specialized agents who are experts and experienced in interrogation, and who are known not to abuse it." Leaving aside the question who these people are, and how they're going to come by their expertise, this seems to at least be a framework for interrogating an enemy without descending into barbarism.

A DailyKos poster, on the other hand, attacks this with the words of NRO's own John Derbyshire, who is becoming a rather unpredictable chap. The same fellow who once intoned that we would not be able to defeat terror without breaking some heads open has categorically denounced torture of any kind, thusly:

The first thing to be said about torture, as a means of discovering facts, was said by Aristotle in Book 1, Chapter 15 of Rhetorica: torture doesn't work very well. Under physical torture, some people will lie; some will say anything to make the pain stop, even just for a while; and a surprising number will refuse to yield.

A valid point, but one which Krauthammer addresses:

Is one to believe that in the entire history of human warfare, no combatant has ever received useful information by the use of pressure, torture, or any other kind of inhuman treatment? It may indeed be true that torture is not a reliable tool. But that is very different from saying that it is never useful.

The monstrous thing about torture is that sometimes it does work. In 1994, 19-year-old Israeli corporal Nachshon Waxman was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists. The Israelis captured the driver of the car used in the kidnapping and tortured him in order to find where Waxman was being held. Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister and peacemaker, admitted that they tortured him in a way that went even beyond the '87 guidelines for "coercive interrogation" later struck down by the Israeli Supreme Court as too harsh. The driver talked. His information was accurate. The Israelis found Waxman.

It remains to be seen just how effective our interrogations methods will be, how much information they will yield. Indeed, given the secrecy such operations tend to entail, we may never know. Perhaps, concurrent to a framework of interrogation, we construct a framework of declassification, of public knowledge of success rates, if such can be done without compromising intelligence.

There's a slippery-slope argument to be dealt with as well. More Derbyshire:

Don't let's kid ourselves that we can pick and choose from the menu. "Yes, we'll beat, but we won't pull out fingernails." ... "Yes, OK, we'll pull out fingernails, but we won't rape your children in front of you." Forget it — when you start on the road of torture, there is no end. We beat him: he doesn't talk. We remove his fingernails, and then, for good measure, his toenails: Still he won't talk. That nuke is ticking away in a high building, in some American city. The suspect has a 16-year-old daughter: Do we send for her?

However valid this slope is, the rapidity with which we descend it may well depend on our ability to accept failure. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed may be indeed a treasure trove of information useful and essential to prosecuting the war on Al-Qaeda, but how far are we willing to go to get it? At what point does the image of America-the-torturer become a net minus, inducing ordinary Iraqis and Afghanis to keep us at arm's length rather than inducing terrorist to spill their guts quickly? This is largely a debate we aren't having, because many of us can't accept that there's even a difference between a terrorist and a regular POW.

Thus, the dangers of reductionism, of the refusal to recognize practical and moral distinctions. To many, anyone who is held by the government, be it a U.S. citizen for theft or a foreign national for plotting the mass-murder of Americans, is a defendant, and thus guaranteed the rights of a defendant. That this is legally questionable does not stop them from speaking and behaving as though it were set in stone, and castigating with empty labels ("pro-torture", "medieval," "Grand Inquisitor") those who say otherwise. By the same token, many believe that violence is violence is violence, whether indiscriminate and for its own sake or focused and targeted. They believe this because it has the ring of cosmic truth to it: to a degree, all prisoners share a universal experience, and all violence bears the same marks. But only to a degree.

It's not moral cowardice to point these things out. In many circumstances, it's impossible to make judgements without making distinctions between type and purpose. The Jesuits themselves, not known for being nihilists, have a dictum: "Never deny. Seldom affirm. Always make distinctions."

No one should be called unpatriotic because they blanche at the thought of agents of the U.S. Government depriving captured men of sleep and comfort to make them talk. Such things run against the grain of popular government. And the wartime powers that the Executive branch claims, the wartime plans it creates, indeed the very wars they propose must be subject to scrutiny. Such is what a loyal opposition is for. But scrutiny that does not make room in its rhetoric for the actions and goals of our government as seperate from the actions and goals of our enemies is counterproductive. A significant amount of the Left's criticism of the manner in which the War on Terror is being fought would have, I think, greater resonance if these criticisms were not dismissable as being made in bad faith. We cannot rationally discuss how far we should permit ourselves to go if one side refuses to concede that we should go anywhere.

Pursuant to Essayist #11

Mark Steyn:

In war, there are usually only two exit strategies: victory or defeat. The latter's easier. Just say, whoa, we're the world's pre-eminent power but we can't handle an unprecedently low level of casualties, so if you don't mind we'd just as soon get off at the next stop.

Even Democrats, judging by the result of Murtha's resolution, know this is dumb. But we haven't really defined what victory looks like. If the President felt more comfortable divulging his strategies and selling them to the American people, we might be able to have a real conversation on the subject. But his presidency has been (or at any rate, acted like it's been) under siege since it started, so everything is played on a James Bond, need-to-know basis. Consequently, the President's arguments are broad and not specific.

So yes, in time of war that many people still consider debatable, the President needs to consistently articulate his arguments with something more than "stay the course." But there's more than a little suspicion that the Left is unwilling to be convinced that victory is even desirable. Consequent arguing in bad faith gets us nowhere.

The Essayist #11: Our Grand Conundrum

Wretchard on the pre-war intel debate:

Although the pre-war intelligence estimates of Iraq now turn out to be inadequate in many ways, its principal defect was that it attempted to measure the wrong thing. It ought to have focused on the extent to which Iraqi Ba'athists and regional terror groups would have mounted a Lebanon or West Bank type defense; identified the key hurdles in creating a replacement Iraqi state; and specified the requirements necessary to win this campaign in an impressive and overwhelming manner in order to demonstrate to the rogue state audience what the consequences of aggression against the United States were. But this subject was verboten, and so instead intelligence spoke to the strategically irrelevant minutiae of Yellowcake and centrifuges, casting a wavering light, like the drunk searching for a lost coin in the story, not in the area where it would be found but in the only place he could shine a beam.

It is said that foreign policy debates in the U.S. are always about the next election. In a democratic society, such must inevitably be true, but perhaps the biggest problem is not the incompetence of our intelligence service but the lack of consensus about our proper foreign policy goals. This problem is not just inter-party but intra-party; the Republicans are currently dominated by a liberationist (neo-con) approach, but only because President Bush is a subscriber. With another republican, the "realist" control-them approach would be just as dominant. Among Democrats, the few who genuinely want to protect American interests tread softly amid the vicious Utopian fantasies of the New Left.

This is unlikely to change. As P.J. O'Rourke recently wrote, Americans hate foreign policy, because Americans have little interest in the rest of the world. America was founded to be different from the rest of the world, a culture in itself, and it would be perfectly happy to not have a foreign policy of any kind. What Europeans and others don't seem to understand is how uncomfortable being the world's No. 1 is for us. We don't like it, and have accepted the role largely because it fell to us. If we believed that we could stand down our defense pacts, send our subs home, and cut the size of the military in half or more, without it leading to mass insanity abroad, we would.

But that's not going to happen. The world has intruded upon us, so we intrude upon the world. But we've managed everything on an ad hoc basis so far, organizing resistance to threats as they materialize, and according to whatever we think will work. Determining that a Soviet-American war would be too costly and not certain of victory, we came up with "containment". The necessities of containment, and our natural predelictions permitted us to ignore jihadism until we were presented with it one fine September morning. Concluding that containment had reached it's limits, the President embarked on a new strategy, without perhaps thinking everything through.

This last is a serious criticism, but the Right has been hesitant to entertain it, because the next election keeps figuring into thinking. The failure of the Democrats to even attempt an alternate strategy on counter-terrorism leads us to say of Bush what Lincoln said of Grant: "I can't spare this man. He fights." So the proper debate on our goals in the world is cast aside for a debate on the merits of George W. Bush. Unfortunately, Bush will be out of office on the 30th of January, 2009. What will we talk about then?

I have a few suggestions:

Are we prepared to give the proper name to so-called "rogue states": that of enemy?

If not, how will we prepare for their continued existence and continued troublemaking?

If so, what strategies are appropriate to destroying our enemies? How shall we determine which enemies require direct confrontation and which require quieter means?

What standards will we use in the selection of allies? When does an ally become more trouble than he is worth?

What appropriate deferrment is due the United Nations, given the level of corruption in the bureaucracy and its tendency to protect "rogue" states?

These are the questions of our age. We have one possible answer for them. Let's hear more.

The Essayist #10: Booga Booga

Much hullabaloo over Dr. Sanity's recent take on Bush Derangement Syndrome. An exerpt:

The number of things that Bush has been blamed for in this world since 9/11 (even acts of God like Tsunamis, hurricanes and other natural disasters) is the stuff of major comedy. You name the horrible event, and he is identified as the etiologic agent.

He is blamed when he does something (anything) and he is blamed when he does nothing. He is blamed for things that ocurred even before he was President, as well as everything that has happened since. He is blamed for things he says; and for things he doesn't say.

What makes Bush Hatred completely insane however, is the almost delusional degree of unremitting certitude of Bush's evil; while simultaneously believing that the TRUE perpetrators of evil in the world are somehow good and decent human beings with the world's intersts at heart.

I am not personally of the opinion that the portion of the country currently dissatisfied with the President is suffering from a mass derangment. I think that the drivers of the debate on the left are intellectually dishonest and driven by prejudices which they refuse to acknowledge Yes, I'm stooping to say that people are "unaware of their prejudice" a favorite tactic of the left for years. Yet I feel it justified, and will so explain.

President Bush is not merely a man with policies with which those on the Left disagree. He is not merely a man whom they feel will, long run, make the country less safe. Leftists will, when pressed, claim that this is all that animates them, but the plain fact is that Bush was behind in their eyes not since the war, not since 9/11, not even since the beginning of his Presidency after the controversial 2000 election. Bush has been the whipping boy of a good portion of the press and especially the commentariat of the Left since he beat McCain in the 2000 primaries.

It wasn't just that McCain was and is a media darling, and that Bush a famously untelegenetic son of another President whom the press enjoyed blaming for everything in 1992. It was the manner of Bush's victory, his unambiguous appeal to the evangelical Right, the Bob Jones U. rally-the-base routine. A brash, dynamic Republican who "talked straight" and seemed to Care Deeply about Serious Issues (campaign finance "reform"), losing to a Jesus freak given to dopey malaprops oozing out of nasal Texan drawl? The disappointment in the news reports of McCain's defeats was visceral, and to date, they still haven't recovered.

This is, to my mind, the real root of what's become known as BDS. It isn't so much an affinity with the goals of jihadism as an emotional disaffinity with the man who is their most public enemy. There are many among our political and media elite, and among those on the coasts who are in their zone of influence, who simply cannot believe that a born-again Christian from Texas can ever be right about anything, ever. Decades (centuries?) of internalized bigotry of urbanites against provincials, of secular humanists against unsophisticated believers, does not vanish overnight, not even in the face of an act of war, not when the same group has drank deep of the waters of Wilsonian collective security and refuses to believe that their enemy is their enemy because he wants to be so.

In short, George W. Bush has been despised since long before the Iraq War, because he is the living embodiment of Those People, and the habit of the American media and political establishment has for some time been to mock Those People as cruel, stupid, and dangerous. His words are treated with contempt, the values he speaks for dismissed as fronts, the common enemy he wants to destroy improperly understood. They cannot take him seriously. Their self-conciet and worldview will not permit it.

We have seen this sort of thing several times before. The Right had a perhaps-milder case of it in the 90's, with the Clintons, especially Hillary, whose background and resume, from her priveleged upbringing to her work on the Watergate investigation and beyond, read like an author's creation of the stereotypical Democratic woman pol. The Left did it again with Reagan, and (oddly enough) LBJ. The Right was equally furious towards Roosevelt, though perhaps for slightly different reasons (and in any case, Roosevelt was always a much more skilled propagandist than anyone in the mid-20th century GOP could ever hope of being).

None of which is to say that there are not reasonable arguments to be made against the Administration's policies. I myself am very unimpressed with just about all of Bush's domestic work since the tax cuts. But reasonable skepticism about the wisdom of proposed solutions, without serious attempt to offer alternatives, leads one to wonder what your real interests are.

The Essayist #9: Hurricanes, Howlers, and Pork, Oh My!

I know that many of you believe I'm nothing more than a Rovedrone who recieves his missives direct from the White House Communications Office, but there have been several days when I have wanted to slap the President, and they've been piling up of late. Now, let me be clear: I'm still an optimist on Iraq (for reasons why, click this link and just keep scrolling), and I'm not of the species that seems to want to blame the New Orleans Water Park on FEMA. I've yet to see anything from a source I trust that indicates that FEMA did anything different in regards to Katrina than they did with regard to any other natural disaster in living memory, and I'm pretty well convinced that the caterwauling to that end is a cynical manipulation by a bored press and a frustrated opposition upon discovering that the Cindy Sheehan and Hokum and Wailing Circus wasn't going to be the spark that lit the Bonfire of Bush's Vanities.

So what am I cheesed about? Well, quite frankly, it has to do with Big Government Conservatism once more rearing it's ugly head: Bush using Katrina and Rita as an excuse to give Federalize all emergency management operations, and turning the relief effort into a mini-Great Society for Southern Lousisiana. This is dumb for several reasons:

1. Katrina devestated the Southern parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and even portions of Alabama. Only in Lousisiana was this disaster met with chaos, looting, and people sitting in football stadiums without food, water, or a place to go. Assuming that the time and competence of the federal response was the same in all places, where do we conclude that the system broke down? That's right, with the Mayor of NO and the Governor of LA, who panicked and ran away. Federalizing the problem rewards the crony regime in Louisiana for abdicating their responsibilities. This isn't just my spin: the Washington Post is sick of Louisiana's politicians and their naked pork-grab. It's time to post blame where blame is truly due.

2. Federalizing also diminishes the accountability of emergency management at the local level. It's real basic: where is your vote most valuable? At the local, state, or federal level. If you said c), you might consider remedial math. A vast federal bureaucracy, answerable to Beltway politicians, is NOT going to act in the best interests of the victims of Katrina.

3. Bush's proposal is already alienating the very people who put him in power, myself included. I held my nose and voted for Bush in 2000, because I found nothing monstrously offensive in him, whereas Gore made me ill. I voted with more confidence in 2004, because I saw some real accomplishments (cutting taxes, Afghanistan), and the promise of more (Social Security and tax reform, Iraq), while the Democrats couldn't come up with any alternative proposal other than "not Bush". But now the silly sonofabitch is acting like LBJ or FDR on a bender. He's caving to media pressure and losing his base while gaining NO support from the other side. C'mon, does anyone think the Left will credit Bush for doing exactly what they would expect and demand a Democrat to do in the same situation? Forget it. Bush *cannot* win support for anything he does from the other side. It won't happen. He can only win by governing from his side of the aisle. This is NOT doing that.

4. Bill Clinton, in his much-ballyhooed "criticism" of Bush, said one very astute thing (which was bound to happen eventually, because Clinton is a smart guy). He pointed out that in the history of the Republic, we have never financed a war with foreign money. In World Wars 1 and 2, we financed it with massive bond issues. LBJ spent the 60's surplus (created by that radical supply-sider, Jack Kennedy) on Vietnam. But both our Iraq campaigns have been underwrote by international bankers. Although the defecit is smaller than earlier feared, this is still not a good thing. Maybe a new set of Liberty Loans wouldn't have worked (although I don't know why not), but finding some way to offset spending for the WOT would have put is in a much better position, I think, financially and otherwise (you can't help thinking that people buying war bonds would have given them a greater stake in our victories abroad). But we didn't do that, and now we're proposing more mammoth spending projects underwrote by the rest of the world. Somehow I don't think this is going to "improve our position," or whatever.

5. Speaking of Bill Clinton, even he didn't think that Hurricane Andrew was cause for a federal takeover of disaster relief, nor did he respond thusly to any of the other natural disasters that took place during his Presidency. Somehow, he didn't think it necessary. Somehow, Florida et al. managed to recover under the existing system. Now, what does a good conservative like myself say of someone who wants to fix a mechanism that isn't broken?

We thus have a proposal that is 1) morally irresponsible, 2) likely to be ineffective, 3) politically stupid, 4) financially dangerous, and 5) probably unnecessary. It's a Super Hat Trick, boys and girls! All thanks to a guy who's moved as far away from Jefferson's idea of government as anybody in the Democratic Party.

Incidentally, if anyone would like to think that based on this rant I'm ready to applaud Nancy Pelosi and her bold pork-renumeration, I have but this to say: show me the money. If the Democrats suddenly become the let's-cut-spending party, I'm willing to pay attention, and even reward them. Being a conservative, I believe in competition, and for one party to have a monopoly on the fiscal restraint position means that they're never in a position to actually provide any. I wouldn't mind seeing that change. But given their history and constituency, I don't believe it's anything other than a temporary pose. And I'm still hoping that the revolt among GOP backbenchers gets somewhere. But for the moment, we all seem to still believe in the money fairy, and that does us as much damage as our much-maligned "dependence on foreign oil".

The Essayist #8: United Numbskulls

The persistent drumbeat among the right regarding Oil-for-Food continues, though typically ignored among the rest of the media, who would rather tell us that New Orleans is still underwater. For myself, I'm of two minds, about this scandal and the U.N. itself.

The basics first: Oil-for-Fraud may well indeed be the most disgusting display of bureaucratic vileness seen in modern times, a scheme so venal it would have done Boss Tweed proud. And I'm not interested in the excuses or the equivocation. The U.N. bureaucracy and the governments of several Western Nations either sold out the suffering people of Iraq to get their hands on oil, or looked the other way, and in doing so, made the Butcher of Baghdad more wealthy, and his stranglehold on his people more powerful.

But...what were we expecting? The right has been castigating the U.N. as a dictator's club for years. Nations with human rights records scarcely better than Saddam's get to sit on the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Nations that refuse to grasp the economic benefit of private property get to draw up expansive tracts on the "just economic order" required to lift themselves out of poverty. Nations that burn brown coal get to wag their fingers at the U.S. and call Bush an "environmental tyrant" because he refused to pay attention to a treaty that our Senate rejected. This is the usual Lower Manhattan Two-Step, whereby thugs and bloated office-seekers transform themselves into the Saviors of the Poor and Friends of the Earth.

But let us step beyond cynicism. I fear that the right's U.N. denunciation is wrongheaded. The U.N.'s purported mission is to represent the world, and in this case, I think it has done so. The source of the organization's problem isn't within. If the U.N. were to vanish tommorrow, the thugs and bloated office-seekers would still be there, and be yet more naked in their brutality and fawning. The world is the real dictator's club. If we could lose the tyrants, we could find dealing with the bureaucrats easier. At any rate, there'd be somewhat less obstruction, and much less need for baby blue helmets to stand around watching genocide.

Ah, but how? Imperial Democracy is not an act that's regularly repeatable, even if it works (I'm confident, but the jury is still out). Probably the best we may hope for is the War on Terror to morph into a Cold War on Tyrants, whereby both parties agree that the security of the U.S. requires diplomatic and occasionally military action against despotic regimes, whatever their strategic value. The logic is not difficult to follow:


1. Tyrants brutalize and engender poverty.
2. Angry, poor people are easily recruited into terrorist and criminal activity.
2a. Tyrants also tend to serve as terrorist and criminal enablers.
3. Terrorists and criminal syndicates, being non-linear threats, have a tendency to encourage free states to greatly increase their security apparati, leading to free societies becoming less so.


And if we can swallow that without protesting our own sinfulness, we can set about doing what must be done.


Update Mark Steyn agrees that U.N. reform is pointless, but doesn't give the same rational. (registration required)

The Essayist #7: The Meaning of Candor

As I've said before, whatever the flaws of the Washington Post, it's no New York Times, and its editors are to be commended for the (albeit occiasionally skittish) support they've given to at least the theory of the War in Iraq. Today's editorial, in response to last night's press conference, is a perfect example of their love-hate relationship with the Iraq War: they're serious enough to see that we need to win, but they won't stop kicking the man whose job it it to win it.

Frankly, I find some of their barbs bizarre:

Mr. Bush didn't explain how a war meant to remove a tyrant believed to wield weapons of mass destruction turned into a fight against Muslim militants

Why does he need to explain that? The Iraqi army melted on the field, and the losers resorted to insurgency, because they didn't want to lose, and were sure we'd run away as soon as they killed enough of us. Ask the average John Q. Voter why the war in Iraq is still going on after two years, and I'll bet you'll get either that or "Because Our Evil President doesn't WANT it to, man!". Does the WaPo believe that anyone who thinks the latter will be convinced by having the former explained to them?

Or this:

When he did turn to Iraq's reconstruction Mr. Bush mostly described the bright side of a very mixed picture. While acknowledging that "our progress has been uneven," his dominant theme was success: in training Iraqi security forces, holding elections and promoting political accord. The progress he described is genuine, as is the reality that the United States has no reasonable alternative to continuing to support the construction of a representative Iraqi government. Mr. Bush rightly argued that a deadline for withdrawal would be a "serious mistake."

Followed by the rest of the piece, which chides Bush for not saying what commanders and senior aides and every newspaper from Sea to Shining Sea has been saying for months: that the insurgency doesn't appear to be going away just yet, and indeed, has remained roughly at the same level of efficiency for the last year. Again, why does the President need to explain this? We see it every day: Bomb kills 40, Three soldiers killed in ambush, and a partridge in a pear tree. WE KNOW the problems. The purpose of the President's conference was to argue why we should continue to stay the course.

Fortunately, most Americans appear to have a hardheaded appreciation of the problems and stakes in Iraq. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that most do not believe the administration's claims of progress, but a majority still is willing to support an extended stay by U.S. forces. If those forces are to succeed in the difficult months and years ahead, Mr. Bush will need to preserve and nourish that fragile mandate -- which will mean speaking more honestly to Americans than he did last night.

No, it's going to require Mr. Bush to continue to point out the "bright side of a very mixed picture." Let me offer a few examples:


In 1941, the two-year mark for World War II, the allied side was in very bad shape. Winston Churchill, more or less the only Western leader still resisting, did not rally his people by pointing out that France had fallen, that half of European Russia was overrun, that Rommel was running rampant in North Africa. The people already knew that. What he told them was that the enemy was monstrous, and that the British people would never surrender to a monster. He didn't tell them about the fact that we were going to start day-and-night bombing of Germany but let the Russians do the heavy lifting until we felt like starting a second front, or about the recent success against the enemy's Enigma code, because, although it might have cheered the Pommies, it would also have told Hitler exactly what he needed to do to win.

In 1863, the two-year mark for the American Civil War, the Lincoln administration had a very mixed picture of its own to deal with. In the Western theater, the Mississippi had been cleared of rebel forces, cutting the Confederacy in half, and the pressure soon to be brought to bear agains the remaining Confederate forces west of the Appalachians was deemed to be inexorable. But in the East, the Rebels had held out, and held out, and held out, embarrassing every Yankee general that could be summoned against them. Sure, they'd won at Gettysburg, but the cost of that battle was horrendous, and that a battle was being fought in Pennsylvania in the first place indicated that all was not well. How was Lincoln to keep the people with him? What could he say?

You know what he said. Read the Gettysburg Address and see if you can find a description of the new strategies to be employed, or candor about the problems faced. Read it with a critic's eye, and it's a masterpiece of vagueness (and more than a few did read it with such an eye. One snark referred to the speech as "the dishwater utterances of a man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States"). Lincoln did not mention that most of the Union Army's three-year enlistments would be up the next spring, or that Confederate cavalry raiders such as Nathan Bedford Forrest were growing "increasingly sophisticated" in their assaults on union railroads, or that the most recent amphibious expedition against Charleston had failed. He also didn't say that his plan for the future was going to involve appointing his hardest-fighting general, a man alternately accused of being a drunken incompetent and a pitiless butcher, to the head of all Union forces, and direct him to cut down Lee's army, whatever the cost.

Instead, he told them that the were engaged in a war for the survival of their nation, that to lose would be the end of our forefather's beliefs, and that they must steel themselves for the coming struggle, must resolve that the sacrifice of their sons, brothers, husbands, and fathers has not been in vain. Thus, Lincoln's candor, not in the tiny decisions that amount to policy, but in the broad meanings that the people, who care not for wonkery, will hear.


Look, if most of the anti-war crowd was as level-headed as the WaPo editorial staff, I'd be a lot less strident on this issue, which I know I said I would stay away from. But if they're so worried about the people not holding fast to a war they know we need to win, mayhaps they could get on board and get their front page to tell both sides of the very mixed picture. If they're stuck for how to get news on the progress they admit to be genuine, they can start here.

The Essayist #6: the Un-Sustainable

My great-grandfather was, in his elder days, what they used to call a "triple-dipper": he had Social Security, a U.S. Post Office Pension, and a State of New York pension. And by the time he died at the ripe old age of 88, he had collected from the system much more than he had ever contributed to it.

I remember that as I read about the U.S. Government taking over the pension plan of United Airlines (Hat Tip: Mickey Kaus).

The temptation to use this to blather fulsomely about Social Security is overpowering, but I should keep a few things in mind:

The airline industry is a money pit second only to the U.S. Government.

A private pension plan going belly-up is precisely the kind of thing that scare the cat food out of people who don't want Social Security messed with.

I am using way too many bullet-pointed lists.

Fortunately, I am armored by the fact that United is planning to shift into a 401k plan. You know, the kind that allows individuals to invest a portion of their income into private accounts and then uses the money to invest in stocks, bonds, and other securities, managed by people who do that for a living, and then holds the money there until the person retires? They estimate they would have to spend $200 million a year to do that, instead of the $9.8 billion they're currently short of.

Traditional pension plans are on the way out. They're un-sustainable, because a) they're too costly if run honestly and b)they're too easy to run dishonestly. Union pension plans were a common source of mob money, and the biggest problem with United's p.p. was that it was allowed to run underfunded for so long.

Those opposed to the President S.S. plan tend to act as though only a few tweaks will be needed to put the ship back on course. Raise taxes here, cut benefits here, and all will be well. They're not quite wrong, but wrong-headed. Trying to maintain Social Security as currently constituted is like trying to jury-rig the engine on a B-17 while supersonic jets whizz by. Sure, you might be able to keep the old beast in the air a bit longer, but are you sure you want to? Is it really worth the aggravation of the double whammy of making workers pay more to get less?

Plus, how long before we have to do this again? Are demographics really our friend on this one? Is this cut-output, raise-input a temporary measure against the harsh winter of Baby Boom retirement, or the beginning of a series of similar measures, until the U.S. Government has to start looking for Japanese bankers to bail out our old folks?

In economics, that which provides a return non-commensurate with investment is deemed wasteful. The costs provided with putting everyone's retirement through one central clearing-house makes such a system wasteful. And that which is wasteful, inevitably, must be discarded if the rest is to survive. Wasteful becomes Un-sustainable.

I don't expect many Democrats to agree with me on this. To their minds, the value of the central clearing-house is that it provides simplicity and accountability. But to mine, these are illusions. There's nothing simple about the machinery needed to run the place, and somehow those on the inside are gaming the system to suit their needs. In the end, all that's left is a monument, bearing the big letters "WE CARE."

The Essayist #5: The Efficacy of Pain

This was started last week and left half-finished. It's somewhat circular, but I offer it anyway. Eugene Volokh, whose quote started the controversey, has since posted an update of ideas here, which is worth looking at. I hadn't intended it as part of the Terry Schiavo bonfire, but since that's on everyone's mind, I feel obligated to point out that when I hear people saying "Oh, the woman's suffered enough," I keep asking myself "Suffered enough for what?"


Could you accept executing a man like this, with a flogging before a non-gallows hanging?

What if you were told that he was a serial rapist and murderer who preyed on children?

Eugene Volokh, the blogger and law professor, has no problem with it:

I like civilization, but some forms of savagery deserve to be met not just with cold, bloodless justice but with the deliberate infliction of pain, with cruel vengeance rather than with supposed humaneness or squeamishness. I think it slights the burning injustice of the murders, and the pain of the families, to react in any other way.

Me, I'm not so sure. I've always found something disordered in the lethal injection table, because it's so bloodlessly clinical; execution made safe and clean, down to the last alcohol swab (a longtime foil of stand-up comics). Me for a hanging, public-style, where the crimes against the community are avenged before they eyes of the community. The soft transformation of existence to non-existence is what strikes me as truly creepy.

Yet at the same time, flogging before hanging just strikes me as gratuitous. To knowingly inflict pain, and to derive moral satisfaction therefrom, is a dangerous area to be getting into. If our purpose is to engage in a killing, let us engage in a killing, and be done with it. If our purpose is to inflict pain, then let us inflict pain, and then release. To inflict pain without the possibility of learning from pain is to de-humanize the victim, and to misunderstand the purpose of pain.

Pain having a purpose at all is an idea not much spoken of in modern America. We do not believe in pain. We believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of pain's opposite. This is noted among both sides of our political perspective: our liberals (aka "conservatives") believe pain is caused by excessive government; sweep that out of the way, liberals argue, and humanity will solve its own problems, with freedom and money. Our socialists (aka "liberals") believe that pain is an evil to be eradicated from every corner in which it might inhabit, except for pain caused to enemies of the people, which is deserved. Both groups rail against any discomfort, inconvenience, or hurdle standing in their way.

The liberal view is slightly preferable to the socialist, however naive it may be, because it holds pain as something to be transcended by the individual, not numbed away by the collective. The latter approach, sympathetic as anyone may be to it, runs counter to the Reality Principle: that everything which exists has a cause independent of it, a purpose it fulfills, however unpleasantly.

So what is the purpose of pain? You know what it is biologically: a signal of damage to the brain from the body, data that something has gone wrong. And like any piece of data, what matters is what you do about it. Some pain, like that coming from a cut, indicates that you should be more careful when you try to cut cheese. Should you do so, the pain will be avoided in the future. Other pain, like that you get in your muscles after exercise, tells you exactly what you wanted to hear: that you had a good workout. You'll want to repeat the experience as often as possible, until you have obtained the goal that you want. Thus the principle of gym: "No pain, no gain."

But outside that aerobic context, who want to hear that kind of talk? Who wants to be told that pain is a necessary evil, even a positive force in life? Who could even beging to see the positive aspects of pain except sadomasochists and people so buffered by money from the twists of fate that they'll never have to experience any pain they don't wish to?

I think this is an unacknowledged part of our political discourse. Liberals ("conservatives") can see that pain has a utility, albeit a negative one, and are willing to reserve to themselves the right and capacity to use it. Such folks tend to have a opinion of capital punishment, corporal punishment, the cruelties of the marketplace, and war that agrees to their use, given certain circumstances. Socialists ("liberals") hate war, hate the death penalty, hate spanking, and despise the invisible hand. Using these means to achieve any end, be it international security, local order, discipline among children, or wealth, is unacceptable to the leftist, because, in his mind, the means do not correspond to the ends.

War and spanking and the marketplace, and possibly the death penalty, cause suffering to those that do not deserve to suffer, for various reasons. Civilians killed in the crossfire of battle are certainly innocent, and the poor and unlucky businessmen are not just innocent but arguably wronged. Spanking just makes children resentful and quarrelsome, we are told, and the death penalty restores nothing to anyone.

Ignoring the merits of these arguments, we may see the core idea: to take action that may cause unjust suffering is wrong, to use suffering as a tool of civilization is idiotic at best and monstrous at worst. The notion is certainly consistent, and at first glance, well within the boundaries of Judeo-Christian tradition.

The problem with the argument is that pain and suffering, unquestionable physical realities though they be, are not absolutes. A child who gets soap in his eye is in agony unprecedented, a youth would scoff at such woes, but in the throes of unrequited love is suicidal, to the head-shaking amusement of more experienced men. All new pain is intense to the point of unbearability. Then the mind and body learn that it is not the end, and is thence able to withstand it.

Which brings us back to the wrongness of torturing someone and then killing them. Using pain to change behavior can be permissible, depending on the degree of damage done and the goal being pursued. Using pain to achieve pain, without offering possibility for behavioral change is simply indulging our appetites. There is much to be argued about regarding the efficacy of pain, where the lines should be laid, how to tell when you've crossed the line from reasonable firmness to abuse of power. But before we can have that conversation, we must accept the idea that pain has a purpose, and sometimes, it's the most effective way to communicate.