Kathleen Geier over at Political Animal wrote an article I very much agree with, Syria and the Return of the Liberal Hawks. She rightly notes that liberals normally have good intentions for the policies they support, but that doesn’t mean that it leads to the right decisions. As she wrote, “Such impulses can also go awry, because they contain the seeds of moral vanity.” And that is very much what I hear when I listen to the liberal hawks.

In this most recent case of Syria, I was very disappointed with many people on the left. Most of the people I regularly read agreed with me or at least kept quiet. There were people in the middle who I found somewhat frustrating. Both Jonathan Chait and Steve Benen pushed the notion that we who were against war with Syria should still respect those pushing for it. “We all have good intentions,” was a common refrain. But I didn’t see it that way at all. The hawks on the Syria situation were talking nonsense.

John Kerry, of course, was the most prominent. And I understand that his argument seems—in a vacuum—to make sense. The Assad government had used chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war, and this caused the deaths of many children. But there were problems. For one thing, even today—a full two weeks after we were supposed to start bombing Syria—we don’t have the UN weapons inspectors report. What’s more, why did we especially care about these deaths, when already 110,000 Syrians have died in this conflict—well over 30,000 of them being civilians. But the biggest issue is the question, “Why now? Why here?” Geier sums up what’s going on perfectly:

This is the issue that I got in trouble with on Twitter. I still don’t understand why the noble position is to care about whatever the television news is obsessed with. In that case, I noted that it was wrong for people to complain that others weren’t upset about an airplane crash that killed two people; why weren’t these complainers focused on the 2,000 people who die of malaria every day? But that kind of thinking is strong among most people. If the media are focus on the horror of Syria, it must be the most important horror. But using the same example, well over ten times as many people are dying of malaria as are dying in the Syrian civil war; more people died of malaria on that one day than died in the alleged chemical weapons attack.

If we want to help the Syrians, there are much better ways to do it than by dropping bombs. Again, Geier:

I understand that public health and education programs are not as exciting as dropping bombs. But they are far more helpful. A big part of the problem with these “humanitarian” wars is that even if they are totally justified, they do more harm than good most of the time. Two thousand people die of malaria every day. That’s not news so it isn’t on the television. But it is an enormous problem—one that is far bigger and in need of our help than any war anywhere. So what the liberal hawks have to decide is if they really want to help or if they just want another “bloody good war.”

I was a little bothered to see that Peter Beinart had written, The Rise of the New New Left. My concern was that he had scooped me, because I have been working on book about the New Democratic movement. But there was nothing to fear. For one thing, Beinart seems to buy the existing narrative that the New Democrats were a rational response to the Reagan “Revolution.” While it is undoubtedly true that it was a response, it was not a rational response.

The article is worth reading, because it is downright inspiring. He argues that the liberal future is bright because the Millennials are so liberal, especially on economic issues because during their whole lives, the economy really has not worked for the vast majority of Americans. That’s music to my ears. Even the focus on economic issues is wonderful to hear. And his thesis—America is going to get substantially more liberal in the coming two decades—is almost certainly true.

Where I part company with him is in his (implicit) belief that the political elites follow the people. Sure, to some extent they do. And once the voting public is 65% liberal, you can bet that the politicians will move to the left. But I don’t think that the Millennials are really that much more liberal than their parents were. Sure, if you ask older people whether “socialism” or “capitalism” is better, they will pick “capitalism” in large numbers. That’s because these words have been so propagandized as to be meaningless. But now or 20 or 40 years ago, if you described the systems in the United States and Sweden, large majorities would pick the Swedish system.

We all know how we got the Reagan “Revolution.” Reagan got into power because the economy was bad. He became a hero because he got credit for the economic boom created when Paul Volcker lowered interest rates at the Federal Reserve. That is, not coincidentally, the change from the high interest rates that got Reagan elected in the first place. So Reagan’s effect on the country is almost entirely negative. And that was clear enough by the early 1990s. What I take exception to is the idea that Clinton got elected because he was a conservative Democrat. Almost any Democrat would have won in 1992. Clinton also gets lots of credit for a good economy that had little to do with him.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Americans remained liberal in their economic policy preferences. Unfortunately, both the Democratic and Republican elites learned the wrong lessons from those political successes. Republicans learned that cutting taxes on the rich is great for the economy. (It isn’t.) Democrats learned that being economically conservative allows them to be politically competitive. (It doesn’t.) And so now we have two political parties that are well to the right of the people on economic issues. There is a way forward, however. Maybe Bill de Blasio is its vanguard. It wouldn’t surprise me, because the current situation cannot hold.

The crisis is over, long live the crisis! Jonathan Chait reminds the world that now that the Syria crisis is fading into the background of negotiations that don’t make for great headlines, we have the old crises that I’ve been quite actively fretting about since a couple of days after the last election. And things look really, really bad.

Let’s just talk about the government shutdown for now, because as bad as it is, the Debt Ceiling is far worse. Boehner is not willing to allow a vote on anything that might get bipartisan support. So any bill that goes through the House must pass with only Republican votes. So Boehner came up with an idea that depended upon the hardcore House Republicans to be stupid and crazy. Unfortunately, they are way more crazy than stupid. The idea was that the House would bundle two bills together. One would be the continuing resolution (CR)—just a bill that says that Congress will continue to fund the government as it has been. The other would be the defunding of the evil Kenyan Communist plot to allow people to get healthcare, also known as Obamacare.

The problem with this plan was that the Senate would approve the CR and ditch the Obamacare kill bill. As Mike Lee put it, “It is not a plan to defund Obamacare—it’s a plan to facilitate the passage of a CR in a way that allows people to claim that they’re defunding Obamacare without actually doing so.” So what Boehner was offering was the opportunity to vote impotently to defund Obamacare for the 41st time in exchange to doing what in normal times would be the most uncomplicated of things. This is because the modern Republican party doesn’t think that anything is as important as the conservative issue de jour. And yes, it does make them unpatriotic; what else would you call a man who thinks that his pet issue is worth destroying the economy and throwing millions more of his fellow Americans out of work?

Given that the Republicans aren’t buying what John Boehner is selling, there is chaos. But not to worry. The House has plenty of time! According to Eric Cantor’s calendar (pdf), the House is not working until next Tuesday. Then they have three and a half days of work and then go on recess for the rest of the month. But after Democratic Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi held a press conference to shame the House for the move, Boehner called off the recess. So now they have eight or nine work days before the government shuts down!

I’m not sure what more time will bring. The House must pass a CR by the end of the month. The hardcore House Republicans are not going to be convinced by some great idea that Boehner comes up with. So this is all going to come down to the last minute when Boehner either does or does not allow a CR to pass with bipartisan support. If he does, we move on to the much more dangerous Debt Ceiling. (We have two weeks for that!) If he doesn’t, the government shuts down, anger builds, the Boehner allows a CR to pass with bipartisan support. I really don’t see any other way forward on this.

I’m not convinced that a government shutdown will hurt the Republicans that much in 2014. But if they cause a Debt Ceiling crisis, I suspect that the elites will punish them in a big way. They will finally see that keeping their marginal tax rates down by an extra couple of percentage points is not worth the harvest they have sown. And that would be catastrophic for the Republican Party as a going concern. But it will be a hell of a price for the American people to pay.

Pat McCrory is the current governor of North Carolina. He is a Republican and of course, North Carolina is not an especially liberal state. But it is not Mississippi either. In recent years, it has become known as a purple state. As a result of that, when McCrory was running for office, he appealed to moderates by claiming that he would not sign any new bills that limited abortion access. And then, just over 6 months into his term (30 July 2013), he signed a bill that limited abortion access.

As much as cynics will tell you that politicians always break their promises, that simply isn’t true. Modern politicians are actually quite careful about following through with their campaign promises. Of course, as voters, we need to be careful with what exactly politicians say. Because they know how carefully they are watched, they will say things like, “I will introduce a bill to build an interstellar spaceship.” They don’t claim that they will make it law, much less that they will get the spaceship built. So it really is a big deal when politicians break their promises.

So it comes as no surprise that Pat McCrory has seen his approval ratings plummet. According to Public Policy Polling, his approval rating has gone down to just 35% with 53% disapproval. And the support has been lost across the board. His approval with Republicans has fallen from 69% to 62%. Most of the drop in approval over the last month is not about the abortion bill. As of a month ago, all liberal and moderate voters had abandoned him. And now his approval/disapproval rating is 9/82 among Democrats and 29/49 among independents. But the overall disapproval is about the abortion bill. As you can see, he still has high approval ratings among Republicans.

Of course, McCrory doesn’t admit to breaking the promise to not limit access to abortion. After signing the bill, he released a statement, “This law does not further limit access, and those who contend it does are more interested in politics than the health and safety of our citizens.” But we know even he doesn’t believe that. When the bill was first passed by the legislature, he indicated that he would veto it. So minor changes were made to allow him wiggle room, and he signed it. Voters know when they are being finessed. And they don’t like it. I think he would be liked more if he just admitted what he did.

But here’s the thing. We see this again and again. Moderate populations vote in Republicans who claim that they will govern moderately. And right out of the gate, the Republicans show that their notions of “moderation” are quite different from the voters’. For example, most people in North Carolina thought that not limiting access to abortion meant that no clinics would be closed. McCrory, on the other hand, thought it meant not all clinics would be closed. (BTW: even that isn’t clear.) My question to my fellow Americans is this: when are you going to stop falling for this? North Carolina is stuck with McCrory for another three and a half years!

The ultimate law of voting: “If you elect a Republican, you elect a Republican.”

Rachel Maddow did a short segment tonight on remembering 9/11. She quoted Walt Whitman. That’s all fine. I like Whitman, but I do have this general idea that people who quote Whitman don’t like poetry. But whatever. It was fine. What struck me was that almost all the pictures that they used for the segment were Whitman as an old man and the only exception was Whitman as a middle-aged man. I wish people wouldn’t do that. He was an attractive young man—half “hunka hunka burning love” and half dandy. You can see that in the sketch at the left.

That made me think of Arthur Schopenhauer, who is also always shown as an old man. Of course, he didn’t do most of his work as an old man. The World as Will and Representation was published when he was only 30 years old. Of course, photography only came about towards the end of his life. But even still, people mostly use the picture where he looks angry. In most of the pictures, he is smiling the way I always imagine the man would. People find him depressing, but I don’t. I think he just understood better than most what a cruel joke consciousness is. But people prefer to present him as an angry old man. I think this is because they resent having to have read him in college.

There are paintings of Schopenhauer as a younger man. I suspect people avoid them because: (1) they would rather have a photograph; and (2) he isn’t an attractive man and old photos do kind of flatter him. But in looking for images of him, I found this that I thought was quite amusing:

With Walt Whitman, I think there is a different thing going on. Whitman’s work is very sensual and I’m sure at the time scandalous. As a result, it is comforting to think of him as old and thus not sexually threatening. But that’s not who Whitman was. He was always threatening: sexually, emotionally, intellectually. He was a revolutionary to the core. And we should remember him that way!

I write a lot about copyright around here because the system is out of control. As a writer, I like to get paid for my work. But as Dean Baker has pointed out, there are various ways that society can encourage creative work. And now, copyright does not work to do that; instead, copyright is used by big business as a cudgel to beat off competition and maintain monopolies.

In the days of Cervantes, writers sold their works outright to publishers who then owned the copyright. The situation is very similar to that today. Except for a lucky few, writers get paid advances and that’s where things end. But even the cases where books become best sellers, publisher profits continue to rise as writers end up with a slightly larger percentage of the gross sales, but less of the net profits. So writers who defend the copyright system are deluded.

Of course, I don’t think that Congress would give a flying fuck about what writers think of copyright. They can be as deluded as they like. We have these ridiculous copyright laws because Disney and Dreamworks have lobbied hard for them. It’s all about corporate profits as it always is. This is, for example, why extensions to copyright are always made retroactive, even though that makes no sense: current law can’t encourage people in the past to produce more content.

Here is an excellent video on copyright by CGP Grey that actually lays out the basics of the issue:

Steve Benen rightly points out that there is a great deal of hypocrisy on the right regarding Syria. He quotes Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel as saying, “Does anyone truly believe that if Mitt Romney had been elected president and had asked House Republicans for exactly what President Obama is asking, that House Republicans would oppose it to the extent that they’re opposed to what President Obama wants? The level of hypocrisy is what amazes me.” Benen notes that it really isn’t true that the Democrats are hypocrites in the opposite direction. When Bush Jr was in power, Congressional Democrats were really terrible when it came to issues of war and surveillance. And now, they are really terrible when it comes to issues of war and surveillance.

I think that the situation is far worse with the Republican base. These are people who are now and forever more for war whenever and wherever they can find it. And now that Charles Krauthammer is telling them that this is a Bad War, they are all falling in line. It isn’t so much that the Republican base is hypocritical as that it is made up of a bunch of sheep who would gladly line up for castration if Fox News told them to. You can see this in a recent poll that found that 40% of Republican voters were against attacking Syria just two weeks ago and now 70% are against it.

The Democratic base is not as reliably anti-war as the Republican base is pro-war. But it is pretty reliable. It also seems that Democratic voters are less easily led. Two weeks ago 48% were against it and now 53% are against it.

But what I find most interesting is how hypocritical liberal-leaning pundits are. Steve Benen himself has tread lightly on the issue. So has Greg Sargent. Both of them—and many more like them—want to focus on the mechanics of votes and such. This is despite the fact that neither seems to think that attacking Syria is a good thing. But they are part of the larger liberal punditocracy that claims that anyone who thinks the situation is clear is not serious. This is just an apologia for the Obama administration.

This is all part of a worrying trend in the liberal media—especially on MSNBC. The idea is that it is fine to disagree with Obama, but it must be done lightly. (In quiet rooms?!) We can’t risk undermining him. This is right up their with Bill O’Reilly’s claim that after a war starts, those against it must shut up and fall in line. But that’s not how a democracy works. Democracies are messy. If you want a rigid system that maximizes a country’s (or party’s) power, you should go for something in an authoritarian government. The idea in politics is to get the best policy, not to cheer lead for whomever we voted into office.

So just to be clear: Obama has totally fucked up on Syria. I do not support him. I really do think he would kill thousands of innocent Syrians in order to avoid a minor political embarrassment. I’m glad that Russia is providing an escape route. I hope he takes it. If he doesn’t, he’s wrong. The fact that he’s better than Romney isn’t part of the calculation at all.

Afterword

A big problem with our politics is that liberals accept so little from the Democratic Party. We all worry that we will allow a Republican to get in. But doing this over the last 40 years has given us Democratic politicians who are not liberal. And we’ve gotten policy where gay people can technically marry, but in practice they can’t because they are too poor. That’s what we get from accepting that liberal social policy is enough to make up for conservative economic policy. The only way forward is to hold the Democratic Party accountable. We don’t need to worry about the Republican Party; it is doing a fine job of destroying itself.

Update (11 September 2013 12:07 pm)

Today Steve Benen writes, “The crisis in Syria is nuanced and complicated. There are plenty of reasonable, knowledgeable, and fair-minded folks on every side of the U.S. political fight, and there’s no reason to question the sincerity of those with sincere disagreements.” Sigh. He writes it to then attack those who were for war with Syria right up until Obama was. And to be clear, I don’t question the sincerity of those who argue for war. I question their intelligence. The arguments for war are exactly the same as the arguments that get us into every war. So I don’t question Jonathan Chait’s sincerity for being in favor of war with Syria. But I don’t understand how he can fail to see that the exact same justification for this war would apply to dozens of conflicts all over the world. And I don’t understand why he ignores the fact that we wouldn’t be doing anything in Syria if Assad were an ally.

Jonathan Chait wrote a very interesting feature about Michael Bloomberg over at New York Magazine, The Dashed Dreams of President Bloomberg. It gets at a very important point to me. A lot of pundits (most notably Thomas Friedman) think that what America really wants is a moderate president. What is so exasperating about this idea is that for the last two years, the Democratic Party has given the American people moderate after moderate. But the Republicans have defined these moderates as extremists and the pundits have gone right along. And when it comes to liberal economic policy, the people mostly love it. But the national politicians don’t. In fact, pretty much no one on the television does either. It just isn’t acceptable policy for the Smart Set.

Bloomberg seems to have made the mistake of believing the pundits. He thought that he could be a moderate and the people would rise up and make him King of America. But Chait makes a mistake in his discussion of this. He correctly notes that Bloomberg is a social liberal and half admits that he is an economic conservative. But that doesn’t make him a centrist or a moderate. What it makes him is a typical politician who only cares about what is good for his class. He has friends who are gay. He knows women who have had abortions. Some of his best brokers are black! These are all great things, but they don’t make him a centrist. In fact, by American standards, they put him fairly far to the left on social issues and very far to the right on economic issues. So he’s an extremist—just in a slightly unusual way.

Chait tries to lighten the case by noting that Bloomberg wanted to allow all of the Bush tax cuts to expire. This is not a liberal position. People often mistake it for one because Obama was for it. But Obama really is that vaunted moderate, although he too is mostly socially liberal and economically conservatives—just not as much as Bloomberg. Raising taxes during an economic downturn is a bad thing. It is bad for workers who have jobs and bad for workers who do not. It puts debt concerns well ahead of unemployment concerns. And the way that Bloomberg wanted to do it would have hurt workers both because it would have caused a bigger economic hit (the tax increase would have been bigger) and it would have taxed the poor more. That’s not liberal economic policy!

But perhaps the worst thing about Bloomberg is that he is an authoritarian when it comes to the poor but a libertarian when it comes to the rich. The poor are not healthy? Stop them from smoking in bars; ban trans-fats in restaurants; eliminate the Big Gulp at 7-11! None of these are the worst ideas that a politician has ever come up with. But they are all authoritarian. They are all things that the government shouldn’t have much say in because there isn’t a compelling social interest. (The smoking in bars is perhaps an exception.) But after a huge financial crisis when the government spent hundreds of billions of dollars to save the banks, Michael Bloomberg was Wall Street’s greatest defender! We needed no regulation. It was the libertarian ideal for the banks (and socialism whenever they got themselves into trouble).

Chait summed up Bloomberg’s paternal attitude nicely:

In my many conversations with normal conservative and liberal voters, the one thing they tend to agree on (at least in the abstract) is economic populism. Even Paul Ryan uses that rhetoric. Everyone understands and dislikes the fact that individuals and small businesses have great constraints put upon them, but big businesses get whatever they want. But our politicians are beholden to these large business interests. And Michael Bloomberg is the poster child for this kind of thing. And he doesn’t even want us to be able to buy a really big soda to drown our sorrows in.

Yesterday, the Desmoines Register published, Iowa Grants Permits for Blind Residents to Carry Guns in Public. It is a fairly long article, but there really isn’t much more information in article than there is in the headline and the subtitle that reads, “Sheriffs and advocates are divided on whether that’s a good idea.” I’m divided on the issue myself. On the one hand, these are blind people—with guns. On the other hand, are they really any more likely to be idiots than sighted people?

It seems to me that society has already decided this issue. We don’t allow the blind to drive cars—both for the public safety but also for the safety of the blind person. So if the society decides that guns should not be carried around by blind people, that seems pretty reasonable given our social norms. Then again, I’m not keen on limiting people’s rights. And it isn’t that hard to imagine cases where a gun could be used effectively by a blind person. (It would seem that a taser would be just as effective, however.)

What I find interesting in all this is that guns in general are not treated like cars. In order to use a car, one must get training and pass a driving test. No such requirements are applied to using a gun. You just leave the gun store and accidentally shoot and kill your son. I think the problem is that we don’t perceive guns as the dangerous things they are. They just sit there doing nothing until quite suddenly they explode a projectile with often tragic consequences. For example, the guy who killed his 7-year-old son in the gun store parking lot was experienced with guns. But he apparently didn’t think there was anything wrong with having a loaded 9mm handgun sitting around his autistic child.

With public carry permits, the situation is better. Most states require some kind of training. And Iowa is no exception, “but that requirement can be satisfied through an online course that does not include any hands-on instruction or a shooting test.” I think that gets to the heart of the problem. Our pathetically weak gun laws and almost nonexistent proficiency requirements are not just a fluke. They are the result of ideologues pushing for laws that make gun ownership and use as simple as possible.

From a broad social standpoint, blind people walking around with guns just doesn’t matter—there are not many of them. But what bothers me is that legislatures think it is a good idea to provide such liberal gun laws that we are even discussing whether it is a good idea for completely blind people to walk around with loaded guns. I would prefer that we be much more careful about who we allow in public with guns. An armed society is not a polite society.

There is a small amount of good news. I have written several times about the tragic story of Debra Milke, the woman who was convicted of murdering her 4-year-old son over 20 years ago. She has been on death row since that time. The evidence against her was terrible, to put it lightly. Mostly, it all depended upon the word of a police officer and serial liar who claimed that Milke had confessed to him. The case came down to his word against hers. So as is usual, the jury believed the police officer. Earlier this year, an Appellate court overturned the earlier conviction (based largely on the officer’s history of lying) and called for a new trial or for Milke to be release. Of course, prosecutors pretty much never admit error and so they are retrying the case. But in the meantime, Milke has been released on bail (against the hysterical arguments of the prosecution).

The injustice in this case makes it extremely compelling. But it is hardly unusual. What I especially like about the case is what it shows about the death penalty generally. Proponents of the death penalty always think that it is applied in cases where there is overwhelming evidence. After all, there is that whole requirement that the jury be certain to within a “shadow of a doubt.” But usually, people are put on death row and later executed based on the flimsiest of evidence.

In Debra Milke’s case it really is just just one guy saying that he told her she did it. Does he have a recording? No. Does he have notes? No. Does he have a history of lying under oath and abusing women during interrogations? Yes! That’s basically what the state thought they should kill Milke over. It is also, what they had no problem putting her in jail for 22 years for. But I think there is something more going on in this case. It was a well publicized case. A 4-year-old boy had been murdered. The jury was angry. They wanted revenge and Milke was offered up.

At this point, I think that Milke will be exonerated. In fact, I’m not sure why they are even having another trial. It seems to me that the prosecution is going to look foolish. They didn’t have much evidence 22 years ago. Now they have much less. That is assuming that the lying cop won’t be allowed to testify—it’s still unclear. And now Milke has a good legal team with financial resources. She’s not OJ, but she will at least get a fair trial. Then again, I won’t be shocked if she is convicted. As we’ve seen, the jury system is not exactly dependable.

But it is at least good news the Debra Milke is out of jail. It is a little bit of justice, a long time in coming. And hopefully it is a good omen for the future. I will continue to follow the story here.

H/T: Debra Milke News

At the Pacific Standard, Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz is freaked out, The Big Problem With Online Dating: It’s Making the Country More Politically Polarized. Her theory is that if you meet people the old fashioned way—blind drunk after last call—then you are more likely to hook up with someone with different political beliefs. This leads to more tolerance of said belief and soon we are all singing “Kumbaya My Lord” and looking forward to attending Burning Man.

There is something to what she claims. People who only talk to like minded people do tend to get a skewed notion of how much diversity of thought there is. But she is totally wrong to think that this is what causes political polarization. Couples who disagree about politics just tend not to discuss it. And couples who agree on politics don’t work themselves up into a froth about it, because, you know, they already agree. And given they are already biased in each other’s favor, they would know quite clearly that they aren’t a representative sample.

What does work people up into a reactionary political froth is the presence of political screamers on the radio and television. Part of this is simply because they claim to be objective—in the case of Fox News, explicitly so. But that isn’t the main thing. Relationships have many aspects. A couple may disagree about same sex marriage, but they know that their lives are primarily concerned with the day to day drudgery that is the modern world. A radio ranter talks only about politics and thus elevates it to a level of importance that is far higher.

In my own relationships, I’ve seen that whoever has the stronger political opinions does tend to pull the other person a bit in their direction. But it isn’t a strong effect. Politics is something that individuals bring into a relationship. It’s just like any other interest: religion, hiking, or tattoos. And I think it is better when a couple agrees on things. There are more than enough things to disagree about in a relationship. Even if agreeing about politics were bad for public political discourse, I doubt that would trump the added comity in the private relationship.

The problem with our politics is that we all hear the same kinds of things over and over again. And even still, what most people think is not represented in the mainstream press. The people of this country are actually very liberal when it comes to economic issues. But they hear none of that in the media. Just look at the Sunday morning political shows. The “middle” is represented with its pro-corporate, supposed free trade nonsense. The right is represented by the constant misinformation campaign that is reflected in George Will and Peggy Noonan. And the left is represented by… No one. As a society, we really do need more debate about public policy. But we don’t need it in the bedroom.

H/T: Max Ehrenfreund