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Michael Young quotes HItchens:
A favorite trope among those who try to politicize the justified outrage over New Orleans is the plight of the slum-dwellers and the dark-skinned, and quite right, too. But it's highly objectionable to be told, by those who go on in this way, that we should instantly dump the Iraqis and Kurds who are fighting for their lives in a slum that could become another slaughterhouse and plague-spot. There is something degrading and suspect here-why lavish any of our care and resources on the wogs? Does this suggestion do anything to diminish xenophobia and resentment "at home," at just the time and just the place where we don't need it? Am I expected to tell a homeless woman in Biloxi that she has just been ripped off by an Ay-rab? A scuttle from Iraq or from Afghanistan (where the Kabul-Kandahar highway also took a lot of time and equipment and manpower to build) would add to the number of stricken and broken cities in the world, and not reduce it. If liberalism and humanitarianism do not mean internationalism, they mean precisely nothing. Shame on those who try to turn the needy and the victims against each other.
So let's see:
1. Liberalism and humanitarianism must mean internationalism, or they mean nothing. Check, I guess, with the proviso that this is what is arguably insane in Western thought, and then in the proselytizing religions, including Christianity and Islam: we've got the truth/a good thing/something that makes sense: we should probably spread it to the entire human race. There is a genuine philanthropy in the Greeks, but it was somehow restrained, free from fanaticism or anything like a war-cry. They may have suspected that except for family and friends (possibly students), it is difficult to do more good than harm in trying to help one's fellow man.
2. Liberalism and humanitarianism, in their proudly internationalist guise, fully justified invading Iraq--and in fact, made it unthinkable or evil (objectively pro-Hitler, perhaps?) to do otherwise. Doubtful. Doubtful that this was among the top three motives for the Bush administration.
3. Once the U.S. is in Iraq, whether rightly or wrongly, internationalist blah blah blah requires that they remain. Doubtful.
4. Anyone who wants the U.S. to pull out, or uses Katrina as an excuse for this position, is probably (objectively?) a racist: they are implicitly saying those people don't count. Er, no. Hitchens seems to miss the fact that W, in particular, has an obligation to protect U.S. citizens, in particular, when they are at home, in particular. Whether he has an obligation that is in any way comparable or similar to care for Iraqis, anywhere at all, but especially outside the U.S., is very doubtful.
Clifford Orwin:
Jean-Marie Le Pen has remarked that he will consider it appropriate to concern himself with rapes in Bosnia only when there are no longer any rapes in the region of Paris. This recalls the rationalizations of earlier French politicians (leftist as well as rightist) for turning a blind eye to German persecution of the Jews.(13) If humanitarian action abroad has to await the cessation of all problems at home, then none will ever be undertaken.
Yet there is this much truth in Le Pen's odious position: that the government of France does bear primary responsibility for the safety of the women of Paris and that its duty to protect them no matter what the cost is clearer than its duty to the women of Bosnia. However general the obligation to affirm universal human rights, a government's duty to risk the lives of its citizens to secure those rights for strangers -- in effect the duty to police the world -- will always remain debatable. And we may rightly deride the government that undertakes an intervention abroad to distract attention from nagging problems at home. Today any such intervention is likely to be a humanitarian one, and if indeed its motive is diversionary, then Rousseau's critique of "loving the Tartars" is fully applicable to it.
Eve Tushnet (daughter of a famous American Constitutional Law prof) said once that there was only one Supreme Court decision that made liberals as made as any of the social issues cases made conservatives: Bush v. Gore. By comparison, U.S. v. Lopez (Congress attempting to ban certain weapons from school yards) and U.S. v. Morrison (Congress attempting to provide redress of last resort for female victims of sexual assault) were small potatoes. Many liberals will say (even in the obits) the Court "pushed back" the Commerce power with these cases, or added new restrictions to it. It seems more true that Congress was trying to establish a couple of new beachheads in what had always been state and local police power, and the Court said no. Maybe the Warren Court, or a similar group, would have said yes. Who knows?
Ann Althouse has emphasized Nevada v. Hibbs as a case where Rehnquist proved to be surprisingly liberal (upholding family and medical leave established by Congress for the whole country). Now one of the pieces on Slate says Rehnquist was being strategic. The votes were in place for a 5-4 decision upholding the Act of Congress; by making it 6-3 Rehnquist got to write the decision, and restrict it. UPDATE: It was Dahlia Lithwick. (UPDATE: in support of Lithwick's view, Rehnquist wrote that if the case were based on the commerce power, Congress would have lost. Rehnquist saw it as a case of enforcing the 14th Amendment under the 5th section, as I recall, of that Amendment. Still not an argument one would expect from an enemy of the Warren Court, but consistent with Lopez and Morrison in (supposedly) holding the line on the commerce power).
In Bush v. Gore, Rehnquist led the "conservative three" who tried to say the Florida count should go back to the original totals, with no interference from the Florida courts. Article 3 of the Constitution, it would seem, protects the actions of state legislatures, not judicial review by state courts. But there were only three votes for that opinion, so they had to come up with a cocakamamie view that "equal protection" had been violated in some counties, and Florida had to have a bigger re-count, however there wasn't actually time for that. And by the way, we don't mean to apply any of this to any other state in this or any other election. Now that is arbitrary legislating by a court, making up rules that apply only to the case at hand. What would have been so bad about leaving it to Congress?
To an amazing extent, the liberals have been winning. On federalism, the Rehnquist Court did more on the 11th Amendment than on the 10th--and there was a joke a while ago that you would get a lot of blank looks from educated Americans by talking about the 11th Amendment, "state sovereign immunity." They did throw around phrases about the sovereignty of states far too easily--really building on the work of Taney, who was CJ for a long time, but is famous mostly for Dred Scott v. Sandford (in which he did not respect states' rights).
Kelo: the Court upheld the use of eminent domain not for truly public purposes, but to turn land over for development into a "higher and better use," with resulting higher tax revenues for a municipality. Conservatives and liberals are split on this decision.
The medical marijuana case [Raich]: yes, the Rehnquist Court, even O'Connor, were terriers on the War on Drugs. I have to look up Thomas v. Ginsberg again on drug testing high school kids in extramural activities.
UPDATE: Here's what I said before, referring to my class:
On search and seizure, I drew a kind of crude continuum: at one (left) extreme, courts are trying to prevent police from taking too many liberties; one's home is pretty well safe from a warrantless search, exlusionary rule applies, etc. But as you move to the right, there are exceptions: your car much less protected than your home; a "container" such as a purse much less protected in a car than it is elsewhere; searches can be done as part of an arrest, and even on the basis of a suspicion; arrests can be made even for a ticket-only misdemeanour. And finally, the piece de resistance, high school students who take part in extra-curricular activies can be searched without their consent on a regular basis--specifically, they can be forced to take drug tests.
The first "right-wing" case on high school teams concerned a football team. We didn't read this case, but there are plent of references to it in Bd of Education v. Earls, which we did read. The football team in Vernonia was in a school with a particularly bad drug problem; there was reasonable evidence or suspicion that some football players were in the middle of the drug scene; and athletes on a team have substantially given up their privacy, above all by agreeing to "communal undress."
Somehow, Justice Thomas in Earls persuades a majority to permit drug-testing once again, even though the high school in question is not known to have a particular problem, there are no specific students who are known as problem cases, and it is hard to argue that the chess club or the choir ever agreed to communal undress.
I read quite a bit of this in class, and got some laughs. I'm not inclined to say Thomas is crazy--I like his opinions on affirmative action, charter schools and free speech. But here he does seem absolutely crazy. Given the controversy about his confirmation--which still seems able to put him on the boil at any time--is he the right person to keep referring to the "communal undress" of a high-school choir, presumably mostly female? Thomas even describes in great detail the procedure to make the kids urinate, in order to confirm that it is not "intrusive". (The kid can have the privacy of a cubicle--even a male! that's more than we said before, says Thomas--but the adult monitor must be able to hear the tinkle. Didn't that Irish track star manage to hand over a urine sample that had whisky in it? Pouring whisky might make a tinkle, I guess).
Ginsburg for the minority has great fun with this, and rightly so. Dahlia Lithwick also wrote about it at the time.
UPDATE: Another difference between the football team and the marching band: football players who are high are more of a risk for injury, including serious injury, both to themselves and others. As Ginsburg says, there are no reports of flying tubas.
William Saletan on Slate:
But the role of criminals, and of malice generally, has been inflated. Initial reports of rapes at the Superdome were uncorroborated. Putative witnesses later said they had inferred the rapes from noises in the dark.
From Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory (a novel I find very moving):
The renegade priest is locked in a prison cell with many other people, in total darkness.
Suddenly, from about five feet away, there came a tiny scream--a woman's. A tired voice said, 'Can't you be quiet?' Among the furtive movements came again the muffled painless cries. He realized that pleasure was going on even in this crowded darkness.
...
Somewhere against the far wall pleasure began again; it was unmistakable: the movements, the breathlessness, and then the cry. The pious woman said aloud with fury, 'Why won't they stop it? The brutes, the animals!' ... 'It's mortal sin.'
The priest: 'We don't know. It may be.'
On the one hand, to give Bush credit, he probably doesn't have a racist bone in his body. Everything he says about Mexican immigration indicates that, along with his working relationships with Rice and Powell. It just doesn't look like tokenism. Powell was never really one of the inner circle, and he was eventually more or less fired as a scapegoat--probably to some extent for disloyally giving the impression that except for him, the grown-ups weren't in charge. Rice has had a distinguished career, and she has won the President's trust--as Kissinger did earlier.
So the idea that Bush and the Republicans are prepared to neglect blacks in particular, somehow in addition to the poor in general, or with a special animus, doesn't seem to hold up. That they are prepared to neglect the poor in general--and let markets, states, municipalities, those wasteful old Democratic programs that exist somewhere, somehow all together take care of things--I think there is no doubt at all.
Jonah Goldberg seems to admit that thousands of Republican after-dinner speeches could lead exactly to a federal government that is unable to cope with Katrina (via Kevin Drum). He says what disappoints him most is that Republicans in Congress turn out to have their own favourite wasteful spending, to make up for the Democrats' wasteful spending. He would like to cut the wasteful spending that has recently been authorized by Republicans, and use it for Katrina. But that means a "Goldberg" Congress would probably cut taxes even more, and have far less federal spending of any kind available.
In a way New Orleans was, and may be again, a Republican paradise. Lots of talk about social issues, and even some genuine concern and action on the conservative side. Strong evangelical churches, and the old Roman Catholic church still in evidence, at least as much as in Boston. But: low taxes, an almost unbelievably inefficent public sector which everyone openly jokes about, and every kind of prostitution available on the street. Oh, sorry, the Republican paradise is Branson, Missouri. This might lead back to my riff about people who prefer music that "sounds white," even if it comes out of the rich soup of American roots music, constantly fusing white and black influences.
Some fine New Orleans music: "There is Always One More Time," can be found on Harry Connick, Jr., "30." Also recorded by B.B. King and Joe Cocker.
If your whole life somehow
Wasn't much 'til now
And you've almost lost
Your will to live
No matter what you've been through
Long as there's breath in you
There is always one more time
If your dreams go bad
Every one that you've had
Don't you think that your dreams
Can't come true
Because it's funny about dreams
Just strange as it seems
Because there is always one more time
Turnin' corners
Turnin' corners
Only a state of mind
Keeping your eyes closed
Keeping your eyes closed
Worse than being blind
If there's a heart out there
Looking for someone to share
I don't care if it's been
Turned down time and time again
And if we meet some day
Please don't walk away
'Cause there is always always one more time
There is always one more time.
Listen to a brief excerpt:
The song was actually written by Doc Pomus, who was born Jerome Felder in Brooklyn. His songwriting partner for many years was Mort Shuman. Doc wrote nearly 2,000 songs, 60 of which made the charts, including "Save the Last Dance for Me,'' "This Magic Moment," "Sweets for My Sweet" and dozens of others, including Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas," "Little Sister," and "(Marie's the Name) His Latest Flame." Elvis alone recorded 20 Pomus and Shuman songs. After a hiatus, Pomus began song-writing again in the 70s, this time collaborating with Dr. John (a genuine New Orleans musician (like Connick); he got the name Dr. John from a legendary Voodoo figure). "There's Always One More Time" comes from this collaboration. Pomus died in New York in 1991.
I should really stay away from this stuff, but I can't resist. Althouse quoting Hitchens in the Weekly Standard.
"For anyone with eyes to see, there was only one other state that combined the latent and the blatant definitions of both 'rogue' and 'failed.' This state--Saddam's ruined and tortured and collapsing Iraq...."
So I guess "latent and blatant" is the new way of saying: "A lot of what the Bushies have said about Iraq isn't true, but by golly it would have come true eventually; it was latent."
[blockquote][Iraq] had also met all the conditions under which a country may be deemed to have sacrificed its own legal sovereignty. To recapitulate: It had invaded its neighbors, committed genocide on its own soil, harbored and nurtured international thugs and killers, and flouted every provision of the Non-Proliferation Treaty....[/blockquote]
Boy, that is awful. So awful, it is hard to think of a single other country, other than Saddam's Iraq, that has done all those things. Well, maybe there is one.
UPDATE: And of course, Saddam wasn't "proliferating" in violation of a treat; hadn't, in fact, "proliferated" for 10 years. Oh right: that was latent.
The guests on Josh Marshall's site are very concerned about John Bolton and what the U.S. is doing to international initiatives.
It strikes me again that the U.S. was the leading supporter of both the League of Nations and the United Nations. Why the great disillusionment by Bushies now? I think Americans tended to support these international initiatives (to the extent that they did) not as an alternative to their isolationism, but as a support for it. Maybe we can set up an international agency, fund it, and it will fight wars in hell-holes so we don't have to. 9/11 could be taken as decisive proof that this doesn't work--the UN doesn't protect the U.S. homeland.
The other part of Bushie thinking is neo-con. They were probably always skeptical of the UN--not because they wanted to make sure isolationism was somehow safe, but because they wanted to reserve the right to carry out adventurist wars. In a way the Bush administration is a combination of Sparta and Athens.
Fred Kaplan says this is the real deal-breaker.
I just don't understand why, with all the Americans involved in the process, something like the U.S. Senate has not been proposed. Above all, equal representation of states, which has probably always been a pretty bad idea in the U.S., might be a pretty good idea in Iraq--it might give the Sunnis a veto over anything affecting oil revenues.
My wife is coming to the end of her vacation, renting chick flicks.
A Lot Like Love, Ashton Kutcher and Amanda Peet. The reviewer on the web says they were hoping for When Harry Met Sally, but the writing isn't at this level. I think there's something more of Breakfast at Tiffany's: a girl who's a bit skanky, so that hunky guy doesn't even consider her girlfriend material, turns out to have a heart of gold and be the one. It's mostly disconnected episodes; it's not clear why they don't keep seeing each other when they're younger, and when they finally want each other, it's anti-climactic.
It's obviously a sign of the times that they want to say: you can have a number of affairs, sorry, "serious relationships," and still end up pure of heart, ready for the real thing. What's interesting is that marriage is a real barrier to further affairs. When she mistakenly thinks he is getting married at the end, she cries and says "it's too late." Too late? In the U.S. today? Too late for what, sweetheart? These people don't seem to accept liberal divorce--that would apparently be too corrupt, cynical and worldly for them.
Guess Who? Not very funny. They need to cut Bernie Mac loose. At one point he says something like: you kids think romance is one sweaty weekend. Twenty-five years of marriage: now that's romance! You know what it is? It's war! That might have been funny to develop. The younger sister (Kellee Stewart) is comic relief. Having been told that the white guy (Kutcher again) sings while he makes love, she teases him in a seductive voice at a family dinner. What kind of singer are you? Alto? Soprano? Why don't you sing something for me, baby? Kutcher, not getting it at all, stammers something like: I'm not really much of a singer.
The younger sister hugs the older, cries a bit and says: I want to thank you: from now on, if I flunk out; if I rob a bank; if I burn down this house; I'm still never going to be the one that brought a white boy home.
After the Sunset: a total dud. Has Pierce Brosnan always been boring? Woody works and works, but gets nowhere. No chemistry between Pierce and Salma Hayek. Does this make the list of love scenes with no spark, which I believe is dominated by Tom Cruise + x scenes?
UPDATE: Tom actually didn't make the top 5 in this list, but three of his movies are in the 16 honourable mentions.
Lots of bloggy goodness from Mickey Kaus.
On the politics of Iraq, the Bushies will probably keep saying there is no turning back, we have to see this through, no withdrawal date, etc., while quietly letting statements leak to the effect that troops are going to be withdrawn. There will still be no way for Democrats to outflank Bush by being tough on the war; but it will also be difficult to out-flank him by promising withdrawal by a specific date.
Hillary's problem is that it will be hard to get the Democratic nomination if you were for the war from the beginning--regardless of whether you make big promises to withdraw.
What interests me just as much are Kaus's brief indications of what he sees as the merits of the case. He thinks the fall of Iraq (descent into civil war? only remaining government (other than Kurdistan) a satellite of Iran?) would be a disaster, and it would be wrong--"insane"--for the U.S. to allow that to happen. He says this is very different from the case of Vietnam in the 60s and 70s. Then he was willing to let the government of South Vietnam fall; it seems he still has no regrets about that position.
It still seems significant that, to over-generalize, Democrats started the Vietnam war, and Republicans ended it. Democrats have at least a hazy idea that it started with noble intentions, but they are likely to say as soon as the war turned really sour, the U.S. should have withdrawn completely. 1968? 1970? Something like that. Republicans are likely to say regardless of how it started (and Kennedy and Johnson may have screwed up, etc., much as Bush has arguably done), once the U.S. was massively committed, it was simply unacceptable to withdraw until there was some kind of substitute status quo in place. Nixon was right.
But this means Kaus still rejects "dominoes" in South-East Asia; but he seems to believe in them in the Persian Gulf today. Then, the fear was that Communism would spread; some Republicans say the continued U.S. presence in Vietnam exhausted the relevant Communists, turned Vietnam against Cambodia, thus halting further expansion, and allowed the Asian Tigers to grow. Positive dominoes, or dominoes in reverse.
Today, if Iraq were to fall, then... what exactly would happen?
UPDATE: Kevin Drum continues on these questions.
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