State Your Allegiance

If we get the culture right, the economy will be right eventually.
Representative Steve King (R-Ohio).

This sounds less like a viable economic plan than it does the sort of "motivated skepticism" that Peter Ditto and David Lopez talk about* - in this particular case the idea seems to be that Liberalism is simply such a destructive force that it must somehow be involved in the recent economic collapse and ongoing malaise. And so the nation becomes more and more polarized.

I've been re-reading The Two Americas recently, and this idea of motivated skepticism fits into the narrative perfectly. The loyalists in both camps are motivated to be skeptical of anything that can be shown to originate with the other party and to be unquestioningly supportive of anything that originates with their own. Not to say that this is all bad - after all, partisanship "is a useful way of organizing our thoughts on policies and politics." Even when it leads people to occasionally flip-flop on the issues. But, as Bouie points out, it helps for us to be honest with ourselves when we're being partisan.

For my part, I'm a non-Republican. I don't really consider myself a Democrat, but I have a tendency to associate Republicans with social, corporate and military policies that I don't care for, and this overwhelms my general alignment with them on fiscal issues. Given a Democrat and Republican both pitching policy arguments at me, I'm usually fairly convinced that neither is being particularly truthful, but I'm more likely to suspect the Republican of attempting to bait and switch me for the benefit of their loyalist constituency. Knowing this, and being willing to be up front about it, I know that I have to careful to examine my immediate reaction to be sure that I'm not simply following a reflex. But I guess I'm okay with being subjective about things. Maybe if more of us were, politicians could afford to confess to their own subjectivity.

* There was a link to a paper from an Ezra Klein column, but it's broken now.

I've Gotta Be Free

Justice Stephen Breyer wonders what happens if the prosecutor had said, "I do not intend to try this person, ever, no matter what; I just want to ask him questions." Does that violate the material witness statute? Katyal says it does but goes on to argue for absolute immunity in this case because "absolute immunity isn't some rule to just protect prosecutors willy-nilly; it's to protect the public. … No doubt that certain individuals will be harmed, but the cost of rooting out the bad apples through damages lawsuits is far worse, that it causes prosecutors to flinch in the performance of their duties."
Dahlia Lithwick. "Al-Kidding Aside"

Translation - the only way for the public to be protected from an outside threat, in this case, terrorism, is for the same public to be subject to an internal threat from federal prosecutors, who must be completely unaccountable for even intentional wrongdoing, as the prosecutors must never have to concern themselves with the possibility of accidental wrongdoing.

Or, more simply: Trust us. We're the good guys.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken

If you read Ms. Lithwick's Slate piece on Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, it seems that as of this point, the Supreme Court might very well accept the Obama Administration's argument that in order for prosecutors to do their jobs, we will have to allow them to commit crimes while they are at it. I'd like to say I surprised, but I'm not.

But I am impressed at the level of confidence in the future that such a ruling would send. While Solicitor General Katyal might be making the argument that the Justice Department are the Good Guys, a ruling in favor of absolute immunity from liability for even intentional wrongdoing would say that the court expects that they always will be the Good Guys. I don't think that is a reasonable, or safe, assumption to work under.

I've always been concerned by people's willingness to condone things that they feel could never happen to them - just as I'm amused/irritated by their sudden panic when they realize it can. And to a degree, I feel part of that mindset is implicit in Katyal's argument - when he says "No doubt that certain individuals will be harmed," it seems clear that he's also saying that those are individuals that we, the American public as a whole, will not care enough about to risk anything for. I guess it's not worth rehashing the whole "First they came for..." argument, because you already know it, and most people are convinced enough that it could never happen to them that you couldn't convince them otherwise if your life depended on it. To be honest, I don't really think that they'll come for me in my lifetime.

But that shouldn't be what freedom and the rule of law are all about. We shouldn't wait until we see a personal threat to do something. Everyone is invested in their own well-being. A commitment to the values that we say that this country stands for should entail being willing to fight to grant them to others. Not to just take what we have and pretend that it's all that matters.

You Must Read This

Tom Socca on the interaction between the implicit American social contract and the budget.

I Don't Get It

While I was doing some reading on the Foreign Policy website, I came across this picture.


Now I know that Fashion is supposed to be forward thinking and edgy and all that. But who would wear something like that? Anywhere? I mean, at least with concept cars, their features and whatnot often make it into production vehicles, and sometimes the who care does. But what part of that model's insane getup is ever going to see the light of day anyplace other than a runway? Or am I just not getting the fact that fashion and clothing aren't intended to be the same thing?

First, Think

Did IQs drop sharply while I was away?
Ellen Ripley - Aliens

The single biggest problem with the Culture Wars, in my not-particularly-humble opinion, is that they make people stupid. Dumb things are followed by knee-jerk reactions that are just as, if not more, thoughtless than what is being responded to.

To wit. I read in the Root that a "Georgia Lawmaker Proposes Death Penalty for Miscarriages." No, really. That's what the headline says. But when you actually read the story, and put a just little thought into it, you develop a slightly different picture.

To make a long story short, Georgia State Representative Bobby Franklin is on a crusade to criminalize abortion, and adjunct to that, to close any and all potential loopholes that people might use to get around the restrictions. To this end, he's calling for very stiff penalties for "prenatal murder," a blanket term that appears to cover not only abortion, but pretty much any deliberate action that leads to the death of a fetus. Now, if you're the suspicious sort, and I suspect (chuckle) that Representative Franklin is, you're likely to expect that one of the unintended, but perfectly predictable, consequences of making abortion punishable by life imprisonment or even execution is that there will be a sudden rise in the number of "miscarriages." So... you'd better close that loophole by requiring that a miscarriage be demonstrably not the result of any sort of human action; otherwise, you class it as a "prenatal murder," and proceed from there.

The conflict here isn't over Representative Franklin attempting to march as women as he can into Death Row. This is, plain and simple, about the idea that exists in some Conservative circles that abortion is part of some hateful conspiracy against - I have no idea what, actually. But if you start from the presumption that abortion, beyond being what the Catholic Church calls an "intrinsic evil," is a deliberate act of malicious and intentional evil, Representative Franklin's proposed legislation, bizarre as it may otherwise seem, makes a certain level of sense. And so, if you're going to criticize, that's where it should lie - in this world of Franklin's, where a woman who terminates a pregnancy and the people who aid her in that are automatically presumed to be such monsters that they deserve the punishments we normally reserve only for the worst of the worst.