links for 2009-03-31

• The New York Times > Books > Image > Book Review | ‘A Pocket History of Sex in the Twentieth Century,’ by Jane Vandenburgh

Choose Your Words Carefully

Megan McArdle chastizes conservatives for throwing around the word “fascist” like it’s their last name:

Has clarifying the distinction between fascism and socialism really added to most peoples’ understanding of what the Obama administration is doing?  All this does is drag the specter of Hitler into the conversation.  And the problem with Hitler was not his industrial policy–I mean, okay, fine, Hitler’s industrial policy bad, right, but I could forgive him for that, you know?  The thing that really bothers me about Hitler was the genocide.  And I’m about as sure as I can be that Obama has no plans to round up millions of people, put them in camps, and find various creative ways to torture them to death.

You know, this is exactly why Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism was so problematic: in the course of trying to blame liberals for every bad thing that ever happened, Goldberg expanded the definition of fascism to the point of absurdity.  By Goldberg’s lights, anyone and anything could be accurately described as fascists.  Now, if Goldberg were some no-name hack toiling away in obscurity, this wouldn’t be a huge deal.  But the terrifying reality is that he’s a fairly prominent conservative commentator who has amassed enough intellectual credibility to be taken at least somewhat seriously.  As such, his loose definition of fascism has a significant amount of popular currency, which in turn means that more and more folks are throwing it around to describe a set of policies which – while not conservative – are certainly not fascist.  The problem is that this obscrues the extent to which there is a real fascist element in American life, and that it is something we should take seriously.  Casually using the word fascist does nothing more than make it more difficult to identify fascism if it ever rears its ugly head.

Comprehension Problems*

Matt Yglesias:

The economic and military might of the United States gives us enormous power to influence events in distant lands. But having a lot of ability to influence events is unlikely to achieve anything useful unless you actually understand what’s happening. And when we get involves in things like the internal politics of Pakistan, or political reform in Egypt, or wars in the Horn of Africa, and so forth we’re dealing in situations where the level of understanding is incredibly asymmetric. If you go to pretty much any country in the world, you’ll find that educated people there know more about the United States than you do about their country. Nobody at highest levels of the American government speaks Urdu. Or Arabic. Or Amharic or Somali or Pashto or Tajik.

This basically captures why I’m intensely skeptical of American intervention abroad. There is a tremendous amount of cultural distance between the United States and most Middle Eastern or Central Asian societies, so much so that even the most well-informed American would have trouble successfully navigating the cultural and political landscape. Of course, that’s not to say that navigation impossible, but to say that it requires a level of effort and commitment which the United States simply isn’t capable of providing.  And even if it were, even if the United States could invest the resources necessary to gain a complete (or at least mostly complete) understanding of Iraq, or Afghanistan or Pakistan, then it isn’t necessarily the case that this would be beneficial to American interests.  At one point, “success” in Iraq was possible, but that doesn’t mean that Iraq was a good idea to begin with.  This seems obvious to me, but then again, I don’t live, work and think within in an establishment that is completely invested in an optimistic/deeply ahistorical conception of American power and its efficacy.

• See, my title is different because I spelled “Problems” correctly!

A note on America’s racial history

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ most recent post – “The Tragedy and Betrayal of Booker T. Washington” – is fantastic, and you’d be doing yourself a favor if you take a few minutes out of your day to read it.  I just want to comment on this particular passage:

The dominant logic of the post-Reconstruction era held that the real problem wasn’t white racists, but carpetbaggers and meddlers from up North who’d elevated illiterate blacks above their station. The white Southerner, presumably, had no existential objection to blacks, they just didn’t want to live next door to them or have an illiterate and morally degenerate population electing their politicians. To this Washington, and much of black America, said Fine. Cease fire. You let us be, we’ll let you be.

In retrospect, this was a grievous error. In point of fact, whites actually did have an existential objection to black people. Their beef wasn’t that illiterates and moral degenerates might get too much power. Quite the opposite. Their beef was that blacks would prove to not be illiterates and moral degenerates, and thus fully able to compete with them. To see this point illustrated, one need only look at the history of race riots in the South. When white mobs set upon black communities they didn’t simply burn down the “morally degenerate” portions–they attacked the South’s burgeoning black middle and working class and its institutions. They went for the churches, the schools and the businesses. It’s one thing to be opposed to black amorality. It’s quite another to be opposed to black progress.

One of the (many) things that hamper intelligent discussions of race is the fact that most Americans don’t even have an inkling of the extent to which American race history is marked by terrible violence directed towards African-Americans.  I think it’s fair to say that most white Americans (and even a fair number of black Americans) see America’s racial history in three steps: first blacks were slaves, and then – for a while – they were half-free, and couldn’t drink from certain water fountains or go to certain restaurants.  Finally, with the help of Rosa Parks and MLK, they became fully free!  The End.  I’d wager that few Americans realize that for a considerable period of time (certainly more than half a century), whites waged an organized and sustained campaign against black progress, and that that has had tremendous implications for the social, political and economic development of black America.   That this isn’t common knowledge is almost certainly one (big) reason for the sorry state of our racial dialogue.

Tools and Toolbags

I am in complete agreement with this (via Megan McArdle):

Stop “networking” already!

No, you are not making a good impression on anyone when you pass out your business card with your email address and phone number to virtually everyone you meet.

In fact, your glad-handing behavior makes you look like a jerk at best and a loser at worst. But now virtually everyone, and especially everyone under 30, is convinced that the key to a successful career is to behave like a totally transparent nitwit.

One of the (many) downsides of going to a large, sorta-prestigious school like the University of Virginia is that you’re virtually surrounded by people whose days are dominated by their utterly transparent attempts to “network” with you.  If you spend any time in any sufficiently exclusive organization, you’ll probably run into someone who shakes your hand, puts their hand on your shoulder, and prattles on about their boring, meaningless lives in a pathetic effect to “build a connection” with you. Newsflash: I know that you’re sizing up my potential “usefulness,” and I hate you for it, so please, go away.

Which reminds me, have I ever mentioned that I’m really glad to be graduating from the University?  Because I am.

Defenders of the Status Quo

Matt Yglesias:

On a related note, people sometimes have a model in their head whereby the typical moderate congressional Democrat is a solid-gold progressive who really wants to do great things for America but feels constrained by politics. That’s probably true of some of them. But one really shouldn’t assume that it’s uniformly true.

I’d go even further, and argue that your typical moderate congressional Democrat is by default friendly to the Beltway/establishment consensus on most issues.  If you look at the most objectionable pieces of legislation passed in the last four or five years, you’ll find that each received support from “moderate” (and even ostensibly “liberal) Democrats.  Self-proclaimed centrists like Evan Byah and Ben Nelson (as well as Vice President Biden) voted for the 2005 bankrupcy bill, continuing their long tradition of defending the interests of credit card companies, at the expense of their constitutents. Moderate Democrats gave their support to last year’s FISA reauthorization vote and voted en mass for the 2002 AUMF, which gave President Bush to right to use military force eat his perogative.  It’s not a stretch to say that most congressional Democrats are well-invested in maintaining the status quo.  Of course, there are important differences between the two parties, but it’s still fair to say that Democratic elites are just as loath as their Republican colleagues to pursue any change that will fundamentally reorganize the status quo.

Then again, I could be wrong, and congressional Democrats are trembling with revolutionary furor.

links for 2009-03-29

• The Agitator » Blog Archive » Do America’s Inner Cities Need a “Surge?”
• Pensons: Why do we need objectivity?

Very Good, Rep. Shimkus, a Gold Star for you

More connected people than me have no doubt already heard about this, but nonetheless, here’s a quote from Rep. Shimkus from a House Energy and Environment committee meeting, about why we should not cap carbon emissions (and indeed, should perhaps emit more carbon):

SHIMKUS: It’s plant food … So if we decrease the use of carbon dioxide, are we not taking away plant food from the atmosphere? … So all our good intentions could be for naught. In fact, we could be doing just the opposite of what the people who want to save the world are saying.

Quick, could any five year old poke holes in this argument?  If so, I will be happy to give them a gold star too.  

See the logic?  If we add less carbon to the atmosphere, then the amount of carbon in the atmosphere will decrease!!  Does Shimkus think that carbon just disappears once it’s been lodged up in the air for enough time?  Or does anyone else think that Shimkus may have failed basic math, so that in his mind changing an equation from 100+2 to 100+1 is equivalent to going from 102 to 70 (or some panic zone number where all the grass in Shimkus’ front yard dissolves in the unrelenting oxygen)?

Also, if he’s going to quote Genesis in his opening statement, then he should at least get his Genesis right.  Plants, if I recall, were in fact created before humans arrived and started burning all the sequestered carbon they could lay their hands on.  Although I’m sure it’s tempting to think that humans are responsible for all plant food.

Assignment Desk

I have a bunch of stuff I want to blog, but I’d like to hear from you, the readers. What, if anything, should I blog?

“Generational Theft Contest”

Marc Ambinder:

Pajamas Media, the conservative website network run by P.T. Barnum figure Roger L. Simon, is offering a $10,000 prize to the college student who can best develop a method for predicting what 2009 college graduates will earn in 2014, 2019, 2024 and 2034, factoring in the cost of recent economic fixes, like TARP, TALF, and President Obama’s stimulus. They’ve dubbed it the “Generational Theft Contest.” Students are encouraged to collaborate with their professors, who are eligible for $10,000 of their own.

Although I don’t have the data to make much of an actual comparison, my hunch is that the current recession will impact the future earnings of this year’s college graduates far more than the government’s debt.  According to the National Bureau of Economic research, this amounts “to about 9 percent of annual earnings in the initial stage, eventually recede, but slowly — halving within five years but not disappearing until about ten years after graduation.”  What’s more, the impact is far greater for the least fortunate graduates; “who suffer permanent losses and are permanently relegated to lower wages.”

Which is to say that if we’re really looking to blame someone for the lowered earnings of current college graduates, then our best bet is the folks most responsible for the recession.  You know, the Republican Party.  The fact that Obama is asking for trillions of dollars in spending is itself a product of Republican inaction or failure on a whole constellation of concerns: health care, the environment, the economy etc.  This contest is cute and everything, but all it does is demonstrate that Roger Simon is an ignorant flunkie, along with the rest of the PJ Media crew.

Al