Oh you silly left, even when someone else does something barbarous, you still get the blame

Now for one of my favorite tricks: taking an article, ignoring the main thrusts of the article, and musing about something in it that either puzzles or concerns me.

Today’s winner is nominally about Intelligent Design and the fact that it is garbage. I’ll sort of table that part of the discussion, because, as I sit here, it occurs to me I don’t actually know anything except the most basic explanation of what ID actually is. That basic principle sounds like the worst argument I’ve ever heard, but that can pushed to the side for now. Why I clicked to this article from AL Daily is because under the link was the following quote:

“For several decades the philosophical ground has been softened up by the relativism and political correctness of the secular left, which succeeded in undermining the very idea of objective reality and of calling a spade a spade—so now, in the resulting marsh, fantasies like intelligent design (or Scientology or feng shui or 9/11 as a CIA plot) take root and spread like weeds. Liberals pioneered squishy-minded indulgence of their key constituencies’ unfortunate new ideas, like reparations and criminalized hate speech; now it’s the right’s turn.”

This strikes me as an unfortunate set of statements. Here’s my problem: an overwhleming majority of the sort of family’s of relativism that this statement is implicating do not in the slightest deny the existence of objective reality. In fact, much of the work on the subject (for example: Nietzsche) proceeds from almost the opposite direction. For instance, moral relativism does not deny reality, or even the existence of morals, but instead presumes that they are rules which are the creations of human activity. These morals are not fixed and can be observed as changing over time (like this). The idea that scientific understandings of relaity proceed in a similar fashion that morals do was most compellingly argued by Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn’s argument is not that reality is relative to the eye of the beholder, but that the relationship between reality, our perception of reality and our statements about reality are imperfect and tied to a constellation of statements that are equally imperfect matches.

Thanks to scientific method, we have advanced methods for collecting facts (which we do) in a manner that can be refereed under fairly solid principles (which we do) that do not relate these facts to authority very strongly (which we moslty do) but instead allow the facts “to stand on our own.” On the other hand, these advantages of method do not serve as supremely helpful for situating these facts in the context of large theoretical investigation once they have been uncovered. Kuhn points out that Aristotle’s “facts” weren’t wrong when he thought the Earth the center of the universe. His theory was wrong, and it was mostly wrong because it relied upon other theories that situated other real facts incorrectly, and, in tying them together, he got a pretty messed up story. This does not mean that Kuhn believes that the Earth was actually the center of the universe for the Greeks because they believed it was.

I bring this up because it seems that whenever dogmatic radicalism rears its ugly head, Christian, Islamist, or hippie-liberal idiotic, there is the instantaneous “fortress europe” effect by all rationalists to place blame essentially on the likes of Nietzsche (funny how he wrote “God is dead” and yet is somehow implicated in ID) which we can, in short, call the Leo Strauss playbook. I was shocked that when I went to a political science conference a couple years ago that the prevailing attitude seemed to be that “post 9/11″(ugh), anything that denies the credibility of right reason or natural right has been proven too dangerous to contemplate. As if there is no room for serious academic exploration on these alternate fronts. As if there hasn’t already been a century of very compelling results on these fronts. In other words: You’re either with the rationalists or your with the terrorists. This is wrongheaded for the enormously paradoxical way in which this type of logic doesn’t at all line up with the subtleties of reality and leans upon the mother of all philosophical slippery slopes.

It is a delightful fantasy to think the correspondance between our faculties of seeing, thinking, and willing correspond with the world so neatly as to think one can simply “call a spade a spade.” Make no mistake about it, however, it is a fantasy. The “straight science” that Mr. Anderson speaks of has moved beyond its instrumetnal usefulness and become a bit of an ideological monstrosity. Am I part of the “big majority” that is against you? If only it were so simple. One can be pro-science and anti-science at the same time. Perhaps if they were as objective about their own craft as they claim to be about the facts of the world, maybe even scientists could see that this is true.

Reflections onf the Fitzgerald Press Conference

The media seems to have a hard time thinking about this in any context but the world of spin they live in, but there is an amount of civic pride that stirred in me when watching Fitzgerald’s press conference. Mr. Fitzgerald showed us the legal system that we et most of the time, not the one that was in the OJ trial.

If anyone has sat on a jury, Mr. Fitzgerald’s manner of speaking should be quite familiar. He spoke in a very organized and compartmentalized way, and he explained not just what his case was, but the principles behind his case, and why upholding such principles are important. Prosecutors in America handle this job gracefully across America all the time, and they usually have to do it with much stickier terminology and concepts than perjury. I, for example, sat on a case that turned on “constructive possession”, which is not an easy concept to communicate.

While lawyer jokes are fun, and probably a lot of lawyers deserve them, Mr. Fitzgerald further reminded me why the law is so appealing to those in search of a career of their own. The law is one of the few obvious places where professionalism, intelligence, and principle are all extremely concrete things, and that if one seeks to excel in those three things, the petty claims of political interest that try to assail it look pale and fragile by comparison. The media may be frustrated by the lack of information, but I feel I have all the information I need on this case: the law is at work, and it appears to be working.

Democracy in the World

Negroponte Unveils Intelligence Strategy

Have we learned the real valuable lesson from Iraq? If the real valuable lesson is that statecraft is difficult and requires more than creating instituions and assuming people will accept them, my guess is that no, we have not seemed to learn this lesson yet. Nevertheless, the “new Intelligence establishment” is going to list democratization as one of its priorities. Now, how exactly are the intelligence services equipped to promote democracy abroad?

Even if the national inteeligence establishment is equipped to do so, the next question I have is WHY?? It seems to me that their institutional objectives are either a) going to focus on the short and long range goals relating to OUR national security, which democratizing another country the right way may or may not actually run together with or b) it will put aside its national security objectives, which would make them nothing more than a redundancy to the Department of State and leave a gaping institutional need for the kind of work that they used to focus on.

The work of democratization does not belong to the CIA anymore than it belongs to the military. It is simply the wrong tool for the job, and it speaks to me as evidence that we still are struggling with the questions “what are the right tools?” and “what is the right job?” Once again, those actually in favor of America being actively engaged in democratization I believe are forced to distance ourselves from administration policy on the matter becaue they do not seem to understand or care about understanding the task at hand.

Trouble in Wal-Mart’s America

Trouble in Wal-Mart’s America: Harold Meyerson ends his op-ed column today in the post with the comment “For, in Wal-Mart’s America, it’s not clear that even Wal-Mart can thrive.”

I find it interesting that it seems that no matter what the organization, we can see that if its authority goes unchecked, it seems to begin acting very destructive towards what were initially percieved as its own interests. Whether one takes WalMart, IBM, the Catholic Church, or even England or France the last two centuries, interest seems to play out in fairly similar matter.

Western thought practically began witht he idea that we are going to oftentimes be mistaken about our own well-being without an incredible amount of discipline and thinking. Our general understanding of contemporary liberal democracy and its idea of reasonable, free and equal persons is practically the opposite of what seemed obvious to the ancient Greek world. There is a compelling case to be made that our understanding is less dangerous because we are more likely to be mistaken in choosing someone else to choose our happiness for us than we are to be mistaken ourselves.

However, we should be under no illusion that self-interest left to its own devices “works”. It does not, and it has never worked. Any organization that has ever grown to be unchecked to the point where it might act unopposed upon its own will has always undermined itself. There is limit to reason and limit to planning, this is perhaps the tragic nature of the world. It’s positive side might be that there may also be a limit to dominance.

re: The new "Larry Bird" rule?

I just read about how a man asked for 3 more years to be added to his sentence so it could 33 years, to match the number of years to Larry Bird’s Boston Celtic’s number.

The article has a tone that makes the story of the “news of the weird” variety. I’m sorry, but I can’t help but feeling like the judge shouldn’t have added the extra years. In fact, it’s really creepy to me that they did.

If I walked into a courtroom and said “put me in jail for 3 years”, and the judge asked why, I’d ike to think I’d need a better answer than “poetic symmetry” for him to comply with my request.

The Assault on Pragmatism

Richard Cohen writes a rather meandering op-ed piece about his feelings on abortion and the Roe v. Wade decision, where it is a little unclear whether his change on is feelings about abortion are supposed to be directly related to what the rest of us feel about Roe or not.

I will, again, recuse myself from talking about the morality of abortion, for it currently is an issue that is tangential to my dissertation field work.

What is more troubling to me in this piece are statements such as “That right of privacy, first enunciated in 1965 in Griswold v. Connecticut, once made sense.” and about Roe “Still, a bad decision is a bad decision. If the best we can say for it is that the end justifies the means, then we have not only lost the argument — but a bit of our soul as well.”

Griswold not only once made sense, it still makes sense, a lot of it. There is an incredible amount of willful ignorance that exists in this country about the existence of the Ninth Amendment, and it needs to stop. The idea that the Constittuion is a complete and perfect embodiment of the political promises between state and citizen was to be avoided, for Madison thought the Constitution never captured such a relationship completely, and that is quite clear in the majority and concurring opinion in Griswold. Pragmatism and the law have been treated liek oil and water by many critics lately, who want judges to be more like scriptual learned-men as opposed to people posing the question of how to make the law hold everything together. I shudder to think of the consequences of this anti-Griswold point of view wins out.

The Love Affairs of Renowned Minds

I just read a review of the sordid escapades of French intellectuals Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Some interesting quotes:

“Sometimes even philosophers and moralists fail to live up to their own highest ideals. But does that negate the importance of their public example or the value of their writing? This is a vexed question.”

Is it such a vexed question? We are not offered people and their thoughts as exclusive “package deals”. What we learn from the likes of those who share their thoughts and work publicly depends as much upon what we take from them as what they offer to us, and perhaps moreso.

“Fundamentally, Sartre pursued as pure an intellectual life as one could ask — he worked like a demon, gave away his money faster than he earned it, helped and supported those he loved, and tirelessly contributed to, or contested with, the literature, politics and philosophy of his time.”

I take issue with Sartre being characterized as pursuing a “pure intellectual life” I feel it would be wrong to group Sartre in with Arendt and Camus, because he did seem to advocate a totalizing conception philosophically that points towards Communism (see “Anti Semite and Jew”) and also advocates and even glorifies violence (see his famed introduction to Fanon’s “Wretched of the Earth”) Arendt and Camus certainly never advoccated violence and absolutely never apologized for the Soviet Union the way Sartre did.

Sartre and Beauvoir were two of the French intellectuals who Camus is implicating when he says the intelligentsia “did nothing” to resist the Nazi’s. If they pursued as pure a public life as Arendt or Camus, for example, why did they not ask themselves what this public life was for? Sartre’s intellectual drive seemed as devoted to the image of Sartre the intellectual figure as it did anything else. His examined life seems lagely unexamined when it came to risking his own neck, but is very generous with risking others. If you want a pure intellectual life, consider how seriously Orwell opposed Fascism. So much so that he traveled to Spain to fight it. What did Sartre do when Fascism was at his very doorstep?

Cheney’s Office Is A Focus in Leak Case

The Post’s headline story today seems to confirm what little dispute there was over Seymour Hersch’s print account of the infighting over decisions and flow of information that has lead to some very grave and questionalbe decisions by the White House in conducting its foreing policy.

Whether or not there is any activity that is designated criminal, I would prefer to leave until various people in the administration face public trial to consider. In spite of the criminality threshold, it should go without saying that it is unacceptable for “feuding” between the Vice President’s office and the CIA to lead to the events as they transpired. While it has become cliche to say things in a “post-September 11th” context, the fact that the nation’s intelligence service and the Vice President’s office could have such a divide is utterly unacceptable. From an institutional standpoint, given the fact that the Vice-President and his office are an appendix in the executive branch, they certainly have no business creating discord between any of the other executive agencies, agencies that are important for national security.

The Vice President’s office is not supposed to be the party whip within the White House. As many accounts of the Wilson trip have stated that it was the CIA’s bristling at the “party line enforcement” coming from the White House that created the motivation for the trip in the first place. Lying has always been and likely will always be a part of politics. However, what kind of lies, what they are lies about, and what they are being used for are incredibly important criteria for judging the lies that those in authority tell us. The combination of lies, money, and power that are tied together in the lead-up to Iraq and its aftermath raise very grave questions about the lies that the American people are willing to tolerate.

Somewhere beyond the game of who is winning and losing in terms of party politics, there’s an actual political structure that makes the US a desirable place to live. The republic can survive quite a lot, but it cannot support massive amounts of blind followers of political parties that view their duties to their own like they would their local sports team.

Critics will say that this White House needs to be reigned in, but it is the White House as an institution, regardless of who occupies it that needs there ability to lie and get away with it restrained. We should not forget that the behavior of the Clinton administration toward the genocide in Rwanda amounts to willful negligence, and that they deliberately mislead the American public until the worst was already over. Perhaps a check on the growing power of the executive and its ability to exploit the “energy” to make quick decisions to the point where it can act first and lie about questions later will materialize. Perhaps such a check will take a long time, and perhaps that is the best we can expect. I suspect that we cannot afford to have it not develop at all without paying a price that will be very grave indeed.

More on DC’s DUI-gate

Chief Ramsey and co. attempt to make a defense of DC’s DUI policy. Not surprisingly, their defense is terrible. If someone has almost no alcohol in their system and are engaged in “extremely bad driving”, can’t they just get fined for “extremely bad driving”??

Chief Ramsey notes that everyone’s tolerance level is different. So how then do the cops know that someone is drunk just because they are driving recklessly and have a blood alcohol level of .02? I have seen some stone sober people make extremely questionably driving choices. Again, it seems to me that all adding a DUI onto a reckless driving charge does in these situations is 1. increases the fine and 2. severely damage people’s criminal record for an offense that is not proportional to the damage it can inflict.

re: Ernst Gombrich

The Guardian has a nice pice on Gombrich. For me, Gombrich’s Art and Illusion is a book that seems to grow in importance each time that I refer back to it. Gombrich was very influential to Thomas Kuhn, whose Structure of Scientific Revolutions was, in my mind, one of the more important books written in the twentieth century.

I, for one, admire Gombrich because I see him as a member of an academic canon that isn’t. Gomrich’s work on the history of art, Kuhn’s work on history of science, Foucault’s histories, Nietzcshe’s genealogies (to name a few famed scholarly works) are all connected in that they trace what has been lost in exchange for the “progress” that has been made on each subject. There was an explosion of this type of scholarship across many disciplines in the twentieth century, and it is extremely valuable. If it is buried now, one can only hope that like Kuhn’s own account of the Copernican Revolution, there will always be a few whose love and admiration for the craft of those like Gombrich will one day inspire the full renaissance of his work across disciplines that is so desperately needed and richly deserved.