On The New Republic (II): Russian Weakness

Leon Aron's "Jihadi Murat," a book review on two books, including Gordon Hahn's Russia's Islamic Threat, reinforces my belief that what we need to worry about in the medium and long term is Russian weakness, not Russian strength. Key points: There are 20-23 million Muslims in Russia, 14-16% of the population; "between the censuses of 1989 and 2002, the number of ethnic Russians declined by 3 percent and the number of MUslims increased by 20 percent; the heavily Muslim North Caucasus is also heavily unemployed, filled with young men with time on their hands; while Chechnya is (temporarily) suppressed, Dagestan and Ingushetia are spinning out of control; the relatively wealthy, educated, and unIslamicist Tatars are being alienated by Putin's suppression of local autonomy in Tatarstan; and state promotion of the Russian Orthodox Church and ethnic Russian nationalism are further alienating the Muslim minorities.

Left unmentioned: that Russia is therefore particularly ripe for ethnic cleansing/genocide, should the quasi-fascist Putinocracy decide there is no other way of keeping the Muslims down. Also left unmentioned, but in the background: the curious, delicate balance of power that leads the various regimes confronting the Islamic world (Russia, Europe, Israel, India, the US, China) to tolerate Islamic radicalism that threatens the other powers--Russia hopes the Islamicists will wear themselves down fighting the US in Iraq, the US doesn't mind if Islamicist fighters head to Chechnya--and so there is no common action against the common threat. The book review mentions how Islamicists in Pankisi Gorge in Georgia, just across the border from Chechnya, were organizing both anti-Russian and anti-American terror--and the astute reader will recollect how the Islamicists benefit from the fact that Russo-American hostility among other things has left the Pankisi Gorge area free from the retaliation of either country. Islamicist success continues to depend on the preoccupation of the Great Powers with their rivalries with one another. And Islamicist success may crumple, paradoxically, when Russia begins to crumple. Or Russia and the Islamicists will come to a long-term accomodation. (A slow Russian surrender/conversion, presumably.) But I very strongly doubt that Russia will be able to maintain hostility against both the Islamicists and the West. (A long-term accomodation with/surrender to China is another possibility, but I somehow doubt Chinese troops will be in Dagestan to support Russia anytime soon.) I hope the planners in Washington are already figuring out how to encourage a Russian alliance, when the Russian collapse comes.

On The New Republic (I)

The latest issue, November 5, has a number of good articles, largely in the back section--the front section is an illustration of the New Republic's decline into a gossip column for politics-wonks. (E.g., T. A. Frank, "Who's the least virtuous first daughter.") First up for discussion: Neal Katyal, "Counsel, Legal and Illegal," part book review of Jack Goldsmith's The Terror Presidency, part essay. Some notes:

1) The unitary executive theory is supposed to concentrate "popular accountability in the president. The president is responsible for his choices, and cannot point the finger at a meddlesome Congress when his policies fail." But David Addington and John Yoo "betray[ed] the premise of the unitary executive theory. Since these opinions were issued in secret, popular accountability could not check the president. Instead, these opinions were essentially a license for the president and his administration to break the law without reprisal. These were cavalier advance pardons, and nobody was supposed to find out about them."

Once again, "essentially," like "in effect," is a cover for somewhat dubious "analysis." I don't think Addington and Yoo are "betraying" the theory of the unitary executive. They may be weakening it, their actions may be in tension with it--but "betray" is too strong. Katyal silently equates "accountability" with "full information provided by the executive for the public"--when this clearly should not be equated. The executive is supposed to keep some
secrets from the public, in the interest of the public--Eisenhower lied about U-2 overflights of the USSR, D-Day wasn't announced in the New York Times on June 5, 1944. Now, those are pretty clear-cut cases where the argument for executive secrecy holds; the question of legal opinions contradicting laws is somewhat more muddy. It is worth noting that the opinions claim that the president's constitutional authority overrides unconstitutional statutes--which is somewhat distinct from permission to "break the law." All that said, the procedure is open to some license to abuse. But that is what accountability is about--correcting the abuse and misuse of executive authority. But how is that accountability to operate? It never has, and never will, operate by the full and free disclosure of information by the executive--all of them are congenitally addicted to shadings of the truth, parsings, and selective ommission. Accountability must come through the operations of the press, of leaks, of the political opposition, of simple human judgment based upon personal experience and conversation, all of which lead a partially informed electorate--which is what all electorates are in all circumstances--to make a judgment of accountability. Katyal is right that there is some essential tension in the Bush administration's procedures with the ideal of accountability and the unitary executive--that they may be pushing the envelope of muddy compromise between the imperatives of executive authority and executive accountability--but this is not the same thing as betrayal, pure and simple. And given the torrent of information that has come out about the Bush administration's policies, in a very few years, I am not convinced that the Bush administration's "pushing the envelope" has made political accountability an impossible exercise. I don't think Katyal is wrong to worry about this tension, but I think he is overstating the case.

2)Katyal ascribes the excesses of the Yooish unitary executive theory to the theorizing of legal academicians, unfamiliar with the complexities of legal or governmental practice, and notes how "the practicing lawyers at the Justice Department and elsewhere were cut out of the discussions when Yoo was implementing his theories."

What makes Yoo or Addington not "practicing lawyers"? Was it not their confrontation with the details and necessities of actual policy--the War on Terror--that led to their embrace of their particular theories, memoranda, etc.? Could not you argue that Yoo and Addington are the practical men, confronted with theory-addled ACLU types? This theory/practice divide is generally a polemical one in such discussions--me good practical person, you bad theoryhead--and I'm not convinced by this article that there actually is a divide between theory and practice relevant here.

3) With so much power now transferred to the executive in all walks of life, checks and balances has now become a matter internal to the executive, between different bureaucracies--and these internal, bureaucratic checks and balances should be encouraged.

I pat myself on the back and say I've mentioned this idea of an internal, bureaucratic system of checks-and-balances a while ago--perhaps on the comments at Tim Burke's blog. Yes, I agree with Katyal's description--but not necessarily with his solution. Checks and balances are supposed to slow government action--but not to make it possible. If the separate branches of government can agree, they are supposed to act with great power. This presumably should apply to the bureaucracies--they should be able to act together, with great power. But how is this to be done? This, after all, is the other point of the unitary executive theory--that the president can override his bureaucracies when necessary, and not point his finger at meddlesome bureaucrats, just as he cannot point his finger at meddlesome legislators. The checks-and-balances theory of bureaucracy, indeed, would seem to argue for the necessity of a unitary executive, one who can in a pinch override the stifling inertia of bureaucratic consensus. One can argue the circumstances of when and where this override should be exercised--but to prevent the president from overriding his bureaucrats is to cede power to an unelected bureaucracy.

4) Katyal cites approvingly Schlesinger's quote about FDR, that "His favorite technique was to keep grants of authority inomplete, jurisdictions, uncertain, charters, overlapping." Katyal states that better policy resulted.

Schlesinger's quotation could apply to Hitler and Nazi Germany. Dysfunctional bureaucracy isn't always a good idea. Indeed, one of the points of democracy is to provide the authority needed for political leaders to get all bureaucrats on the same page--giving orders and cracking the whip, when necessary.

5) "When rival agencies disagree, there needs to be a neutral decision-maker--a "decider."

The decider is called "the president." "Neutral" here is a euphemism for a way to establish bureaucratic independence against the president--a way to keep the self-constituted wise elite insulated from democratic control and accountability. This search for "neutrality" goes back to Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant--the attempt to find some reason independent of the fallible opinions and interests of mankind. It's a hopeless search, authoritarian in its core, and antithetical to the American system, based upon the incorporation of interest and faction into all levels of government. If there are any troubles in the current system, this is not the solution.

6) Katyal notes that both he and Goldsmith changed their views after seeing particular prisoners--that they became more aware of "the core of personhood and individual dignity," of the fact "that these Others are, after all, human beings."

The core of humanity, of personhood, includes the urge to sin, to murder; the essential human being is Old Adam, or Cain. The essential human being is not a prisoner--but the man who had a gun in his hand, out to kill Americans. Or the murderer is at least as much essential to a man's humanity--even his dignity--as is the prisoner. The view of the prison cell is not a view of reality, only a partial slice of it--and, apparently, a deceptive one, since it encourages the false equation of humanity and virtue. To the extent that Katyal's entire article and analysis is predicated on this false view of human nature, it is flawed.

All this said, it's a good and thoughtful article, and not to be ignored. While I don't buy Katyal's critique in its entirety, neither do I reject it in its entirely. It's worth reading.

Torture, In Essence

In the New York Times today, Scott Shane writes, in what purports to be "News Analysis" ("On Torture, 2 Messages and a High Political Cost," 30 October 2007),

The administration has a standard answer to queries about its interrogation practices: 1) We do not torture, and 2) we will not say what we do, for fear of tipping off future prisoners. In effect, officials want Al Qaeda to believe that the United States does torture, while convincing the rest of the world that it does not.

Well no, I have no reason to believe that that is remotely "in effect" what the Administration aims to do. Take it at face value: we don't torture prisoners and we don't want to tip off Al Qaeda as to which third-degree interrogations they should prepare for, and to which they can blithely assume they will have immunity. This is not "contradictory", for anybody conducting "analysis," as opposed to the practice of the Times, which should be defined as "advocacy".

Publishing Peculiarities

The Australians have sent me my author's copies of the third novel in my series. They have not, to my knowledge, published the second one. I have a sudden horrible vision that things have gotten very mixed up in their publishing house, and that the third novel is about to be published there before the second one! This could be very confusing for unsuspecting readers ...

Corning Museum of Glass

Goldberry and I were at the Corning Museum of Glass today--which is wonderful! It provides an entire history of glass, from 1400 BC to modern art glass, with examples in the museum from every historical period. Suddenly I have a sense of glass as an evolving art form, with some sense of technological and artistic change. This is what a museum is supposed to do!--educate you, introduce you to a new form of beauty, make you want to see it again. And I do--we didn't have enough time to see the museum properly, and I'd love to go back--and now I can go to other museums and look at the glass with new eyes. The museum also has a bit on why Corning became a glass center--canals, cheap transportation--and on modern innovations from Corning, like fiber-optic wire. There's also rather nifty glass for sale in the museum store, and a reasonable museum cafe. The only thing not perfect?--pretentious wall signs in front of the contemporary art. Goldberry took photos of them, I transcribe them below, Goldberry dedicates them to Alpheus.

"In the 'Sky/Water' series, Chesney studies Bachelard's interest in the cloudless, empty sky, a sky that he calls the 'unsilvered mirror,' which refers both to the exterior sky and the 'interior skies of dreams.' These skies are the 'landscapes of the soul ... infinite like space and time ... landscapes without features, living in gentle, changing colors, like memory."

[This was a mottled silver-white piece of glass.]

"Black Cube is so dark and reflective that it is almost invisible; it apears to lack substance, like a shadow. Yet its slightly bulging sides reveal an energy contained within."

[It's, yes, a slightly bulging black cube.]

UPDATE: And then there was Falling Knives. A large number of glass knives, tips pointed downward, suspended over tiny glass houses. Both Goldberry and a random tourist passing by said of the artist, independently, "She has issues."

Democrats Past ...

While helping my wife do research, I spent today looking at a Democratic newspaper from upstate New York during the Civil War. The editorials were instructive--in 1861 the editor was loudly indignant at the idea that Democrats were being regarded as treasonous, and assuring his readers that Democrats were in for victory--just for fighting more competently than the Republicans. In 1862-63, it becomes clear that "competently" means "without emancipation of slaves," and the Republicans are referred to every week as the miscegenating nigger-lovers, sacrificing the Union for filthy ideals. Vallandigham and habeus corpus are the heroes of the hour--civil rights! Civil rights! In 1864, the editor is strongly for peace negotiations and an end to the bloody, pointless war. In 1865, after four years of slandering Lincoln, he piously mourns him in death, as all loyal Americans have done.

The parallels between the present conflict and the Civil War have been pointed out ad nauseum by various commentators. But it was fascinating to read the primary sources and see, yes, they do substantiate the parallel. The echoes really are remarkable. Although the vituperation against Republicans was a smidgeon more vicious in 1864 than it is now!

Ultimate Spider-Man: The Clone Saga

Jessica Drew has the same origin story as Ozma of Oz. Bizarre.

Losing Counties

In upstate New York, our waitress at dinner says that the local economy is so bad that there's a possibility the county government will be dissolved to save money--which will, by the by, put the kibosh on what remains of the economy of the county seat, since there won't be any more bureaucrats around to spend money on lunch, doo-dads, etc.

How often do counties dissolve for lack of money? Towns disincorporate? I've never even considered the possibility before.

This is, incidentally, further evidence that New York State really needs to do something to revive upstate. They're losing county governments?!?! C'mon, guys, this is desperate.

Talk Radio

Michael Savage today: "What's the point of having all those nuclear bombs if we don't ever use them?"

Oh, dear.

On My To-Read Shelf

Ultimate Spider-Man, Vol. 17: Clone Saga. Guest-starring: Beowulf!

(No, probably no Beowulf. Sorry.)

Off for a few days again, possibly without internet access. Have fun, all.

Composition Bleg

Is there a very short, cheap, yet excellent composition handbook (say $10 or under) that I could assign to students? Or 20-30 pages in a longer composition handbook that I could extract and make part of a coursepack? Recommendations welcome. Not Elements of Style, however; I need something more, well, handbooky.

On Lodowick Muggleton

Is there a more perfect name?

Specialization

A student asked at the end of class today (Modern Britain) what my specialty was. Early Modern Britain, I said. Could he tell that I speak with somewhat less assurance about Modern Britain than I do about my own period of specialization? How effective is the facade of competence?

On Harry Potter

Now that I've mercilessly gay-bashed Dumbledore two posts back - a reference, by the way to J. K. Rowling's recent announcement that Dumbledore is gay, by way of Alan Bennett's The History Boys, quotes parodied from IMDB - did I mention that I rather liked the seventh book? It's better-edited and better-written than most of the series, certainly than the three previous books, and it is a good moral tale, with rather nifty religious imagery. It was good. Heck, I might even re-read the entire series at some point.

On Puritanism

Puritanism--an epithet from the beginning, always used to condemn people more precise in their religion than you are. Also associated from the beginning with an accusation of hypocrisy, of religion covering up carnal appetite--Falstaff, oddly enough, is among others an image of a Puritan, just as much as Angelo in Measure for Measure. The self-description of Puritans was "godly"--no-one originally called themselves Puritans. So it is very difficult to defend Puritans, given the linguistic and historical context; how can one defend an epithet?

How define it, to begin with? It involves the enforcement of religion by the state and by society--but that's rather broad. I would take it to involve, in particular, a Calvinist sense of religion not just as ritual, but as inner, sincere belief, and a sense of the state as involving ordered liberty--the freedom of a polis to enact laws to govern the behavior of the citizenry. Puritanism involves freedom and an ideal of religious sincerity, as well as the compulsive intertwining of church and state.

How to defend it?--perhaps with the intuition, the suspicion, that those who use the epithet Puritan are arguing in favor of some license, that those who cry out "Puritan!" are sinners seeking freedom from compulsion to virtue, and freedom from judgment of their sins. Doubtless mixed up, in the best of people, with a sincere attachment to individual liberty--but only consisting of such a sincere attachment in a few saints. The defense also rests on the rejection of the old accusation--the realization that a good many Puritans, perhaps most, are not hypocrites--that the ad hominem attacks should be set aside, and the arguments of individual liberty and the communal liberty of the polis should be considered on their own merits. I'm not sure a defense can even begin until one takes these preliminary steps.

And for the defense itself?--one must posit a soul. Our secularized Puritans of the left, our anti-smoking and diet and safety-belt nannies--with whom I feel some sympathy, to the extent that they are Puritans--are quite willing to abrogate individual liberty to protect physical well-being. Puritanism relies on a belief that there is a soul, which can be harmed by one's free actions just as much as the body can be harmed by one's free actions. Believing in a soul doesn't necessarily lead to Puritanism--from Milton, the idea that the liberty of the soul is essential for moral health has become part of both the religious and secular tradition of liberalism--but without a belief in the soul, Puritanism is impossible. That belief is also a prerequisite for Puritanism.

And once you believe in a soul?--you must believe in a very great capacity for both good and evil. You must believe an individual soul, free, will very often seek out evil--and that individual souls, freely voting, can legislate and enforce good. How can one argue such a metaphysical point?--you must point to experience, and say that we have seen these capacities for good and evil act in the world. But experience is a wonderfully ticklish concept, quite particular, and unlikely to gain universal assent. Puritanism doubtless works best in small communities, perhaps those self-selected toward similar perceptions of experience. Winthrop's Massachusetts, say. For something larger and more diverse, such as modern America, Puritanism will be a harder sell--dependent on aligning the experiences of millions of voters who happen to believe in a soul, and dynamic good and evil. The Puritan argument, more than a liberal argument, will always be weak, contingent, doomed to decay.

No less worth arguing, for all that. But the difficulties should be emphasized.

The Magic Boys; Selected Quotes

Ron: That Grindelwald bloke. Wasn't he a nancy?
Dumbledore: Foul, festering, grubby-minded little trollop! Do not use that word!
[Waves his wand at him and turns his necktie into a salamander.]
Harry: But you use it, sir!
Dumbledore: I do, sir, I know, but I am far gone in age and decrepitude.

Fudge: There's a vacancy in dark arts.
Voldemort: [Thoughtfully] That's very true.
Fudge: At Hogwarts.
Voldemort: Ah.

Hermione: What happened with Dumbledore? On the broomstick?
Harry: He thought it was magical. Except I managed to get my bag down. I think he thought he'd got me going. In fact it was my History of Potions, Volume 2.

Sympathy for the Turks

What are you supposed to do when Kurdish terrorists pop in from across the border to murder your soldiers? Do nothing? I hope we can figure out some way to keep the applecart un-upset, but the Turks certainly have a casus belli (bellum? Latinists, please advise.) against Iraqi Kurdistan.

Goldberry's Suggested Comment-Stamp

YOU ARE NOT WORTHY.

Goldberry's Suggested Critique for a Bad Paper

Dear X,

Perhaps you should consider majoring in home economics.

Withywindle

Three-Part Nightmare

I was teaching the class on the Reformation in a European survey. I got as far as "Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses on the door at Wittenberg," before the students started interrupting me with questions. I tried to continue, but then they were just interrupting me, and wouldn't let me continue. My mentor was in the back of the class, taking notes. "Martin Luther ... Martin Luther ... Martin Luther," I said, but I couldn't get any farther, I had lost control of the class.

I was in some sort of science-fiction story. Mean kids had pushed Al Gore over and taken his water-gun from him. He had fallen down the side of a concrete-brick structure into the sand. I aimed my own water-gun at the kid who had stolen Gore's gun, and brought him down. When I gave the water-gun back to Gore, it was an air-gun of some sort, and he aimed it at the sky. A tornado came down. He aimed it again and again, and more and more tornados came down.

I realized that it was just a story, and it seemed to me that it had something to do with the mini-conference I'm organizing. I realized which professor I knew was best for giving a paper on how the story intersected with the conference theme, made a note of his name, and woke up.

Syllabus Creation

Syllabus creation is so much fun! I just created one for a job I'm applying for, and just generally to have handy, in both undergraduate and graduate levels--the graduate version is much heavier on the secondary sources. Frankly, it's as much a reading list for myself as a syllabus for students--we would be learning together the first time I taught it! I would get to read Bruni, Erasmus, Montaigne, Donne, among others--lots and lots of Erasmus. And it does reflect real knowledge on my part--I know just enough of the field to choose good texts, even when I've only glanced at them hastily myself, and to choose a selection of texts that balances nicely. Now, the syllabus does depend upon either coursepacks or electronic reserve--I have a lot of short works and selections, not just a few longer texts--and it might have to be modified if coursepacks or reserves fail to show up. But the basic structure is in place.

Now to get back to grading essays. Sigh ...

PS. I'd provide more details about the syllabus, but I think that might compromise my anonymity.

Can we vote John Podhoretz off the NRO island?

Also Andrew Stuttaford. Not for their views, but for their tone. Both seem to be perpetually aggrieved, thundering their indignation at high tone, unable to extend themselves to see their opponents arguments, and, well, not very bright. I call this the Frank Rich phenomenon; it seems to happen when film reviewers discuss politics. Consider, by contrast, the sparkling John Derbyshire, speaking of Islamophobes: "I ... part company with them with goodwill and a cheery wave, and, while I continue to think that they are a bunch of crankish obsessives, remain ready to join with them in matters of common interest." Podhoretz and Stuttaford are incapable of that goodwill and cheery wave, much less the ability to come up with so stylish a sentence.

Ah, John, maybe you'll have less time to post on NRO once you're editing Commentary. Say, maybe you could hire Stuttaford as your film reviewer! Commission some long pieces for him.

What About Judge Dredd for Attorney General?

Just asking.

Evidence versus Authority

My discovery of the Junkfood Science blog that I referenced in my last post has led me to a fantastic opinion piece in the Financial Times (registration unfortunately required) in which John Kay takes a sledgehammer to the notion of "scientific consensus" and the related idea that "science" refers to what scientists say and not to a process for seeking out the truth. Some key quotes:

Consensus finds a way through conflicting opinions and interests. Consensus is achieved when the outcome of discussion leaves everyone feeling they have been given enough of what they want. The processes of proper science could hardly be more different. The accomplished politician is a negotiator, a conciliator, finding agreement where none seemed to exist. The accomplished scientist is an original, an extremist, disrupting established patterns of thought. Good science involves perpetual, open debate, in which every objection is aired and dissents are sharpened and clarified, not smoothed over.

Often the argument will continue for ever, and should, because the objective of science is not agreement on a course of action, but the pursuit of truth.

And:

Numbers are critical to democracy, but science is not a democracy. If an evangelical Christian converted all members of the Royal Society to creationism, that neither would nor should affect my belief in evolution. Most scientists know no more about climate change, HIV/Aids or the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine than do most lawyers, philosophers or economists, and it is not obvious who is better equipped to assess conflicting claims on these issues. Science is a matter of evidence, not what a majority of scientists think.

It is easy to see why the president of the Royal Society might want to elide that distinction, but in doing so he turns the organisation from a learned society into a trade union. Peer review is a valuable part of the apparatus of scholarship, but carries a danger of establishing self-referential clubs that promote each other’s work.

Statements about the world derive their value from the facts and arguments that support them, not from the status and qualifications of the people who assert them. Evidence versus authority was the issue on which Galileo challenged the church. The modern world exists because Galileo won.

I don't know if this sort of thing impresses most people, but when I read it, I hear drums and trumpets. In our time, the greatest achievement of the human mind -- the skepticism that clears the way for a nearer approach to truth -- is gravely endangered by the professionalization and corporatization of the sciences. Authority, whether of individuals or of groups, is always and everywhere the enemy of the intellect and the processes that intellect can use to make sense of the world.

This is as true for history as it is for science. I have great difficulty getting my students to see that history is not merely a story told by historians but still ought to retain some shred of the significance it had when Herodotus used it to begin his book 2500 years ago. For the Father of History, historiē meant a process of investigation, a disciplined search for the facts about the past. What Herodotus claimed to be publishing was the results of his historiē. Even today, statements about the past not backed up by any such process of investigation cannot really be history. It, like "consensus science" would only be that debased species of rhetoric condemned by Plato. (This sentence, like every sentence containing the word "rhetoric" may be Withywindle bait.)

The modern world is awash in data. It is simply not possible to check all the results that are constantly being generated by the vast apparatus of academia and the learned professions. We are constantly kept busy absorbing the latest findings. But somewhere in our mind should be a tiny scrap of doubt, and a willingness to question established views. Because that scrap of doubt contains more real science, more intellectual explosive power, than any quantity of "consensus science."

Another Annoying Thing About Historians

They rag on genealogists. "They just care about their families! They don't know how to do research! And they never know how to use the microfilm readers, and they keep the librarians busy teaching them where the power switches are!" Something about genealogists seems to annoy historians intensely.

Now, Withywindle and Mrs. Withywindle are both into genealogy. It doesn't have anything to do with politics--Mrs. Withywindle, Sweet Goldberry, is a Liberal Democrat--it's an innocent avocation of mine--and historians go around insulting that too. (It seems there aren't any genealogists in a room full of historians either!) What next? Mockery of my choice in wristwatch? A sneer at my brand of long underwear? Lordy, I feel like that creature in the Hitchhiker novels that kept on getting killed by Arthur Dent through multiple reincarnations. Even when I'm not feeling political, the profession snoots me.

Genocide Denial at the National Review

Their editorial really is repulsive. The noxious bit:

We can respect the passion of modern Armenians to secure justice and remembrance for their forebears even if we cannot always reach their conclusions. But how can anyone respect Mrs. Pelosi’s motives, which, as she all but admits, are to secure Armenian votes? She may be compelled to take account of strategic realities before this crisis ends, but historical truth has counted for nothing with her at any point.

Historical truth, however, separates us not only from Mrs. Pelosi but also from the Armenian campaigners. No one doubts that hundreds of thousands of Armenians — maybe more than one million — were killed in the course of forced evacuations by Ottoman troops in World War I. But were these deaths the collateral damage of an extremely brutal war? Perhaps augmented by massacres carried out by locals? Or was there the official intent to exterminate that signifies genocide?

Only a few cranks dispute the Gulag and the Holocaust. Indeed, Holocaust denial is not denial at all; it is really a sly endorsement of murdering Jews. But historians of the first rank — Norman Stone, Gunter Lewy, Justin McCarthy, and Bernard Lewis — firmly dispute that the Ottomans ordered an Armenian genocide. They point out that no orders to exterminate have ever been produced (some were incompetently forged); that Ottoman files examined after defeat found no incriminating evidence; and that investigations afterwards by British and American military officials led to the release of their Ottoman suspects.

To be sure, there are also arguments on the other side by able historians — and the sheer number of deaths is suspicious. What that means, however, is that this is a historical dispute to be settled by historians rather than by legislators who in this matter are simply ignoramuses.

1) Pelosi's motives are irrelevant to the truth of genocide. The fact that Armenian-Americans are an interest group is also irrelevant, and no moral slur. Our system is built upon interest groups struggling to prevail in the political arena. Indeed, if we must make comparisons (as the National Review does) political America's recognition of the gravity of the Holocaust has something to do with Jewish-American votes. So? The actions of interest here promote the public good, and do not compromise it.

2) This parsing of genocide is distasteful. It was only a mass murder! It was done by the Turkish and Kurdish people without Ottoman direction! We don't have a paper trail! Why, yes, this is the argument of the Holocaust deniers, and it is no more pleasant when directed toward Armenians; it is a sly endorsement of murdering Armenians.

(I confess to parsing on the fate of Native Americans--preferring to speak of mass murders of different tribes rather than of genocide of one race because, indeed, I think their extermination a necessary evil in the rise of America, and (not entirely coherently) I would also just as soon minimize that evil. But perhaps I will speak more openly of America's genocides in the future.)

3) Does the intent of genocide matter more than the fact? The National Review has often spoken against hate crimes legislation, on the grounds that the fact of murder matters more than the reason of murder. Doesn't that also apply to the murder of nations?

4) The facts of murder should never be settled by historians. No moral judgment should ever be referred to a credentialed body, claiming superior judgment by dint of professional authority. Citizens--mankind--should make these judgments, not any elite. Far better Congress, our elected representatives, make this judgment than historians. And shame on the National Review for suggesting we shirk our moral duty to judge, for suggesting that an academic elite can judge better than American citizens about the rights and wrongs, the very facts, of genocide.

The Armenian genocide happened. What we should do, and say, about it is disputable; but to quibble about what happened is odious. National Review, shame on you! Shame! Shame!

Science and Health (UPDATED 11/20/08)

Recently, I've become convinced that politics is really only an epiphenomenon of a deeper struggle in our culture, a struggle that's been going on for centuries and millennia. That struggle is the struggle to perceive the truth -- or rather, since that's probably an unrealizable goal for mortals, the struggle not to be deceived by too many popular or attractive myths.

In our time, popular myths claim the imprimatur of science. This is possible because the meaning of "science" is not well understood. In particular, the public as a whole has little appreciation of the differences between various methodologies within science. Large-scale medical studies in particular, are a highly imperfect methodology, readily subject to distortions in the processes of analyzing and reporting the data. And, as a result of such distortions, it may not be too long before our society begins allowing (or insisting upon) the acquisition by the state of tyrannical, almost totalitarian, authority in the interests of our health.

Consider one of the most widely cherished and ancient medical myths: the myth of the overarching importance of diet for determining good health. This myth is more prevalent now than it has ever been. It has become virtually impossible to go out to dinner, or indeed to eat in one's home with any other person, without hearing certain foods described as "healthy" or "unhealthy" (or, more annoyingly, as "healthful" and "unhealthful"). Every other day, it seems, the press reports another study that should supposedly convince us of the dramatic effects the food we eat can have for our long-term and short-term health.

Consider the latest results from the Women's Health Initiative Dietary Modification Randomized Controlled Trial, the largest attempt ever to scientifically prove the superiority of a low-fat diet in promoting good health. The study, which looks at a huge sample of almost 50,000 postmenopausal women over the course of several years beginning in the 1990s, was one of the most rigorous of its kind. Almost 20,000 of the 50,000 women were persuaded to adopt a low-fat diet, and these women can be compared to the control group of almost 30,000 women who regulated their own eating without an "dietary modification." A publication of some recent results claims that women eating a low-fat diet reduced their incidence of ovarian cancer. These results have been widely reported in the popular press.

But, in fact, those results are somewhat equivocal, statistically significant only for certain time frames. (For the first four years of the study, the low-fat diet group actually had slightly higher rates of ovarian cancer.) And the finding should be understood in light of how many correlations the authors of the latest research were investigating. As a CNN article about the study notes, "the [low-fat] diet has had seemingly little impact on rates of breast cancer, colorectal cancer and even, surprisingly, heart disease." Rather than accepting these results at face value and allowing for doubt about the belief that low-fat diets are beneficial, the CNN article then offers theories to explain these findings: Most of the women in the treatment group were overweight (but this does not distinguish them from women in the control group, rendering this fact meaningless). "Nor did most women actually cut enough fat."

"Enough"? In that single word is contained a world of presumption. If only they had cut enough fat from their diets, then of course they would have seen dramatic results. So what's the use of the study, if it can only confirm what we already know, if we can never doubt our own beliefs? It's the same as with global warming or revealed religion: evidence can confirm what we already think, but evidence that cuts against our preconceived notions is ipso facto inadequate to answer the question being posed. This is not the search for truth. It is not science in the best sense of the word.

Here at the fascinating blog Junkfood Science, Sandy Szwarc explores the recent results from the Women's Health Initiative study and the media reaction, explaining for the uninitiated the process of data mining that goes on in studies like these to obtain media-friendly results. The results for ovarian cancer, tenuous and overplayed as they are, seem to have been the best that researchers looking at the data from this vast, expensive study could do to confirm the conventional wisdom. The CNN report was unusual in mentioning even a few of the correlations the researchers had failed to find.

The fact is that, hard as it may be for most of us to believe, the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence shows that the influence of what we eat on our health is minimal within normal parameters (always assuming, of course, we take in the necessary nutrients and vitamins and avoid known poisons). In this New York Times article, John Tierney daringly calls the common belief that fatty food is especially unhealthy "a case of mistaken consensus" and describes the process (partly political) that enforced that consensus in the first place. For decades, evidence of the weakness of the conventional view has been piling up. But it has been largely ignored, because the natural human tendency toward confirmation bias has been magnified by a media willing to report -- and a scientific and political establishment only willing to pay for -- only certain kinds of findings.

Does it sound slightly crazy to question the conventional wisdom on diet and health? Yes. It always does. But it's good to have such crazy people around. Because most of us are like Dr. Pierre-Charles-Alexandre Louis, whom I learned about from this comment on one of my all-time favorite blogs, the hyper-rationalist Overcoming Bias. (The comment, incidentally, is on a post discussing the seminal Framingham Heart Study's failure to find anticipated links between dietary cholesterol intake and blood serum cholesterol or coronary heart disease.):

In the 1830's, Dr. Louis studied the effect of bloodletting, or bleeding — the standard treatment of the time — on pneumonia."The data showed that bleeding didn't work," Dr. Freedman said. But, he said, "Dr. Louis rejected this as terrifying and absurd."So, he made a recommendation: bleed earlier and bleed harder.

But of course! What else could he conclude? Only now do we see the absurdity of le bon docteur's horrific conclusion. And today, how can the guardians of conventional wisdom respond to the Women's Health Initiative study results -- except by insisting that the ineffective low-fat diets adopted by 20,000 women just weren't low-fat enough?

UPDATE: The anecdote just above referring to the work of Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis represents him unfairly, and wish to correct the error.

Conservative Academic Ambitions

To serve academia, as well as to serve conservatism. The point isn't just to make academia more conservative, but also to defend academia. Consider that academia remains highly dependent on government subsidies, often of necessity supplied by Republicans/conservatives. Wouldn't it make sense for academics to have a few Republicans in their number, who can appeal for funding as fellow conservatives?--who can manage to talk to fellow conservatives without curling their lips. Surely it's in the self-interest of academia to hire a few Withywindles and Alpheuses, as part of a tactic of assuring bipartisan support for higher education. And, I confess, I could enjoy playing the part of the interface between conservative politicians and academia. A challenge, that would be.

This is also by way of saying that I do have great affection for and loyalty to academia. Sometimes, amid the various critiques, I forget to mention that.

Fiat justitia ruat caelum

Should America's legislature officially recognize the Armenian genocide? Is this the wrong time, because it will reduce/eliminate Turkish assistance for our war in Iraq? Isn't this actually a situation where something good happens either way? Either the Turks continue to aid us in preventing genocide in Iraq now, or we stand in solidarity with the dead, and state to the world that we recognize evil and will not forget it. I see the cogency of the prudentialist arguments for present silence ... but, oh, how wonderful it would be for America to shout out truth, ruat caelum. And there will always be prudentialist arguments for silence. Wherever my head is, my heart is with Pelosi et al on this one.

UPDATE: The National Review editorial, quibbling on definitions of genocide, is disgraceful. If the case for prudential silence depends on such mealy-mouthed exonerations of the Turks, the case is very bad indeed.

Character, Redux

Via Tim Burke and Kevin Drum, a quote from Nordhaus and Shellenberger's environmental manifesto Break Through:

In America, the political left and political right have conspired to create a culture and politics of victimization, and all the benefits of resentment and cynicism have accrued to the right. That’s because resentment and apocalypse are weapons that can be used only to advance a politics of resentment and apocalypse. They are the weapons of the reactionary and the conservative — of people who fear and resist the future. Just as environmentalists believe they can create a great ecological politics out of apocalypse, liberals believe they can create a great progressive politics out of resentment; they cannot. Grievance and victimization make us smaller and less generous and can thus serve only reactionaries and conservatives.

This is, of course, obnoxious nonsense, largely because it makes a simple equivalence between personal nastiness and conservative politics. But what makes it obnoxious nonsense isn't simply the bye-the-bye equivalence of conservativism with personal unpleasantness--it's the conflation of personal and public character, period. The person who writes this sort of vileness doesn't seem capable of saying "such-and-such is an admirable person, although I disagree with his politics." Now, this sort of conflation is the bread and butter of truly traditional political discourse--but the creation of a space between public and private character, between the personal and the political, is the bread and butter of modern (i.e., since the late 1600s) politics. Aside from the virtue in itself of such an attitude, our political health depends upon not seeing politics everywhere--upon being able to cherish our fellow citizens (our fellow human beings) for something other than politics.

This, of course, is not the cue to say that liberals are peculiarly disposed to this sort of conflation!--although one can make that argument, drawing a line from Robespierre, through Stalin, to this milquetoasty ad hominen of the quotation above. (The key phrase here would be "republic of virtue"--something I am fond of in some incarnations, but with clear dangers to it.) (I would also note here the National Review's pleasant habit of issuing kind obituaries for political opponents, and contrast it with The New Republic's unpleasant habit of issuing nasty obituaries of political opponents--spitting on their graves.) But let us say that people of all political bents are tempted to make this sort of conflation, and we should all resist it. We should be able to criticize one another's politics ferociously--we should be able to recognize evil and corruption--but we should be able to recognize that our political opponents can be good and honorable men.

"The Only Right-Wing American History Professor I Know"

Just said to me, sotto voce, by another history professor, of some seniority. Silently, I replied, Actually, two.

Just another anecdote.

UPDATE: "American" modifies the professor's nationality, not the research area of the professor.

Away for a Few Days

What it said. Probably won't be able to post for a bit. Have fun, all!

Commentary on Gross and Simmons

P. 5. In 1955, a survey of social scientists found 46% Democrats, 36% Independents, 16% Republicans.

Worth noting that the mass swing to the left in academia was already well under way before the 1960s.

Pp. 21ff. Methodology.

Interesting as a disciplinary outsider to learn what are professional considerations of sampling methodology. Their methodology sounds sensible—I note Alpheus’ critique about the problems of self-reporting political belief, but still, they seem to have made a respectable, professional effort.

P. 23. Non-respondents a bit more conservative than respondents.

Worth noting.

Pp. 25-28. Setting up a three-category system, with center-left moderates distinguished from far-left liberals.

A great deal of the study turns on the validity of this distinction. I don’t dispute that there is some truth to this. I also note that the values of the “slightly liberal” are very close to those of the “liberal” and “extremely liberal,” and that the values of “middle of the roaders” are almost twice as far from those of conservatives as they are from those of liberals. There is always horizon bias—conservatives have a tough time distinguishing among varieties of liberals, liberals have a tough time distinguishing among varieties of conservatives—but the numbers given here do lend significant credence to the idea that there is not much difference between the center-left and the far-left in academia. It may be important to say there is some difference, but emphasizing this difference—much less making it a heuristic, as is done here—is very problematic.

P. 28, Table 2. Liberals, Moderates, Conservatives, by broad disciplinary division.

So few conservatives, so many everyone else! Yes, it matters somewhat that there is a division among liberals and moderates—but the paucity of conservatives is overwhelming! Yes, more conservatives in business and health sciences—why health sciences?—yes, the social sciences (4.9%) and humanities (3.6%) are unusually low in conservatives, but, boy, does this confirm the lack of conservatives in academia!

P. 29, Table 3. Liberals, Moderates, Conservatives, by institution type. Liberal arts colleges and non-elite Ph.D. granting institutions, under 4%, elite Ph.D. granting institutions, about 10%, community colleges, 19%.

Yup, my Swarthmore experience is confirmed. I wonder if my PhD comes from an elite institution?—it’s marginally elite, I’d say. Nice to know things are better at the community colleges.

P. 30, Table 4. Younger professors are slightly less liberal than 1960s professors, although still more liberal than the 1950s professors.

That is comforting—I’d thought of things as getting progressively worse, and I may be wrong. Still, a holding pattern with very few conservatives is not a good situation.

P. 31, Table 6. Massive party tilt toward the Democrats; “Independents” lean heavily toward the Democrats.

Yup.

Pp. 32-33. Both history and English have extraordinarily low numbers of Republicans (3.8%, 2.0%); history has the highest number of Democrats (79.2%).

Wow. Alright, my perceptions are clearly accurate about history and English, the two disciplines I hang out in. It is comforting to know things are better in other disciplines—but dispiriting to have confirmation of just how horrendous things are in my own department. I had no idea that historians were exceptionally liberal/Democratic, even compared with other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.

P. 33. The most Republican fields are elementary education, electrical engineering, accounting, finance, and economics.

Elementary education? What? I thought that was supposed to be a bastion of the far left, filled with spouters of post-Deweyan nonsense. How’d they get to be so Republican?

P. 36. 20% of professors voted for Bush in 2004.

I’m surprised it’s as many as that. Do note that the supposed center-left moderates do largely vote to the left in a pinch.

P. 37, Table 10. A majority of health-science professors voted for Bush, only 6.2% in the social science, 15% in the humanities.

So, why are health-science professors so Republican-voting? How’d that happen? Soc-sci and humanities, as you’d expect.

P. 38. Academics who vote Republican come from poorer backgrounds and have fewer PhDs; almost half are born-again Christians.

For the first, interesting; for the second, wow! Here, as almost everywhere else, the hope of America lies in the propagation of evangelical Protestantism.

Pp. 38-39. Academics voted a bit more Democratic in 1992 and 1996 than in 2000 and 2004.

Interesting.

Pp. 39-40. Bush-voting academics are less politically active, and less likely to mention in class who they’re voting for. Most academics don’t mention their vote, but those who do are much more likely to be on the left.

Go figure.

P. 40. Nearly 18% of professors in the social sciences are self-described Marxists; one quarter of sociologists are Marxists.

Wow. And 5% in the humanities—not trivial.

Pp. 42ff. Value attitudes—professors are less liberal on economics and affirmative action than they are on abortion, homosexuality, and (dovish) foreign policy.

I think this is a way of restating David Brooks’ Bobos in Paradise—the professoriate, like much of the new meritocracy, are a bourgeois-bohemian hybrid, allergic to governmental interventions of all sorts, right or left—soft-core libertarians. But note that what they are liberal about is most salient for the culture war—abortion, homosexuality—itself clearly more salient for political choices in this generation than is economics, and that the dovishness on foreign policy (see below) correlates very strongly with trumping political decisionmaking. Where academics are most liberal matters far more, for political identity and political decision-making, than the areas where they break liberal lock-step.

P. 55. One-half of academics feel equal sympathies for both Israelis and Palestinians.

This does not comfort me, or strike me as evidence of academic moderation. To feel equal sympathy for murderous Palestinians and their Israeli victims is morally vacuous and morally vicious. And rather liberal.

Pp. 59-60. The meta-clusters are 27.9% liberal, 37% center-left, 21.6% moderate, 10.6% conservative, 3% moderate foreign-policy hawks.

About what you might expect. That 3%--the liberal hawks, “eagles” in Andrew Sullivan’s old parlance—fascinatingly, is 3%, the same size as the switch toward Bush between 2000 and 2004 amongst almost all voting groups. Note that only moderates are open to being foreign-policy hawks; liberal and center-left unite on dovishness.

P. 61. “Views of the use of military force and the Mideast situation were the most robust attitudinal predictors of vote choice.”

This is why foreign-policy views matter so much—they trump almost every over voting choice. The overwhelming dovishness of academics matters far more than their more moderate attitudes on other issues. This result argues very strongly against the authors' overall argument that the distinction between liberal and center-left academics is of much importance.

Pp. 62ff. A large minority of professors feel free to voice their politics in the classroom, and to have their politics inform their research; this minority skews heavily left. Professors in liberal-arts colleges are particularly prone to politicizing their teaching.

Yup.

Conservative Supreme Court Justices

I've expressed before a minor preference for precedentialists like Roberts and Alito, over originalists like Thomas, and natural-law folks like Scalia. I should add that what's best of all is to have all of these schools represented on the Supreme Court--It makes for an attractive combination of fidelity to the Constitution, intellectual excellence, and intellectual debate. Given that we already have Roberts and Alito as a precedentialist combo, I'd probably prefer a Thomas-style originalist as the next choice--not because I want nothing but originalists, but to maintain conservative intellectual pluralism on the Supreme Court.

"Nobody Sells Out to the Lowest Bidder."

In one sentence, Thomas Sowell obliterates the myth of the black conservative as sellout. Specifically, Sowell is talking about Clarence Thomas, whose new book is causing liberals to once again rearrange -- but not question -- their prejudices about my favorite Supreme Court justice. These prejudices always come with a nice seasoning of racial stereotypes. First, Thomas was the sexually predatory black man. Then, he was the laughably incompetent beneficiary of tokenism. And, now that Thomas's book and the accompanying promotional interviews have showcased his first rate mind, he's the angry black distraught by his own rage. America's legacy of racial stereotypes has always given the left plenty of ammunition to use against black conservatives, who are never allowed to hold political or philosophical views based on principle.

In this context, Sowell's observation is especially welcome. The notion that black conservatives are ipso facto defective blacks who can only succeed by "selling out" and becoming conservative tokens is not only offensive, it's stupid. For most blacks, becoming an outspoken conservative means choosing a life of persecution, not cheap success. If Thomas had wanted cheap success, he should have become a black liberal enforcer -- one of those who have repeatedly attacked Thomas and other black conservatives as Uncle Toms. Someone like, say, Trey Ellis, who recently composed this piece of self-regarding garbage slamming Thomas in racially-charged terms even a white liberal wouldn't dare to use. Ellis, intent on proving how ignorant and in-over-his-head Thomas is, laments the fact that Thomas "is now one of the twelve highest judges in our nation."

That's right. Ellis wrote "twelve."

Dutch Art Exhibit

Just at the Dutch Art Exhibit at the Met Museum of Art--the entire Met collection, organized by who donated the art, and when. A good exhibit--with remarkably snarky commentary on the walls, which unfortunately I can't remember precisely. Something like: "This painting came out of left field--which is to say, Alpine, New Jersey." "This painting, bought because it illustrated marital harmony, is actually a scene of a courtesan and her customer." "This painting, meant to be cornerstone of a fine collection of Old Masters, is in point of fact by far the best of a somewhat dubious collection of misattributions and second-rate work." Ouch! The copy was polite to living donors, but surely they know what waspishness to expect when they pass on! I've never run into museum wall copy that was quite so bitchy before. Actually a highlight of the show--make sure to keep an eye on the words, if you go to see the pictures.

Politicized Academia?

A friendly reader--if he sends me his preferred pseudonym, I'll refer to him that way from now on--sends a link to a fascinating paper, Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, "The Social and Political Views of American Professors"; the link to the PDF is at the bottom of Gross' webpage. I'll want to comment on it in detail, so it will take a few days to work out the series of comments. But it's worth reading. Short version: academia is a duopoly-dominance of liberal-left and center-left, rather than a liberal monopoly, and the discipline of history, where I work in, is perhaps the most left-liberal of any of the disciplines. And a lot of other nifty complications. Go, read!

Job Applications

Just put a whole bunch into the mail. Ah, tenure-track job of my dreams!--Come to me! Come to me!

Oh, AHA, be full of first-round job interviews, leading to job talks!

Oh, interview suit, be less full of cat hair than the last time round.

Oh, interviewers, this time don't spend the entire half-hour telling me about your fine institution. Give me a few minutes to tell you something about myself.

Oh, Withywindle, be intelligent and charming! Re-read your published work so that you can discuss it intelligently, even if it bores you silly by now.

Oh, rivals for my desired jobs--I wish you great success in your second chosen field of endeavor. Advertising. Screenwriting. RenFaire re-enactor. Fettucini sculptor. But do see if you could manage to deliver an injudiciously critical comment about your interviewer's necktie.

Withywindle and Alpheus see the Pissarro Exhibit

At the Jewish Museum in New York--Pissarro and Landscape, Rural and Urban. And enjoy it very much--I had not realized that Alpheus was also a Pissarro fan. The stillness, the wonderful sense of composition, the assemblage of color. For stillness, I keep on wanting an exhibit that puts together Vermeer, Pissarro, and Edward Hopper. But a disconcerting thought--Stanley Kubrick strikes me as having some of the same stillness, composition, and distancing from the portrayed figures, but in him the distancing effect eventually becomes sadistic. Is that so in Pissarro as well? I don't think so--but I would have to explain why not, and I can't as yet. But never mind that--still a wonderful painter.

Pipes on Academic Psychology

I don't want all my posts to express disgruntlement about academia, but this quotation from Daniel Pipes's new memoir at NRO's PhiBetaCons also seems to me to hit the nail on the head. I think most academics' desperate need to fit in is one of the major reason why universities are so ideologically uniform -- and why politics comes up so often at times and in places where you wouldn't think it would: it's an easy way to assert in-group membership.

Hamlet

Saw Hamlet tonight at the Pearl Repertory Company. An adequate production, sometimes good, but overall a B minus. But I sympathize with their difficulties! The play needs to be four hours long--we saw a three-hour version, and it hurtled along so quickly that there was no time to savor any scene, even to speak a phrase slowly. The words are so beautiful and so famous that every time you come to another immortal phrase (sweets for the sweet ... to be or not to be ... I am more an antique Roman than a Dane ...) that it jars, takes you out of the production, and makes it feel like a recitation of Bartlett's. You need very good actors to master the words, make them actually seem spoken by a real character. And then, it is a wonderfully dramatic play--but a leisurely, coiling one, chock-a-block with philosophy, and you need a director shaping every minute of the play to make sure that the drama doesn't dissipate. So, you need a four-hour running time, good actors, and a good director--and any professional worth their salt knows that! Think of the courage it takes to dare put it on.

So, a merely adequate production, but I say that with the greatest respect.

(The best version I've seen yet was with Stephen Dillane in London, back in 1995. Not perfect, but good, and with a brilliant ending.)

(I wrote a paper back in high school arguing that Claudius was a very impressive character, the one murder aside--a good king and a feeling man. I'm still waiting for an actor to portray my version of Claudius. I think one could do it and not distort the play.)

Impressive Collective Endorsement for Sen. McCain

The names on this endorsement are really quite impressive. It's not enough by itself to flip me back to support of Sen. McCain--and some names, associated with realpolitik and detente, would serve more to lessen any impulse to support the Senator. Still, the weight of that collective judgment ought to be considered, and respected, by Republican primary voters.

Comics, Invention

There's an article to be written on the comic-book as a form of continual invention upon a theme. This more the comics of the last decade or two, where they keep pressing the reset button on the characters, and retelling the basic narrative, the character origins, the villains, in updated ways. Even when they keep to continuity, there's now an urge to retell, vary, the basic myths of the character--perhaps trying to add new ones. All this combined with inadvertent variation, as sloppy writers lose track of continuity, and pointless riffs on old themes as writers struggle to fill the page. Still, I think some of this continual re-invention may be inherent to the genre, and it does make for a very interesting art-form.

Also a jazz-like artform? Which also opens the door for thinking of jazz as a rhetorical form of music.

Quote 'n' Rant

This looks like an interesting new book: Anthony Kronman's Education's End. By interesting, I mean that it seems to reach conclusions in which I already believe. Here's an excerpt from a review in the Wall Street Journal:

What followed was the century of "secular humanism," as Mr. Kronman terms it, admiringly -- from Charles Eliot's appointment as president of Harvard in 1869 to the campus revolts of 1968. Secular humanism was the seeking of a middle way between dogmatic belief in God and militant atheism. As a teaching doctrine it focused on the enduring nature of human institutions and cultural achievements, and it tried to convey a variety of approaches to human fulfillment.

Into this paradise, a snake was invited -- the research ideal of the German universities. It rewarded professors for scholarship more than teaching and emphasized specialization. Thus the graduate students who would become the professoriate of each successive generation were forced away from general knowledge and pushed to pursue their learning in ever narrower subject areas.

This research imperative worked to perfection in the hard sciences, but in the humanities it led to endless reinterpretation and the acquisition of esoteric, marginal knowledge, if that. The humanities, Mr. Kronman argues, began to lose their strength and to abandon the traditions of broad intellectual inquiry -- all that the Socratic dialogues had once meant to the university. The radicalism of the 1960s and the rise of identity politics completed this destructive process.

Bingo. One can make fun of those old generalist professors who "occupied settees rather than chairs," but at least they seemed to be learned in ways that were meaningful to large numbers of their fellow human beings. Now one constantly encounters academics in the humanities who have read deeply in some narrow topic but otherwise (even within their own putative fields) have opinions that border on the stupid or banal. And the reason is the insidious pressure to publish and, as a necessary part of the research process, to digest all the tedious drivel that one's career-driven predecessors have already inflicted upon the world.

There really should be two separate standards for the natural sciences, in which the questions and approaches are constantly changing, and for the humanities, in which the questions and approaches remain largely unchanged from century to century. An intermediate standard should be adopted for the intermediate disciplines, like economics or psychology.

UPDATE: I should add, by way of full disclosure, that the topic of my Ph.D. thesis is *impeccably* narrow and obscure.

Fractions of Presidential Character

Just for the moment, idly, I wish we had a parliamentarian-cabinet system of government, so that each of the different Republican candidates for President could be entrusted with one department of government, but not the whole. Sen. McCain as Secretary of War--Mayor Giuliani as Attorney General--Gov. Romney as Chancellor of the Exchequer--and perhaps Sen. Thompson as prime minister, to build consensus, but not to be overloaded with the execution of departmental responsibilities himself. But, no, we have a president responsible for the whole--a system I prefer all in all--and so the choice becomes more difficult.

Wollstonecraft, Ambition, Clinton

Teaching Wollstonecraft today, A Vindication of Rights of Woman, I notice an interesting passage: When do we hear of women who, starting out of obscurity, boldly claim respect on account of their great abilities or daring virtues? Where are they to be found? This is part of a thread of logic where she argues--following late British Enlightenment thought, Smith and Madison in particular--that ambition spurs both men and women to cultivate their several talents, that women's removal from the spheres of ambition corrupts their character, that if women be placed in the spheres of life where their ambition will operate, their talents and virtues will increase to match those of men, already improved by ambition. This I find marvelous--I've already been reading and writing on ambition and self-interest as a spur to virtue, and it's fascinating to find the same idea woven into a foundational document of feminist theory.

It also reminds me of Sen. Clinton, for whom the rap for several years has been that she is ambitious. This has not bothered me--following Madison and Hamilton, I take ambition to be the proper spur for a politician, and have no qualms about the senator sharing in the character of her profession. It is interesting, however, to think of her ambition as the culmination of a Wollstonecraftian vision--that Sen. Clinton's character (as Lady Thatcher's, as PM Merkel's) is one dream of the Enlightenment. And for all that I may disagree with Sen. Clinton's policy preferences, she isn't a bad advertisement for Enlightenment virtues. Rational ambition--concern for the public good--stoic self-control, self-rule--enduring passion, rather than flighty sentiment. And, yes, corruption, and the dishonor attendant upon loyalty to her husband--but I think that, with all her flaws, she has the character to be President of the United States, a position for which ambition has no higher scope. And, having observed her since 1992, I gather that it is indeed her ambition that has spurred her to acquire those virtues that fit her to be president. So Wollstonecraft--and Smith, and Madison--deserve kudos for a correct perception of human nature. I think Wollstonecraft would be happy to see Sen. Clinton boldly claim respect for her great ability and daring virtue.

Cavafy!

Thanks to the joys of comments-section free association, I am reminded of Cavafy, and what a wonderful poet he was. This poem speaks to me particularly strongly:

Of the Jews (A.D. 50)

Painter and poet, runner and discus-thrower,
beautiful as Endymion: Ianthis, son of Antony.
From a family on friendly terms with the Synagogue.

“My most valuable days are those
when I give up the pursuit of sensuous beauty,
when I desert the elegant and severe cult of Hellenism,
with its over-riding devotion
to perfectly shaped, corruptible white limbs,
and become the man I would want to remain forever:
son of the Jews, the holy Jews.”

A most fervent declaration on his part: “...to remain forever
a son of the Jews, the holy Jews.”

But he did not remain anything of the kind.
The Hedonism and Art of Alexandria
kept him as their dedicated son.

Athens and Jerusalem, after all, an old tension. And I am only the latest in a line of wandering Jews.

More on Teaching

I think I've gotten to the point where I can assess how good a student is; I'm very clearly not at the point where I know how to help make someone a better student. I know it's a goal--I have a vague idea what the different techniques are--it's the execution that's difficult. I like to think that knowing what I need to do is half the battle, but the other half looks like it will take a while to achieve.