LINK: your friendly Sunday morning thought, from Le Sabot Post-Moderne:

"This doctrine also brings the many verses in the Bible about the necessity of good works into focus, while preserving the Bible's teaching on justification by faith. Those whom God has justified, He also sanctifies, as Romans 8 teaches us. If you are saved, you WILL do good works, and God WILL sanctify you."

I find this to be enormously reassuring, somehow.

LINK: If Josh Chafetz says it's okay for me to like it, I will. I especially like the second half.

LINK: Sometimes I run across someone's opinions, not on politics, but on the structural features of democracy, and I'm a little confused. But not everyone has swallowed Downsian models and the concept of single-peaked preferences whole.

So, briefly, controversially, let me throw out the following thesis as if it's established fact: there will never be significant, long-lasting third parties in American politics. Never never never.

ADDENDUM: OGIW points out that the below theory fails to explain the higher than normal involvement in Dem primaries in Iowa, NH, and various Feb. 3 states (she cited New Mexico). Two answers:

1. Those are all swing states*, where higher than average turnout is expected in the model.

2. For Iowa and New Hampshire, there was the impression that there was an interesting race for the nomination going on, a perception that has by and large gone away. The key turnout numbers will not be those that have already happened, nor the Feb. 3 primaries, but the ones after that: this will indicate whether higher turnout was a function of the perception of their being a race, or genuine interest in electing Kerry/beating Bush.

*the general definition of a swing state I use is small margins of victory in Presidential, Gubenatorial, and Senate races (split Senate delegations are also a good sign).

THE DYNAMICS OF THE GENERAL ELECTION: or, Why Turnout Might Be Really, Really Low:

Go here, flip West Virginia back into the Democratic column, and you have my prediction for the Presidential election. It's been my more-or-less expressed theory for the last week or so that turnout, surprisingly, might be lower than everyone's expecting. Here's why:

1. ceteris paribus, no one is going to become more enamored of Bush or (I'm being presumptuous, I know) Kerry as time goes on. Bush will shed off partisan support so long as he keeps expanding the size of the federal government (I think this year might be a sign of whether or not libertarianism constitutes a serious political movement), and, far more importantly, the intensity of his non-partisan support is likely to shrink because even if you're not rabidly Republican, he's still doing some things you don't like, and those tend to be the things voters remember.

Kerry's not going to do any better because we saw last year how well he handled the scrutiny of being the presumptive front-runner when it was only super-wonks like myself who were following these things. He's going to get bloodied. He suffers the Al Gore disease: it's nigh-impossible to be passionate about him (Upper Left will probably disagree with me on that one). It's also not clear exactly how deep his support is (OGIW sent me a conversation with a friend of hers where this point was discussed; hat tip to them), and the speed with which people went from Dean/Clark to Kerry should raise some questions about the depth of that support.

Further, there's the not inconsiderable splinter-group of metropoliticals (Michael Totten, Jeff Jarvis, etc etc), who would be inclined to vote for Bush on the War on Terror but are trying to break the habits of lifetime Democratic voting. It's not clear how they're going to go, and I won't discount the possibility they'll sit the election out (as I am considering doing).

2. In swing states (my latest list is: Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Pennsylvania and maybe New York), turnout is probably going to be very high. But given 1., people who live in states with large populations where the end conclusion is pretty certain (Texas, California, Illinois, and possibly New York as well) are not likely to come out to vote--at least not in the same numbers they would if they were really fired up.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: or, ridiculously florid thought for the day:

"From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I."

-Ps. 61:2. Bonus points if you know where this appears in 90s musical history.

JOY OF JOYS! My replacement copy of The Captive Mind came today. I might have to re-read it tonight.

OH: And Our Girl In Washington (my source for all these sorts of things) has some poll numbers which I'll pass along to you:

Generic Matchup
Bush 47%
Dem 46%
Undecided 7%

Kerry Matchup:
Bush 46%
Kerry 47%
Undecided 7%

I have more crosstabs, if anyone's interested. Anyway, I think this is the first time I've seen a specific candidate polling above the generic Dem.

LINK: So there's this Katha Pollitt column, and I read it, and I have very conflicting feelings about it. On one hand, it's almost certainly the case that there's a misogynistic subtext to a male candidate bringing out the little wife to campaign with him, where she's expected to fufill a certain role which is almost laughable. On the other hand, I'm not too cool with Ms. Pollitt's condescenion towards women who want to stay home and raise a family. I mean, if a woman wants to go out and have a career, that's fine, but does it make her any less of a woman (or any less 'equal' to her husband) if she doesn't?

Anyway, it's a welcome change from reading articles in The Nation that make me want to laugh and/or vomit.

WILL COUNTRY MUSIC EVER MAKE IT BIG IN BLUE-STATE AMERICA?

No.

That being said, it's hipper in some places than others (slightly more fashionable in Ann Arbor, as you might be surprised to hear--this weekend's highlight is Emmylou Harris coming to town, and my boss, latte-sipping, NYT-home-delivery-receiving, fire-branded liberal that he is, loves her before all else musically), though that's generally true of any kind of music. It was big a few years ago as part of the O Brother Where Art Thou? 'old-timey' music craze, but I'd brake out Hank or, say, The Anthology of American Folk Music ("John Hardy" by the Carter Family being my favorite), and they couldn't ever really take it.

But I think the bigger explanation is the good country music is about life experiences--loss of love, depression, and existential grappling with the toughness of life--and the willingness to hear about them correlates nicely, I'd imagine, with age and the time to be pensive enough to really think about these things. When we talk about Blue-Staters, we generally mean 20- and 30-somethings in major metropolitan areas, right? They're generally the people with lifestyles least disposed to being able to get country music.

Which is better, because I kind of like the feeling of having Hank and Patsy to myself.

HELL FREEZES OVER: or, Will Baude posts something I almost entirely agree with. Especially:

"This is especially the case given that much of the official curriculum taught in high school classes will either be re-learned in college (and it will often turn out to have been wrong the first time around) or else never used again."

I've occasionally advocated the theory recently that pre-college education serves absolutely no purpose other than a placeholder of time before students get to college and study things that actually interest them. To some extent high school might help you find what you want to study more of (not me--I had to read philosophy and Greek classics on my own time, and I hadn't even thought of political science at that time (consider this a warning, Kevin, that you might make it to Chicago only to major in biochemisty and interpretive dance)), as well as some valuable experiences which may or may not be class-related (mine included toilet coffee (I didn't drink it), shed-jumping, and a trip through Indiana, about which the less said, the better).

Other than explanations of the structure and function of juxtamedullary and cortical nephrons, I never use anything I learned in high school. But maybe that's just me.

LINK: Sometimes I'm embarrassed by my gender. Sara Butler has the current-most example.

LINK: Dan Drezner on whether or not bloggers should declare their votes. Nick's bold prediction: he's gonna vote Republican. I say this because I'm a sucker for realist democratic theory. Most of us talk a good game about being independents, but we really aren't.

LINK: Norman Geras on the Paul Berman article I linked to a couple of days ago. His thoughts are tantalizingly unfinished, and I for one am looking forward to the rest.

QUOTE: A good point in the latest by The Hitch:

"(German intelligence reported to Gerhard Schröder that Saddam was within measurable distance of getting a nuke: That didn't deter the chancellor in the least from adopting an utterly complacent approach.)"

So presumably Bush was somehow supposed to know that the information given to him was false, even though the CIA and whomever else swore up and down by it (or equivocated on it in a reasonably consistent pattern over time). But let's say that you knew what Gerhard Schroder new, and what's more, you had your intelligence agencies swearing up and down (or at least equivocating in a reasonably consistent pattern over time) that Saddam was going to use it on (pick your helpless group: Kurds, Israelis, Palestinians). What do you do then?

I think the key to moral and political seriousness, here as everywhere, lies in getting the extreme cases right.

WELL: I find it very masculating that I singlehandedly got the boiler for my apartment building up and running again.

I find it less than amusing that I'm the one who has to do this.

WELL: As usual, Joe links to me when I'm at work and can't post as much. Some of my plans for the weekend:

*Is the Evil Demon (or the argument from dreams) a defeater for epistemology?
*Dynamics of the General Election, or, Why Turnout Might Be Really, Really Low
*Thoughts on something or other in my political theory reading
*Plus much, much more...

Please note: this is not a 'sorry for not posting' post... it's a... uh... 'coming attractions' reel... yeah...

LINK: Breaking Ann Arbor news... I wouldnt have believed it, but...

oh, and check the byline, too.

ANSWERS: to questions of Discoshaman's:

When I got bored over the summer, I used to go to the Grad Library and read from the bound volumes of PR and Dissent from the 30s-50s. I sometimes think I was born 70 years too late to be happy with the political world I'm in.

Also, my grandparents are from Winchester, so nary a trip goes by that doesn't include paying homage to Patsy Cline.

REASONS I LIKE ME: I'm writing a paper on Homer and Greek political thought, and I did little post-its throughout my book for passages I wanted to discuss. My post-it for the beginning of Book IX, where Agamemnon decides that the cause of sacking Troy is hopeless and that they ought to give up is labelled "A's freakout."

ALSO: when I play "Roadrunner" by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, I tend to sing it as "I'm in love with Taxachusetts," though I don't really know why.

UM: from The Nation, proving that maybe they need to rethink the quality of their examples:

"For a variety of reasons--opposition to the war, Bush's assault on the Constitution, his crony capitalism, frustration with the overcautious and indentured approach of inside-the-Beltway Democrats--there is a level of passionate volunteerism at the grassroots of the Democratic Party not seen since 1968." [emphasis mine]

because 1968 worked out so well for the Democrats.

LINK: This number on GWB's liberalism puts me in mind of what I didn't put in my comment to this TruePravda post:

"It's true that there are huge difference between the parties on social issues, but it's also something of a truism in American Politics that people, by and large, don't vote on social issues: they vote on economic ones. And the parties are a lot closer on those. After all, should I vote for the big-spending, entitlement-creating, nation-building, deficit-raising candidate, or should I vote for the Democrat?"

WAIT: So conservatives like the NEA now? I'm confused.

QUOTE: Iraqi blogger takes on HoDo:

"By statements like these you deny any honourable motives for the great job your people are doing here. How in your opinion will this affect the morale of your soldiers? Feeling that their people back at home don’t support them and that they’re abandoned to fight alone in the battlefield.

And all of this for what? For staying in the white house for 4 or 8 years? Is it worth it?

And this is not directed only to Mr. Dean, it’s for all the Americans who support such allegations without being aware of their consequences. What’s it that you fight so hard for, showing your soldiers as s occupiers and murderers, the soldiers who I had the honour of meeting many, and when talking to some of them, I didn’t see anything other than gentleness, honesty and good will and faith in what they’re doing."

LINK: Tacitus has an interesting view on the Christian/Muslim God kerfuffle. I chuckled:

"As a Christian, I'm not inclined to view the Islamic god as the same God that I worship -- too many behavioral differences."

QUOTE: Moby:

" ok, so in the interest of further alienating my fans, etc, i have to express my true thoughts regarding the next election...
and that is that al sharpton is the democratic candidate who would, in many ways, be the best nominee....
have you heard him speak?
he's bright and personable and aware and informed and all of the things that we want all of the other candidates to be."

Sometimes you just can't do a parody of reality.

LINK: Joementum may be a useful bit of terminology after all.

LINK: See what happens when you pay someone what he's worth? That's an extra 10 wins for Detroit next year, easy.

QUOTE: this may be the most redundant sentence I've read in awhile:

"there was a time when [switching managers in midseason] was a common strategy two decades ago."

-from ESPN.com

LINK: Can There Be a Decent Left?, one of my five favorite political essays ever.

The others: "My Confession," by Mary McCarthy; "New Styles in Leftism," by Irving Howe; "Of Sin, the Left and Islamic Fascism," by Christopher Hitchens; and "Why the Christian Church is Not Pacifist," by Reinhold Niebuhr.

SIX THUMPS FOR RIGHT: Dissent has been the intellectual front lines for my kind of leftism for quite awhile (ever since Michael Walzer's "Can There Be a Decent Left?" at least), and Paul Berman rails away effectively:

"The old-fashioned left used to be universalist-used to think that everyone, all over the world, would some day want to live according to the same fundamental values, and ought to be helped to do so. They thought this was especially true for people in reasonably modern societies with universities, industries, and a sophisticated bureaucracy-societies like the one in Iraq. But no more! Today, people say, out of a spirit of egalitarian tolerance: Social democracy for Swedes! Tyranny for Arabs! And this is supposed to be a left-wing attitude? By the way, you don't hear much from the left about the non-Arabs in countries like Iraq, do you? The left, the real left, used to be the champion of minority populations-of people like the Kurds. No more! The left, my friend, has abandoned the values of the left-except for a few of us, of course."

"What a tragedy for the left-the worldwide left, this left of ours which, in failing to play much of a role in the antifascism of our own era, is right now committing a gigantic historic error. Not for the first time, my friend! And yet, if the left all over the world took up this particular struggle as its own, the whole nature of events in Iraq and throughout the region could be influenced in a very useful way, and Bush's many blunders could be rectified, and the struggle could be advanced."

"You haven't the foggiest idea what fascism is," I said. "I always figured that a keen awareness of extreme oppression was the deepest trait of a left-wing heart. Mass graves, three hundred thousand missing Iraqis, a population crushed by thirty-five years of Baathist boots stomping on their faces-that is what fascism means! And you think that a few corrupt insider contracts with Bush's cronies at Halliburton and a bit of retrograde Bible-thumping and Bush's ridiculous tax cuts and his bonanzas for the super-rich are indistinguishable from that?-indistinguishable from fascism? From a politics of slaughter? Leftism is supposed to be a reality principle. Leftism is supposed to embody an ability to take in the big picture. The traitor to the left is you, my friend . . ."

LINK: Jacob Levy has enough thoughts on NH for all of us. If you can imagine a two-sided version of this post, that's what conversations with OGIW are like (though we're obviously slightly less well-informed).

YEAH, THAT'S WHAT WORRIES ME: Josh Marshall:

"Yet for all Democrats I think there are some very promising signs coming out of these two contests. There was a lot of talk for months about the divisions in the Democratic party. And certainly there was something to that. But that wasn't what was happening on the ground here. I heard most of the candidates repeatedly. And the differences between them are matters of mild shading. The important differences are retrospective rather than prospective."

OUCH: Wonkette:

"The Nation: How have they survived 100+ years? Lottery winnings."

Certainly not with the writing.

WELL: How's this for a good test of a democracy: the ability to have only one candidate on the ballot and not have them get anywhere close to 100%:

"George W. Bush, who had no major opposition, managed to seize 85.5% of the vote in the Republican primary. That's right. 14.5% of New Hampshire Republicans voted for somebody else, including 6.5% who wrote in Kerry, Dean, Clark, or Edwards. By comparison, Bill Clinton got 95% of the vote in the 1996 New Hampshire Democratic primary."

LINK: Le Sabot Post-Moderne has an interesting post on the correlation between country music fandom and living in a Red State.

I, of course, am an effete Blue State northern liberal who swears by Hank Williams Sr. and Patsy Cline. You have my grandfather (liberal democratic wage laborer from Virginia, so pretty much the opposite of me in everything but politics) to thank for that, as he taught me the following iron law:

Real Men Love Hank Williams.

QUOTE: Michael Totten:

"Andrew Sullivan says Bush is in trouble. And that is probably true. He’s earned every bit of that trouble. But the Democrats aren’t gearing up to replace him. They winding themselves up to flail."

I wouldn't be at all surprised if voter turnout were really, really low this year. We're set up for a Patriots-Panthers-type election season: the die-hards will turn out, as well as the freaks who enjoy it no matter who's involved, and everyone else is going to be lackadaisical. I'm not finding any of my options to be particularly appealing at the moment (I'm even contemplating not voting for a President if that doesn't change), and I think that's a fairly common feeling, left and right.

QUOTE: Roger Simon shares my pain:

"[a two man race between Kerry and Dean] is bad because a two-man race of this sort will push the Democratic Party to the left, particularly on the war. With Dean surging like this, and pushing on Kerry, the contest will become about which candidate more despises the War in Iraq. Intelligent discussion of the most important subject of our day will be minimized. Nuances on the subject will disappear. Edwards at least had a relatively clean slate on the issue--and occasionally he made sense on it."

Sigh. I've told OGIW on a couple of occasions that Edwards is a Hubert Humphrey for our generation: enormously talented, good (in a moral and political sense), and forever doomed to do less well than he should, in a perfect world.

LINK: I'm aware of the Kerry-botox rumors. Yale Diva has a before-and-after. I hate to disagree with her on this one, but it looks like the big differences between the two are attributable to 1. lighting and 2. the difference between smiling and frowning. Botox is supposed to get rid of forehead wrinkles? They're still there in the after picture, so obviously he didn't get it done very well.

WORDS OF WISDOM: Joe Carter:

"I mean, really, one post a day does not a blogger make."

Oh yeah, there's also a good post on the trouble surrounding Mel Gibson's movie The Passion as well.

More of the insightfulness working itself out here. Imagine if it were just a period history movie, and he had people speaking Latin or whathaveyou: everyone would be aflutter with the "authenticity" it conveyed. It never ceases to amaze me how some people get bent out of shape as soon as the subject of Jesus comes up.

LINK: I had time to kill before class this morning, and found this, which will hopefully brighten up your day like it did mine.

WELL: I'm not sure if anyone else has had this experience before, but I'm rereading Hobbes' Leviathan for my Modern Political Thought class. The version we use is the one my Political Philosophy professor edited. I've been getting a certain amount of joy out of reading the marginal notes and supplimentary things this time around, because I now realize that he writes in exactly the same way he talks, which makes for some comedic mental narration.

OKAY: So last night wasn't such a good night for my budding interesting in political methodology.

Or was it?

Follow me here. One of my big theses was that Kerry, Clark and Dean were fighting for the same supporters. Look at my Clark, Kerry and Dean predictions again:

Kerry: 41%
Clark: 19% (actually 20% on my model, but was changed for reasons I explained here)
Dean: 16%

which is, by my math, 76%.

The actual vote percentages for the three:

Kerry: 38%
Dean: 26%
Clark: 12%

which is, by my math, 76%.

So yes, my predictions were wrong (I did rob myself of an extra day by declaring on Friday (easier in Iowa as the caucus was on a Monday)), but I feel some vindication that I was right on the only thing I explicitly modeled.

ABOUT MY PREDICTION:

"Well, folks, when you're right 52% of the time, you're wrong 48% of the time."

-Smooth Jimmy Apollo, from The Simpsons

More thoughts on why I was wrong a little bit later in the evening (after I'm done with tomorrow's Hobbes)

QUOTE OF THE DAY OF THE MOMENT: from today's Philosophy 477 reading:

"The traditional theist, on the other hand, has no corresponding reason for doubting that it is a purpose of our cognitive systems to produce true beliefs, nor any reason for thinking the probability of a belief's being true, given that it is a product of her cognitive faculties, is low or inscrutable. She may indeed endorse some form of evolution; but if she does, it will be a form of evolution guided and orchestrated by God. And qua traditional theist -- qua Jewish, Moslem, or Christian theist - she believes that God is the premier knower and has created us human beings in his image, an important part of which involves his giving them what is needed to have knowledge, just as he does.

The conclusion to be drawn, therefore, is that the conjunction of naturalism with evolutionary theory is self-defeating: it provides for itself an undefeated defeater. It is therfore unacceptable and irrational."

THIS ONE IS MUCH MORE ENTERTAINING, THOUGH:

Which Revolutionary War Asshole Are You?

Which Founding Father Are You?

I think this makes sense along with the one that had me as John Calvin.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Matthew Yglesias:

"If one thing's become clear over the past two weeks it's that no one has any business trying to predict stuff..."

having heard some of the exit polling from NH, I'm thinking I might need to get out of the prediction business myself.

LINK: um, yeah...

INTERESTING: One more reason to vote Democratic, as provided by Jayson Stark:

"Here's the perfect note for this joyous election season. Loyal reader Christopher J. Fried reports that it shouldn't have surprised anyone that the Yankees lost the World Series last October. It's all George W. Bush's fault.

Since 1958, the Yankees have played 20 seasons with a Democrat in the White House -- and won eight World Series. But in their 25 seasons after a Republican gave the State of the Union, the Yankees are 0-for-25. They've now lost five straight World Series under Republican administrations. Think George Steinbrenner will vote Democratic this fall after he reads this note?"

Just a note: there'll be no blog posting until my heat goes back on, because I'm finding it hard to concentrate on anything else in the interim. Should be back to normal by this afternoon.

UPDATE: not only is my heat back on, but I got a crash course in basic repair and maintainance of a boiler. Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach him how to fish and he won't have to crash on his friends' couches to avoid hypothermia.

THE VALUE OF ART: in re this Benjamin Alan post, I tend to find works of art instrinsically valuable because they ultimately say something from one occasionally gloomy intellectual type (Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Caravaggio, The Smiths) to another occasionally gloomy intellectual type (me). It's a nice way to remind yourself that you're not alone in the world, and that your difficulties have been shared by many others who have found ways to live through them.

WELL: [puts on philosopher hat]:

"If more people are resisting marriage, or fleeing the ones they're in, or inventing new permutations like cohabitation and serial monogamy, here's one reason: for a significant percentage of the population, marriage just doesn't turn out to be as gratifying as it promises."

Premises do not entail conclusion. I don't think (unlike what I took to be Sara Butler's main argument) that this is necessarily a problem with people's expectations of what the institution of marriage entails (though that's certainly a factor) so much as it's a matter of people getting married at the wrong time, or for the wrong reasons, or to the wrong person. Go read the comments section here, and you'll find some people for whom the old-fashioned approach is working just fine (even if parts of their approach are too old-fashioned for my tastes).

The more I think about it, the more I believe Aristotle was right: it's all about being habituated into the right actions and thought patterns that determine future romantic success. I think.

HINT: Do not click on this if you have to, say, read The Old Oligarch's thoughts on the Athenian Constitution. You will not get your work done.

LINK: I love Wonkette, and this post made me think of OGIW (who is now going to start reading Wonkette herself, by the way)

LINK: I read David Frum's diary like normal, and came across this:

"Finally, isn’t there a very real possibility that the centrist-seeming Edwards might actually be the Democrat most vulnerable to an opportunistic campaign by Ralph Nader?"

David Frum offering electoral advice to Democrats? Clearly something is up--and I think that something is the very real fear of facing John Edwards in November. Sucks when there's a guy who can pull of the President's shtick better than he can, huh?

And anyway, as Ralph Nader pointed out after Florida in 2000, Democrats lose a lot more moderate votes to Republicans than they do fringe votes to the Green Party, so they ought to be following the votes...

QUOTE: One of the more amusing things about being at a school like Michigan is that you get a large number of professors who have bounced around all your basic high-powered universities, and don't hesitate to resort to the crudest stereotypes of the students at various institutions... it's guaranteed hilarity.

Today's example: my political modeling professor (who taught at CalTech and Northwestern before coming here) was discussing an example involving a large sum of money that some people wanted to give to the University of Chicago to build a fancy gym-type-thing. They refused, naturally (Northwestern ended up getting it), which prompeted the following set of observations:

"People at the University of Chicago don't work out... they all wear black and walk around with their hands behind their backs [does impression of mild-mannered but serious student]...

[after discussing the role selection bias plays in picking academic institutions] People who go to the University of Chicago don't want to work out: that's why they went to the University of Chicago."

Lest you think I'm horribly biased, as a potential Chicago grad student, it's exactly that sort of reputation that makes me want to go there. But then again, I'm also wearing black...

ESSENTIAL NON-OBVIOUS ALBUMS OF THE 80s

The Queen is Dead and Hatful of Hollow, The Smiths: impossibly Baroque pop creations, where the first is Ruebens and then second is Caravaggio. You probably have to have been a 16-year old boy who'd been dumped by his first girlfriend to really get them, but if you did, they were a world unto themselves.

(I'm also not sure whether I should be offended at Joe's insistence that The Smiths is the "soundtrack of future metrosexuals," or embarrassed because he pretty much got that one right)

Closer, Joy Division: not the happiest album you'll ever own (Ian Curtis killed himself a few weeks after finishing it), but the most complete cataloging of human faults you'll ever find. Breathtakingly heartbreaking.

Chronic Town, Murmur, Reckoning, Fables of the Reconstruction, Lifes Rich Pageant, Document, R.E.M.: there is nothing on this earth so wonderful to listen to as a good R.E.M. album. Too bad they've decided they don't need to make good ones anymore. (Does this qualify as obvious? I'm not so sure it does)

Let It Be, The Replacements: listen to "Favorite Thing" to see where Kurt Cobain stole half of his ideas.

3 Feet High and Rising, De La Soul: The most welcome trend of the late-80s/early-90s (flower-power hip-hop) reaches its apotheosis here.

The Stone Roses, Stone Roses: singlehandedly keeping alive the flame of British Popular Music ('Britpop,' if you will) with ridiculously good guitar work and just the right hint of mystery (the US version, with "Fools Gold" on the end, is even better)

It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Public Enemy: pioneered the "Bomb Squad" style of production (on "Prophets of Rage") and contained the best prison-related song since "Jailhouse Rock" ("Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos"). Sure, Chuck D and Flava Flav had a lot of... ummmmm... 'controversial' opinions on various topics, but mostly worth the listen.

OH, SURE: It was cold and horribly depressing this morning (though I'm not the only one with heat problems, apparently), but so long as there are things like this headline, I can rest assured the world is a fair and wonderful place.

WELL: I'm surely not the only person who noticed this (though I am possibly the only person who noticed it because his apartment's heat went off AGAIN), but if you look at the ARG tracking numbers for the 22nd-24th, they definitely only add up to 93%. Talk about a flawed methodology.

That'll also (ahem) make it a little harder to try and predict what will happen.

QUOTE: Political haiku is the new terminology waiting to happen. To wit:

"In this latest speech, the two sentences in this paragraph qualify as political haiku. That is, they do a lot of work in a relatively small number of syllables."

SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE: I found something useful on InstaPundit

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:

"But may it not be objected that if the prince forbids a sin, such as homicide, on pain of death, he is in this case bound to keep his own law. The answer is that this is not properly the prince's own law, but a law of God and nature, to which he is more strictly bound than any of his subjects. Neither his council, nor the whole body of the people, can exempt him from his perpetual responsibility before the judgement-seat of God, as Solomon said in unequivocal terms. Marcus Aurelius also observed that the magistrate is the judge of persons, the prince of the magistrates, and God of the prince. Such was the opinion of the two wisest rulers the world has ever known. Those who say without qualification that the prince is bound neither by any law whatsoever, nor by his own express engagements, insult the majesty of God, unless they intend to except the laws of God and of nature, and all just covenants and solemn agreements. Even Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse, said to his mother that he could exempt her from the laws and customs of Syracuse, but not from the laws of God and of nature. For just as contracts and deeds of gift of private individuals must not derogate from the ordinances of the magistrate, nor his ordinances from the law of the land, nor the law of the land from the enactments of a sovereign prince, so the laws of a sovereign prince cannot override or modify the laws of God and of nature."

-Jean Bodin, Book I, Six Books of the Commonwealth

NOTE: I am not at all worried about my NH predictions. Despite the plethora of polls I've seen with different numbers. And I'm certainly not worried because I ended up first on the list at California Yankee.

Note also: I'm lying about the above.

LINK: New Covenant does a pretty darn good job of elucidating the view I hold about how the Bible should be read (or can be read)...

"The conclusion of this approach is that we are tasked with the responsibility to research into the aspects of the text that will give us an indication of the author's intent.

Author's intent. There's a concept we need to make sure we understand... that authors have intentions whenever they write something. It may seem obvious, but in our "post modern" age how many times have you heard the phrase: "What does this verse mean to you?" Or if you read up at all on issues before the Supreme Court you have surely run into the term "Living Constitution."

This tendency to ignore author's intentions permeates our culture. Hence it is no surprise that many people are unaware of the proper way to study a book such as the Bible. And although it is not surprising, it is disheartening to see many people write off the proper study methods as ultimately unimportant."

FOLLOWING THE BELOW:

Then there's this part:

"After all we could use a verdict: Are we really two nations, rich and poor, where elections can function as national jury awards, redistributing wealth from the Big Guys to the Little People? Or are we a middle-class country where--beyond a few glaring instances--most people must take responsibility for themselves?"

Consider this an inversion of TruePravda's taxes question: do Republicans/conservatives really believe that whenever a Democrat talks about social responsibility for people who fall behind/are poor (Bill Clinton's people who "work hard and play by the rules" but never seem to get ahead), that they're really using this as code for a socialist redistribution scheme run by the government?

Or, to take the possibly stronger tack, let's assume that it's true that we're mostly a middle-class country where everyone mostly does fine, except for a few people, and let's assume further that it's the case that the private sector has not (through charities, foundations, or what have you) done a sufficiently good job helping people who need it: why is it unacceptable for the government to step in at that point?

I'm a Third Way Democrat, so I have a lot of sympathy for people who believe that government should not reflexively be our answer to every social and economic problem, but what's wrong with the government stepping in when no one else will?

QUOTE: The Weekly Standard points out that attacking Edwards as a trial lawyer is a bad:

"REPUBLICANS who dream of attacking John Edwards for making his fortune as a trial lawyer should know that his most famous lawsuit--the one he talks about most on the campaign trail--involved a little girl condemned to a lifetime of feeding tubes when she became caught in a powerful drain in a wading pool. Sitting in only a foot of water, the 5-year-old became trapped by a horrendous vacuum when someone accidentally left the cover off the drain. Four adults couldn't pull her off and she lost 80 percent of her intestines. The pool owners quickly settled but the manufacturing company insisted it was without fault.

Diligently pursuing the case, Edwards uncovered a dozen other instances where children and adults had suffered death or injury from the same type of drain. He also found correspondence indicating company officials had known of the problem but brushed it off. "Doesn't he know this kind of thing should never be put in writing?" warned one memo. The jury awarded damages of $25 million."

LINK: Upper Left makes predictions on NH, and suggests the wisdom in scrapping following polls altogether.

LINK: Josh Marshall provides a little anecdotal evidence to support my theory that Clark is still very much in the NH race.

DO: note that I've stolen Kevin Yaroch's phrasing for my kind-of endorsement of John Edwards (left-hand red cell).

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:

"Far from diminishing the amount of needless cruelty and suffering in the world, I am firmly convinced that the belief that no one is ever morally responsible, in addition to being false, is quite certain to have a mischievous effect and to increase the amount of needless cruelty and suffering. For it justifies Smerdyakov's formula in The Brothers Karamazov: "All things are permissible." One of the commonest experience is to meet someone whose belief that he can't help doing what he is doing (or failing to do) is often an excuse for not doing as well as he can or at least better than he is at present doing. What often passes as irremediable evil in this world, or inevitable suffering, is a consequence of our failure to act in time. We are responsible, whether we admit it or not, for what it is in our power to do; and most of the time we can't be sure what is in our power to do until we attempt it. In spite of the alleged inevitabilities in personal life and human history can redetermine the direction of events, even though it cannot determine the conditions that make human effort possible. It is time enough to reconcile oneself to a secret shame or a public tyranny after one has done one's best to overcome it, and even then it isn't necessary."

-Sydney Hook, reply to Edwards and Hospers

LINK: makes sense to me. The real question is who's more unreadable: Husserl or Merleau-Ponty?

BREAKING NEWS: OGIW tells me something political that I'm not allowed to tell you until 10:00 a.m. tomorrow.

Oh, heck, it's on their front page. I'm told that this should be considered a signal that environmental groups are going to come out swinging this year. This will prompt some later musings on interest groups, the ordering of preferences in the electorate, and the benefits of having the status quo on your side (as evangelical outpost pointed out). This does signal bad news for Bush in Michigan, though.

I reserve the right to change my prediction by Saturday if the numbers shift dramatically.

WELL: I decided not to be a wuss and wait for the latest ARG tracking poll to make my prediction on Hew Hampshire. Here goes nothing:

Kerry: 41%
Clark: 19%
Edwards: 17%*
Dean: 16%
Lieberman: 6%
Kucinich: 1%

1. Methodology: look at the polls and guess what people are gonna do. Note that Clark has held strong at 18-20%, and Kerry's rise can be explained without recourse to his attracting undecideds, so there's no reason to give him an undue advantage there.

I feel reasonably enough confident in my model to suggest that the margin of error is +/-3% for all the candidates.

2. Assumptions: Dean's slid a lot lately, but he also hasn't done anything to damage himself since Monday night, so I'm assuming his floor is 15%. I don't think he's set to collapse entirely (he's going to finish ahead of Lieberman), but he could drop down as low as 11-12%. Those votes would mostly go to Kerry.

Edwards is going to end up with a reasonable portion of the currently undecideds. They're obviously not swayed by anything they've seen thusfar. Kerry will get about half because he's the frontrunner and they'll pile on, but most of the rest will go to Edwards because he's optimistic, and people like optimism.

Clark, Dean and Edwards are all within the margin of error of each other, so the potential for chaos abounds.

3. Big winner: Kerry. Not because he'll win going away (he will) but because Dean, Edwards and Clark will finish so close to each other that there'll be no clear second-placer, and none of them will drop out.

*my model predicted Edwards and Dean at 16%, but as ties are ways of wimping out of saying who'll win, I went with my gut and thought that Edwards would probably win the undecideds I gave to Clark and gave him an extra point.

OH: My NH prediction will be up tomorrow night, after I have time to digest the polls and write up a little model.

WELL: Will Baude produces a post on capital punishment which I happen to pretty much agree with:

'If the problem is that innocent people languish for 24 years at a time in "a ghastly place," well then that's a problem. But the marginal harm of also inflicting the death penalty on such people isn't what gets my blood going.

As of yet, we haven't executed anybody we now know to be innocent since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty. Of course, once people are dead, we often stop looking. Still, Delma Banks' story will be almost as tragic to me if he "merely" spends 24 years wrongfully imprisoned and uncompensated than if wrongful killing is added to the state's list of wrongdoing.

So replacing a bunch of wrongful death penalties with a bunch of wrongful life sentences does little, to my mind, (especially given the small fraction of people on death row who eventually meet execution) to solve the actual evil of wrongful conviction. Sure it's an improvement, but is it enough of an improvement?"

And then he loses me:

"[Incidentally, why, other than the possibility of bad press, do we stop long-term prisoners from killing themselves?]"

Presumably, we undertake a great and serious bit of moral responsibility when we decide someone should be executed for a crime. We don't kill to make the person dead, but because there's a certain moral quality to the death that we find to be valuable. Being indifferent to prisoner suicide is only possible if you consider the death alone to be the important thing. But if death alone is important, why not just take them out behind the courthouse after their sentence and get it over with? Sure, a lot of the features around capital punishment can be ridiculed (especially if you look at it from a purely utilitarian perspective*), but they're there for a reason.

*Incidentally, if you are taking it from a purely utilitarian perspective, I have an argument I was introduced to recently that I'd like to test out, if any of my utilitarian friends or readers would like to take me up on it.

WELL: So what is interesting about the ARG tracking poll, anyway?

1. Clark + Kerry + Dean vote Jan 16-18: 67%

Clark + Kerry + Dean vote Jan 20-22: 69%

So... there's no reason to assume that any of those candidates are appealing to new voters... they're just reapportioning their bloc amongst themselves.

Note also that Clark's support has remained in the 18-20% range, which suggests that the bottom might not be dropping out from under him.

2. Undecideds hover around 15%, which suggests they're not being won over on the basis of Dean's organization, Clark's pre-Iowa surge, or Kerry's post-Iowa surge.

LINK: A very fine example of a limitation on marriage that I generally support.

HILARITY OF THE DAY: evangelical outpost:

"But the most egregious slam is the statement that “Dobson is a lay Ph.D, not an ordained minister.” A “lay Ph.D”? I’ve heard of a lay minister but not a “lay” Doctor of Philosophy. I suppose it can be expected, though, when you get yoru doctorate from that most fundamentalist of seminaries, the University of Southern California."

LINK: I was looking at ARG's latest tracking poll, and I wonder if anyone notices the two interesting things I found there

BIG STORY OF THE DAY: Senate Republicans spy on Democrats. Nick Confessore has more details.

LINK: Interesting piece on the importance of religion for the Democrats. Consider:

"A study from the Pew Forum on Religion found that 50 percent of polled African-Americans said Bush uses too little religious rhetoric compared to 8 percent who said he uses too much and 28 percent who said he used the right amount. Two-thirds of blacks said churches "should express their views" about politics—about the same percentage as white evangelicals—and 61 percent said they wanted more religious leaders advising the candidates. Asked the same question, only 19 percent of white mainline Protestants and white Catholics agreed.

On many of the issues over which liberals mock "the religious right," African-Americans are closer to the evangelicals than the rest of the Democratic Party. Fifty-one percent believe that God gave Israel to the Jews and that its existence fulfills the prophesy about the second coming of Jesus. The U.S. population as a whole disagrees, 46 percent to 36 percent; in fact, the only group that sees eye to eye with African-Americans on this question is white evangelicals."

WELL: The Midland friends (Claire and Camille) made me watch The Ring with them a few months ago, and unlike tacitus and most of his posters, I didn't find it particularly scary. Actually, I'm pretty sure Camille had to tell me not to laugh on more than one occasion.

LINK: Taking philosophy courses again has reintroduced me to the delight of a really well-reasoned argument, and norman geras has a really fine example up.

QUOTE: Terry Teachout discusses reverence for books:

"Never in a million years could I do such a thing. Just to read about it makes my skin prickle. I can’t even underline or highlight passages in the books I own—even though I approve in theory of underlining, and I love reading other people’s marginalia in used books and library copies."

I have very, very similar feelings on the topic. I was once urged in junior high, by a Sunday School teacher to underline parts of whatever (non-Bible) book we were reading for discussion, and the thought of writing in a book just horrified me. Pretty much every passage I like in pretty much every book I've read I can find without needing outside reference (as with Ivan Karamazov's declaration of hating individual people but loving humanity in The Brothers Karamazov, or Stephen's "I'll tell you what I do not fear" conversation in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man--or I just memorize the relevant passage). Moreover, I subscribe to the believe that intelligent people ought to have lots of books--I have maybe 400+, which is a decent start. Then again, I grew up in a house where there were shelves of books everywhere, piles of books on the floor, and various and sundry books elsewhere in the house, so maybe my norms are just way, way off.

Sasha Volokh also has good words on this topic:

"I, too, grew up believing (1) that owning books is good and noble and that you should own a lot if you're an educated person, and (2) that books are sacred and that you shouldn't deface them in any way..."

LINK: of purely personal interest: Amy Gutmann, the Princeton political theorist, is going to become the President of Penn. It sort of depends on who they replace her with, but I think this might be a good thing for the direction of the Politics department there...

WELL: It's not really a picnic waking up and being a liberal, either.

TWO TRENDS: which I've seen some evidence of for quite some time, but seem to be oddly contradictory:

1. An increasing number of college-agers self-identify as libertarians.

2. College-agers who attend church or affiliate with a particular group within the Judeo-Christian tradition are becoming increasingly orthodox.

LINK: I can't believe I'm posting poll numbers before either Upper Left or TPM, but I am: the latest poll I've found, which confirms my tentative New Hampshire thesis, though I'll wait to formally make a prediction until I've seen the numbers through Friday.

UPDATE: Kevin Yaroch beat me to the punch.

ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT REALIST THEORIES OF DEMOCRACY:

evangelical outpost notes that most people don't support major policy changes on any contentious social issue.

Diotima points out that even politically savvy people don't necessarily know that much about what makes politics go:

"I went to the College Republican National Convention this summer and was appalled by how the whole thing seemed to center around W-worship rather than any sort of coherent set of conservative principles."

LINK: Jeff Jarvis finds a category for political moderates to which I don't belong.

Then again, I'd argue that Jeff is wrong, and he's actually more dogmatic than he assumes (you can't be a non-indifferent moderate and not be dogmatic).

WELL: TruePravda asks, I attempt an answer:

"Do the Democrats actually think that there are a large number of Americans who would willingly pay more taxes?"

Short answer no, with a but; long answer yes, with an if.

No, most people are not willing to pay more in taxes, but they do enjoy the benefits of government programs and largesse.

Yes, many people would be willing to pay more taxes if they believe that money is going to some worthwhile cause. No one would object, presumably, to paying an extra dollar in taxes to raise the wage of a member of the military. No one (I hope) would object to paying a little more in taxes to make sure that all children can get the immunizations they need for free if they aren't covered by insurance. Presumably no one minds the money they pay to their state to pave the roads, and no one would mind a increase that would make the roads better (especially if you live in Michigan), so long as the average amount each person would have to pay marginally were reasonable.

The big problem Democrats often have is that they get stuck arguing on raising taxes in a vacuum. Ted Kennedy might think the world would be a better place if marginal income over $300,000 a year got taxed at 90%, but it's not because he thinks that rich, successful people should be screwed over just because they're rich and successful. It seems like a basic point of economics to me that the coercive taxation ability that government has allows for economies of scale that make certain things much, much more affordable (education being a fine example).

The counterargument is the Rosemary Nagle Game argument, which says basically that if you take it as a true psychological fact that people will always prefer a marginal tax cut to a marginal tax increase (in a circumstance where that tax increase doesn't go to one of the above-listed things), there will be a race to the bottom in terms of who can cut taxes the most. This is a fine pragmatic argument, and certainly it's dangerous on a pragmatic level for Democrats to oppose tax cuts, but taking this view also requires ignoring the normative element in the policy debate.

QUOTE: Dan Drezner asks the same question OGIW asked me this morning:

"Oh, and one last thing -- what the hell are steroids in professional sports doing in the friggin' State of the Union?"

QUOTE: Matthew Yglesias points out something I puzzled a bit over during last night's SOTU:

"I'm already seeing the president's thingy about how terrorism can't be fought with indictments alone praised on all the conservative sites. The president is right about this, of course, but he's so right that no one disagrees with him. In the wake of 9/11, virtually everyone felt we had to demand that the Taliban hand Osama over and shut down the camps. When they refused, everyone agreed that we had to go to war. Indicting people is a wonderful thing, but as we all learned on 9/11 it doesn't work very well when the guy you indicted just gets to hang out in another country."

LINK: best use of "smoking crack" in a humorous post on conservatism ever.

LINK: Upper Left gives you all the baseline numbers you'll need for your New Hampshire predictions.

WELL: In re Kevin Yaroch's open pondering:

"I'm still trying to figure out what happened to Kerry and Edwards in Iowa, and whether it will happen in other states..."

The answer is fairly simple, I think: no one who voted in the caucus paid much attention to what had been happening before about a week ago. They knew a few things: Gep seemed a little bit desperate, Dean was the angry guy with th annoying volunteers, Kerry had experience and Edwards was the optimist. Voters like experience and optimism, so they voted for Edwards and Kerry.

As to whether this will continue: look to who Dean and Clark go after, if anyone. Kerry probably needs (and can get) another win, and Edwards probably needs to get about 15% (which should be no worse than a fourth place finish). But the basic structural fact doesn't change: most people who are going to vote aren't paying much attention to what's going on, so momentum and perception count for everything.

LINK: This strikes me as a really good exposition of the problem that some within the evangelical community have from time to time:

"These people [anti-dating advocates] wish to create such a a fear of dating in young people that they will wait to date until they are mature enough to do so with proper respect and self-control. Unfortunately, this fear does not magically disappear when the people mature, but rather lingers on. In addition, the resulting lack of any substantial personal interaction with people of the opposite sex makes it nearly impossible for these people to begin venturing out. Dating suddenly becomes a major life event that is greatly magnified out of proportion. Rather than just being a time to "hang out" and have fun, a date becomes greatly magnified in their minds, such that considering asking someone out on a date requires the careful thought and consideration of asking the person to marry them."

I'm not unsympathetic to the argument that God puts the right person in front of you at the right time (I mostly think that's true in most cases), but the extreme view seems to lead to total passivity: part of what my dating experience, but moreover, my experience having a large number of close friendships with women has taught me is that there are a lot of wonderful character traits that I have a lot of respect for, but absolutely no desire for in the theoretical girl I wish to marry. More importantly, dating experience has taught me that what you're actually looking for is not what you think you're looking for. And I think you miss out on all of that if you go the Courtship route instead.

LINK: I would've never figured Dave Mustaine for one of us, but it's always good to have more people on the team, especially IF THEY ROCK!!!*

*I actually don't like Megadeth at all, but that's just me.

LINK: this is HILARIOUS. I'm making a mix CD for Our Girl In Washington that begins with this.

YEAH, HE JUST LOST ME: the tax thing. I mean, it's one thing to think lower taxes are good. It's another to try and make the other guy look slimy for disagreeing with you. And it's another thing altogether to do it when you're the President.

I thought the foreign policy stuff was good, but not as good as last year.

But on the plus side, GWB knots his tie in the same style I do (proportional with the size of the collar). I didn't think the red worked, though.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

"On the one hand, this is seriously twisted, something only a libertarian could come up with."

-Sara Butler

WHY THERE WON'T BE A BROKERED CONVENTION: CalPundit discusses the possibility. I tend to disagree:

1. There are four big candidates in the N.H. race now: Kerry, Dean, Edwards and Clark. Dean has the numbers (right now) and the organization, Clark has the polling trend in his favor, and Kerry and Edwards have the mo.

1.1 Dean and Clark must finish either #1 or #2 to stay viable--Dean has to do well to counteract the perception that he's slipping (so if he's #2, he has to be very close to #1). Clark has to do that well or his momentum will slow down, not a good thing for the further-out primaries.

1.2 Kerry is probably going to finish in the top 2.

2. Obviously, this means that Clark or Dean will not finish in the top 2. If it's Clark, then he's pretty much done--if he doesn't quit officially, his support is going to start weakening. If it's Dean, he'll probably fight on until he gets statistically eliminated, but he'll start to lose his non-fanatic support.

2.1 Every not-top four candidate (assuming #4 doesn't drop out, of which there's a high probability) will drop out either directly after N.H. or soon after.

3. There is a strong (i.e. non-trivial) possibility of a Edwards 3rd place finish in N.H.--anything lower signals trouble for the campaign's long-term prospects.

3.1 If Edwards doesn't finish #1 in South Carolina, he's done. And not just because I suspect he'll be having money troubles by then.

4. What's really going to keep the possibility of a brokered convention at bay is the question of where supporters go when their main candidate ducks out--this is the key question, about which I don't have anything beyond pure speculation, but I see Kerry and Edwards (especially the latter) being beneficiaries as people drop out of the race, and I also see a non-trivial number defecting from the Dean/Clark camp in the near future. The 1-3 dynamics suggest a four-candidate field won't last past N.H., and a three-candidate field won't last past South Carolina, but it's #4 that determines who wins.

LINK: Matthew Yglesias plays the 'what if' game, and gets the right answer.

LINK: David Brooks suggests I may be a 55-year old female schoolteacher.

WELL: Much more bloggery tomorrow on why Edwards has me excited at the prospect of the Democratic nominee again, an explanation of why Kerry and Edwards did so well after struggling for so long, and why my very, very flawed methodology for predicting the final outcome actually worked pretty well... but only after I'm done discussing the politics of Solon and Herodotus for class. Fun!

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

"FedEx doesn't move as fast as momentum does."
-John Edwards volunteer Abraham Kneisley, on the lack of signs, buttons, etc for the Edwards campaign, as quoted in TAP

LINK: Ah, another Ann Arbor blogger worth reading, but only really for people who live here:

"The piece also notes that Starbucks will be opening at Main and Liberty, "bringing a high-profile chain presence to the block." Well, about time."

As Our Girl in Washington and I put it earlier today:

OGIW: The last thing we need in Ann Arbor is another Starbucks.
Me: No, the last thing we need in Ann Arbor is another Jimmy John's.
OGIW: Four in a one square-mile radius is kind of a lot.

LINK: The new voter myth debunked. This one has been troubling for the Democrats for a long time, so hopefully the powers that be will figure things out soon.

LINK: Le Sabot Post-Moderne questions what we're doing in South Korea if South Koreans don't especially like us being there. Makes me think:

"How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child!"
-King Lear, Act I, scene iv

Which actually strikes me as a rather good analogy. We do have something like a responsibility for the protection of the South Koreans (so long as the threat is as proximate as it is with the crazies in North Korea), and their not liking us doesn't vacate that responsibility any more than, say, having your teenager be mad that you are 'invading their privacy' means you should cease to care about what they're doing.

Maybe this is why my political philosophy professor said I considered paternalism a legitimate basis for governmental action.

LINK: The turnout problem for Gep and Dean.

QUOTE: Born-again Edwards supporters? It may not be as specious a comparison as you think:

"Edwards's presentation over the last week here is more intense and more theatrical. He arrives and departs to rock music blaring from his bus. He draws huge crowds that spill outside of union halls and community centers. He delivers his stump speech in a theatre-in-the-round setting where he stands dramatically in the center of a circle of Iowans. His longtime message of tying his own working class background to a set of policies meant to address middle-class anxiety remains unchanged. Grafted onto it more recently is lots of language about hope, optimism, and an end to the petty sniping that has characterized the campaign. Unlike the events of the other candidates, most of the people at Edwards's events have never seen him before. Many have come out because they watched his final debate appearance, which won rave reviews, or read that he was endorsed by The Des Moines Register.

You can actually watch and feel the crowd metamorphose from folded-arm skepticism to open-minded-curiosity to head-nodding support. "The truth of the matter is this," Edwards says in his closing argument at one stop, "We Democrats have always been the party that believes you don't look down on anybody. That you lift people up. That you don't tear people apart. You bring them together. We are the party that believes that in our America the family you're born into and the color of your skin will never control what you're able to do. I don't for a minute believe I can do this by myself. But I believe that you and I can do it together. Here's why: Because I believe in you. And you deserve a president who actually believes in you. Join me in this campaign! Join me in this fight..." The rest is drowned out by a standing ovation."

QUOTE: Hubert Humphrey in 1948, singlehandedly putting civil rights onto the American political agenda:

"To those who say, my friends, to those who say, that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late! To those who say, to those who say this civil-rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: the time has arrived in America for the Democratic party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights!

People, people -- human beings -- this is the issue of the 20th century. People of all kinds -- all sorts of people -- and these people are looking to America for leadership, and they’re looking to America for precept and example.

My good friends -- my fellow--Democrats -- I ask you for calm consideration of our historic opportunity.

Let us not forget -- let us do forget -- the evil passions, the blindness of the past. In these times of world economic, political, and spiritual crisis, we cannot -- we must not -- turn from the path so plainly before us. That path has already lead us through many valleys of the shadow of death. Now is the time to recall those who were left on that path of American freedom.

For all of us here, for the millions who have sent us, for the whole two-billion members of the human family, our land is now, more than ever before, the last best hope on earth. I know that we can -- I know that we shall -- begging here the fuller and richer realization of that hope -- [have] that promise of a land where all men are truly free and equal, and each man uses his freedom and equality wisely and well."

LINK: Let's all be not even a little bit shocked that I ended up nearly dead center on another political compass test. My only complaint is that I ended up maybe a little to the right of where I am because of the phrasing of the first half of the questions, which leaned as Labour Party-liberal as that other Political Compass test does libertarian.

(Link via Kevin Yaroch)

Note also my neighbor the next cell to the left. Interesting.

LINK: Dan Drezner sums up my rationale for liking Edwards' position despite his supposed lack of ground organization, even if he admits there's not a lot of evidence for that supposition (for me, I presumed that Kerry would win big amongst urban caucuses, and win a fair share throughout the rest of the state. I presume Edwards' biggest support to be in rural precints, with some spillover strength in suburban areas).

WELL: I'd just thought I'd note that if you take my previous prediction of how the general election will go, tip North Carolina to the Democrats and calculate, the Dems would end up winning.

LINK: I will toot my own horn a little bit and point out, via the absolutely indispensible Upper Left, that the poll numbers look a little bit like my prediction for the Iowa Caucus.

LINK: Something to keep in mind if you're ever planning on running for office.

Fortunately, I don't think the same thing will apply to hiring interviews:

"Is it true that you once posted on your blog that a consequence of realist political theory is that you can't trust poll numbers?"
"Yes."
"Oh. Interesting."

not quite the same thing.

LINK: Ann Arbor does have some blogs, apparently, including one Mr. Joan Cole. Odd.

(thanks to Kevin Yaroch for the tip)

LINK: for my own purposes for later: CJR blog

LINK: The economics of this Matthew Yglesias post strike me as fundamentally sound.

QUOTE: Diotima:

"Government is bad, so can we really use government as a tool to lessen people's dependence on government?"

This is the operative premise of Hamilton and Madison in the Federalist Papers, no?

STOP ME BEFORE I BLOG AGAIN: I almost made it 24 hours without posting something... almost...

WELL: Joe Carter:

"As anyone who has spent more than five minutes in the blogosphere knows, libertarianism is a remarkably fast-growing political movement."

I'd say rather that libertarianism is a remarkably fast-growing political movement within the blogosphere, largely because single-issue libertarians (people who subscribe to that label before liberal or conservative) are the vast minority in the country, generally well educated, and completely ignored by the major parties. Even the fair number of people I know who have libertarian sympathies are willing to abandon them when their more serious ideological pursuits require it. Mostly this is because libertarianism runs along the current alignment of politics in America*.

*As libertarianism is a offshoot of liberalism, and both major parties in America subscribe to liberalism as their dominant fundational political doctrine, so a libertarian could (theoretically) be as at home in one party as the other.

I CAN'T SAY I'M SURPRISED:

"[To] serve God properly we must learn to give up our own wills, thoughts, and desires. Why? Because otherwise we will be wise in our own conceits and will imagine that we can serve God with this or that, and thus spoil everything."

You are John Calvin! You're the most intellectual and thoroughly intense theologian on the block. You know what you're talking about and you recommend people to ignore you at their own risk. Yeah, baby, you know your stuff. You speak in riddles and confuse people for fun. Still, this hurts your social skills a lot... and you end up always appearing arrogant and rude.

What theologian are you?

A creation of Henderson

WELL: My inner commutarian is about to come out, so beware.

Ben Domenech has an interesting think-blog about the benefits of home-schooling. I will, of course, be taking the opposite side here.

The problem is that there are essentially three public policy options: the full public funding, the actual public funding, and the homeschool. Public policy working the way it does (the Rosemary Nagle game, and the political preferences of some people for lower taxes over higher social benefits), teachers will be perpetually underpaid, infrastructure will be sub-par, and the educational experience will be shoddy. It's not surprising that homeschooling (especially in the hands of dedicated parents, which seems to be a pre-requisite of home-schooling in the first place) produces better results, because the effort and money will be better targeted.

But let's imagine a Shangri-La for a moment, where there's a large number of well-educated people (some might aver one of the highest per capita concentrations of PhDs in the country) where people constantly vote up their property taxes to keep their schools at the highest possible levels of quality. And let's suppose further that there existed private individuals with some money to throw around, allowing for a high variety of cultural experiences (including a very, very nice library collection). One might be inclined to argue that, should such a place exist, it might provide as flexible and excellent an educational environment as any home school.

The moral of this particular story? Collective actions allows buy-ins on a scale otherwise impossible (school buildings, state-of-the-art science labs, libraries), but only if you're willing to pay for them. If you're not, don't be surprised if those collective institutions underperform.

A QUIBBLE: Diotima says:

"This sounds like a type I am quite familiar with - the woman who got the idea that femininity means acting like a sorority girl, emoting rather than thinking, being passive-aggressive rather than open and honest." [emphasis mine]

Maybe it's just my experience with more than a few sorority girls who make for wonderful interlocutors (including my sister) on topics both serious and not, but this has been one of those stereotypes that has always really bugged me. I understand that they're probably exceptions to the rule, but it still bothers me a little.

"I will admit I've had my temptations in this direction, sitting in class after class listening to young women begin every single comment with "Well, I just feel..." and dealing with passive-aggressive roommates who won't just come out and ask me to turn off my music. "

I'll have to check with Our Girl on Mary Street about this one (she being my resident linguistic anthropologist), but I'm pretty sure that this is a classically 'female' use of deintensifiers and qualifiers (though it is not exclusively female, as I tend to qualify many of the statements I make, this one being a case in point).

LINK: So much Buffy, your head will explode.

UM, NICK, DID YOU PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT THE POST WAS ACTUALLY ABOUT?: Louis Vuitton handbags are so ugly, it's just wrong. I do sort of like Burberry scarves, though, so long as they're not the tan plaid.

More seriously, though, I think there's a conceptual link between Joe's observations about the really sickening aspect of Japenese men's preference for the schoolgirl-type (if not actual schoolgirls), and Sara Butler's observations on the Playboy-means-women's-freedom argument.

Two thoughts, in outline form:

1. Clearly part of the problem is that men aren't being adequately socialized into behaving like decent human beings.
2. Equally it seems that there's a problem with women's self-definition. The article Joe links to mentions that women tend to abet men's schoolgirl prediliction, and Ms. Butler's article was written by a woman. Something seems to be missing definitionally: where the line gets drawn between a healthy level of self-respect and comfort with all of the various aspects of femininity, and when it spills back over into perpetuating the same old stereotypes, just at a level where all the participants are more debased.

QUOTE: Jeff Jarvis:

"They are treating the primaries as their big fight. For them, it's all about venting, even revenge.

But that doesn't find a leader. That doesn't create a winner. That doesn't build the nation. That just makes them feel better.

And we, the people, are smarter than that. Whether in politics or media or business, you make a mistake if you think we live on the edges. Network executives do it all the time: If we like one hour of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, we'll want 40 hours, right? And for a while, we do. We Americans are cultural and political and marketing bulimiacs -- binge, purge, binge, purge. But then we've finished purging our latest appetite, and suddenly you're Regis Philbin -- or Howard Dean -- left standing there, yesterday's fad, yesterday's news. Nobody wants to be a millionaire anymore. Nobody wants to just bitch anymore.

All the Deaniac pundits -- and the posters on those weblogs -- may have pushed Dean too far, not toward radical views but toward radical negativity (just read that Krugman snippet again). And Dean let himself be pushed. It felt so good. The people enjoyed getting that out of their tummies. But now it's time to get serious. Now it's time to build. Now it's time to find a winner."

VIEWS ON THE IOWA CAUCUS:

evangelical outpost points out that it doesn't really mean anything.

Dan Drezner speaks for the political nerd in me:

"As a politics junkie, I love what's going on in Iowa. Four candidates with roughly the same level of support the wekend before the caucus? That's awesome, baby!! How long has it been since this many candidates had a legitimate shot at winning Iowa this late in the day?"

QUOTE: Oh, sure, OxBlog pointed out the intro is good, but the rest of it's not so bad, either:

"It is a very virulent season, and one of the consequences of the pitiless, sectarian, self-loving, money-worshipping ethos of the Bush administration is to have made rage seem like reason, and to have erased from the recent memory of Democrats the great debate about the direction of the party that ended with the creation of the New Democrat, who, for all his or her weaknesses and mistakes, managed to combine a genuine concern for national security with a genuine concern for civil liberties, the ethical responsibilities of American power with the ethical responsibilities of American prosperity. But now the Democrats despise Bush so much that they are feeling pure again, which is always the beginning of their end. (I thought that Bill Clinton established once and for all the political utility of impurity.)"

WELL: I just played around with the poll numbers a bit and came to the following not-final conclusion about the Iowa Caucus final standings:

Kerry-- 32%
Edwards-- 29%
Dean-- 24%
Gephardt-- 15%

A few notes:

1. methodology: I took a recent poll where Kerry and Dean's numbers were close, then predicted the move of each of the candidates between now and Tuesday (based on my highly-biased perception of where they've been going lately; thus, Dean down, Kerry up). I further dropped all the candidates who would be unable to muster 15% statewide, on the assumption that if they can't do it across the state, they won't do it in enough caucuses to make a difference, then reapportioned their vote shares where they were likely to go.

2. assumptions: I'm assuming Dean and Kerry are going to partially block each other from doing well because they compete for the same votes in the bigger cities. This could entirely be wrong: Upper Left probably knows better than I do.

3. Possibilities: I'm not going to rule out the possibility of a Gephardt collapse below the 15% threshhold statewide. I'm also not denying the possibility of a much, much bigger Kerry win, or even an Edwards win.

4. Take it to the bank: Dean at #3, and his campaign going into a tailspin from which it won't recover.

SIMILIE OF THE WEEK: from TNR's &c:

"Listening to Kerry warm up a crowd is like listening to your parents talk dirty to one another"

LINK: I'm from Michigan. My friend is from Texas. It was cold out today. Hilarity ensues.

BEAUTIFUL LOGICAL ARGUMENT OF THE WEEK: Joe Carter on the mutual exclusivity of postmodernism and Christianity. It's breathtaking.

Incidentally, my completely crazy epistemology professor had one of the most brilliant takedowns of relativism I've ever heard: it wants to claim that it's epistemological position is an entailment from the world being a certain way, but it's really just a type of justification definition that is so specious it has to be rejected prima facie.

This took him five minutes. It took him three classes (80 min. per class) to get to the lesson plan for the term. He's crazy.

LINKS: Centerfield and New Covenant.

Picking the shortest post on a blog that does really (really) good long posts, there's this interesting bit about the importance of swing voters. I wholeheartedly agree, though would like to point out one thing further: all of the states which could be reasonably described as 'swing states' (New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and possibly Oregon as well) all went Democratic in 2000*. Even if they win all of those, and win back West Virginia, the Democratic candidate would still lose the general election. Obviously, swing voters in swing states does not a winning strategy make.

*you could make a plausible case that W. Virginia will swing back (highly likely), and it's generally true that no one knows what will happen with Nevada, but I'm not really counting those for present purposes.

New Covenant's post on existentialism and Christianity is interesting, except that it again identifies existentialism only with its Camus-ian variety. A great number of the suppositions of, say, a Kierkegaard would be wildly unobjectionable to most Christians.

LINK: The Nation helpfully explains to us all why ant-Semitic behavior is not, in fact, evidence of anti-Semitism. That was nice of them.

QUOTE: Fareed Zakaria from the Slate piece everyone's been linking to lately:

"'I've often been associated with the "democratization spillover" argument, so let me point out that the elimination of Saddam Hussein has been a big plus for American national security. The most anti-American and expansionist regime in the Middle East has disappeared. An actual and potential threat to Israel, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Kuwait has been eliminated. A violent, rejectionist state has faced consequences. This has had a sobering effect on the region: See Syria and Libya's recent behavior. Given our interest in a stable Middle East, this is good.

Given our growing interest in a more decent Middle East it is even better. For the last few decades we have defined deviancy down in that region. Behavior that would be utterly unacceptable from other countries gets a pass because it's the Middle East. If we learned tomorrow that, say, the Brazilian government was supporting various terror groups, trafficking in chemical and biological agents, and allowing its media to glorify anti-American violence, we would be appalled. When it's Syria we shrug our shoulders and say, "It's the Middle East.""

LINK: Kevin Yaroch endorses the right guy for the Dem nomination, and for the right reasons, too. Just don't go back to Dean, Kevin.

LINK: You've seen the new madponyness, right?

Something tells me Kristin Madpony picked the wrong polisci classes to take:

"and the first class i did finally make it to? "genocide and u.s. intervention." and the second? "weapons of mass destruction."

oh, what a semester it's shaping up to be."

Incidentally, I'm taking a class in political modeling this term. When people ask me what classes I'm taking, and I say I'm in a modeling class, they tend to look at me askance. I can't imagine why they would...

REASONS TO LOVE HAVING A PHYSICAL DICTIONARY: rather than the online counterpart--in looking up a word just a moment ago, I ran across one of my favorite (and dramatically underused) words: 'inspissate," with a lovely bit of etymology and a quotation from George Barkley which is completely useless in trying to understand what the term means. Oh how I love thee, Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

WELL: So I've been reading the comments on Yglesias' Bush=Hitler post, as well as the responses to the 'Bush in 2004' in which I involved myself in the argument, and I have sort of a serious question to ask: let's grant the proposition that Bush's policies have been less than stellar (though I'm not entirely prepared to concede this) and that getting him out would be good because Democratic policies would be at least marginally better--this seems like a legitimate set of arguments to me.

Does anyone seriously believe any of the following:

a. Bush's policies will cause irreparable harm to the country (such that a Democratic Congress and President could not at some point step in and reverse the trend)?
b. Bush is actually equatable with a fascist?

QUOTE: Diary of a Dean-o-Phobe:

"Ruy's thing these days is to unify the Democratic party and snuff out faction fights. It's a noble sentiment. But, like the pacifists of the 1930s, his is a noble sentiment utterly mismatched for the times. Ruy, your party is about to be taken over by maniacs! There's still time to stop them! Yes, it's nice that the maniacs bring needed energy to the Democratic Party. And yes, the Democratic establishment leave a lot to be desired. But putting people like Joe Trippi--who are completely deluded about the state of the country outside the tiny liberal sliver in which they reside--in charge is not going to help the liberal cause. This is not the moment to be a noncombatant in the party's internecine battle."

QUOTE: Matthew Yglesias talks some sense:

"Turns out that Bush is Hitler after all. Except that obviously he's not. And it's a shame, too, because the story actually raises some legitimate questions about the future of US-Canadian relations under new Prime Minister Paul Martin, but it's essentially impossible to have a rational discussion about this with people crying "Nazi!" at every turn."

The piece he links to is indeed almost unbelievably stupid.

LINK: TPM has the latest polls and analysis.

LINK: Ben Domenech has an interesting discussion on hockey, which is his 4th favorite sport, but only my sixth: behind baseball, the Tour de France (you'd think that watching people ride their bikes for five hours would be boring, but it's surprisingly gripping TV), football, basketball and World Cup soccer. This is. of course, heresy for someone who lives in the metro Detroit area, and I will watch the Wings in the playoffs, but I never quite 'got' the sport.

LINK: TAP has an interesting dicussion of the possibility that this year's Democratic nomination could go down to the wire. Except that this never happens. Anyone who's ever looked at a model of how primary contests go will note that though the situation always looks tough at the beginning, it always works out in the end (go back to the Dems in 1992 to see this at work): money follows the people with momentum, and only a small number of candidates (perhaps two) can claim a victory after a primary that anyone will take seriously.

LINK: Everything at Ryan Lizza's blog is endlessly fascinating, at least for those of us who enjoy knowing the arcane details of tracking poll numbers and what-have-you.

LINK: I might just be spacing out on finding the permalink, but Mr. Pete's Journal has a nice post on Iran:

"This sounds interesting. A plan for the peaceful removal of the mullahs? It would be wonderful if it happened, especially if a new government in Iran was committed to democracy, individual rights and rule by law. I can't see that the mullahs would willingly give up power. Peaceful resistance, along the lines of the successful resistance against the British in India, doesn't seem to me that it would be effective against the brutal theocracy in Iran. Gandhi's non-violent resistance in India was effective in large part because the British could not conscience aggressive retaliation against passive resistance. In my view, the ayatollahs would not have such restraint. In Iran, I fear non-violent resistance would be met by brutal retaliation, arrests and torture.

I look forward to hearing this plan for peaceful removal of the Islamic Regime. If it is realistic, can be carried out, and is followed by a democratic, secular government that respects the rule of law and individual rights, it would be a fantastic and wonderful victory, indeed. The people of Iran, and the whole world, would be much better for it."

WELL: I think Discoshaman is half right here:

"The crisis of leadership in the Democratic Party comes into sharp focus when you look at whom they've chosen as their front-runners. Rejecting a passel of experienced mainstreamers, they've picked two guys who wouldn't even register in a healthy party -- a small-time governor and a retired, Republican general."

Except that I'm not sure what a candidate which would register with a 'healthy' party. If you're looking for winners over the last 30 years or so, you definitely want a governor, but as many have come from small states (Carter and Clinton, 3 general election wins between them) as from large states (Reagan and Bush, 3 general election wins between them). Otherwise you've got a bunch of Senators and Vice Presidents, who most of the time lose, except when they don't (Bush I, Nixon, Lyndon Johnson). And then there's the fine example of a President whose party preference was far from clear before he got into the race (Eisenhower) who, as I recall, did alright for himself.

In other words, I'm not sure there is any discernable trend in what previous qualifications make someone a good and electable president. I totally agree about Clark and Dean, though.

LINK: I forgot to mention yesterday that Yglesias' suggestion for a Federal Dating Service is brilliant (and funny), and reminds me of the following:

"Boswell: Then, Sir, you are not of opinion with some who imagine that certain men and certain women are made for each other; and that they cannot be happy if they miss their counterparts?

Johnson: To be sure not, Sir. I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter."

And if Samuel Johnson thinks it's a good idea, well, that settles the matter.

HOW ABOUT: Some contempt for the American system of government to go with your coffee this morning? From Matt Yglesias' comments section:

"But the Democrats have a major problem: as voting trends currently sit, Republicans have a structural advantage; the Democrats currently have a handicap. Democratic Senators represent more people than Republican Senators -- yet Republicans have the majority in the Senate. Ditto for the House (I think). Our Constitution essentially grants de facto voting power to land. And currently, the the vast, mostly empty tracts of land have people that vote Republican. It is ludicrous to have Wyoming, North Dakota, Alaska, and Montana having the same Senatorial power as California, Texas, New York, and Florida: yet they do."

Never mind the fact that the Senate was structurally designed to do exactly what it's now doing, and a complaint about that is a little silly (I think it's ludicrous that clocks tell time, don't you?): I'm going to expand upon the point Josh Marshall made awhile back about loyalty to the eventual nominee being the price of running in a party primary. If you want to talk about American Government, you have to be prepared to accept it for what it is (that is, not object to bicameralism*), or else your opinions shouldn't matter**.

*The equally vile Republican example is all those people who said in 2000 that if people couldn't figure out how the ballot worked, they didn't deserve to vote. Everyone who wants to and is legally able to should be allowed to vote, and to have that vote reflect their choice. I'm not saying we should run 2000 over again... Bush won, fair and square. But to be unable to recognize the value of the underlying principle is sort of disgusting.

**I'm not saying that you can't argue that, say, initiatives ought to be done away with, but that you really can't attack any of the Constitutionally enshrined principles, at least not without a much strong argument than the glib one tossed off in the comment.

QUOTE: Upper Left lets the Deanies have it:

"Asked about Dean's seemingly inexpicable reluctance to support automatic citizenship for people willing to volunarily serve the United States in uniform, Trippi attempted an explanation. It boiled down to this - Joe Trippi (and presumably Howard Dean) - fears that the promise of citizenship would provide people with "an enticement into a life they don't want to lead."

Well, that's a way to look at it, I suppose. Especially if you've never served, aren't particularly appreciative of those who do or have and can't imagine why anyone would want to.

But for me, and I suspect for most of my fellow vets and many other Americans, it's not a matter of enticement at all, but a matter of reward.

A well deserved reward to people willing to sacrifice for the liberty and opportunity that the United States represents to them.

Except, of course, unless you think those brown folks just couldn't feel that way."

I'm not familiar with this automatic citizenship proposal, but it strikes me as a brilliant idea.

LNK: If your leanings are to the politically nerdish, and you enjoy my endless speculation on how the 2004 election is going to turn out (based solely on electoral trends), you'll love this VodkaPundit post.

LINK: J.P. discusses the current state of NRO. I can only speak for myself, but aside from picking up Jonah Goldberg's column (whenever it's funny, anyway), there's not a whole lot I read there anymore--and I used to read pretty much all of it, and The Corner, everyday (way back long enough that I remember when they used to talk about The Moose), and I don't read it largely for the reasons J.P. elaborates.

WELL: I read Vox Popoli's answer to J.P.'s question. I think it's a perfectly fine and well-reasoned answer, though obviously I don't agree with the particular conclusion he comes to. But I find this troubling:

"To be sure, there are verses which suggest that the earthly authorities have been given their authority by God. However, it is worth noting that the apostles, who surely understood the Gospel better than we do, were constantly in trouble with the law, and indeed, most of them were executed by the legal authorities, as was Jesus Christ himself. This would seem to support the notion that earthly law and moral law are not one and the same."

Which is true, of course, but Jesus and the disciples were existing within society in a slightly different manner than most Christians do, that is, officially outside it. The pertinent question is whether we, as political actors, would do right to pretend as if we don't make moral judgments when it comes to our political judgments. Vox brings up the abortion example. If you truly believe that abortion is infanticide (which you reasonably might), can you really sit back and be utterly indifferent to the position the government takes on that question? You might well say that it's not the government's place to make that decision, or the coercive power of people as a group might make for an effective countervailing force, but even the refusal of the government to take a position amounts to a position, either passively approving or disapproving, depending on which is the status quo. You can want the role of government in these issues to be minimized, but you can't pretend like it doesn't exist, or that governmental role isn't a problem. Pretty much the last thing I intend to do is impugn anyone's motives or, worse, their Christianity; but I still see the tension there.

DO: note the lovely TrackBack feature now added, thanks entirely to the assistance of evangelical outpost, who should be at the same position on your blogrolls as he is on mine.

And I've now successfully pinged someone (J.P.) so, well, looks like this may be fun.

LINK: I thwack Matthew Yglesias often enough when he's wrong that I should admit he's right when he's right: the best thing that can happen for the Dems is to lose in 2004.

Basically, this is an example of the Al Smith phenomenon: there was pretty much no way he was going to win in 1928, the political environment at the time being what it was. But the loss happened to be the right kind of loss: the realignment that went on in the major cities was a key (previously missing) component of the 1932-36 landslides, and it was the Al Smith campaign that brought them into the Democratic fold. If you think that the demographics work in the long term interests of the Democratic Party (which they almost certainly do), a loss which allows you to a. avoid responsibility for the nasty problems likely to come up in the next four years (budget problems, mostly) and b. position yourself well for the future (if I were a strategist, I'd be looking seriously at building up Louisiana, Nevada and Texas, at a minimum), then taking a pass is the smartest thing the Dems can do.

This is actually a party-neutral argument, as I think it works for Goldwater in 1968 as well. And, in the interest of fairness, if I were a Republican strategist, I'd be looking at New York, Minnesota and West Virginia.

LINK: TruePravda's post is intriguing...

LINK: Dan Drezner points out the upsides of John Edwards.

DO: note the lovely RSS feed-thingie now working it's mojo on the left-side cell under my blogroll. Don't ask me what it does, exactly, as I haven't read that yet.

Trackback may happen soon-ish, as well.

WELL: I'm not exactly J.P.'s intended answerer, especially as libertarianism is the only major political orientation with which I have no sympathy.

It seems to me that the two have to be in tension with each other, because Christianity seems to imply a deontologist sense of ethics: certain things have to be morally unacceptable in all circumstances (e.g. murder is wrong). It seems to be a further consequence that these ethics are by their very nature at least partially coercive (so it does no good if you don't murder anyone if lots and lots of other people do). The essence of libertarianism (as it's always been presented to me) is to have the minimal possible level of governmental intrusion, so, for example, people should be free to drink, smoke, do drugs etc etc, so long as in doing so they hurt no one else. Now, especially if you subscribe to an evangelical form of Christianity, it seems like you can't be indifferent to the fate of other people to the level that libertarianism seems to require.

Do note the frequent use of 'seems.' I'm prepared on this one to be proven wrong, since there may be a way of closing that gap, though it doesn't occur to me right now.

YGLESIAS II: I like the first comment on this post.

YGLESIAS II: Here's a fine example of how really smart people can become obsessed by something not very interesting.

YGLESIAS I: Oh, sure, Clinton's definition of 'is' was scuzzy, but it was possibly the best sneaky lawyer's trick I've ever seen anyone pull off. Matthew Yglesias seems to agree.

LINK: Via Norman Geras, I found this highly entertaining quiz, on which I scored 10 out of 10.

NICK MAKES A PREDICTION: If Edwards wins in Iowa (hey, it could happen), he'll be the nominee for the Democratic Party. If someone else wins, all heck's gonna break loose.

QUOTE: Diary of a Dean-o-Phobe:

"In the piece, Dean details his belief that he can win the general election solely by appealng to the Democratic base. "I concluded that the only way we can win is to really get our base excited: African-Americans, trade unionists, latinos, women, and now young people," he said. Of course any intelligent strategist will tell you the Democrats must excite their base and win over the center. The intense opposition to Bush among liberals would seem to give Democrats their chance: they could run a candidate who appeals to the center, and excite the base with the prospect of deposing Bush. Ignoring the center is a recipe for disaster.

In the same story Joe Trippi responds to the notion that other Democrats might be electable thusly: "If these guys can't beat us, how the hell are they going to beat George Bush, Karl Rove, and $200 million?" The answer to this is so obvious it's embarrassing that the campaign manager of a front-running candidate would need to be told."

LINK: more nerdly coverage on possible outcomes of the Iowa Caucus from TNR's Ryan Lizza, who's now started a blog of his own, which promises to be good.

LINK: Christopher Hitchens and Paul Berman weigh in on Iraq today. The Hitch is in fine form, but I think Berman has the best quote:

"And today? The larger totalitarian movement in the Muslim world has been dealt two very powerful blows. The Taliban no longer rules Afghanistan and has been reduced to a guerrilla insurgency. The Baath in Iraq has likewise been reduced to a guerrilla insurgency. Some 45 million Afghanis and Iraqis, who had previously been confined to the lowest ranks of hell, are now engaged in a very tough fight—a fight in which there is at least a plausible hope of achieving a better society, animated by liberal values in a suitably Muslim version.

On Sept. 10, 2001, liberal-minded people in those two countries had no reason to think that life would ever be better. Today the liberal-minded Afghanis and Iraqis have been given a somewhat shaky boost, but a boost, nonetheless, which can only encourage their fellow-thinkers in other parts of the Muslim world. Strategic goals? These are the strategic goals."

LINK: Upper Left does some good firsthand reporting on the resolution to the Kerry-Clark brouhaha.

LINK: Give Upper Left a lot of credit for not letting offenses slide just because their candidate did them. Evenhandedness... I remember when we used to have that in the Democratic Party...

LINK: A Small Victory has a nice post on the complete meaninglessness of pop song lyrics, and why that doesn't really matter.

LINK: I don't even have words for how wrong I think this is:

"I'm generally against increasing funding for public universities. But if you're going to be public, you have to serve the needs of the taxpayer first, not the needs of your institution - and you have to be accountable for your expenditures."

though it sounds like an iteration of the Rosemary Nagle Game to me*.

*how the game is played: get a group of people together, and have them pick numbers between 0 and 100. Place money on the outcome of the game. Whoever is closest to 2/3 of the average gets all the money.

People will a lot of game theory will recognize that the equlibrium here is 0. This is sort of how a lot of political argumentation goes, as well: if you believe that it's a psychologically true fact that people don't like to pay taxes (or would be okay with cutting certain programs to pay less in taxes), you're going to get caught in a cycle where you bid down to 0.

LINK: David Brooks has got my number:

"This situation — Republican unity and Democratic fissures — means that the Democratic vote is less cohesive than the G.O.P. vote, at least on the presidential level. In a Bush-Dean matchup, 20 percent of Democrats would vote for Bush, according to a CBS poll, while only 3 percent of Republicans would vote for Dean. Over all, Bush leads Dean by 20 points. And in Iowa and New Hampshire, swing states where voters know both candidates well, Bush is up by significant margins.

In other words, at least at the moment, Bush has crashed through the 45/45 partisan divide. He is a polarizing figure, but there are many more people who support him than oppose him. And this support is not merely personal; it is built into the issue landscape. According to an ABC/Washington Post poll, 57 percent of Americans say they are more likely to support a candidate who supported going to war in Iraq, while only 35 percent say they would be less likely. According to Pew, 59 percent believe that the war in Iraq has helped in the broader war on terror.

All of this means two things. First, as we dive into this period of intense Democratic primary competition, it's worth keeping in mind that Democratic primary voters are a misleading snapshot of the electorate as a whole. Second, while the nation remains closely divided over all, and gravitational pressures will cause the general election to tighten, it is wrong to think that the electorate is fixed. There are millions of people who may lean toward one party or another, but who can be persuaded to support either presidential candidate.

At the moment, many are supporting Bush."

LINK: Dan Drezner suggests something I suggested a few months ago. Always good to know you're not crazy.

MEDIUM FUNNY: this OutKast parody, which is only kind of funny, but I was still sort of amused.

WELL: Kevin Yaroch establishes, entirely correctly, that I left out, oh, part of the conclusion and most of the premises in discussing how this particular post suggests the superiority of republican forms over government over democratic alternatives.

Essentially, it looks like the people of Iraq are not hostile to liberal democratic values as such, but it's unclear exactly how much support they have for a government that models western values. This isn't so much because they dislike western-style democracy as the concepts involved are a little fuzzy for them. The beauty of the republican form of government is its quasi-aristocratic status: that is, so long as there are enough people who get what's going on to run the country, then it really doesn't matter where the vast majority of people are at any one time. This was, as I understand it, the organizational principle under which our country flourished prior to Andrew Jackson.

Why a republican form? Because it can run roughshod over people's expressed non-western preferences until such a time as it becomes sufficiently obvious that there's a connection between a western-style government and the sorts of things they value (like free elections, civil liberties, what have you), at which point people's preferences will align with their interests, with positive pro-liberal democratic results somewhere off in the future.

If you start with democracy instead, then you have people's interests and preferences crosscutting, and you have it happening in a world where the is no stable elite (meritocratic or otherwise) to anchor factions, which seems to be a perfect recipe for chaos.

Hopefully that makes a little more sense. Hopefully.

LINK: CNN covering the situation in Iran.

HOWARD DEAN THE PELAGIAN:

"After five straight questions about Iraq and the war on terrorism, Fineman asks Dean, out of nowhere, "Do you see Jesus Christ as the son of God and believe in him as the route to salvation and eternal life?"

Dean, belying his reputation for having a hot temper, gives a low-key reply: "I certainly see him as the son of God. I think whether I'm saved or not is not gonna be up to me." " [emphasis mine]

Not to suggest that HoDo's not a Christian, of course, but didn't that particular controversy get cleared up pretty well by Augustine?

Salon's apoplexy on this is amusing as well:

"To be sure, faith is a relevant campaign issue, as is the question of whether Dean or other Democrats can connect with Christian voters, particularly in the South. But Fineman didn't merely ask if the Vermont doctor was religious; he phrased his question in a way to root out whether Dean subscribes to a particular kind of born-again Christianity."

I'll go out on a limb and say that the question as phrased actually applies to all Christians. But what do I know about theology?

UM: in re this, which I found via New Covenant:

"Too many of our lyrics are embarrassingly personalistic, about Jesus and me. Personal intimacy with God is such a wonderful step above a cold, abstract, wooden recitation of dogma."

Some of us enjoy the dogma. This does make me think that perhaps those of us with more, shall we say, nerdish leanings are probably bound to be outside and idiosyncratic within the church, which is either depressing or inspiring, depending on how you think about it.

LINK: Michael Totten names names of people who are in my position.

LINK: Tacitus has a good comment on HoDo's latest religion-related outrage:

"The candidate comes across as deeply insincere. The language used by Ungerer -- "neighbor" as signifying "fellow man" -- comes from the tenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke; it's doubtful that an educated person (and Dean certainly is one) would fail to recognize the allusion. Having made a public show of his Christian faith lately, the airy dismissal of the Biblical injunction about who is and is not your "neighbor" exposes that image as manufactured and false. If you're not familiar with it, the short version is that Jesus says everyone is your "neighbor" (although some act like it more than others); I can't think of a committed Christian that I know, left or right, who would deny this in any particular."

LINK: Hilarious, if a little nerdy even for me. I can think of at least one person who will appreciate the D&D references, though (and that person will go nameless).

LINK: Upper Left has a good summary of why not to trust Dean's number of supporters. You read Upper Left, right? Aside from the 'Boot Bush' items, it's all quite good political commentary.

LINK: When I heard about Roger Clemens, I figured A Small Victory would have an appropriate response. I was right.

LINK: I was perusing evangelical outpost's thoughtful argument on Wes Clark's position on abortion, and I realized that my previous objection to attacks against Clark may not have made my own position clear. Three things I think about abortion:

1. I have no problem with the partial-birth abortion ban, though stating this preference left a few of my friends aghast.
2. I think pro-choicers tend to underplay or ignore the emotional effects of abortion, but, having neither a uterus, nor ever having had an abortion myself, I'd like to minimize everyone's perception of how strongly I make that claim... I just sort of suspect that there's a tremendous emotional/psychological question involved.
3. I think Roe v Wade needs to be overturned, if only to get away from all the bad law that's piled up behind it (Planned Parenthood v Casey) and to make the debate about abortion about abortion again, and not regulations for abortion clinics and other sneaky back-door ways of not taking the issue head-on.

DO NOTE: That Andrew Sullivan (in his "The Dems Regress" post) takes the Democrats to task--rightly--for pandering far too much to minority votes with crude political arguments, then turns around and assumes that Sharpton's support and African-Americans votes are exactly the same thing, or that there's a direct causal link between them.

LINK: Bird Dog over at Tacitus defends the Boy Scouts. I had a 'character-building' Boy Scouting career (hated it at the time, but have come to see since then that sticking with it was one of the smarter decisions I ever made), and I'm not surprised whenever I hear it has really, really good effects on boys, who (remember the Claremont paper?) are in need of a good set of character-building experiences. Me likey:

"On a personal note, I have a 12-year son who is one merit badge away from making First Class. Our five years in Cub Scouts, and then Boy Scouts, has been about having fun, taking on new experiences and learning a few things along the way.

Sex is simply not brought up in Scouts. The environment is non-sexual, or asexual. There is no rational reason why anyone would choose to bring up their sexual orientation in the first place, straight or gay. There are references to God here and there, but that's not the focus at troop meetings or outings.

So here's my message. To the Left, go find and attack some other group that actually does pose a threat to American society. To everyone else, give the Boy Scouts some support, both financially and spiritually. This is a noble group with a long tradition of good works. They have played a major role in shaping boys into men, and young men into good citizens."

Gerald Ford, Neil Armstrong, Steven Spielberg, me... an illustrious group, no doubt...

WELL, THAT"S ALMOST AN ARGUMENT: excepting the specious assumptions and leaps of logic. From The Nation:

"Don't think and drive.

That was the message sent out by the FBI to roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies on Christmas Eve. The alert urged police pulling over drivers for traffic violations, and conducting other routine investigations, to keep their eyes open for people carrying almanacs. Why almanacs? Because they are filled with facts--population figures, weather predictions, diagrams of buildings and landmarks. And according to the FBI Intelligence Bulletin, facts are dangerous weapons in the hands of terrorists, who can use them to "to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning."

But in a world filled with potentially lethal facts and figures, it seems unfair to single out almanac readers for police harassment. As the editor of The World Almanac and Book of Facts rightly points out, "The government is our biggest single supplier of information." Not to mention the local library: A cache of potentially dangerous information weaponry is housed at the center of almost every American town. The FBI, of course, is all over the library threat, seizing library records at will under the Patriot Act."

HIYO! Jeff Jarvis on Roger Simon:

"That's not writing. That's wasting our time. That magazine should come with a tube of Vaseline."

LINK: Josh Marshall paints a picture for a big Dean defeat in Iowa, and some of us can't stop smiling at that thought...

LINK: The Angels are spending an awful lot of money to finish third in their division.

Then again, so are the Orioles.

LINK: this certainly accords with my experience, but I think The Elder might be expanding the zone too much: he's meshing moral and political development (at least that's the assumption I make when he labels one view the 'liberal' one, though I could be wrong). Having been out of philosophy for so long, I'm not prepared to make any blanket assertions about how people develop their sense of morality, but on the political question, I believe that the story given applies only to political elites (we're all included in that category), and not at all to the other 50%-75% of the population (depending on which sets of numbers you find to be the relevant ones).

QUOTE: Matthew Yglesias:

"I'm seeing a discussion on The Chris Matthews Show of the whole Dean/religion thing, and I'm left wondering how religious all these folks impugning Dean's religiosity are. It's not that a person needs to be devout in order to make observations about the politics of religion, but on the other hand it's hard to make assertions about what religious people are looking for in a candidate if you aren't one and don't know any. Certainly I don't know many observant people, so I think it behooves me to tread with caution in this area. Is Chris Matthews a regular church-goers? Tucker Carlson? David Gregory? Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think that they are. And yet -- that's the panel."

This is only true if you think that what religion is about is questions of theology, where regular church-goers would naturally have an advantage. If you're talking about religion in politics as a shortcut signal to a set of values or behaviors, then anyone with an understanding of politics could probably make a good guess at what religious people are looking for.

SO: (caution: extended rumination involving contrasting theories of democracy. you've been warned)

If you subscribe to a liberal view of democracy (basically, that people make more-or-less rational political decisions based on calculations of their preferences), you'd expect that any potential voter in any election would look at all the issues, figure out where they were on them, and then find the candidate who best matched up with those, regardless of party affiliation.

But then, you'd be wrong.

Look at Michael Totten, or Jeff Jarvis, Armed Liberal, or myself, all of whose politics seem to have gone on a serious whack since Sept. 11. For me (and presumably for the others, though I don't want to speak for them), I'd say that what has happened to my politics since then is not so much a repudiation as a reaffirmation of all the things I thought, especially on foreign policy, etc etc.

Similarly, it's hard to argue that Bush is exactly anathema to the FDR -liberal tradition: first new entitlement since Gerald Ford? check. huge increases in foreign aid? check. deposing nasty dictators for the heck of it? check. proposing massive new government programs to further things whose immediate benefits to the american people as a whole are not at all clear (Mission to Mars, meet rural electrification)? check.

And if you happen to also believe, as I do, that the inertia in the American legislative system is immense, and it serves the larger interests of the country to disrupt it as little as possible, you'd have another reason not to want a change in 2004.

So, if I'm a liberal (I'd still probably self-describe that way, despite some reservations), shouldn't I be voting for the guy who's going to make all the things I want happen?

Maybe.

But let's suppose, instead of a liberal model of democracy being the correct explanatory one, that a realist model is correct. You'd then believe that one of the first things children get socialized into when it comes to politics is party affiliation. I can remember proudly marching down the hall in first grade to vote in my school's mock election for Dukakis, and being aware that I was a Democrat because my parents were (well, my mother was. To that point, the only political figure my father had expressed respect for was John Anderson). I'm guessing everyone probably has a story similar to that. Studies by my own fair University of Michigan have shown a strong tendency for children to retain that initial party affiliation throughout their life, and you certainly can't get it when you're young from having a concrete grasp of the issues.

So why do I bring this up?

Watching all of the abovementioned fight, despite whatever they've written, to be allowed to retain the titles 'liberal' and 'Democrat' happens to mesh very nicely with my increasing uncertainty that I can actually break down and vote for GWB, even as he continues to pile on more policies and proposals I agree with. My list of people I would vote for if they got the Democratic nomination has been slowly expanding over the past few months (though will likely never get so big as to include Howard Dean). And I'm beginning to feel like I'll vote for the Democrat even if I hate them and love everything Bush does between now and then.

The conclusion I've drawn from all of this is that there simply can't be such a thing as a truly independent voter--the pull of one side or another is too strong, and the leap from one to the other is the most impossible feat in politics. Realist theory predicts all of this--all other theories do not.

LINK: Kevin Yaroch who, unlike me, is still in high school, makes a good set of comments on the teenage blogger phenomenon, and seems to kind of suggest that people who came onto the whole blogging thing as a result of spending so much time reading political commentary and news (as I did, and probably everyone who visits here) might be doing something entirely different than the NYT story people.

In a semi-related note, I'd be interested in hearing his theory (if he has one) as to why Ann Arbor (home of all us latte-sipping, Volvo-driving bobo meritocratic liberals) is so vastly underrepresented in the blogosphere.

ALSO: He makes a good case for being a small-r republican instead of a small-d democrat, though that might've been incidental to his point

LINK: Sara Butler points us all towards this post on Wes Clark's abortion litmus test. I'm a little concerned about this:

"“Life,” he said, “begins with the mother’s decision.” Of course, Clark also added this “I’m not going to get into a discussion of when life begins. I’m in favor of choice, period. Pure and simple." But I thought you just said life begins at the mother's decision. I am confused. What a sad state of affairs that candidates have to pander to a vocal minority of our population that promotes infanticide. Of course, I can see why some women might vote for him--he has made them God, determining when and if life begins. What a loser."

I realize I'm about to complain about a structural feature of how we talk about politics, but it does seem like referring to abortion supporters as a minority who promote infanticide might be crossing a line of decorum.

QUOTE: From Le Sabot Post-Moderne:

"Sometimes I think non-Calvinists picture us sitting people down and explaining the intricacies of predestination to unbelievers, and then telling them that if they're elected God will save them."

Of course, if you've ever been in the position where someone asks you to explain how that whole 'predestination' thing works (as most people who accept the idea generally don't have a lot of questions about it), you find that your audience is inclined towards impugning your motives to begin with.

ACTUALLY: I took a more in-depth look at Ben Domenech's reasons for opposing the Mars mission, and it struck me that it's actually a very good argument for why it actually is worth doing: there's something about the grand action that is inherently ennobling, and I for one think it may well end up having all sorts of positive influences on the development of technology.

WELL: My friend Lauren was nice enough yesterday to make me a list of 50 bands I should be listening to*, which she can do because she listens to American indie rock, and no one's ever heard of any of them (the mooney suzuki? ranier maria? the salteens? didn't think so). I briefly considered making one for her, but my list mostly consists for 90s Britpop and things any faithful listener to rock music would know (Patti Smith? Pulp? Let's Active?), and who needs someone to tell them Led Zeppelin is worth listening to?

Then it occurred to me that, you know, really famous bands like Led Zeppelin are good and all, but the proportion of really good songs they have is low compared to how famous they are. For instance, I could take everything you need to know about Led Zeppelin down to five songs:

1. "Friends"
2. "Hey Hey What Can I Do"
3. "Immigrant Song" --Live at the BBC
4. "When the Levee Breaks"
5. "Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp"

and you could never listen to anything else they'd ever done and not be missing terribly much. It occurs to me you could probably do this with other famous bands: The Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Beatles, Eric Clapton, etc etc.

*actually contains 24 bands

LINK: OxBlog discusses Tom Friedman's latest column.

"I happened to be in Istanbul when the street outside one of the two synagogues that were suicide-bombed on Nov. 15 was reopened. Three things struck me: First, the chief rabbi of Turkey appeared at the ceremony, hand in hand with the top Muslim cleric of Istanbul and the local mayor, while crowds in the street threw red carnations on them. Second, the Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who comes from an Islamist party, paid a visit to the chief rabbi — the first time a Turkish prime minister had ever called on the chief rabbi. Third, and most revealing, was the statement made by the father of one of the Turkish suicide bombers who hit the synagogues.

"We are a respectful family who love our nation, flag and the Koran," the grieving father, Sefik Elaltuntas, told the Zaman newspaper. "But we cannot understand why this child had done the thing he had done . . . First, let us meet with the chief rabbi of our Jewish brothers. Let me hug him. Let me kiss his hands and flowing robe. Let me apologize in the name of my son and offer my condolences for the deaths. . . . We will be damned if we do not reconcile with them.""

Which makes me very glad that I live in a country where we can go hammer-and-tongs at each other on questions of religion without anyone getting too bent out of shape, much less blown up (or other nastiness). Then again, it makes me wonder: I've often noted that the priorities I have as a Christian and the priorities I have as a lover of liberal democracy run counter to each other. I'm fortunate that I never have to choose between them, at least not in any serious way. But I feel like if I lived in Turkey (or any other hotspot of religious conflict in a democracy), I'd probably have to choose, which then leads to the obvious question: if you had to choose between eschewing some fervor in support of your religion (assuming you take your religion seriously) to help maintain the democratic stability of your country, and maintaining your faith strictly, whatever the consequences, which do you choose?

LINK: I consider the mission-to-Mars story (which Joshua Claybourn, among others, discusses well) to be so ridiculous as to not merit comment. I don't really buy the leftist line that all of the money we'd be spending on space could be better spent on schools, hospitals and military salaries--though they're all things worth spending money on. The argument seems a little insincere to me, as do most budget-related questions (the $87 billion for Iraq being another example), because it's nevr a question of do we spend our dollar here or our dollar there, as if there were only one, and giving more money to one area automatically made the others lose out. The genius part of the federal government is that it can, if it likes, procure two dollars and give one to each. Arguing that doing x takes money out of the hands of needy inner-city schoolchildren is about as serious as the argument that raising taxes takes money out of the hands of struggling small businessmen and farmers--it might, but it's certainly not a necessary consequence of those actions, and it's just demagoguery to say otherwise.

LINK: Yale Diva has HoDo's number on religion and morality.

LINK: I read this New York Times article on teenage bloggers with some interest, especially as Matthew Yglesias made a trenchant observations about the use of the word 'emo.'

I was talking, during Beckypalooza I, to a friend of mine who didn't know about my blog and briefly explained the concept to he. She didn't quite grasp that it's not so much an online diary as a way to talk about politics and various other interests, but she did definitively declare (and she's the sort to know these things) on blogging: 'that sounds so emo.'

So maybe it is emo.

LINK: David Brooks is judicious and fairminded on the question of Bush's immigration reform. I'm struck by the fact that the proposal doesn't seem to actually change anything: it admits that, yes, immigration law has overlooked the facts of the situation, but all that's really happening is that the exact same set of problems is being altered somewhat (in terms of threshholds) and mostly just put off until later. But, of course, given the choice between a good policy that doesn't resolve the fundamental questions but perhaps makes them more resovable someday and waiting for plans that address all the problems, well, the choice is obvious.

UMMMMMMMM...

"Regrettably, the number of applications we receive prevents me from reading your Statement of Purpose to determine your field/s of interest."

-Duke's political science program, in an e-mail to me. Good to know. I hate to think the trouble that reading 600 words would cause them, especially as my statement of purpose begins "My qualifications for graduate study in Political Theory are..."

WELL: Four parts to evangelical outpost's end-of-week roundup, and I make none of them. It's my fault, really, for taking a week off. Still, gives me something to strive for next week...

ALSO: J.P., I can take the hint about RSS. I'll do the trackback thing again when I have time; oddly enough, I only really have time on days I have classes... sooooo Sunday afternoon, maybe. I got Sundays off to be able to go to church at, you know, the time that normal people go (11:00), but after a few weeks there, I determined that I don't like it as much (too many of the people who just happened to roll out of bed at the right time). If you're there, you ought to sing when you're supposed to sing--don't pretend like you're too cool to be doing it. I promise God doesn't care how good or bad you are.

QUOTE: evangelical outpost:

"Best Reference to a Kansas Song in a Pseudo-Philosophical Post"

I'm pretty sure that 'best' and 'Kansas song' don't belong in the same sentence, unless it's 'best excuses to not listen to a Kansas song.' Which I mean in good fun... I have friends who listen to, oh, Whitesnake (or Poison, I can never keep that straight), and can still manage to find them to be decent human beings.

FROM ANOTHER MIX CD:

"High and Dry" Radiohead--The summer where I was the Fonz at Andy Nicholson's house was when I got the brilliant idea that we should cover Radiohead songs. We learned this one because, well, it was easy. It was just Andy and I and two guitars, him singing. Once we were done, his mother (who hated all of us except for Eric Jankowski, and hated our music most of all) came down and said "what was that you just played?" We told her. She said: "it was pretty--you should play it again." Maybe not the best musical moment of mine ever, but far and away the most special.

APOLOGIES: Light posting until tomorrow after work... tonight is night #2 of Beckypalooza, wherein all her friends and I celebrate the named's departure to Washington D.C. to become part of the problem (or a lobbyist for the League of Conservation Voters, if you see it that way).

Rest assured, however, that since we are nerds, we will discuss at least three, and possibly all five, of the following:

1. The 2004 election
2. The Democratic Primary, and whether Kerry's/Gephardt's/Clark's surges actually mean anything, including whether or not insurgent candidates can actually win major party nominations
3. Environmental regulation (boring, I know, but we'll balance it out by talking about labor politics, which is interesting)
4. realist v. idealist theories of democracy
5. how we're nerds because we spend our evenings talking about the above

WELL: I've been doing lots of liner notes for mix cds lately, which mostly consists of noting where I bought an album, or telling some interesting fact about the song. The idea is to be pithy and informative... most of the time. I just wrote this one that I like:

"Nuages" Django Reinhardt-- I like me some purdy geetar music.

LINK: Trouble's a-brewin' for HoDo, at least so far as Josh Marshall suggests. It looks like the anybody-but-Dean forces are gaining strength, and that 'anybody's name is Wes Clark.

I might vote for him, maybe, if I actually knew anything about his positions. I've been so focused on my HoDo hatred lately that it's squeezed out time for other things.

LINK: I approve of this Terry Teachout sentiment.

LINK: Like most junior high kids who had their parents buy copies of The Village Voice for them so they could read Robert Christgau's rock criticism, I have a little bit of love for Dan Savage. The OxBloggers obviously have it too. His advice column is, ahem, not for everyone (if you don't know what 'Santorum' is, consider yourself lucky), but his political views largely parallel my own--that is, he wrote a couple of columns before the Iraq War on how you could pick whatever rationale you wanted--Saddam Hussein was a bad man and had to go. Agreeing with me on politics will cover a multitude of sins.

QUOTE: My adoptee:

"It seems to me that the badness of George W. Bush is at least 70 percent a matter of lost opportunities. The nineties boom dealt him a strong hand on fiscal policy as did 9/11 in its way on foreign policy, and he's played both very poorly."

Funny, I feel the same way about Bill Clinton... oh Bill, why did you have to hurt me so?

NONSEQUITIR OF THE MILLENNIUM: Matthew Yglesias:

"Who knew that there were 30,000 Jews in Uzbekistan? Apparently, there used to be 100,000 until pretty recently, but most left for Israel or the USA. Based on everything I've hear, the remainder ought to strongly consider availing themselves of the opportunity to relocate as well. It's not a pleasant place. I went to an excellent Uzbek/Jewish restaurant somewhere in Queens one time."

LINK: evangelical outpost provides your slam-dunk theology/logic lesson for the day.

RUNNER UP, LOGICAL DIVISION: This Yglesias post from TAPPED.

LINK: I consider this sort of thing to be a good antidote to my occasional belief that people were a little smarter way back when.

(Link via Diotima)

LINK: The most important post I will probably neither read nor comment on. Yglesias mentioned it; Will Baude mentioned it (I think); Pejman mentioned it. It seems like an outside possibility I'll check this out later (maybe tomorrow), but I'm not sure about that.

QUOTE: As part of my ongoing service to prove that not everything Will Baude writes I find objectionable, I offer the following:

"And even if The New Republic were "just an idea depository with no real aim or purpose," what's so bad about that? Are ideas and arguments pointless except when in the service of a greater political vision? Why on earth should that be so?"

Of course, TNR isn't, and it's one of two publications I've subscribed to for a long-ish period of time with which I'm entirely happy (the other being Atlantic Monthly).

As just the sort of person TNR is looking for, I can assure everyone that it really does represent a cause, and even if you believe (as I do) that (ideal case) our portion of the party will be out to sea for a long time or (realistic case) we'll be making the jump to the Republicans within 20 years or so, the support that we offer now (financially by subscribing, and otherwise by blogging about their articles) really will matter at some point down the road. I read evangelical outpost because I mostly agree with what he says about religion, and when I don't, I think carrying on that dialogue is important. The same goes for, well, everyone else in my blogroll. Talking about politics, culture, and other interests we all have is, as my ancient philosophy professor would have said, "choiceworthy for its own sake."

QUOTE: Dan Drezner:

"Is it just me, or have a lot of online news sites started parsing their stories into more than one page? It used to be just the New York Times, but now the Washington Post is doing it too.

Is this a sign of prestige? Am I, as a reader, supposed to be wowed by the fact I get to click a couple more times to look at the whole story? Is this going to make me think, "Wow, it took five clicks to read the whole story. That's quality journalism.""

Hey, it works for The Nation. I generally read the first page of a story there, then see that there are four more pages in which they'll explain to me how I'm secretly abetting *'s agenda without even knowing it. Why do I read the Nation again, anyway*?

*Because I actually happen to agree with them on a large number of issues... they just happen to be so repellent when it comes to tone that I just can't look away.

QUOTE:

"That's the most color I've ever seen you wear."

-Lauren, on seeing me wearing a green sweater. Sadly, she's right.

You'd think that someone who's had a few people tell him he couldn't be Queer Eyed would expend a little more effort on his wardrobe. You'd be wrong, though. Tomorrow, however, I bust out the red Banana Republic merino wool v-neck sweater. That should be something.

DEJA VU: I have an unusually large number of classes involving my rereading things I've read several times. To wit:

Iliad, second time
The Republic, fourth time
Nichomachean Ethics, third time
Gorgias, third time
The Prince, fifth time
Second Treatise on Government, third time
Letter Concerning Toleration, second time
The Social Contract, fourth time
Theological-Political Treatise, second time
Discourse on Inequality, second time

...and these are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. As my Greek Political Thought professor pointed out today, there's a certain joy that comes from reading and rereading great works, and I wholeheartedly agree.

This may be another sign that I'm well suited to be a political theory professor someday.

LINKS: Ben Domenech thinks Joe Gibbs' return to Washington means a return to glory for the Redskins (he's probably right).

evangelical outpost thinks Parcells is the man with the Midas touch, not Gibbs.

My prediction for next year? The Lions. Consider: we won 2.5 times as many games this year as we did last year, without very many good players, and in the first year of a good coach. Since it's reasonable to expect that the coaching will be a little better and the players will be at least marginally improved, we can safely assume the rate of increase of wins will remain constant. Therefore, we can expect the Lions to go 12-4 or 13-3 next year. It's a lock!

QUOTE: From the Nation:

"In as much as the overwhelming majority of Americans did not know about the Bush-Hitler comparison until Gillespie publicized it, it would seem that the RNC chair is the one who should be apologizing."

So, um, let me see if I have this right. MoveOn subsudizes and publicizes the Bush-Hitler ad. Gillespie makes it possible for more people to see the Bush-Hitler ad, and complains about how making that comparison is way out of line. Ergo, it's Gillespie's fault for... um... being outraged? Letting people know what the ad actually looked like?

WELL: Kevin Yaroch, part of the small but highly influential Ann Arbor blog scene, makes some comments about my comments to his post on whether Dean is a centrist, and the possible effects of the internet. Everything he says is spot-on, I think, and I maybe don't give the internet enough credit as a vehicle to connect politically active people.

I do disagree, however, that the internet makes possible a more off-center candidate. All elections are about getting 51% of the people to back you. If you believe in single-peaked preferences*, then it sort of logically follows that the closer candidates are to the center, the more likely they are to win. I'm not necessarily saying this is a good thing, but it seems to be a structurally reinforcing aspect of the American political system. The exception is, of course, if you believe (as I think Kevin does, though I don't wish to speak for him) that what the internet uniquely makes possible in the injection of a large number of non-centrist voters into the political scene. But, I generally contend that people who are on the internet and utilizing it for, say, the purposes of talking about politics are already the sort of people who get involved in electoral politics anyway.

I do think, though, that it is possible that the internet might be able to allow smaller interest groups within a party to wield outsize power, but that seems to me to be a policy issue, not an electoral politics one.

*The idea that my ordering of preferences amongst candidates must be rational... that is, my ordering cannot go Liberman, Kucinich, Gephardt, because if I'm consistent about what political issues matter to me, there's no way that someone further off on those issues can be higher ranked than someone close on those issues.

WELL: Unsurprisingly, I think Matthew Yglesias is wrong about why people care about the religiosity of their candidates: it's a very handy shortcut to tell you what you really need to know about a candidate. Not really more complicated than that. But then again, I'm a Christian who uses religion as a means of judging what sort of person candidates are, so what do I know about this topic?

QUOTES: The New Republic surprises no one and endorses Lieberman, my preferred Democratic candidate. Me likey:

"By deriding Democratic support for overthrowing Saddam as "Bush Lite," Dean threatens to define that tradition out of the Democratic Party. Reasonable people, including reasonable hawks, can differ about the wisdom of the Iraq war, especially given the apparent absence of an ongoing Iraqi nuclear program. But the nature of Dean's opposition suggests an old Democratic affliction: an excessive faith in multilateralism and an insufficient faith in the moral potential of U.S. power...

Liberals resent Lieberman's moralism. But what they see as sanctimony, many ordinary Americans see as overdue concern about the toxic influences that saturate their children's lives. Clinton acknowledged that concern with calculated micro-initiatives like the v-chip. But it is Lieberman, the more sincere New Democrat, who infuriated Hollywood--and thus denied himself a rich vein of campaign funds--by repeatedly insisting that the entertainment industry value the public good as well as the bottom line. Similarly, many liberals mocked Lieberman as self-righteous for denouncing Clinton on the Senate floor at the height of the Lewinsky affair. But, given the then-pervasive fear in the Democratic Party about crossing the Clintons, Lieberman's speech took courage. And it emboldened his colleagues to do the same, which helped keep Clinton's immorality from tainting the whole party.

The deep irony of Lieberman's campaign is that many Democrats view him as timid. But how much courage does it take for Dean to throw red meat to the party faithful? The Democratic Party is racing back to the '80s, with interest groups enforcing litmus tests on everything from partial-birth abortion to steel tariffs, and party activists dangerously out of touch with a country that feels threatened by terrorism, not Donald Rumsfeld. Dean has helped create this mood of self-righteous delusion, and his competitors have, to varying degrees, accommodated themselves to it. Only Lieberman--the supposed candidate of appeasement--is challenging his party, enduring boos at event after event, to articulate a different, better vision of what it means to be a Democrat. Three years ago, that vision seemed ascendant. Today, it is once again at the margins. It may take years, or even decades, for Democrats to relearn the lessons we thought, naïvely, they had learned for good under Clinton. But one day, Joe Lieberman's warnings in this campaign will look prophetic. And the principles he has espoused will once again guide the Democratic Party. It will be the work of this magazine, to whatever small degree possible, to hasten that day."

Well, they just got me to renew for another year.

QUOTE: normblog pointed me to this:

"As leaving-Labour people tend to do, Foot's friend wrote a letter to Tony Blair:

I am totally opposed to the war in Iraq and feel that the justification now being used (that we have removed an evil dictator) opens the door to other such adventures and interventions in the future. Saddam Hussein was not by any means the worst of the dictators in charge of a country in the world today. Are we to make war on them all?

I find this the most curious reason to oppose the war of all. I can understand someone feeling betrayed by the absence of WMD or by the failure to win 100 percent UN security council backing for action. But to oppose the war because it removed an evil dictator and that might set the precedent of removing other evil dictators is a pretty bizarre position for someone who presumably considers themself to be a democratic socialist and internationalist isn't it?"

Well, yeah.

LINK: I'd do Matthew Yglesias one better and say that you can't have a deontologist set of ethics unless you have a salvation-oriented theology.

Having one, apparently, frees me to do the morally right thing in all circumstances without fear of the consequences. I realize I'm being sort of flip, but why exactly is doing the morally right thing bad?

LINK: I read this Diotima post as was momentarily confused (I'd just come back from an hour and a half of discussing how we can go from having a true belief about something to having knowledge of it, which warps your sensibilities like nothing else) until I realized she was referring to the punctuation mark.

LINK: These responses to the movie Mona Lisa Smile are highly entertaining. I didn't go and see it myself despite my Kirsten Dunst rule for seeing movies, because, well, I figured the project was probably better the first time around--you know, Dead Poets Society?

QUOTE:

"Few people rely solely on any social science for their pleasures, and attaining a suitable level of ecstacy requires work. We regret the latter problem. It is a nuisance, but God has chosen to give the easy problems to the physicists."

-Lave & March, An Introduction to Models in the Social Sciences

QUOTE OF THE DAY: From my Political Models professor:

"The models for preventing the deforestation of Guatemala and for overthrowing North Korea are surprisingly similar, which is frightening when you think about it."

N.B.: he also gave us some 'class notes' for the lecture. They are twelve pages long, single spaced, and organized a la Wittgenstein (e.g. 1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.2.1). This man is clearly insane.

He also referred to the first part of his lecture as "the perfunctory introduction I'm forced to give." Promising.

QUOTE: From my Greek Political Thought professor, the legendary Arlene Saxonhouse, on tomorrow's reading (as the books are not in the bookstore yet):

"The Department will xerox the relevant books from Homer for tomorrow's class. Copies will be ready by noon today. You can pick them up from the windowsill outside my office (7772 Haven Hall).

(Warning: the xeroxes come from my son's copy of the Iliad from when he was a junior in high school. Ignore his marginal notes!!! I am sure that in this stage of your lives you can do better than he.) "

I suppose the below is not so much a 'quippy' response as a 'rant.' Apologies.

WELL: I didn't read this particular article on manliness the first time it went around the evangelical blog circuit. But Diotima linked to it and made some interesting observations of her own, so I went ahead and read. This will require a fuller response, as I feel one coming on, but it will have to wait until after classes tomorrow, so the quippy response will have to do:

It seems like Mr. Moore is pushing a particular agenda of what men should be. I should begin by saying that I wholly advocate it, and think that all men should aspire to be cultured, well-rounded gentlement, who can balance their desires against those of others in a mature and responsible manner. Nevertheless, being not-so-far removed from my formative years, I think Mr. Moore might be neglecting some of the pressure-cooker aspects of teenagerdom.

Essentially, there seem to be two options for young men who don't want to turn into either of Mr. Moore's alternatives: the first is the Aristotlean way, by habituation in virtuous behavior from the youngest possible age. This seems to be Mr. Moore's preferred approach, and indeed is mine as well. The other seems to be making the benefits of a virtuously led life so attractive that any right-thinking person would choose it over other options.

But, with either option, a choice has to be made by the individual. Moore's panegyrics aside, I sometimes wonder how many of the boys fighting with the Duke of Wellington (to cite an example he uses) were actually inspired entirely by being manly and virtuous. My own suspicion is not that many. I was, in my formative years, a church-going Eagle Scout who did fantastically well in school. Nevertheless, as people who knew me back then will tell you, I didn't really develop my current balance of morals, manners, etc, until I got to college and made the conscious choice to. Perhaps I'm misreading the article (it is late, and I have only read it the one time), but he doesn't seem to think that boys nowadays can be anything but barbarians or wimps, and that strikes me as dead wrong.

WELL: I'm not sure who set me up with the TrackBack thing, but thanks much.

though my extreme technical incompetence means it may take a day of playing with this to figure it out...

LINK: Techincal question first, for anyone who knows: I think I need to be on movable type to do trackback urls, but I was hoping someone who knew could confirm that for me.

On to Will Baude's post on legacy admissions. I'm tempted to disagree, as someone who probably only got in to his prestigious midwestern university as a result of legacy (I might've made it on the basis of my extracurriculars, test scores, and that Eagle Scout thing I did, but I can promise you my grades were not helping me), and have proceeded since to do very well for myself, thanks for asking.

But, as the plural of 'data' is 'anecdotes,' I don't think that qualifies as a rebuttal argument. So I'll go to my default position on college acceptances: a college or university should be permitted to create a freshman class however it likes, so long as it does not exclude any particular group of people we might be offended if they didn't have (i.e., they can choose to not have an art program, but they can't choose not to have Jews).

LINK: evangelical outpost on the Argumentum ad Hilterum (or, as I call it, the Hilterum ad absurdum, but to each his own). I did successfully call one of my professors on this last term, though his usage wasn't as hostile as most of them are--it was just a good-spirited intellectual joust about democratic theory.

UM: From The Onion:

"Diehards should be pleased with In Time's two-disc option: Slightly pricier but well worth it, the set includes 15 B-sides, outtakes, and live versions, some of which rival the best material on the first disc. Of particular note is the dark, incredible "Fretless." Guitarist Peter Buck, in the set's casual but informative liner notes, even wonders why it didn't make the cut for 1991's Out Of Time."

Having heard many, if not most, pre-1995 R.E.M. outtakes, b-sides, etc, on what I will euphemistically refer to as 'live concert recordings,' I can assure you that, as is the case with most bands, the songs that didn't make it onto the album aren't on there for a very good reason.

And the best Out of Time outtake is still "Night Swim."

LINK: Andrew Sullivan is right: British obituaries are among the really sterling contributions of the British to journalism.

LINK: I love madpony for everything it posts, and I feel pretty much the same way about About Last Night*. Terry Teachout on the genre-literature dustup, and where blogging stands in relation to the general culture.


*I also like, I should note, post-heavy days on Diotima, especially the big block-quote ones.

MY ADOPTEE: Please note that Matthew Yglesias' blog is only a few weeks older than mine.

LINK: Diary of a Dean-o-Phobe picks up on one of my arguments that I've been harping away on recently--that any serious calculation of what will be swing states in 2004 includes only states that went for Gore, and most of those are ones that barely went for him. My forecast is Bush by 8 electoral votes (if the election happens today); should a Democrat lose even only one or two of the potential toss-ups, you're looking at landslide-type numbers.

Interestingly, though, I've been wondering whether longer-term electoral trends might favor the Democrats, and Howard Dean becomes more like Al Smith than Alf Landon. Partly this rests on the question of whether the Dean insurgency really does say something significant about how politics are changing (if it pays to start at the grassroots and start early, don't be surprised to see some Dems gear up for their 2008 runs in 2005, a la Andrew Jackson), and partly this is because there are a host of questions now coming into political importance (gay marriage, terrorism and (pick 'em: health care, taxes, or international relations more broadly) around which there has been no major national election, so there really don't exist data points. As Dan Drezner says, developing...

WELL: I would give perhaps as much as ten whole U.S. Dollars to anyone who could get Blur's "Country House" out of my head, where it's been for the last week.

As a longtime Oasis fan (who thinks their first two albums are the best two albums put out by any band in the 90s whose name does not rhyme with Playdiohead or Shirvana), I get frequently worked up when people bring up the whole "they were just stealing from the Beatles" thing... they stole from Gary Glitter, T. Rex, a bevvy of 1960s Detroit-area bands, but not from the Beatles.

"Country House," however, has the most obviously Beatles-y backing vocals ever. And all of their other songs are like that. Sickening.

p.s. for a serious treat, find the Oasis version of David Bowie's "Heroes"... ah, the wall of sound...

QUOTE: David Brooks (actually, the entire column is pretty funny):

"Do you ever get the sense the whole world is becoming unhinged from reality?"

Pretty much every day, yeah.

QUOTE: Cogent analysis from Jonah Goldberg, of all people:

"But my point is not that this is Dean's strategy. No: This is Dean. He doesn't always actually say he's just having a little fun at other people's expense. But that's always what he's doing. We know this in part because Dean, like Bush 41, tells people his stage direction. Rather than appealing to lower-income southern white men who have Confederate flags on their pick-up trucks, he baldly says he wants to appeal to southern white men who have Confederate flags on their pick-up trucks — even though he concedes that they are racists. Rather than appealing to religious voters, he tells the world he wants to appeal to religious voters. He admits he lacks foreign-policy know-how, but it's okay because he'll be solving that problem with his VP pick.

It's the difference between saying "I love you, I think you're beautiful" and saying "Now I'm going to tell you how much I love you and how beautiful you are so I can get you into bed." "

LET US ALL REVEL FOR A MOMENT: in the lyrical brilliance of the Beatles*, as they're on my mp3 player right now:

no one I think is in my tree
I mean it must be high or low
that is, you know you can't tune in but it's alright
that is, I think it's not too bad

which just makes me think: "no one, not even the rain, has such small hands."

*even though I'm making fun of John's lyrical ability, it's still a good song.

QUESTION: Has there ever been a side one, track one better than "Where the Streets Have No Name" from The Joshua Tree?

Answer: no.

QUESTIONS: that were raised during my conversation with Becky a couple of days ago, which I turn over to my intelligent readership to ponder and discuss:

1. Is 20th Century literature better or worse than, say, all literature that came before it?

(I'm a big fan of the argument that how you compare them is not by taking the best works by any given author from the two periods and comparing them, but by taking the second or third etc greatest works. I'd love to hear how a critique of this view might go)

2. Has the number of elites in American society changed at all over the last hundred years?
(we all know, presumably, that those elites have become a more diverse group... but are there really more of them?)

3. We can assume that all politicians and political actors have an internal reasoning mechanism that goes like this:

a. I believe in x, and consider it the rational and right thing to believe in, and so should vote for candidates/policies that further x
b. I would like to convince as many people as possible that x is rational and right, and that they should vote to support it
c. failing b., having people prepared to vote in support of x is a perfectly acceptable result whether they do so for bad reasons or none at all

Does this make political actors realists by definition, or can they still reasonably claim to be idealists?

LINK: Easily the weirdest article I've ever read. Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but I think the article ends with the author issuing a blanket proposition to every woman in the world...

QUOTE: Andrew Sullivan:

"I think his belief in the supreme importance of government in people's lives deserves debate, and represents what the Democratic party is ultimately about. Why not have a candidate who expresses that without any more goddamn Clintonian equivocation?"

It may surprise him to hear this, but some of us think that Clinton more closely approximated the real Democratic Party (FDR and whatnot) than Howard Dean does.

WELL: I would submit the following to OxBlog's request for bad jokes, but I'm not sure it even qualifies as a joke. Nevertheless, it's one of my favorites:

Two pickles are sitting in a bathtub. On pickle turns to the other and says, "could you please pass me the soap?"

The other pickle says "what do I look like, a radio?"

LINK: For as often as I criticize Will Baude for saying something I disagree with, I figure I should admit when he says something I like:

"As nice as waterproof boots are, it would be even nicer if they had waterproof laces."

AHA! I knew I thought that one woman in Cold Mountain was the most attractive for a reason*...

"Inman faces many struggles and fends off the advances of womenfolk right and left, including a lonely widow, played by Natalie Portman..."


*btw, if you haven't seen it, don't.

TODAY'S EUPHEMISM FOR 'I WAS DRUNK'

"There are grounds for this court to grant an annulment ... because plaintiff Spears lacked understanding of her actions to the extent that she was incapable of agreeing to the marriage..."

From cnn

DO: note the re-vamped and expanded blogroll on the lower left hand portion of my blog. Rather than use a simple organizational system, I BCS-style ranked all the blogs I tend to visit on 1. frequency of visits 2. interaction with other blogs' proprietors 3. general interestingness of posts and 4. the computer rankings... the NYT computer kept screwing things up, but still...

Also, reason #4080 why TCM is the best station on television. From a generic black-and-white movie on at 2:30 in the afternoon:

Woman [looks at her husband and their son]: He gets more and more like his father everyday...
Sassy black maid: Yes he does... just yesterday, I caught him playing with a corkscrew.

OH: and a music post: do yourself a favor and download (or buy, I guess...) Blur's "The Universal." Listen several times without headphones. If it's your type of music (effete baroque mid-90s britpop) you'll love it. Then go and find the lyrics. Be very, very disappointed.

LINK: This Matthew J. Stinson post has me wondering if my previous position (that there likely won't be a realignment for a long, long time, if ever) might be wrong.

LINK: Like Matt, I feel the space program is pretty much a total waste of time and money. I feel the same way about it that I do about stories on welfare reform: I know I should care, I know it's important, but my eyes tend to glaze over after a few paragraphs.

MY ADOPTEE: Matthew Yglesias supports my previous assertion about the ideological orientation of candidates:

"Life is complicated in this way. Ronald Reagan, in a sense, was another Barry Goldwater*. In another sense he was very different from Barry Goldwater in that Goldwater was a representative of the right wing of the Republican Party who led the GOP off an electoral cliff while Reagan came from closer to the middle of the party and was very politically successful."

*Keeping in mind that I excepted the 1964 election because it was a fluke year.

LINK: evangelical outpost asks an interesting question.

My answer: while on substance, the trend is probably one to be wary of, I wouldn't ever underestimate the ability of people who are going to end up as Christians to get there. Look at Augustine, for instance, who did the fashionably secular, the heretical, and the quasi-Christian before settling down to the real deal. I'm not saying we shouldn't be concerned, but then again, you also get people like the second responder to the post, who seems to have figured it out.

LINK: and nominee for weirdest blog post header: hitler has jumped the shark

DEAN AND RELIGION:

Pejman recaps many of the idiocies:

"Asked his favorite New Testament book, Dr. Dean named Job, adding: "But I don't like the way it ends." "Some would argue, you know, in some of the books of the New Testament, the ending of the Book of Job is different," he said. "I think, if I'm not mistaken, there's one book where there's a more optimistic ending, which we believe was tacked on later.""

(see also TruePravda on this one)

Ricky from North Georgia Dogma says that people should lay off Dean's religiosity:

"While I have no qualms about laughing at Dean's pandering, Totten's right, leave Dean's personal worship out of it. The guy can believe what he wants & unless it's some sort of extremist position (don't parse, you know what I mean) should be off the table. It was wrong when folks went after JFK's Catholicism, when folks went after Romney's Mormon beliefs, when some went after Lieberman's Jewish beliefs & is wrong when questioning Dean's faith or his family's."

Which is true, except that he's actually conflating two different things here: there's disliking a candidate because their religious belief happens to take a certain form (not liking JFK just because he's Catholic strikes me as a little silly), and then there's disliking them because of the content of their religiosity. Religion happens to be a good and effective shortcut for voters in trying to make judgments about candidates, and in its own way, just as effective a signal (for those in the know) as party affiliation.

We get habituated into voting for one party or another because, generally, the party label tells us what we need to know about what a particular candidate will do if actually elected. If Dean gets elected President, will he pull out of Iraq unilaterally and raise taxes? If Bush gets re-elected, will he invade Syria and privatize social security? No one can possibly know the answers to those questions (not even the candidates themselves, who know their plans depend on a lot of other things falling into place), and no one knows what unexpected issues will crop up that everyone is unprepared to deal with; so voters do well to look at things that indicate how it is a candidate makes their decisions.

We'd want to know, presumably, where each candidate falls on all sorts of moral questions, so why should it be out of bounds to ask where their inspiration for their answers to moral questions comes from?

LINK: The Hitch writes up the dissimilarities between The Battle of Algiers and the current situation in Iraq. If there's one element of leftism in the last 50 years that I find distasteful enough to consider giving up on the left entirely over, it's the various hero worship of third-world revolutionary figures (this sort of attitude is well-chronicled in Irving Howe's seminal essay "New Styles in Leftism"). Call this attitude 'socialism in any country:' a conflation of the (occasionally well-meaning) desire to see x form of ideology spread more widely and the desire that the U.S. get what's coming to it. Sometimes, I think the road to America-bashing, at least if you're an American citizen, runs right through Che Guevara.

WELL: I can barely sustain topicality (if you're a debater) or a news peg (if you're a journo type) by noting the amusing consequences of Bill O'Rielly and Al Franken being linked together in the public consciousness as a segue into the following anecdote:

When I was visiting my old high school history teacher over break (actually, the day before my last exam, where I spent four hours driving home and back and pretty much wasted the entire day not studying), she showed me a copy of Al Franken's book sent to her by Ben Mathis-Lilley, the valedictorian of the class before mine, and now a proud ex-Harvard man (not unlike Matthew Yglesias). He sent a long letter to her, as well, describing what exactly he was up to now. There was also an inscription in the book:

"That A- you gave me almost ruined my #1 class standing. Don't think I'll forget it."

Which is about perfectly vindictive, I think.

LET US ALL NOTE THAT: I am the only hit you'll get on google to "Springsteen had simultaneously endeared himself to the crowd"

ON MY AMAZING POWERS OF PERCEPTION:

spacegirldreams: i hope carl is downstairs winning lots of money at poker... i want to go out tonight
notbyrondorgan: it's sunday night!
notbyrondorgan: classes start tomorrow!
spacegirldreams: no they don't
notbyrondorgan: ?
spacegirldreams: they start on tuesday i believe
spacegirldreams: but it doesn't matter to me
notbyrondorgan: ??
notbyrondorgan: seriously? [goes off and checks the U of M academic calendar]
notbyrondorgan: huh
notbyrondorgan: how 'bout that
spacegirldreams: that's what i hear. but i don't know for sure
notbyrondorgan: I really wasn't making it up when I said I didn't know when classes were starting this term

QUOTE: Maybe it's the fact that I was indoctrinated into feminism at an early age, but I agree with all of this Diotima post. Especially:

"So let's go back to my example of the way women's bodies are treated in our culture. I think it's awful. I hate the mainstreaming of pornography; I hate Stuff; I hate frat parties; I hate girls jumping on trampolines. There are women who think this all is empowering; they're wrong. But if one allowed the truth about women to be defined merely by adding up women's subjective experiences, you could never make any judgments about when things are bad for women."

though it is a little odd to express your distaste for Stuff and then go ahead and link to them, but, I suppose, that's because Ms. Butler is much more fairminded in her dislikes than I am.

WELL: (via Sara Butler:

" Some good news from Afganistan: "The final draft of the constitution now states that all citizens of Afghanistan, both men and women, have equal rights under the law." "

So does that make them more advanced, Constitutionally, than we are?

LINK: I mostly agree with Matt Powell on the question of the relation of existentialism to Christianity, except that his idea of what constitutes existentialism seems to be derived overwhelmingly from Camus, as he seems to equate with existentialism the drive towards suicide or self-destruction, which Sartre, for one, would tend to argue against (and as the old joke goes, Camus can-do, but Sartre is Smartre*). He notes the Christian alternative:

"The Christian knows that this world is not all that there is, and that there is life after this world. Further, what's going on now is for the purpose of training us for the future, and so our existence is no longer pointless, and events are no longer our enemy. We have a benevolent God who, by the grace of Jesus Christ and for the sake of His blood, nurtures and cares for us, and use all things for our good, to conform us to the image of His son."

I agree, of course. But I sometimes worry that focusing on the hereafter too much (as my evangelical church did) occasionally miss out on what existentialism can teach. Thus Christian existentialism (Kierkegaard in particular): we are saved by grace, yes, and we know that what we go through on earth is merely an unpleasant prelude to the life eternal. Nevertheless, the world is still filled with pain and suffering, both for ourselves and for others, and a constant attempt to bring good things out of easily corruptible human natures (even our own). And I've always felt that the best, most meaningful passages in the Bible (Job, Ecclesiastes, the "do not worry" portion of the sermon on the mount, and the first twelve chapters of Romans) and religious literature try and come to grips with this. Finding the balance is hard, though.


*I note this because there are only three minorly funny philosophy jokes, and that is one of them. The other two:

Q: How many existentialists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two. One to change it, and the other to note how the bulb is an incandescent beacon of subjectivity in a cosmic netherworld of nothingness.

and:

assume solipsism is true. Explain why more people aren't solipsists.

LINK: I firmly agree with evangelical outpost on this one: the belief in God is a fundamental part of one's outlook on the world, and should be regarded as akin to other arguable-but-grounded claims (e.g., you can argue whether or not objects exist in the world--as a matter of epistemology, it's far from clear that they do. But just about everyone is prepared to accept that you function in the world as if there are objects, and this is an acceptable leap of faith to make). Which I find, as a theist, makes arguing about the existence of God a sort of odd exercise--not unlike arguing for the existence of Tuesdays.

LINK: Amusing little condundrum from Crooked Timber.

WELL: I think this comment of J.P.'s (scroll down a bit) deserves an extended reply:

"***...but candidates tend to move towards the center because that's where the voters are.***

True. But why don't we just choose candidates who are squarely in the middle from the beginning? If the center is what voters want then candidates should do away with all the nonsense about being conservative or liberal.

In fact, we would probably be better off choosing candidates that we *know* are middle-of-the-road."

I think (excluding House races, which are a different kettle of fish) we by and large do choose candidates who are middle of the road, and I think the system has such a level of inertia that it keeps anyone from going too far off the ends. I think everyone can agree that when we talk about candidates, what they say is, most times and in most instances, self-serving cant, so it's the actions the particular politician engages in that we have to watch.

If you look at Presidential nominees back (excepting 1964, which was sort of a fluke year in this regard) through the end of World War II, all of them have run, more or less, as moderates compared to the political climate at the time (Reagan increases federal spending, Nixon passes environmental legislation, Clinton reforms Welfare, etc), and all of the Presidents who have been elected have pretty much been moderates in terms of their accomplishments. And I think people know this and instinctively support candidates in this mold. A lot of the counterexamples to this argument apply towards what politicians say and do to influence the politically savvy, who only make up 10% or so of the population at large.

LINK: Josh Claybourn discusses which side should have the burden of proof in the God exists-God doesn't exist debate. Having had to suffer through a year of arguments for and against God's existence (in Philosophy 202 and 389), I came to the conclusion a few years ago that all arguments on this topic are equally bad.

As a theist, presenting a logical argument for the existence of God is, I think, a sucker's game, because no one will be convinced if they're not willing to let themselves be convinced (and few people getting involved in these arguments are). As a Christian, I think there's an additional component, what Kierkegaard (in The Concept of Anxiety, still the best explication of what happened in the Garden of Eden that I've ever read) called "quantitative steps to a qualitative leap:" that is, the argument will only take you so far. To make the last jump (from understanding the logical implications of having such a view to, as it were, possessing it internally) requires some sort of outside motive force, which I always understood (in this particular case) to be the action of the Holy Ghost. It's not so much that the argument can't get you there (whether or not it does is God's judgment call), but putting too much stock in developing any particular argument risks missing a central point of what makes Protestant faith what it is within Christianity.

QUOTE: David Adensik says something I've been thinking about a lot lately:

"Yet in spite of it all, George is dangerously close to being a liberal hawk. Like TNR and like Michael Totten (and OxBlog, of course) George really believes that the Democratic party must reclaim its heritage as the true advocate of liberal internationalism, of using American power to ensure the spread of democratic values across the globe.

As such, George feels no less marginalized within the Democratic party than does TNR or Michael Totten or OxBlog. He was glad to hear however, that the Rachels and Patricks of this world are doing the best to create a real future for Democratic foreign policy. If the lib hawks are ever to have the success that the neo-cons have had, we have to have scores of young idealists ready to march into the next Democratic administration and ensure that it lives up to our ideals.

Not in 2004, however. With a sense of personal disappointment that can only grow out of true loyalty, George regrets the rise of Howard Dean and the resurgence of the ostrich-headed doves. And Wes Clark isn't much better. But more important than the views of Dean and Clark is the fact that the Democratic base has no real desire to unite power and idealism. Instead, most Democratic voters continue to embrace a sort of kneejerk multilateralism.

And so it goes. For as long as misery loves company, liberal hawks will be social animals."

QUOTE: Will Baude makes the following interesting admission about the University of Chicago:

"As I write this, I have several friends who are currently sleeping with professors-- some in their departments and some out-- and having a variety of reactions."

Obviously, U of C's rep (you know, home to students who spend all their time studying) is in need of some updating.

LINK: I agree with most of what J.P. Carter says about Dean, except for the following:

"Compromise is obviously a necessary component of politics. But when it is taken for granted that expediency will trump conviction, we should not be surprised when we find all politicians stuck in the “mushy middle.” "

I hate to disagree, but candidates tend to move towards the center because that's where the voters are. It's not a matter of expediency when compromise is made, it's a matter of voters getting precisely what they want; most people (even most of those who vote) don't have convictions on questions of politics, really.

QUOTE: He sounds surprisingly like one of us*:

"Nevertheless, I think this is actually a legitimate (i.e., non-rhetorical) question. If the price of crude oil were to suddenly double Monday morning the result would be widespread human suffering as waves of economic destruction wending their way through the developed world. "Blood for oil" makes a mighty bad slogan compared to, say, "blood for freedom" or something, but expending a few lives to prevent global economic collapse seems like a legitimate thing to do. So I don't know how much oil a human life is worth, but I'm confident that a human life is, in fact, worth some finite quantity of oil. Which is not to say that we've followed a wise or moral policy in the Middle East over the past year, either, but still...."

Welcome to the dark side, Matt.

*Which 'us' am I referring to? If you agree with the sentiment, I'm including you; if you think it's repellent, you're not part of the group.

LINK: I agree with Matthew Yglesias on the importance of anti-poverty initiatives within the Democratic Party, in large part because I think everyone should support them. I don't know that an extra government program (or whatever) is automatically the best solution to poverty, nor do I necessarily believe it can be entirely done away with. Nevertheless, I'd like to meet the cold-hearted jerk who doesn't think that taking care of the poor should be a social priority in this country.

QUOTE: Ryan Lizza in TNR, on HoDo:

"For all the genius of the house parties, which the campaign says raised $500,000 from 22,000 people, they also provide evidence that the Dean campaign isn't really moving beyond its base. The campaign met its goal of attracting 450,000 online supporters by the end of September. Months ago, the campaign also set a goal of having one million online supporters by tonight. They're almost 450,000 people short of that goal. In September, the campaign also organized an evening of nationwide house parties, and Deaniacs responded by hosting 1,400 of them. The goal for last night was an ambitious 3,000 parties. "[I]t seems we will undoubtedly break our own record," one party-planning document on the Dean website explains. But Dean's supporters didn't even come close to the larger goal. Once again, there were 1,400 parties.

That far exceeds what any of the other campaigns are doing, but it does little to convince people that the Dean campaign is really moving beyond its now familiar base of college kids, urban young professionals, and latte-swilling social liberals. In small ways, even the slick house party kits confirm these stereotypes. They are tailored for people who live downtown in apartments and condos ("Is your buzzer clearly marked?"), people who immediately understand a reference to Craigslist.org, which the campaign suggests using."

LINK: I'm on a modified version of this plan, except that I don't read it in a year-- I pick a set amount I want to read per day and plug away until I'm done (generally a year or two later). I'm also less certain of the advantage of reading it over every year... my experience (this being my third time through) is that a lot can be gained by reading and absorbing, then going off and reading and doing other things for awhile, then tackling it anew with the insights that three to five years can give you. The difference between reading it now and when I last read it five years ago is that my ability to pick up really meaningful psychological insights has increased quite a bit, as well as my understanding of various bits of theology. But this is just my experience, others' might be different.

LINK: (via Dan Drezner):

I was 8 points ahead of Drezner, but 16 points behind Will Baude... something to aspire to for next year...

LINK: Dean can't win, whatever explanations anyone offers, because electoral trends say he can't, and there's no reason to suspect he's gonna shift those (barring the unforseen developing in the next 8 months or so)...

LINK: Joshua Claybourn again:

"While the eighties had its own brand, one could see the beginnings of the decline. Just what is the artistic legacy of my generation?"

Off the top of my head... good bands since the 80s: Joy Division, The Smiths, R.E.M. The Stone Roses, B-52s, The Replacements, Husker Du, Nirvana, Oasis, Pulp, Manic Street Preachers, Lauryn Hill (with and without the Fugees), the Roots, Radiohead, Uncle Tupelo, the Jayhawks and Wilco.

WELL: I appreciate Joshua Claybourn's dislike for the buzzword 'metrosexual,' but I can assure him that those of us who enjoy elaborate cooking, interior decoration, the arts of all stripes, and fashion (I not only led a successful buying-work-clothes strike on Somerset for Becky, who was getting ready for her job at the LCV, I was actually complimented on my assistance/choices by people who only saw what she ended up with) for both men and women find metrosexual to be a useful term to denote that, yes, we are culturally well-versed, but yes (don't ask) we are also very, very straight.

Of course, the world would be a better place if I didn't have to defend my masculinity just because I enjoy all the stuff listed above, but what can you do?

LINK: You know I love madpony like nothing else in this world. Not only is this post amusing in its own right, it also includes a very amusing comments section which discusses, among other things, whether or not the picture with the post was staged or not.

WELL: evangelical outpost presents an updated version of his argument on whether or not Christians and Muslims worship the same God. I was displeased because his argument brought back unhappy memories of doing truth-trees for Symbolic Logic.

I think it's mostly a good argument, except that there seems to be an unstated premise that enters in between 4. and 6. The basic problem is that 4. needs to be an iff (if and only if) to make the rest of the argument flow (you could support this with "I am the way, the truth..." I think). Because there is nothing in the argument as written that prevents someone from theoretically having knowledge of the Father without Jesus. So even though the argument, as written, proves that Muslims and Christians don't worship the same God, it is possible that Muslims could claim that the argument doesn't cover their case.

Unless I'm missing something (which seems likely). Thoughts?

UPDATE: the link is actually to evangelical outpost now, and not the Dean 2004 blog. But I think my confusion between the two is understandable.

LINK: (via OxBlog) this criticism of liberal political writers, including my adoptee Matthew Yglesias. In defense of Matt, I don't think, even assuming the definition of a Heather to be valid, that he is one: he doesn't like Dean because he has open, honest disagreements with Dean about questions of policy. He will get behind whoever the eventual nominee is, because he's a good party man. But there's no reason to call him names just because you disagree with his politics... that's what Republicans are for (kidding, of course).

LINK: I have not thoroughly read this article yet, but it seems like it will provoke me to have many things to say in the near future. Consider yourselves warned.

LINK: Tacitus goes off on Communism, apparently, like Willie Nelson, forgetting what year it is exactly.

Now, nothing I'm about to say should be construed as a defence of small-c communism ("theoretical" communism, if you like), for reasons that will be explained at the end.

1. Tacitus blurs the distinction between Marx's earlier and later periods. In the Communist Manifesto, as my Marxism-Leninism teacher was fond of pointing out, the great heroes of the story are the bourgeoisie, because it is through their development of capitalism that humankind is able to make a tremendous leap in terms of standards of living, etc. And the basic tack of communism is (depending on which bits you read) is that capitalism is a perfectly fine way of going about life, so long as the capitalist system remains competitive (competition = higher wages, lower prices). What's problematic for communists is what they called 'monopoly capitalism,' which is your basic Gilded Age stuff, and State Monopoly Capitalism, which is when the state begins to assume too many functions of the government and society (churches, banks, etc) under its aegis. Later Marx is more than willing to suggest violent means are necessary (after the failed experiment of the Paris Commune), earlier Marx is less likely to advocate violence, but, as he's something of a diffuse writer, anyone can come in and find support for their agenda.

2. I agree with Richard Pipes' thesis in The Russian Revolution that the October Revolution was a coup d'etat, not a real revolution. But it is far from clear that was how things had to turn out. The motive force for the Bolsheviks becoming the group they did was Lenin, but when Lenin returned to St. Petersburg, he was definitely on the outs with his supposed followers: the power at that time was with Kamenev, who was preaching tolerance of the Provisional Government and support for a socialist revolution only after Russia had the time to develop its industry and the class consciousness of their workers and peasants. Even as late as July or August, it was Trotsky, not Lenin, who was wielding power. Indeed, when it came time for the vote about whether or not to go forward with the 'revolution' as soon as possible, Lenin was the only one who thought that the time was best if it was right that instant.

But, what has to be said here is that there was an untimate failure of nerve on the part of Kamenev, Zinoviev, Trotsky and their followers. They knew what was coming, and (being smart men all) they had to have understood the consequences of their actions, but they chose, for whatever reason, not to care about that. For their willingness to overlook the flaws of Lenin, and for their complicity in everything that happened after, they ought to be soundly condemned.

MY ADOPTEE: It's clear that Matthew Yglesias has half an argument here, which is your basic On Civil Government or Letter Concerning Toleration argument that the functions of the state and of religion ought to be separated (and as the former instance of that argument was made by Martin Luther, I tend to think it carries some weight). But:

"Your freedom of religion extends to you, not to your ability to exercize your will over others."

True insomuch as we are social actors. But Matt's blurring a distinction here, because people are also political actors, and being asked to check your values at the door when it comes to public policy, candidates, or lobbying for laws is not only silly, it runs fundamentally against an organizing principle in American politics. If I honestly believe that, say, school prayer is an issue that demands a law be made concerning it, and can find enough people to support it, vote for candidates who will proposes and vote for it, and justices who think it's kosher with the Constitution, what harm has been done to the democratic process? Has it not, rather, been fufilled?

"So why is it so commonly thought that parents should have some kind of "right" to indoctrinate their children in the way they see fit? Why is that preferable to state coersion?"

Well, in this instance, I think it's the argument of in loco parentis, in the literal sense: if the mother and father of any particular child will bear (in addition to the obvious moral burden) legal responsibility for keeping their child out of legal trouble, then they should have the right to acheive that end by whatever means seem best to them. But I'm also not a lawyer, so I could really be wrong on this.

LINK: Diotima links to an especially amusing article, though I tend to think that sort of shoppy in-talk applies to just about any insular group (though maybe I just say this because similar conversations were yesterday had amongst my music-nerd friends and I). But, you know, hilarious and stuff.

HAHA: Terry Teachout's New Years farewell, which I especially liked:

"Next year in Chicago!"

LINK: New Willie Nelson song condems Iraq war. Given Willie's obvious attention to timely news-related protest songs, I suggest a few follow-ups:

"We Should Do Something About That Hitler Guy"
"2000 Election Blues"
"The President's Sex Life is None of Our Business"

hopefully any of these will, too, "stir passions in those who hear [them]"

WELL: I don't mean to overstate at all, but after many years of tepid New Year's Eves, this one finally did away with any notion of a curse associated with this particular holiday. The Bang! was the most fun that should be allowable by law. Nick's highlights:

Most surprising: "Ca Plane Por Moi" -Plastic Bertrand, or "Common People" by Pulp

Most intense dancing: "Connection" -Elastica

You knew it was coming but were thrilled anyway: "Hey Ya!" -Outkast

Most shocking moment: Nick recites the entire Notorious B.I.G. rap to "Mo Money, Mo Problems"

Weirdest cameo: the girl from my political science seminar, who was definitely shocked to see me dancing

Best unexpected rescue: Erica being at the back of the pack so I could dance with her to "Disco 2000" -Pulp, "You Really Got Me" -Kinks and "Satisfaction" (do I really need to tell you who?) before Janki, Becky and Alan reappeared

You knew it was coming but were thrilled anyway II: "Lust for Life" -Iggy Pop

Most unexpected but pleasant aspect of the evening: discussing Kafka and recommending "A Hunger Artist"