The Only Winning Move

A double helping of Political Correctness from the IDS.

First up, Wildermuth name change to be tabled after questioning. “Wilbermuth?” you may be asking yourself. Yes, it turns out the HPER is actually named after someone. Someone from Gary who might once maybe have advocated segregation back in the 40s. You know, like pretty much everyone in the 40s. The “controversy” arises because a school administrator pointed out that segregation was a normal view to hold in the 1940s, and that Wilbermuth, who did all kinds of great things for the university, shouldn’t be held responsible for being mainstream. This didn’t stop people from bloviating in the Jordan River Forum about it being equivalent to having a KKK monument on campus. But since I’m sure no one is ever going to point out to them that Abraham Lincoln himself was a segregationist (abolitionist, but also segregationist), they can continue to imagine this other past where average joes had … pretty much the views everyone has now, save for an evil cabal of white males who forced them to act otherwise.

Second and twice as ridiculous is this bit on new Kelley Business School Poling Chair Gen. Peter Pace called Controversy sparked over Pace’s remarks. Apparently, Gen. Pace said some controversial things about gays, but you’ll have to take IDS’ word on that as they never say what these remarks might have been, why people find them offensive, or even quote Gen. Pace in any way. Rest assured that they were pretty awful, whatever they were, though, because we get quotes from all the relevant campus gay leaders telling us so. They might as well have called the article “Gay People Offended for Secret Gay Reasons.”

But the best part of today’s IDS, as usual, was the Heroic Proletarian Staff Editorial. Apparently, some prof. in California (which is why it’s relevant to IU - just nod) is in trouble for having found better things to do than attend a required sexual harrassment training seminar.

McPherson believes that the training session is a waste of his time and that it casts suspicion on his character. We think McPherson’s logic is backward. By not attending the sessions, he only makes himself appear to be more of a creeper, and by taking such a public stance against something so simple and straightforward, he is wasting everyone’s time.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, they actually pulled a “when did you stop beating your wife?”. One of McPherson’s complaints is that the training session casts undue suspicion on his character, which the IDS says makes him “appear more of a creeper” … than he already is? And how do you know? Is it maybe because being forced to attend a sexual harrassment seminar casts undue suspicion on people’s character?

Another red-letter day for IU journalism. Keep it commin’, fellas!

Heartfelt thanks to Noah for putting me on to last Thursday’s Fresh Air interview with Robert Kuttner on his book about how Obama is gonna be the jizz. It’s truly astonishing just how many crappy ideas the sound engineers over at NPR were able to cram into a 40minute radio session. Here’s a taste - but I wanna go ahead and stress that to get the fully effect you really gotta just listen to the original and … marvel.

So here goes.

- Lincoln was a uniter. Yes, THAT Lincoln. The one who tossed out all the compromises of the day and plunged the nation into its only-ever Civil War, the one that remains, proportionally, the bloddiest war in its history. The one who had to suspend habeus corpus and declare martial law in New York City because he was such a “uniter” that people took to the streets to call for his overthrow. I mean, think what you will about the merits of the Civil War and President Lincoln … a uniter?

- Lyndon Johnson was a uniter too. Yes, THAT Johnson. The one who couldn’t run for reelection because his party was so united behind him that he dropped out for fear of losing the primary, whom they STILL rioted against at the convention, and who enabled the Republican to win because a third party actually split the Dems’ vote that year in the formerly-solid Democrat South in opposition to his stand-in Humphrey. This one is even too much for Terri Gross who says “surely you don’t mean the Vietnam Johnson?” No worries, folks. It turns out there were TWO Lyndon Johnsons, and Kuttner’s only talking about the “good” one. Not, you know, that other imposter who is also coincidentally named Lyndon Johnson.

- Larry Summers in unfit to be Treasury Secretary because way back the last time he was Secretary he might have deregulated a thing or two. Now we all know that Larry Summers is hugely intelligent, but it just can’t be that in the 10 years he’s been out of office that his perspective could’ve changed, or that he could’ve adapted to new conditions, or anything like that. You know, what with him being so intelligent and all.

- The problem with the economy is that housing prices were too high and lost value. So, what we have to do is artificially prop up all those housing prices that we know are wrong.

- While we’re at it, we could take some of those excess houses and convert them into tenament blocks - because, you know, what with there being such a glut of houses that he thinks the government needs to artificially raise their prices, now is clearly the time to save as much on housing space as we possibly can by cramming people into just a few of this vast supply of houses that are out there and available for cheap.

- He happens to know off the top of his head that the debt is $5.6trillion (which Terri Gross think is 5.6 “billion billions” - at which point he interrupts to correct her, but not about the meaning of “trillion”), fully 1/5th of which was accrued in the past year, but now is the time to start spending even more money, and on things like training programs for people who are already employed so that they can continue being employed in their current capacity, only now with more education, which will force their employers to … probably continue to pay them what they currently earn, but hell, it’s only tax money! OH, and maybe put some of them to work building bridges, because that way their jobs can’t be outsourced - and that’s what America wants to be - a nation of bridgebuilders! That’ll teach them Chinese to make clothes for us! Yes sir!

- We’ve spent $700billion on the bailout so far, and that’s just the beginning. We should do that every year from now on - just keep putting the market correction off by another year by throwing an ever-increasing pile of government debt at it. Maybe, just maybe, we can avoid reality until the current generation dies off - and then shit, who cares, right?

- Worried about debt? Never fear! The debt-to-GDP ratio is only at about 40% right now - whereas after WWII it was up to 128%. So - that means we’ve got TONS of room to spend money we don’t have! Yay! Never mind that WWII was, you know, a global war, or that there was a huge and punishing worldwide recession after that war, the sky’s the limit on debt spending!

Oh man, oh man, you have to hear it to believe it. Even Dick Vitale doesn’t have enough energy to properly convey just how spectacular the whole thing is. Where the hell does NPR find these people? I mean - just when I start to think that maybe I’ma bit too hard on the left, that maybe they’re more sensible than I give them credit for - out of the wordwork pops the walking leftist stereotype from Economics la-la land to say “nope, you’ve got it just right. Keep on keepin’ on!”

Unbelievable. Truly astounding.

The final chapter in Kerr/Greenwald drama is up. Point, set, and match to Kerr.

I’ve been rather enjoying the recent bits about Glenn Greenwald over at Volokh. It’s been gratifying on a number of levels.

First, of course, because I can’t abide Greenwald. It isn’t so much that I disagree with his politics. I do, of course, disagree with them, but there’s plenty of room for common ground. Greenwald was one of the early troopers pointing out some of the abuses of presidential authority of the Bush administration, so he can’t be all bad. No, what annoys me about Greenwald is that he’s a shrieker. He’s one of those people who can’t argue without massive helpings of hyperbole and opprobrium, and it just gets tiring after a while. Even worse, I think he’s often guilty of the partisan fallacy - whereby transgressions by people who broadly share your political opinions get softer treatment than those by political opponents. I can’t be bothered to dig up the link now, but I wrote a post on this some time back with regard to his about-face on Memogate. Any evenhanded look at the evidence forces one to the conclusion that Dan Rather abused his position for political reasons. You may well agree with the “truthiness” of George Bush’s spotty national service record - I know I do - but that doesn’t give Dan Rather a free pass to simply make up evidence. Greenwald started out really good - presenting the story as it actually was. But all it took was a single email from one of the co-conspirators - an email which contained numberous and obvious logical problems in its argumentation, no less - to get him to sing another tune. In short, Greenwald had just never felt comfortable calling the story as it was because Dan Rather is “one of the good guys.” Well.

This argument from emotion bent is actually at the heart of the current controversy too. Greenwald apparently has been taking Orin Kerr to task for being “a leading apologist for radical and lawless Bush policies.” Only - as it turns out - Kerr never actually supported any of the (four) policies Greenwald cites as evidence. Never mind, says Greenwald, he offered rational arguments against them, thus dignifying them with a response. So, for example, Kerr notes that the structure of the Protect America Act of 2007 was basically sound, even though he disagrees with the actual content of the law. This, as far as Greenwald is concerned, amounts to being a “leading apologist for radical and lawless policies.”

Ahem.

That said - Greenwald’s little temper tantrum does raise an interesting question. Surely there are some things that are so far beyond the pale that there’s no point in arguing about them. Sorta like if someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night, you shoot first and ask questions later. (Or, if you’re a Democrat, you hand him a bunch of cash, tell him you love him, and then spend the rest of the evening thinking up convoluted ways to explain how it’s none of it his fault.) What you don’t do is offer him coffee and try to talk him into respecting your property rights! So it’s interesting really. There are some cases where I don’t think anyone would hesitate to join Greenwald in one of his temper tantrums. How is it that we know this isn’t one of those cases?

I guess it comes down to whether or not you think the Bush policies really are so “radical and lawless” that they’re on the level of ordering the Holocaust. I mean, the way Greenwald talks, all people of conscience, faced with one of these Bush policies, should’ve just, on hearing the bill read, immediately pulled out a gun and shot Cheney or something, since all of this is apparently so obviously wrong that reasonable people can’t talk about it.

Yeah - probably not, right? And the reason we think “probably not” isn’t just because no one actually did this, but also because we strongly suspect that Greenwald’s playing partisan here too. I haven’t, for example, ever read anything on Greenwald’s blog to the effect that FDR was a crook, even though the court-packing scheme and the NRA administration certainly count as far greater abuses of presidential power than anything Bush or Cheney dreamed up. Nor have I read much in the way of criticism of LBJ - who, along with Nixon, laid all the groudwork for the modern “imperial presidency.” More to the point, neither have a I read much criticism of the Clinton Administration, itself not such a stickler for ethical rules. Quite the contrary, when Maureen Dowd suggested recently that Obama would be liberating the White House from 16 years of indecency, Greenwald flew off the handle at her for drawing equivalences. I hate to defend Maureen Dowd, but come now. Pointing out that the Clinton Administration has sins of its own is not tantamount to saying that Bush was no worse. Anyone who regularly reads Maureen Dowd can point to several columns where she says quite explicitly that Bush was worse. But the punchline is that Greenwald apparently thinks that because Bush was worse, Clinton is completely off the hook. Yeah - THAT’s a recipe for healthy government. Screw up in office? No problem - just be sure to leave the media with the impression that your successor was worse and you’ll be fine.

No, I’m with Kerr on this one. There may well be some situations where the appropriate response to a bill is to pull out a gun and shoot, but this just isn’t one of them. I’m right with Greenwald in thinking that Bush did a couple of things that deserved impeachment and even imprisonment, but Kerr’s willingness to state his case calmly doesn’t make him an apologist for the Bush Administration. None of Bush’s “offenses” were so blindingly obvious that we’re past the point of having to make a case against them.

I think public discourse is very much a situation where Kant’s “categorical imperative” applies - which is a fancy way of saying “use the Golden Rule.” We should speak respectfully and back up our claims with rational arguments NOT because we necessarily think the opposing opinion is correct or even reasonable. Rather, we should speak respectfully and back up our claims with rational arguments because this is how we want our own assertions treated. Because it’s fairly easy to see that if everyone behaved like Greenwald behaves - calling even people who largely agree with them names if those people aren’t appropriately shrill - it would simply be impossible to discuss issues with anyone.

Since the rules of this probably obligate me to show a left-wing example of someone who argues reasonably, let me point to this Matt Yglesias post, in which he calls out Thomas Friedman for hypocrisy on Obama’s muslim connection. Choice quote:

I mean, look. Obama’s not a Muslim. He’s not a Muslim when people are trying to smear him by suggesting he is, and he’s also not a Muslim when people are trying to suggest that he shares a secret connection with the Islamic world in a good way.

Right. Yglesias had no obligation to publish this since I think no one doubts his integrity on the issue. The point is that he saw someone making a silly argument, and it didn’t matter that that person happens to be broadly “on his side.” A silly argument is a silly argument no matter who makes it. Right.

For my own part, this is a case of “it takes one to know one” for me. I’m an ideologue myself. I have strong opinions about politics, and I don’t mind expressing them. And so sure, I’ve had to fight a lot of the tendencies I see in Greenwald in myself over the years. And I haven’t completely won the battle, I’ll be the first to admit. I have a lot of trouble, for example, taking people seriously who support (a) the War on Drugs or (b) the Kyoto Protocol. These are issues where it seems to me that there are simply no rational arguments in favor of them, and so quite frankly I don’t have a lot of respect for people defending them. However, it gets me nowhere to just say so and go home. The point is, we all have our faults, and the appropriate thing to do about them is - well, exactly what all the 12-step programs say. First admit you have one, then stop making excuses for it, and then do something about it. Greenwald has been spitting venom for - oh, about 5 years now with no respite. I think you get some consideration for intelligence - but after a while, no matter what your IQ, if you can’t make arguments without drama, you’re just Ann Coulter and not worth listening to.

I keep running across Orwellian phrases this week.

The first was from Nancy Pelosi who, talking about the possibility of bailing out the automakers, had the following to say:

“We may need to make a statement of confidence in our auto industry,” Pelosi told NPR this afternoon. “We’re not saving those companies, we’re saving an industry. We’re saving an industrial technological and manufacturing base… It’s about jobs in America.”

And then today I stumble across this bit from BBC Radio 4 about solar power in Germany. Asking why there is so much investment in solar power in a rain-friendly place like Germany, we get this cute answer:

Most importantly, there is a market mechanism in place, which gives suppliers of solar electricity a guaranteed price for the energy they supply to the national grid set for 20 years.

Look, I’m not a prescriptivist or anything, but when you use terms to mean the opposite of how most people use them, I think it’s fair to say you’re abusing the language.

Dear Nancy Pelosi: a bailout is never a sign of “confidence” in anything. If the industry believed it could succeed on its own, it would hardly be asking for one. Bailouts only then come in play when an industry is failing. So unless you’ve gone and changed the rules and eliminated private investment in this country (aw, shouldna gone and said that - don’t wanna give her any ideas!), there is NO SUCH THING as a “bailout” that signals “confidence.”

Dear BBC Radio 4: price controls are not, repeat NOT, a “market mechanism.” Pricing, whereby a buyer wants a low price and a seller wants a high price and they meet in the middle (or decline to exchange), is a market mechanism. Price controls are where the government decides to completely suspend the market mechanism and dictate who buys what from whom and for how much. So unless you’re prepared to call the US the last stalwart of communism and pine for the good ol’ days of the USSR’s relatively free economy, you need to repeat after me: price controls are not a market mechanism.