Did nobody vet the "blood libel" video?

As has been widely reported already today, in a video posted to her facebook page, Sarah Palin used the term "blood libel" to refer to criticism of her previous speech:

“Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. Especially within hours
of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood
libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport
to condemn. That is reprehensible.”

As the Times pointed out in an article on the matter:

The term blood libel is generally used to mean the false accusation that Jews
murder Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals, in particular
the baking of matzos for passover. That false claim was circulated for centuries
to incite anti-Semitism and justify violent pogroms against Jews. Ms. Palin’s
use of the phrase in her video, which helped make the video rapidly go viral, is attracting criticism, not least because Ms. Giffords, who remains in critical condition
in a Tucson hospital, is Jewish.

Now, I understand if this had been an off-the-cuff speech, where Palin had just misspoken, and had heard the term blood libel but didn't know or mentally misplaced the historical baggage. However, this was a video, that was presumably written and vetted by her staff before posting it.

The big problem that I see in this is not that Palin is anti-semitic - I'm guessing she didn't realize the nature of the term "blood libel." No, the problem is that not a single person around her had any idea that it was a problem to use the term, or if they did felt unable to warn her. That speaks to the lack of historical literacy in those surrounding her, and an incredible lack of the basic qualification for her team. Anybody who has run for the vice presidency and is a top contender for a major party nomination for the presidency in less than two years has to have somebody on the team who knows some history, or somebody who has enough confidence to shut down a video like this before it gets posted. Palin has Todd and a bunch of hacks who have little to recommend them except their personal loyalty to her. A Palin presidency would be like a replay of Warren Hardings, except his wife and loyal hacks had the good sense to not let him talk in public.

Quintessentially American

Charles Murray writes a piece this weekend in the Washington Post that, pushes the Tea Party line that modern elites are totally out of touch with "mainstream America."

Taken individually, members of the New Elite are isolated from mainstream America as a result of lifestyle choices that are nobody's business but their own. But add them all up, and they mean that the New Elite lives in a world that doesn't intersect with mainstream America in many important ways. When the tea party says the New Elite doesn't get America, there is some truth in the accusation.

This article makes the mistake made by Sarah Palin and many others in elevating niche, regional American subculture(s) to "mainstream America," and then excluding everyone who doesn't participate in the subculture from "real America," even though this really defines the majority of Americans as somehow less than American.

Murray writes:

With geographical clustering goes cultural clustering. Get into a conversation about television with members of the New Elite, and they can probably talk about a few trendy shows -- "Mad Men" now, "The Sopranos" a few years ago. But they haven't any idea who replaced Bob Barker on "The Price Is Right." They know who Oprah is, but they've never watched one of her shows from beginning to end.

Talk to them about sports, and you may get an animated discussion of yoga, pilates, skiing or mountain biking, but they are unlikely to know who Jimmie Johnson is (the really famous Jimmie Johnson, not the former Dallas Cowboys coach), and the acronym MMA means nothing to them.

They can talk about books endlessly, but they've never read a "Left Behind" novel (65 million copies sold) or a Harlequin romance (part of a genre with a core readership of 29 million Americans).

They take interesting vacations and can tell you all about a great backpacking spot in the Sierra Nevada or an exquisite B&B overlooking Boothbay Harbor, but they wouldn't be caught dead in an RV or on a cruise ship (unless it was a small one going to the Galapagos). They have never heard of Branson, Mo.

Here's the thing - The Price is Right gets 5 million viewers a week. Seven million people a year go to Branson. By Murray's own admission, 29 million people read Harlequin romances (worldwide). There are 300 million people - so each of these things that Murray cites as an element of "Mainstream America" is actually only something that a tiny fraction of Americans do. And really - "The Price is Right" Harlequin novels and cruises? It seems like, for Murray, Mainstream America = retired southerner ladies.

On the other hand, I'll submit my experiences and those of my friends and co-workers--urban New Yorkers in their late 20s and 30s who mostly have graduate degrees from "fancy schools". I can tell you that almost all of the guys, and most of the girls, watch the NFL (which averages 16.6 million viewers per regular season game), and we all know the Jimmie Johnson on the Fox pregame show. Most of us have been to Disney World (30 million visitors per year). We watch the same reality TV that the rest of the country does - American Idol, Teen Mom, Top Chef,* and almost everyone I know saw Avatar and Dark Knight.

Murray makes a really bold, and incorrect, claim that certain types of experiences, the kinds that tea-parties have, are "quintessentially American" while others are not:

There so many quintessentially American things that few members of the New Elite have experienced. They probably haven't ever attended a meeting of a Kiwanis Club or Rotary Club, or lived for at least a year in a small town (college doesn't count) or in an urban neighborhood in which most of their neighbors did not have college degrees (gentrifying neighborhoods don't count). They are unlikely to have spent at least a year with a family income less than twice the poverty line (graduate school doesn't count) or to have a close friend who is an evangelical Christian. They are unlikely to have even visited a factory floor, let alone worked on one.

However, let me rewrite the paragraph above:

There are so many quintessentially American things that few members of the Tea Party have experienced. They probably haven't ever attended a meeting of a Bar Association or bought food from a CSA, or lived in a neighborhood where they weren't part of the racial majority. They are unlikely to have used mass transportation (shuttle bus to the rental car lot doesn't count). They are unlikely to have taken a philosophy class (college or grad school does count). They are unlikely to have taught at a school where most of the kids had an income of less than twice the poverty line. They are unlikely to have a close friend who is a Jew or a Muslim or an atheist. They are unlikely to have worked on a trading floor or software design team or know what a derivative or Ruby on Rails is.

At the end of the day, America is a really big place, with room for many types of quintessentially or mainstream American experiences. I'm willing to grant Murray and the Tea Partiers that going to Branson, taking a cruise, joining Kiwanis and watching The Price is Right are authentically American, even though though these are things are niche activities undertaken by relatively small numbers of Americans.

I don't pretend to say that my experiences are like those of everyone else, or even most people, and I don't say that they're necessarily better, but I do think they're just as American, and I'm just as American, as Murray or the Tea Partiers.

*I will note that Murray has a point where scripted TV is concerned. I've never seen an episode of NCIS and have never heard anyone talk about it, and I only saw Two and a Half Men once on a plane (although, to be fair, it was a flight to Milwaukee so I think I should get some "real America" credit for it).

Harvest

I'm on vacation in the Sonoma Valley and did some wine tasting and vineyard touring yesterday. One of the interesting things we learned from the guide was that, depending on rain levels, an entire crop of grapes may have to be harvested in just one or two nights (yes, nights- for reasons having to do with keeping the grapes from getting crushed in the baskets, they're harvested at night when they're colder and firmer). And this wouldn't just be at one vineyard either, if it's early November and rain is on the forecast, the whole region needs to harvest at once. Also, the better wineries (basically anything that comes in a bottle as opposed to a box or jug) harvests by hand, which is really labor intensive.

I lay all this out to point out that this work would be impossible without migrant labor. Although growing grapes and making wine takes manpower, the workforce in Naps or Sonoma needs to grow exponentially at harvest time, which means that those workers need to have other work at other times of the year in other places, because you wouldn't want people justsitting around on unemployment for the whole non-harvest season. As American citizens have not shown much interest in itinerant agricultural labor, this job is being done by immigrants, mostly undocumented because the US doesn't give out nearly enough agricultural labor visas to bring in legal workers, and because migrant workers often move between the US and Mexico depending on the growing season. If people who want to conduct mass exportations were taken seriously we would it would destroy the wine industry (and probably most of our vegetable farming as well) in the US and basically put mistaken of the US citizens who live in central California out of work. Since nobody is going to let that happen, its best to remember that people advocating full deportation are not in fact to be taken seriously, and that we should look to some kind of real solution for regularizing the status of undocumented workers.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.2

An unnecessary provocation

A group opposing the Cordoba House just won permission from the New York MTA to place ads opposing the project on busses citywide.

The ads — which are scheduled to be printed and posted on city buses within ten days — feature an image of an “airplane headed toward the burning World Trade Center” next to a building that’s labeled as “WTC Mega Mosque” and the words “Why There?”

It's nice to know that those opposing the Cordoba House, who allegedly are worried that the mosque would be an "is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts." [sic (Palinese)] and inflame the grief of 9/11 survivors and families, think that those families are tough enough to see images of the burning world trade center drive by then on busses all day.

Test

I just got a new droid x and installed the mobile blogging software and I'm trying it out. Hopefully it will make it easier to post more frequently since I'll be able to post on the go.

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Justice

I have not yet read the whole of Judge Walker's decision in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, but the concluding paragraph is pretty powerful:

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. ...Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

One other critical point in this decision, is that Judge Walker, operating as the "finder of fact" (the role typically played by the jury in a jury trial) issued a finding fact on a number of critical issues. This is kind of inside-baseball legal stuff, but it's really important. A court of appeals, even the US Supreme Court, must defer to the facfinder with regard to facts from the trial. The appellate court can say that the facts aren't sufficient to support the judgment, but they can't quibble with the facts themselves.

Ambinder has a rundown of the facts here:

1. Marriage is and has been a civil matter, subject to religious intervention only when requested by the intervenors.

2. California, like every other state, doesn't require that couples wanting to marry be able to procreate.

3. Marriage as an institution has changed overtime; women were given equal status; interracial marriage was formally legalized; no-fault divorce made it easier to dissolve marriages.

4. California has eliminated marital obligations based on gender.

5. Same-sex love and intimacy "are well-documented in human history."

6. Sexual orientation is a fundamental characteristic of a human being.

7. Prop 8 proponents' "assertion that sexual orientation cannot be defined is contrary to the weight of the evidence."

8. There is no evidence that sexual orientation is chosen, nor than it can be changed.

9. California has no interest in reducing the number of gays and lesbians in its population.

10. "Same-sex couples are identical to opposite-sex couples in the characteristics relevant to the ability to form successful marital union."

11. "Marrying a person of the opposite sex is an unrealistic option for gay and lesbian individuals."

12. "Domestic partnerships lack the social meaning associated with marriage, and marriage is widely regarded as the definitive expression of love and commitment in the United States.The availability of domestic partnership does not provide gays and lesbians with a status equivalent to marriage because the cultural meaning of marriage and its associated benefits are intentionally withheld from same-sex couples in domestic partnerships."

13. "Permitting same-sex couples to marry will not affect the number of opposite-sex couples who marry, divorce, cohabit, have children outside of marriage or otherwise affect thestability of opposite-sex marriages."

Further costs of the "death panels" lie

Further to my earlier post on Atul Gawande's article about the fraught nature of end-of-life decisions and the importance of thinking and talking about them frankly and early... it turns out that Sarah Palin's death panels lie not only scotched the provision in the healthcare bill that would have reimbursed doctors for having these conversations with seniors, but it also leads a third of seniors to still believe that a "government panel" will make end of life decisions for them.

Beyond all the policy problems the death panels lie caused, the fact that people still believe it has the potential to cause all sorts of extra anxiety in the elderly who believe it. They may be less likely to talk to their doctors about end-of-life issues, or might seek to conceal symptoms to avoid being subject to the imaginary death panels.

I've said this before, but I think it continues to be important to point out that when people in power lie to make citizens afraid of the government, there are serious, serious consequences, almost none of which are borne by the liars or others in power. As a political "tactic," the death panels lie worked quite well for the right - it made it much harder to pass healthcare reform (and made the bill that passed less potent than it might ahve been), it clearly turned a number of voters away from Obama and the dems, but this comes at a cost - which may well be that some number of terminally ill people go untreated, or are incorrectly treated, or suffer much more anxiety and pain in their last months than would have happened if Palin and others had told the truth.

Glenn Beck's Gold Scam

If you follow Glenn's advice and buy gold from Goldline, you're getting so badly ripped off that gold would have to nearly triple in price just to make back your investment. The Big Picture explains here

As usual, Senators find "waste" in programs helping kids, no waste in defense

The New York Times reports that:

four senators this spring refused to approve a $425 million package of federal grants for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America after staff members looked at the organization’s tax forms as part of a routine vetting process and were surprised to learn that the organization paid its chief executive almost $1 million in 2008 — $510,774 in salary and bonus and $477,817 in retirement and other benefits.

The Senators, which include Republicans Chuck Grassley and Tom Coburn (the article doesn't list the other two), apparently are worried that federal dollars are footing the bill for the nonprofit's salary largesse. Of course, nobody seems to be concerned that the taxpayers are footing the bill when defense contractor Raytheon (where 90% of its income, or $22 billion, comes from government contracts) pays its CEO $15 million a year, or that Lockheed (70% of revenue, or about $35 billion, from government contracts) paid its CEO $24 million.

Of course, to members of a party that likes to mock things like nonprofits or community organizing, presumably any idiot can run an organization like the Boys & Girls clubs, which oversees 4,000 clubs with 50,000 employees and $1.4 billion in revenue. Of course "[a] nearly $1 million salary and benefit package for a nonprofit executive is not only questionable on its face but also raises questions about how the organization manages its finances in other areas", as Coburn said about the Boys & Girls club. But in real, old-fashioned "private industry" like defense contracting, it's important to have somebody who makes $24 million, or about 25 times what the Boys & Girls Club pays, running the show. You'd never have any question about how defense contractors "manage their finances," especially when Raytheon and Lockheed combined for over $9 million in lobbying congress in the second half of 2009 alone...

Lee not Custer

A heartbreaking, long, but incredibly important piece by Atul Gawande in the New Yorker (here) on how our current medical system excels at fighting disease but critically fails at helping terminal patients decide when to focus on improving the days they have left.

The simple view is that medicine exists to fight death and disease, and that is, of course, its most basic task. Death is the enemy. But the enemy has superior forces. Eventually, it wins. And, in a war that you cannot win, you don’t want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You don’t want Custer. You want Robert E. Lee, someone who knew how to fight for territory when he could and how to surrender when he couldn’t, someone who understood that the damage is greatest if all you do is fight to the bitter end.

More often, these days, medicine seems to supply neither Custers nor Lees. We are increasingly the generals who march the soldiers onward, saying all the while, “You let me know when you want to stop.” All-out treatment, we tell the terminally ill, is a train you can get off at any time—just say when. But for most patients and their families this is asking too much. They remain riven by doubt and fear and desperation; some are deluded by a fantasy of what medical science can achieve. But our responsibility, in medicine, is to deal with human beings as they are. People die only once. They have no experience to draw upon. They need doctors and nurses who are willing to have the hard discussions and say what they have seen, who will help people prepare for what is to come—and to escape a warehoused oblivion that few really want.

Gawande describes what doctors can do to help people through these decisions:

I spoke to an oncologist who told me about a twenty-nine-year-old patient she had recently cared for who had an inoperable brain tumor that continued to grow through second-line chemotherapy. The patient elected not to attempt any further chemotherapy, but getting to that decision required hours of discussion—for this was not the decision he had expected to make. First, the oncologist said, she had a discussion with him alone. They reviewed the story of how far he’d come, the options that remained. She was frank. She told him that in her entire career she had never seen third-line chemotherapy produce a significant response in his type of brain tumor. She had looked for experimental therapies, and none were truly promising. And, although she was willing to proceed with chemotherapy, she told him how much strength and time the treatment would take away from him and his family.

He did not shut down or rebel. His questions went on for an hour. He asked about this therapy and that therapy. And then, gradually, he began to ask about what would happen as the tumor got bigger, the symptoms he’d have, the ways they could try to control them, how the end might come.

The oncologist next met with the young man together with his family. That discussion didn’t go so well. He had a wife and small children, and at first his wife wasn’t ready to contemplate stopping chemo. But when the oncologist asked the patient to explain in his own words what they’d discussed, she understood. It was the same with his mother, who was a nurse. Meanwhile, his father sat quietly and said nothing the entire time.

A few days later, the patient returned to talk to the oncologist. “There should be something. There must be something,” he said. His father had shown him reports of cures on the Internet. He confided how badly his father was taking the news. No patient wants to cause his family pain. According to Block, about two-thirds of patients are willing to undergo therapies they don’t want if that is what their loved ones want.

The oncologist went to the father’s home to meet with him. He had a sheaf of possible trials and treatments printed from the Internet. She went through them all. She was willing to change her opinion, she told him. But either the treatments were for brain tumors that were very different from his son’s or else he didn’t qualify. None were going to be miraculous. She told the father that he needed to understand: time with his son was limited, and the young man was going to need his father’s help getting through it.

The oncologist noted wryly how much easier it would have been for her just to prescribe the chemotherapy. “But that meeting with the father was the turning point,” she said. The patient and the family opted for hospice. They had more than a month together before he died. Later, the father thanked the doctor. That last month, he said, the family simply focussed on being together, and it proved to be the most meaningful time they’d ever spent.

One point - the health care reform bill included funding in Medicare that would reimburse doctors for the time spent having these conversations with patients. This provision was tagged by the right as the infamous "death panels" and was taken out of the bill.

National Debt and Global Power

Economist Tyler Cowen, writing about the US national debt, makes the following point-

At some sufficiently high debt-gdp ratio, it becomes a foreign policy issue and a big one. Postwar UK had a high debt to gdp ratio, and to this day it is a fine place, but that debt meant the end of England as a world power, for better or worse. The U.S. for instance used financial issues to push England around and they basically had to give up on their overseas commitments. A very high debt ratio here would mean the end of the U.S. as a global world power, again even if gdp does OK. A global power needs the option of spending a lot more, quickly, without asking for anyone's permission. Your mileage on a U.S. retreat from the global policeman role will vary, but it's the elephant in the room which hardly anyone is talking about.

This is a really critical point that I'm very surprised national security conservatives aren't making (possibly because most "conservatives" don't actually care about the debt or deficit, only about cutting taxes). It is generally accepted that good credit - the ability to borrow money quickly at reasonable rates - has been historically the single most important factor for countries that want to project power. It was the basis behind the expansion of the British empire in the 1800s, and conversely was a key cause of the implosion of the French monarchy in the 1780s.

The reason is pretty straightforward- most countries tax/spend systems are generally inequilibrium - you take in roughly as much money through taxes, fees, tariffs, etc. as you regularly spend on general operations. However, foreign crises often require quick, heavy expenditures of money- oftentimes double or more the regular cost of running the state. It's not feasible to get that money through taxes - you can't just double the taxload on your citizens in a year and not expect disaster- even very patriotic people who are totally on-board for the war are going to be unable to part with doubled taxes without succumbing to financial catastrophe. Consequently, you have to be able to borrow.

Some of that borrowing can come from a state's own citizens through the sale of war bonds, which are just loans by citizens to the government. Even during World War II, the very peak of war bond sales in a very widely supported war, my back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate that the government's sale of $185 billion in war bonds covered less than half the cost of the war.

Consequently, the government will typically have to reach out to financial institutions and the general credit markets for loans necessary to fight wars, and credit market participants (particularly those in other countries) will not make loans that they think will not be paid back.

In the event of an attack on the country or similar event, I can imagine a surge of patriotism causing defense contractors to operate on IOUs, or soldiers to fight without paychecks, but that will not work over a long war, and will certainly not work for an unpopular war.

All of this is to make the point that, if a government has bad credit, even if it's a large, rich country, it is very difficult to project power. The US's status as a superpower is to some degree based on its navy, airforce, and sizeable standing army, which historically has been generally paid for out of regular revenues. However, the real American power is the threat that, if necessary, we can greatly increase our military spending to put more people in uniform, and more vehicles and weapons on the ground and in the air - as we did in Afghanistan and Iraq. Even now, with two ongoing conflicts, the US military numbers about 1.5 million troops. During World War II, we had 13 million in uniform. That kind of increase in scale would involve serious borrowing, which would not be viable if lenders didn't believe that the US would be able to pay back the loans - and a really high debt, like what's carried by, say, Greece, makes lenders very wary.

This is not to say that I support the deficit hawks' positions that we need to immediately freak out about the debt. The current national debt is only about half of US GDP - a far cry from the rates held by Italy, Greece, Japan, etc. However, it does have a couple repercussions-

1.) Americans, particularly those that care about the US remaining a global power, need to consider the effects of the national debt on our credible ability to borrow in the future to finance military operations.

2.) Given that much of our current military operations are funded by borrowing, which is adding to the debt, we need to think about military borrowing as a finite resource, like oil reserves, and we should weigh the value of adding to the debt to meet current foreign challenges against the need to have credit available for military operations in the future. Think of it this way - the national debt is kind of like a credit card with a limit - does it make sense to run up the card now on wars that aren't strictly necessary, when we might in the future need to use that card for something absolutely vital for our survival?

The GOP's Agenda - Stop, Repeal, Delay, Reject, Subpoena

Given current polling, there's a significant possibility that the Republicans will take over at least one house of congress (with the House much more likely than the senate). Today from leading conservative thinktank the Heritage Foundation, and conservative celebrity/congresswoman Michelle Bachman, we get an idea of what they might do if given the reins:

The Heritage Foundation has a new political action arm, which is urging conservatives to take action on the following issues (via Yglesias):

Take Action: Big-government global warming legislation will destroy jobs and weaken the American economy. Tell your Senators to reject any energy legislation that would harm the economy.

Take Action: Senators cannot fulfill their constitutional duty of “Advice and Consent” with incomplete information. Tell the Senators on the Judiciary Committee to delay a vote on Kagan’s confirmation until they have received and evaluated all the relevant documents.

Take Action Now: In June, Congressman Steve King of Iowa filed a petition that would force the U.S. House of Representatives to vote on repealing Obamacare. We must repeal Obamacare, now! Tell your Member of Congress to sign the petition to repeal Obamacare.

Take Action Now: Senators must know that America should not enter into a treaty that weakens our defensive capabilities and sovereignty. We need to stop the New START Treaty, now! Sign the petitionto make your voices heard.

Michelle Bachman, an actual member of congress who, via her hordes of followers (she actually raised more $ this past quarter than did Sarah Palin), lets slip what she thinks the GOP should do if they win the house:

“Oh, I think that’s all we should do,” Bachmann said. “I think that all we should do is issue subpoenas and have one hearing after another. And expose all the nonsense that is going on. And it’s very important when we come back that we have constitutional conservative leadership because the American people’s patience is about this big.”

Because of course, the main thing standing in between our current situation and a happy, prosperous US with a cleaned-up gulf and full employment is a lack of subpoenas and hearings.

The concrete benefits of the US - Israel relationship

I have periodically questioned, on this blog and in conversations, what kind of concrete benefits the US gets from its relationship with Israel. By concrete benefits I mean outside of those that stem from historic, cultural or religious similarities - ie, why is Israel the top recipient of US foreign aid, and why do we care more about their policy preferences than we do about those of similarly sized Western democratic nations like the Netherlands, Denmark, New Zealand, etc.?

That question has been sharpened in the past couple years, as the Netanyahu government has engaged in policies that are at times contrary to US interests and have also been at times openly hostile to other US allies like Turkey.

David Frum gives some good answers:

First, as the patron of the region’s pre-eminent military power, the United States gains leverage and status. Arab states that cooperate with the United States (e.g. Egypt) get what they want from Israel. Arab states that do not cooperate (e.g. Syria) do not get. The US can deploy Israel’s power to rescue other US clients from enemies (as the Israelis rescued King Hussein of Jordan from the PLO in 1970) or to accomplish strategic missions that the US would rather not dirty its own hands with (the destruction of nuclear facilities in Iraq and Syria, the assassination of terrorist leaders).

Second, Israel is a huge source of information to the US – and the most valuable live-fire test laboratory for US military equipment and doctrine. One of the decisive moments of the Cold War, for example, occurred during the skies over Lebanon in 1982. During the Yom Kippur war of 1973, only 9 years previous, Soviet ground-to-air missiles had wrought havoc upon Israeli aircraft. This time, Syria scrambled its air force to meet Israeli planes: 150 against 150, the largest air battle of the jet age. In just a few minutes, the Israelis downed 86 Syrian craft, suffering no casualties of their own. Microelectronics had triumphed in the test of battle. Soviet histories generally credit this event as the shock that jolted the Soviet elite into realizing that it must try some kind of “perestroika” of its ossifying economic system.

Third: the demonstration effect of the superiority of Western ways in interstate competition. Israel in 1950 had an income per capita not very much higher than that of neighboring Syria. Today, Israel has a GDP per capita comparable to that of most European countries, and higher than that of Saudi Arabia. It has sustained democracy under military onslaught. It is a science and technology leader. The Arab world may not like Israel, but its success sends a powerful “If you can’t beat them, join them” message. And of course part of “joining them” is emulating Israel’s close relationship with the United States.

I think the third is by far the most relevant (the second is not terribly important at the moment, as we have our own two hot wars in which to test our equipment). It's not a perfect argument though. Israel has a lower per capita GDP than the Gulf sheikdoms, and is not much higher than Saudi Arabia (although I would wager that the Israeli median per capita gdp is much higher than in those nations). In addition, as Turkey continues to grow as a regional power with rising incomes, as a muslim nation it will work as a much better model for countries in the region than will Israel.

Gingrich suggests the U.S. look to Saudi Arabia as a model of religious freedom

Following on Sarah Palin tweet that "peace loving Muslims" should "refudiate" plans to build a moderate mosque and cultural outreach center in lower Manhattan (not actually on the ground zero site, or even across the street, or frankly even viewable from ground zero) because of course Muslims = terrorists, perennial presidential wannabe Newt Gingrich has also voiced his opposition to this, and apparently all, mosques:

There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.

The reason that there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia is that Saudi Arabia is an Islamic absolute monarchy with no religious freedom. Gingrich here makes the serious logical error that the proper reaction to Saudi illiberality is illiberality of our own.

Gingrich's critical mistake, which is shared by Palin and many others, is his belief that the US is philosophically opposed to Islam, and not repression. To oppose Islam is to oppose millions of our own citizens and hundreds of millions of peace-loving people worldwide, many of whom have no problem with the U.S. It is also to turn our backs on the religious liberty that is a bedrock value of this country.

Thirty years ago, Gingrich's hero Ronald Reagan knew that the best way to fight the repression and illiberality of Soviet Russia was to highlight freedom and liberty in the United States, echoing the same strategy employed by FDR when fighting Nazi repression. It is time for Gingrinch, Palin and co. to realize that the best way to fight the lack of liberty elsewhere is to champion it here.

Back

Apologies to my readers for the lack of posts lately, I had a sort of crisis in confidence in blogging which I'll hopefully be able to articulate in a later post.

In the meantime, a great article by Jonathan Rausch that looks at family patterns in red states and blue states (like the fact that single-parent families, earlier pregnancies, rates of divorce, etc. are much higher in red states), and the implications for gay marriage.

Rausch, drawing on the work of other social scientists, theorizes that in red states, the moral tradition is that "families make adults." Thus, early marriages (often shotgun) and the addition of children are the crucible that form adults. Thus, the focus in red states is on having children within a marriage as main moral driver. This norm, however, creates some problems:

Moral traditionalism fails to prevent pre-marital sex and extra-marital childbirth. Demands for abstinence delay sexual activity, but not much, and often make early pregnancy more likely by reducing the use of contraception This increase in early pregnancy precipitates more early marriages, which are more likely to end in divorce. It also precipitates more unwed parenthood. Premature family formation, in turn, derails education and limits earning potential and increases stress on families. The resulting sense of social breakdown fuels more calls for moral traditionalism. More sex prompts more sermons and more emphasis on abstinence. The cycle repeats.

In blue states, the moral norm is reversed - adults form families, after having achieved their education and made some headway into careers, and the key moral driver is making responsible choices.

Mature adults form families to express and nurture commitment to each other and their children, and to share human capital which both partners have already amassed. Sex comes before marriage, and marriage comes before children, and indeed children need never come at all. The decisions to have sex, marry, and have children are thus distinct and separate. What counts is not the linkage but the timing (not too early, at least not without birth control!). The crucial moral requirement is not that the decisions be linked or made synchronously, but that they be made responsibly.

Rausch sees these differences in moral norms for relationships as a critical piece of determining where support or opposition to gay marriage lies:

In Blue World, gay couples fit the paradigm perfectly. They are responsible adults trying to live more stable, more responsible lives, and trying to improve the prospects of any children they may have. Who could ask for anything more?

In fact, in Blue World, marriage is incomplete if it excludes gay couples! Excluding them sends all the wrong signals about family and responsibility. It would make a hypocritical nonsense of what it is that marriage is supposed to be all about.

In Red World, things look very different. The Red project is to maintain the linkage between sex, marriage, and procreation. In Red World, de-linkage has wrought all kinds of social problems.
Same-sex marriage, in this view, is in some sense the ultimate symbolic assault on what is left of the unity of sex, marriage, and procreation.

It should be clear from my blog what side of this divide I'm on, but it's interesting to think about why so many people, particularly those who are not traditionally religious or homophobic bigots, feel threatened by gay marriage.