tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9320991770849980762024-02-07T13:38:33.898-05:00AK's RuminationsAkil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-4562202743607690112018-06-15T16:54:00.002-04:002018-06-15T16:57:26.555-04:00The Bogus Basis of the Minimum Wage<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 18pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>[This article was originally published on April 19, 2016.]</i></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the fall of 2013, nationwide </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/02/business/economy/wage-strikes-planned-at-fast-food-outlets-in-100-cities.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1386757585-ig2LI2Im+W1kp1wFQX/uBw" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">protests</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> pushing for drastic increases in the minimum wage—and the endorsements of politicians like President </span><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/12/04/obama-shifts-to-economy-calls-for-minimum-wage-hike/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Barack Obama</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">—revived the perennial controversy over the wisdom of this three-quarter-of-a-century old federal policy. Advocates of minimum wage hikes have now won their latest victory in California, where the legislature recently </span><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/03/28/california-raises-minimum-wage-15-hour/82348622/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">voted</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to raise that state’s minimum wage from its current rate of $10 an hour to $15 by 2022. Professional economists will continue to </span><a href="http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/along-the-minimum-wage-battle-front/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">debate</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> whether the minimum wage </span><a href="http://www.therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5650&updaterx=2010-10-08+11%3A40%3A17" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">makes low-skilled workers better off</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or </span><a href="http://mercatus.org/sites/default/files/unintended-consequences-raising-minimum-wage.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">prices them out of work</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and costs consumers more in higher prices. What usually goes unmentioned in the discourse, however, is that the concept of a mandatory “living wage” makes little sense in principle. Employers’ duty is to pay workers according to the value of their labor, not to pay them enough to cover their cost of living—or any other arbitrary benchmark.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Support for minimum wage hikes stems from the </span><a href="http://fastfoodforward.org/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">belief</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that all full-time work is worthy of compensation generous enough to enable employees to live comfortably. This well-meaning misconception treats jobs as if they were social programs, designed to lend a helping hand to people who need it. In reality, workers are not charity cases; they do the work that their bosses need them to do in order to accomplish those employers’ missions. McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s don’t hire their cashiers and burger-flippers in order to help them out; they pay them to produce and serve their customers food, hopefully at a tidy profit. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Indeed, this reality applies to all employers, not only to profit-seeking businesses. Police officers are paid to enforce laws and protect the public; employees at charities and non-profits are paid to serve certain principled causes; teachers are paid to educate their students. None of their employers hire them out of sheer goodwill, for the purpose of putting roofs over their heads, food in their bellies, and clothes on their backs. Those organizations all keep workers on payroll for fundamentally the same reason: to get certain jobs done.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The purpose of paying employees is to compensate them according to the value of the services that they provide to their employers. There’s no better mechanism for ascertaining that value than market forces, which spontaneously aggregate the various factors that determine the supply of and demand for labor: the number of job seekers and competing employers, the amount of specialization and training that are necessary to develop the skills required for the job, etc. As one economist </span><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Free-Our-Markets-Essential-Economics/dp/098442542X" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">puts</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> it, “Market prices coordinate the actions of billions of people pursuing their myriad goals, by communicating the changing, particular knowledge of everyone about the availability and potential uses of everything.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In many unfortunate cases, workers’ labor may be worth less than what it costs to live decently in certain locations (especially if the cost of living is artificially inflated by misguided government policies like </span><a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/12/10/housing_costs_it_s_the_zoning_stupid.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">restrictive zoning regulations</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">). Yet that situation isn’t inherently unjust. There’s nothing about unskilled tasks like flipping burgers, stocking shelves, ringing up purchases, or other menial work that necessarily merits pay generous enough to enable employees to support themselves or their families. That kind of labor is too unspecialized and requires too little training to entitle its practitioners to any arbitrary minimum pay. If you find this pill too bitter, consider </span><a href="http://live.wsj.com/video/who-in-america-earns-minimum-wage/EDEB8B62-96D1-4FEE-B95E-85E4E80E21FE.html?mod=trending_now_video_3#!EDEB8B62-96D1-4FEE-B95E-85E4E80E21FE" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">how few American workers</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> actually have to swallow it in any case: in 2012, less than 2.8% of the workforce made minimum wage; over half were under the age of 24, and ¾ of them worked part-time.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The idea isn’t that people who can’t hack it on their own should be left in the lurch; it’s just that it’s not their </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: italic; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">bosses’</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> job to lift them out of it. Given their institutional character, it makes more sense in principle for governments to provide that support, at least wherever private charity and voluntary mutual aid </span><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/the-conservative-myth-of-a-social-safety-net-built-on-charity/284552/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">aren’t up to snuff</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. For this reason and more, a </span><a href="http://reason.com/archives/2013/11/26/scrap-the-welfare-state-give-people-free" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">basic</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="https://reason.com/blog/2015/12/07/finland-to-test-basic-income-guarantee" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">income</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> guarantee of some kind might do the trick </span><a href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-04-01/a-basic-income-is-smarter-than-minimum-wages" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">better than the minimum wage</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It’s also critical, of course, to make educational and economic opportunity as widely available as possible—partly by </span><a href="https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2016/sdn1602.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">keeping labor markets flexible</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">—so that people in low-wage jobs can move on up to better-paying work as quickly and as fluidly as possible. Just as consumers are empowered when they can penalize incompetent firms by taking their business elsewhere, workers are empowered when they can respond to sub-optimal pay or working conditions by taking their labor elsewhere. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For all of that, I’m not opposed to raising the minimum wage under all circumstances; as long as we have the existing system instead of the aforementioned alternative, it makes sense to adjust the minimum wage periodically to keep pace roughly with the rising cost of living. (The key is to avoid hiking it too far, too fast, which would almost certainly cost at least some unskilled jobs.) In the long run, however, the general approach that I advocate here would make a great deal more sense than imposing an arbitrary wage floor, with all the </span><a href="http://businessinnovation.berkeley.edu/williamsonseminar/rubinstein110311.pdf" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #0563c1; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">unintended consequences</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-style: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that can come with it. A job is not a social program or a charitable endeavor; it’s a business transaction in the labor market, plain and simple. Your boss’ job is to pay you whatever your work is worth, not to take care of you. </span></div>
<br />Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-68962068118232659742015-12-17T19:24:00.000-05:002015-12-21T16:32:46.696-05:00Memoirs of a Black Princetonian<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a Black alumnus of Princeton University, I'm dismayed at the quality of the debate over last month's "Occupy Nassau" sit-in and the <a href="https://www.change.org/p/princeton-university-administration-occupynassau-meet-black-student-s-demands">demands</a> made by the Black Justice League (BJL). The BJL and many of its <a href="http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2015/11/princeton_student_protests_draw_national_support.html">supporters</a> have painted a rather gloomy portrait of a Black and Latino student body crushed under the boot of an unfeeling administration and uniformly seething with racial resentment. I, for one, don't buy this dismal caricature of race relations at my alma mater. My experience as a Black Princeton student in the 2000s suggests that while many minority students there do experience racism and feel alienated from the school's cultural mainstream, a great many others don't. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mind you, I'm glad that the BJL has succeeded in prompting Old Nassau to confront the issue of race relations on campus. In my day, I heard more than a few Black students express dissatisfaction with Princeton life due to the occasional racial slur, feeling out of place or unwelcome at parties at Princeton’s </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_clubs_at_Princeton_University" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">eating clubs</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, obnoxious racial attitudes expressed in campus publications, etc. Yet I knew at least as many Black students who felt entirely at home at Princeton; and even those who felt alienated had a number of campus institutions to which they could turn for cultural succor. The Princeton that I attended was not the racial dystopia that many participants in the current clash make it out to be. Furthermore, I doubt that the problems that do afflict the “Orange Bubble” would likely be remedied by the implementation of most of the BJL’s demands.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In 2006, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (JBHE) gave Princeton its </span><a href="http://dailyprincetonian.com/news/2006/02/university-tops-ivies-in-attracting-black-students/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">third-highest ranking</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> among the 26 most selective U.S. universities—and its highest Ivy League ranking—for its record of attracting African-American students and professors. That same year, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Hispanic</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> magazine rated Princeton America’s </span><a href="http://dailyprincetonian.com/news/2006/04/university-second-best-for-latinos-magazine-says/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">second-best university</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for Latinos. One African-American freshman, Cameron White ’09, </span><a href="http://dailyprincetonian.com/news/2006/02/university-tops-ivies-in-attracting-black-students/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">told</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The Daily Princetonian, "I think the fact that I don’t notice anything negative is a sign that University policies in promoting diversity are effective. I feel like my race isn’t even an issue when making friends." He wasn’t alone. </span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I arrived at Princeton expecting to struggle to find my Afro-Caribbean culture represented on campus. Instead, my very first day, a personable Bahamian sophomore promptly introduced me to the Princeton Caribbean Connection (PCC), where I couldn’t swing my arm without smacking a fellow West Indian. That spring semester, I performed on my brand new </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steelpan" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">steelpan</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> at the PCC’s annual “A Little Taste of </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinidad_and_Tobago_Carnival" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Carnival</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">” festival. I routinely broke bread with students from throughout the Caribbean Islands and Diaspora; I met two budding </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancehall_Queens" style="text-decoration: none;">dancehall queens</a></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and had a classmate who was a veteran of Spike Lee's films; I saw reggae veteran Wayne Wonder perform at Princeton's <a href="https://www.princeton.edu/fieldscenter/">Carl A. Fields Center</a> for Equality and Cultural Understanding for free. </span></span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Such offerings of non-Caucasian culture were not in short supply. There was the “Black and Brown Barbecue” that kicked off the school year; the “Soul Meets Seoul” dinner that united African-American and Korean-American students (and cuisine); the Blacklight Party at the Campus Club (which had a membership commonly described as consisting of “Band people and Black people”) where I celebrated my very first </span><a href="http://admission.princeton.edu/multimedia/student-focus-celebrating-deans-date" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dean’s Date</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. The Black Student Union’s Leadership and Mentoring Program (LAMP) paired Black freshmen with veterans who showed us the ropes, helping us navigate the often choppy waters of the Princeton experience. Among my favorite social events by far were the Black Men’s and Women’s Appreciation Dinners each spring, in which gentlemen would treat ladies to a sumptuous formal banquet and vice versa; send off graduating seniors in style; and and salute one another for the roles we had played in each other’s lives.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Beneath the surface, of course, all was not copacetic; I never personally experienced any ascertainable bigotry, but many of my fellow Black students reported not being so lucky. My first inkling of their discontent came during my freshman fall, when my academic advisor asked me bluntly—at the administration's instruction—whether I felt comfortable on Prospect Avenue (the location of the eating clubs). Taken aback, I told her that I felt fine on the drag colloquially known to students as "the Street;" but it soon dawned on me that my experience was not universal.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I learned more about the alienation of many of my fellow Black students after joining the Black Men’s Awareness Group (BMAG) and Princeton’s </span><a href="http://www.princeton.edu/~sd/about.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Sustained Dialogue”</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (SD) chapter. One of my SD discussion group leaders once stated that she’d been called a nigger on campus in the past. In online conversations between BMAG members, I heard tales of rejection from parties on the Street. One member told us of the time he’d been accosted by an enraged, drunk white student who accused him of “wanting to screw our [i.e. white] girls.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anecdotal or not, such claims of racism shouldn’t be cavalierly dismissed. Casually peruse the comments section of virtually any </span><a href="http://dailyprincetonian.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Daily Princetonian</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> article about racial issues, and you’ll find comments exhibiting contempt for African-Americans and other racial minority groups. It’s not hard to imagine that at least some of that demonstrable prejudice occasionally manifests itself in face-to-face encounters between students or in </span><a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/12/7/9849382/black-at-princeton" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">interactions</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> with faculty and staff. </span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nonetheless, the totality of the circumstances doesn’t clearly support the narrative advanced by the BJL and its supporters. Based on my experiences and those of other Black and Latino alumni whom I’ve consulted on this issue, I strongly suspect that a great many minority students have not found Princeton to be such an </span><a href="https://medium.com/@theblackjusticeleague/an-open-letter-on-free-speech-our-demands-and-civil-disruption-8fa9b94f8167#.l5e4wow4u" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“oppressive environment.”</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So it should come as no surprise that I don’t agree with the BJL’s entire reform agenda. I’m not opposed to renaming University institutions named after Woodrow Wilson, though apparently, the exact extent and significance of his undeniable </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/06/25/expunging-woodrow-wilson-from-official-places-of-honor/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">racism</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is </span><a href="http://dailyprincetonian.com/opinion/2015/12/letter-to-the-editor-from-woodrow-wilsons-biographer/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">debatable</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Yet I can’t support this demand strongly, either, because I can’t see what good it would do. November 2015 was the first time I ever heard a Black student or alumnus voice a grievance having anything to do with Princeton’s thirteenth president. It figures, because Wilsonian nomenclature has no practical impact on any students’ daily lives; it doesn’t directly affect anyone’s grades, job prospects, work loads, or classroom and social experiences. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-cc067102-c671-e6f8-4c8b-e32cb6703a03"></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I'm much more sympathetic to the designation of a room in the Carl Fields Center for Black students than I originally was. When I was an undergraduate, Fields had already </span><a href="https://www.princeton.edu/fieldscenter/about/history/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">provided</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Black Princetonians with “a place where [they] can have dignity and comfort and engage in self-healing with those who have had similar experiences” (in the BJL's </span><a href="https://medium.com/@theblackjusticeleague/an-open-letter-on-free-speech-our-demands-and-civil-disruption-8fa9b94f8167#.ken98yhbh" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">words</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) ever since its foundation in 1971. Yet it's been claimed that since Fields' </span><a href="http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S25/33/00C33/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">relocation</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> six years ago, it has ceased cater to minority students the way it used to. At a campus <a href="http://dailyprincetonian.com/news/2015/12/speakers-examine-discrimination-at-u-in-reach-in-teach-in-colloquium/">colloquium</a> last December, Yina Moore '79 stated that Fields is no longer "the cultural center for African-American students," according to the Daily Princetonian. It this is true, then I can see how it made sense for the administration to agree to this demand.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I just can't get behind the BJL’s call for the establishment of cultural affinity housing. The implication that </span><a href="http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S44/79/75E24/index.xml" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“students interested in Black culture”</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> currently have nowhere to go boggles my mind, for I was never at a loss for exposure to Black culture at Princeton. The Black Arts Company (BAC) regularly enthralled students with African-American dance and theatre; I thrilled to the acrobatic moves of the B-boy crew Sympoh; I remember Black students flocking in droves to Friday night </span><a href="http://dailyprincetonian.com/news/2006/02/students-find-beats-and-red-bull-at-blackbox-2/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Black Box”</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> parties (in the insidiously named Wilson College, no less!). I got to see Jurassic 5 and Rihanna perform for free (though I’ve always kicked myself for missing George Clinton’s show); I even got to shoot the breeze briefly with human beatbox Rahzel after one of his two performances at Princeton during my freshman year. I got to see Attallah Shabazz, Malcolm X’s eldest daughter, </span><a href="http://dailyprincetonian.com/news/2003/12/malcolm-xs-daughter-looks-at-race-identity/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">speak</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Not once during my Princeton days did I ever feel “</span><a href="https://medium.com/@theblackjusticeleague/an-open-letter-on-free-speech-our-demands-and-civil-disruption-8fa9b94f8167#.ken98yhbh" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">pushed</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> to assimilate into the dominant community by hiding important aspects of [my] identity.”</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I also partook of countless other multicultural offerings, from the traditional Mexican dance of Ballet Folklorico to the South Asian dance of Naacho to Raks Odalisque's Middle Eastern dance. The Afrobeat All-Stars, Sensemaya, were perennial crowd favorites at my own Terrace Club, and the springtime "Souk" bazaar brought Jewish and Arab students together to share Middle Eastern customs and cuisine with the campus. I doubt that all those cultural opportunities (and many more) have completely vanished from Princeton in the years since I graduated. I don't see why non-white current students need to be able to live in racially dedicated dorms in order to feel at home on campus.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There's one more dimension to my disagreement with this particular demand. I strongly support African descendants' efforts to build our own spaces, but the more we can provide such spaces for ourselves, without having to depend on white authorities like governments or university administrations to provide them for us, the better. Intriguingly, the Black alumni statement proclaiming solidarity with the BJL seemingly <a href="http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2015/11/princeton_student_protests_draw_national_support.html">echoed</a> this sentiment: "You should be able to create your own safe spaces and not have [them] ascribed to you." But the BJL is demanding precisely what its alumni allies seem to be inveighing against: the ascription of campus spaces to them by the administration. How can the alumni's laudable appeal for Black collective self-reliance and independence possibly be reconciled with the BJL's demand on its face?</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s partly because of my belief in </span><a href="http://dailyprincetonian.com/opinion/2015/11/a-plea-for-moderation-and-inclusivity/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">open-minded</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><a href="http://dailyprincetonian.com/news/2015/11/on-speech-and-talking-protest-and-possibility/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">respectful</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> discourse that I actually support the addition of a diversity category to the undergraduate distribution requirements. I learned a great deal about many lesser-known dimensions of institutional racism in America through my freshman seminar on “The Ghetto As a Socio-Historical Problem” and my writing seminar on “The Race Debate in the Modern U.S.” My classmates came from diverse political and cultural backgrounds, and my professors taught in an ideologically neutral and intellectually tolerant manner, conveying documented facts and allowing us to draw our own conclusions from them. As long as the proposed courses are implemented as impartially and open-mindedly as my past courses were taught, I’m confident that the calibre and tenor of discussion of race relations at Princeton will benefit from them.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet that benefit won’t materialize as long as Princeton students continue to </span><a href="http://www.charlotteobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article46546405.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">denigrate</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the </span><a href="http://dailyprincetonian.com/opinion/2015/11/in-response-to-in-the-defense-of-the-christakises/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">value</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of </span><a href="https://www.thefire.org/president-obama-student-protests-should-embrace-free-speech/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">free speech</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or to <a href="https://www.thefire.org/free-speech-at-princeton-a-report-from-the-front-lines/">cast aspersions</a> on its advocates' motives; </span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to </span><a href="http://dailyprincetonian.com/opinion/2015/11/we-can-do-better/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">refuse to debate</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the BJL’s demands on the merits or to substantiate their claims of bigotry on campus; to </span><a href="http://www.wsj.com/article_email/backlash-develops-over-student-protests-1448063437-lMyQjAxMTA1OTI5MTEyMzE1Wj" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">dismiss</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> arguments against the BJL’s agenda with facile accusations of racism and race treachery; to </span><a href="https://medium.com/@theblackjusticeleague/an-open-letter-on-free-speech-our-demands-and-civil-disruption-8fa9b94f8167#.v5k88nt8y" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">scorn</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> critiques of the BJL’s tactics as “tone policing” and “respectability politics;” or to lump all darker-complected Princetonians into the same monolithically aggrieved category. I’m not convinced that Princeton is the bubbling cauldron of racial antagonism that the BJL’s rhetoric suggests, or that it is a systematically “oppressive” environment where only white students can get a fair shake. This more nuanced perspective, too, must be be a part of the discourse on the BJL’s demands if Old Nassau is to emerge from the current controversy a better place. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: white;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One thing that can certainly be said for the BJL’s ballsy maneuver is that it has prodded Princeton to face up to the race question in an unprecedented way. For that achievement, they deserve their props. Now that that phase of the mission has been accomplished and the </span><a href="http://dailyprincetonian.com/news/2015/12/panel-discusses-free-speech-discrimination-in-the-context-of-bjl-protests/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">debate</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="http://dailyprincetonian.com/opinion/2015/12/the-right-to-offend-goes-both-ways/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><a href="http://dailyprincetonian.com/news/2015/12/speakers-examine-discrimination-at-u-in-reach-in-teach-in-colloquium/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">afoot</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, however, I hope that cooler heads and more open minds will prevail from here on in. </span></span></div>
Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-41161463405801094612015-11-20T19:06:00.001-05:002015-11-20T19:07:55.119-05:00Ain't No Love in the Heart of the Campus<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">As a recent graduate of Princeton University, I am occasionally treated to e-mail messages from Princeton Pause, which styles itself as “a monthly e-greeting that brings Princeton closer to Princetonians everywhere”. In short, the university tries to avoid becoming too distant a memory in the minds of its departed students, partly in the hope of eliciting generous alumni donations to its Annual Giving program. The latest such Valentine I received featured a short video clip of a speech by the estimable Anthony Grafton—a former History professor of mine—on “what makes Princeton unique.” </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">This question has crossed my mind often of late. On the whole, I enjoyed my time at Old Nassau, and will forever cherish the memories and hopefully lifelong friends I made there. In just the past several weeks, I have been pleasantly reminded of the key role my Princeton experience has played in my personal development by sporadic visits to campus, encounters with former classmates and attendance at various alumni gatherings. Yet not until I recently learned of a despicable episode at the University of Massachusetts did I begin to approach answering the question of what makes Princeton unique. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">The episode in question concerns the appearance of conservative columnist Don Feder on UMass’ Amherst campus on March 11th of this year. Feder opposes hate crimes laws as a criminalization not only of acts but of thoughts and beliefs—“hate” being a state of mind rather than a form of conduct, or so the argument goes. This viewpoint predictably incurred the wrath of most of UMass Amherst’s student body. The result was that Feder’s speech, which was sponsored by UMass’ Republican Club, was systematically disrupted and derailed by a swarm of left-wing student protestors. As shown in a video posted on YouTube by a group of the protestors themselves (</span><a href="http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DcJPmv1vTbjc&h=mAQHRphMg&s=1" rel="nofollow" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-family: helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJPmv1vTbjc</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">), the students hissed and booed Feder. Some noisily reversed their chairs to turn their backs to him. One student loudly interrupted his speech with a statement about one victim of an allegedly racist and homophobic hate crime. The harassment mounted to a fever pitch, until Feder finally gave up protesting this unseemly treatment and left the podium. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">The case against this disgrace is obvious—and virtually unassailable. Whatever Feder’s detractors might think of his views, it is beyond dispute that he had a right to express them without intimidation or disruption. Feder’s speech was to be followed with a question-and-answer session in which his student opponents could have critiqued his position as extensively as they liked. They denied themselves that opportunity, however, by effectively running him off the stage. “This is free speech,” cried one young woman in defense of the students’ shenanigans. It seems not to have occurred to her that Feder’s speech deserved to be as “free” as hers and her schoolmates’. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Are there any circumstances under which the protestors’ actions may have been justified? The only such case I can imagine would be if Feder had engaged in what the US Supreme Court’s free speech jurisprudence has described as “fighting words”: speech that deliberately incites violence or other forms of criminal conduct. Had Feder taken the stage to advocate acts that would have qualified as hate crimes, that would have been a different story. Yet he did no such thing, merely arguing that violent crimes committed for bigoted reasons should be punished in exactly the same way as all other violent crimes. There may be a mountain of sound, rational arguments to make against this thesis. Not one of them was heard at UMass two months ago. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">This, unfortunately, was not an isolated incident. Such nonsense has become more and more common on college campuses across the US in recent years, as political polarization of the American electorate has set in and the American academy has drifted further and further leftward. On at least two occasions in the past several years, African-American advocate Ward Connerly met a similar fate when he took his campaign against affirmative action to the University of Michigan campus. This unseemly behavior, of course, cuts both ways on the ideological spectrum. I still remember with unease the war fever that gripped the US before and during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the widespread intolerance for the expression of opposition to the war that came with it. New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, for instance, was forced from the stage by protesters during his commencement speech at Rockford College in Illinois after criticizing the war. Conservative pundits in general were as likely to applaud as to protest such shameful conduct. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">The relevance of these incidents to Princeton’s virtues is no doubt obvious by this point. I have heard of at least one case in Princeton history in which jeering protesters discombobulated an appearance by a speaker deemed controversial by much of the student body. On March 5th, 1970, during President Richard Nixon’s brief expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia, almost fourscore antiwar students at an ecology conference in Jadwin Gym heckled Interior Secretary Walter J. Hickel to distraction while then-University President Robert F. Goheen looked on furiously. As far as I know, however, such cases have been mercifully rare within the Orange Bubble. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">In all my time on campus, I recall no such foolishness taking place. From the “Frist Filibuster” in the spring of 2005, to the running battle over abortion waged in the letters section of the Prince throughout most of 2006, I cannot remember any incident on campus in which one or more parties to a debate found themselves bullied into silence. I remember attending a presentation in the spring of 2007 at which anti-abortion advocate Dr. Charmaine Yoest of the Family Research Council gave a speech entitled “How Abortion Harms Women”. Sponsored in part by the Woodrow Wilson School—it was hosted in Bowl 16 of Robertson Hall—this event, as hot-button as its topic was, proved a model of civility. Dr. Yoest’s speech was followed by a Q&A session in which the students—a mostly pro-choice lot that included Sara Viola ‘08, then head of Princeton Pro-Choice Vox—subjected the speaker to rigorous scrutiny and criticism of her views. Through it all, not a sentence was cut off, not a personal attack made, not a voice raised in anger. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">During my time on campus, I heard countless complaints about how politically jaded, complacent and apathetic Princetonians were, at least as compared with their counterparts at, say, Columbia. This criticism was well enough taken by me; but I hope Princeton never travels so far down the road of political activism as to become another UMass or University of Michigan. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Is it too much to ask that all students at all communities of higher learning show a similar tolerance and respect for opposing viewpoints? Am I to believe that only elite institutions like Princeton can hold their students to this same standard? Surely—hopefully—not. However, if civility and rationality in public (and especially political) discourse, and the free contention of a hundred or more schools of thought, are to remain primarily the province of America’s top-notch universities, that makes me that much more grateful to have attended one of those schools. There are many advantages to a Princeton education, most of which are obvious enough that I need not regurgitate them here. One that usually receives far less emphasis than it deserves, however, is that Princeton is the kind of place where neither Don Feder, nor Ward Connerly, nor any of their ilk would ever find themselves muzzled by an unruly mob—no matter how abhorrent their views might be to the bulk of the student body. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">This does not make Princeton “unique” in the strictest sense of the word—ours is hardly the only university whose students behave so civilly and intelligently. Yet in these politically polarized times, Old Nassau may find itself approaching this kind of uniqueness asymptotically. And you know what? That’s good enough for me.</span>Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-37921890455159946552014-08-28T09:59:00.003-04:002014-08-28T10:00:22.756-04:00Of Markets and Mores<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 27.35pt;">
<i><u>Note:</u> This post is adapted from an essay I wrote in the summer of 2011 that <a href="https://www.liberalstudies.ca/essay-contest2011/">won honorable mention</a> in the Institute for Liberal Studies' "Morality of Capitalism" <a href="https://www.liberalstudies.ca/contests/">Essay Contest</a>.</i></div>
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I have not always believed
in free enterprise. On the contrary, as a teenager, I looked at the capitalist
system with a deep-seated suspicion. From my current libertarian vantage point,
I remember wistfully the loathing and contempt with which I viewed the notion
that a system of self-interested individuals making free choices could ever
benefit the common good. I saw competition between individuals for scarce
resources, goods and services as just so much lubricant on the slippery slope
to a cutthroat, social Darwinist dystopia. The whole scheme, I reasoned, was
immorality at its worst. Greed, selfishness, chaos, mutual sabotage instead of
mutual assistance, taking advantage of labor instead of providing for workers’
needs altruistically—all these were strands of a web of vice and perfidy. I
sincerely believed that capitalism was simply a sublimation of some of the
worst impulses in the human character.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Who would imagine that an
illustrated storybook, of all things, would have shown me the error of my ways?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 27.35pt;">
Yet so the story goes. During
a visit to a friend’s dorm room in university, I happened upon a copy of
cartoonist Gary Larson’s book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/There_s_a_Hair_in_My_Dirt.html?id=3B7LDJ2OF_cC">There’s aHair in my Dirt!</a></i> In it, a family of earthworms—mother, father and son—sits down to supper. The
little worm, discovering a stray hair in his routine dinner of topsoil,
explodes into a tirade about the boredom and drudgery of his life as a lowly
annelid. A stern Father Worm, seeking to teach his naïve son about his true
place in the ecosystem, launches into a fable about a young human girl named
Harriet who goes for a walk in the forest near her home. <o:p></o:p></div>
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During her promenade,
Harriet is awestruck by the beauty of the natural landscape she observes. She
is bedazzled by the kaleidoscope of color in a field of blossoming flowers,
exclaiming, “I’m gazing at a painting! Oh, Mother Nature! What an artist you
are!” She thrills
to the sound of songbirds chirping as they wing through the air, interpreting
their sweet strains as expressions of good cheer. She coos
over two cute young fawns playing in a meadow. She
marvels at the “graceful acrobatics” of dragonflies circling over a nearby pond, and
gushes over the lights of fireflies dotting the night sky, calling them “the
fairies of the night, enchanting the forest with their magical little lights!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 27.35pt;">
Father Worm, of course,
wastes no time bursting the young maiden’s bubble. The blooming flora Harriet
witnessed were actually waging war on a “reproductive battlefield”—using their
bright colors to compete for the attention of insects, which, of course, bear
the pollen those plants need to breed. Those birds belted out their avian aria
not to delight human ears, but to communicate with each other—relaying “an
array of insults, warnings, and come-ons to members of their own species.” The fawns
frolicking in the field instinctively did so not to engage in carefree
horseplay, but to form added neurons in their brains, improving their
intelligence and thereby increasing their chances for survival in a life in
which predators were constant threats. Meanwhile, the dragonflies were engaging
in predatory maneuvers, and Harriet’s beloved fireflies were really beetles
whose displays of light were the products of biochemical processes used to
attract potential mates.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 27.35pt;">
Underpinning all of the
sensory delights Mother Nature has to offer is a rough-and-tumble reality: fierce—and
often lethal—competition. Moreover, although that never-ending struggle coexists
with extensive cooperation between organisms, such cooperation is not
altruistically driven. Rather, when living beings assist one another, they
receive some sort of benefit in return. As naturalist and author Edward O.
Wilson wrote in his foreword to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">There’s a
Hair in My Dirt!</i>, “Nature really <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i>
red in tooth and claw. While it is true that organisms are dependent on others,
the ecological web they create is built entirely from mutual exploitation. Life
is tough! There is no free lunch, and what one creature consumes, another must
provide. I know of no instance in which a species of plant or animal gives
willing support to another without extracting some advantage in return.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 27.35pt;">
I remember feeling awed when
I first absorbed the wisdom in this simple yet profound parable. I already
knew, of course, that in scientific terms, human beings are but the smartest
subjects in the animal kingdom. Most, if not all, of our behavior has its roots
in our less evolved ancestors’ primal struggle for survival. If the natural
world could have spontaneously evolved into this arrangement—this system that
was at once based on competition and cooperation, albeit a decidedly
self-interested cooperation—without leading to utter chaos and collapse, then
maybe, just maybe…<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 27.35pt;">
Yet I thought that perhaps
the most striking insight in this tale was one left unspoken by the
author—indeed, one that may not even have occurred to Mr. Larson himself. Out
of the ferocity of competition in the state of nature comes beauty—awe-inspiring,
breathtaking beauty of the kind that genuinely enhances our existence and helps
make life worth living. The ruthlessness of the battles waged by blooming
flowers, prancing deer, chirping birds and luminous beetles should not distract
us—and does not detract—from the fact that what they produce is nonetheless
wondrous, and our lives would be severely diminished without it. The thing to
remember is that without the competition, the beauty would not exist.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 27.35pt;">
Competition, then, leads to
beauty—if it is done correctly.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 27.35pt;">
The accordance of human
existence with this principle soon dawned on me. Virtually every one of the
products and services that we take for granted in our daily lives reaches us
through a pipeline laid through a foundation of competition. No architectural
marvel would exist without a butting of heads between architectural firms,
contractors, engineering companies, and any number of other businesses involved
in its construction. Every musical masterpiece is composed by an artist or
group of artists who knows how many other such artists are champing at the bit
to obtain one of a finite number of available record deals. Every garment is
designed by an artisan who comes up with an outfit and a look that enough
customers are likely to want to make it a worthwhile investment. In a true
capitalist system, every winning competitor gets to the top of the heap by
offering consumers an arguably better deal for their money than their rivals do.
Competition spurs businesses to pursue true excellence, in the quality and
utility of the products and services they offer.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 27.35pt;">
Even when this basic
paradigm is violated by misguided, meddlesome politicians and bureaucrats, the
reality of competition does not go away. Thanks to the universal reality of
unlimited wants and limited resources, that economic clash is inescapable and
cannot be banished by government. All such intervention accomplishes is to push
that competition into a context in which it is less likely to serve a socially
beneficial purpose. Firms that lobby governments to give them no-bid contracts,
or subsidies, or tariff hikes to shield them from foreign imports, still have
to compete for those cronyistic favors. Unfortunately, instead of competing to
give paying customers the best bang for their bucks, they are jockeying for
political patronage—the kind that corrupts the political process, swindles
their customers by artificially inflating prices, squanders taxpayers’ money
and distorts the market beyond all recognition.<o:p></o:p></div>
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No matter what system of
political economy a society adopts, competition will always exist, as will any
avarice that accompanies it. In countless societies that sought to stifle
competition throughout history—from the former Soviet Union to North Korea and
Cuba today—one finds that the elites in the uppermost echelons of government power
have always claimed material perks and privileges that were unavailable to
ordinary people. Moreover, to a large extent, the proof of capitalism’s moral
superiority to other economic systems is in the pudding. Fifty years ago, the
Soviet Union felt the need to construct a wall through the city of Berlin to
trap the people under its jurisdiction and prevent them from getting out. More
recently, the US government contemplated building a fence along its southern
border to keep out people who were desperate to get in. The voluntary flow of
people between capitalist and anti-capitalist societies has always been almost
entirely one-way. That stark reality speaks volumes as nothing else can.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The genius of authentic free
market capitalism, then, is that it encourages capitalists to engage in the
right kind of competition—to bend their energies toward benefiting society
instead of plundering and pillaging it. In short, true free enterprise
harnesses two unavoidable facts of life—competition and self-interest—for the
greater good. There can be no system more moral.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-62373979032688206922014-08-13T20:55:00.000-04:002014-08-13T20:55:43.940-04:00Trial and Error: The Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman Controversy and the Pitfalls of Politicizing Criminal Cases<br />
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<o:p> </o:p><span style="text-indent: 0.3in;">When George Zimmerman was
acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin one year ago, I took to Facebook to point
out the weakness of the evidence of Zimmerman’s guilt and to marvel at laypeople’s
rush to judge the case with little or no knowledge of the facts. I further admonished
my Facebook friends to “Stop pretending that you know exactly what happened
that night, folks. You don’t.” One relative of mine chided me for pooh-poohing
the emotionally charged popular reactions to the verdict: “Just let people have
their emotional reactions and don’t fall into that trap of lecturing people on
not having all the information nor understanding the legal workings of this and
similar cases.” I thoroughly disagreed; the time to debunk widespread
misconceptions is ASAP, before those attitudes harden. Nonetheless, I knew well
the </span><i style="text-indent: 0.3in;">ad hominem</i><span style="text-indent: 0.3in;"> bile to which I would
have exposed myself by commenting on the case publicly at that time. So I mostly
kept my overall views on the subject to myself until </span><a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/al-sharpton-travyon-martin-george-zimmerman-94149.html" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">the
paroxysm of outrage</a><span style="text-indent: 0.3in;"> over the case’s outcome subsided. Now, the verdict’s
first anniversary, seems as fitting a time for me to emerge from the bunker as
any.</span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In a nutshell: due to the weakness
of the evidence that George Zimmerman’s fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin was
not justified by self-defense, Zimmerman’s acquittal was more warranted than a
conviction would have been. Unfortunately, America clearly still has not
learned the main lesson of racially charged criminal cases past: the folly of
judging any criminal defendant in the court of public opinion without—or in
spite of—credible evidence.<o:p></o:p></div>
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A year after the verdict, only the
book-ends of the Zimmerman-Martin confrontation are clear. The critical middle
part of the story—between Zimmerman’s tailing of Trayvon and his shooting of
the youth—was never clear enough to dispel all reasonable doubt about
Zimmerman’s guilt. <a href="http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-03-26/news/os-trayvon-martin-zimmerman-account-20120326_1_miami-schools-punch-unarmed-black-teenager">According
to Zimmerman</a>, at some point during the alteration, Trayvon punched him in
the face, knocking him to the ground, and then repeatedly banged his head into
the sidewalk. Zimmerman claimed that his gun became exposed and Trayvon began
reaching for it, whereupon Zimmerman grabbed the gun and shot Trayvon in the
chest. If this version of the confrontation is true, then it arguably was
objectively reasonable for Zimmerman to think that he was in imminent danger of
death or serious bodily harm. It is this <a href="http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=&URL=0700-0799/0776/Sections/0776.012.html">legal
standard</a> that governs the lawful use of deadly force in self-defense.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The prosecution never did manage
to rebut this account of the altercation convincingly. Even if Zimmerman did follow
Trayvon because of his race as the prosecution sought to prove, Trayvon may
still have physically attacked Zimmerman, and thus the latter may still have
fired in self-defense. Trayvon’s mother <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/george-zimmerman-trial-trayvon-martin-death-mothers-testify-19603528">identified</a>
the voice of a person screaming for help in the background of a 911 call as her
son’s, but of course the defense was able to <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/george-zimmerman-trial-continues-to-focus-on-911-tape/2013/07/08/97e65f6c-e7e9-11e2-aa9f-c03a72e2d342_story.html">produce</a>
several friends and relatives of Zimmerman’s to testify that the voice was his.
An FBI voice-analysis expert, Hirotaka Nakasone, <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/george-zimmerman-trial-fbi-expert-hirotaka-nakasome-testifies-he-cant-tell-if-trayvon-martin-or">testified</a>
that he could not determine who was calling for help on the tape, and that such
recordings tend to be highly unreliable in any case.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Other witnesses didn’t get a clear
view of the incident through the rain or the darkness and thus couldn’t
conclusively identify Trayvon as the person pinned to the ground during any
part of the scuffle. Expert witness Dr. Vincent Dimaio, a forensic pathologist,
<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/07/09/george-zimmerman-trayvon-martin--marijuana/2501293/">testified</a>
that Trayvon’s gunshot wound supported the claim that he was on top of Zimmerman
when he was shot. Apparently Trayvon’s top was hanging away from his chest when
the shot was fired, which suggests that he probably was bent over Zimmerman at
that moment. Moreover, arguably the case’s most controversial witness, medical
examiner Dr. Shiping Bao, <a href="https://www.blogger.com/said%2520that%2520the%2520knees%2520of%2520Mr.%2520Martin%25E2%2580%2599s%2520pants%2520were%2520stained,%2520and%2520a%2520police%2520officer%2520has%2520testified%2520that%2520Mr.%2520Zimmerman%25E2%2580%2599s%2520back%2520was%2520wet%2520and%2520flecked%2520with%2520grass.">testified</a>
that the knees of Trayvon’s pants were stained, and a police officer <a href="https://www.blogger.com/said%2520that%2520the%2520knees%2520of%2520Mr.%2520Martin%25E2%2580%2599s%2520pants%2520were%2520stained,%2520and%2520a%2520police%2520officer%2520has%2520testified%2520that%2520Mr.%2520Zimmerman%25E2%2580%2599s%2520back%2520was%2520wet%2520and%2520flecked%2520with%2520grass.">testified</a>
that Zimmerman’s back was wet and had pieces of grass on it. These claims, too,
were consistent with Trayvon’s having knocked Zimmerman down and kneeled over
him to pummel him.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Dr. Dimaio also testified that
Zimmerman’s injuries were consistent with his having been struck from above and
having had the back of his head banged into concrete. Dimaio <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/george-zimmerman-trial-trayvon-martin-was-on-top-of-zimmerman-when-teen-was-shot-gunshot-wound-expert-testifies/">stated
further</a> that such an attack can cause serious head trauma, even without
leaving visible superficial wounds. Although medical examiner Dr. Valerie Rao <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/2020/george-zimmerman-jury-told-injuries-insignificant/story?id=19552856">testified</a>—based
on footage and photographs of Zimmerman’s injuries—that she thought the wounds
were “insignificant” and “non-life threatening,” the jury was left to wonder
which expert was more to be trusted. One thing is certain: heads wounds from
simple fistfights can be fatal, as some <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/05/us/utah-soccer-death/">recent</a> <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/01/justice/michigan-soccer-death/">incidents</a>
show.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1307/03/cnr.12.html">According to</a> Anthony
Gorgone, a crime lab analyst with the Florida government, the investigation
failed to turn up any of Zimmerman’s blood or DNA on Trayvon’s hands or under
his fingernails. Yet the prosecution left it unclear whether it was possible
for Trayvon to attack Zimmerman without getting the latter’s blood or DNA on
his hands. Without in-depth analysis of this issue and others, the jurors,
lacking expertise in such matters, couldn’t conclude definitively that Trayvon
didn’t attack Zimmerman. The cuts and bruises on Zimmerman’s face and head were
real, whereas Trayvon appeared to have suffered no injuries other than the fatal
gunshot wound to his chest—and <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/autopsy-shows-trayvon-martin-injuries-knuckles-report-article-1.1079190">broken
skin on his knuckles</a>, which <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">also</i>
suggests that Trayvon did indeed inflict some <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH5iEsO7Hls">“whoop ass”</a> on
Zimmerman. (Those are the words of Trayvon’s irrepressible friend <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/26/justice/zimmerman-trial">Rachel Jeantel</a>,
who was on the phone with him shortly before the shooting and who publicly
conceded after the trial that <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/17/rachel-jeantel-huffpost-live-interview_n_3610921.html">she
thought Trayvon might have thrown the first punch</a>.) The available evidence,
though hazy, weighed more heavily in favor of Zimmerman’s self-defense argument
than in favor of the prosecution’s case.<o:p></o:p></div>
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For these reasons, the jury was
not to be faulted for coming back with “not guilty” verdicts on both charges in
this case. Florida law required the jury to convict Zimmerman only if the
prosecution proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he shot Trayvon with a <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/jury-find-zimmerman-deparved-mind-murder-article-1.1397768">“depraved
mind”</a> and if the defense failed to prove that it was objectively reasonable
for Zimmerman to believe that he had to use deadly force in order to protect
himself from death or great bodily harm. The evidence presented at trial arguably
raised that reasonable doubt and supported Zimmerman’s affirmative defense; accordingly,
the acquittal was a fair judgment for the jury to render.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Nothing that I’ve written here
amounts to a personal defense of George Zimmerman. The man always struck me as somewhat
slow-witted, and rather creepy at that—a man who likely suffers from delusions
of crimefighting grandeur and possibly harbors racist prejudices as well. (This
assessment of his character is borne out by a <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20131119180129/http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/11/18/list-george-zimmerman-past-run-ins-with-law/">list
of his run-ins with the law</a>, both before and after his shooting of
Trayvon.) I have no doubt about the folly of his decision to follow Trayvon in
the first place, and I agree that he thus bears the lion’s share of the moral
responsibility for this tragedy. It is quite plausible that Trayvon’s race
played some (perhaps subconscious) role in Zimmerman’s decision to tail him.<o:p></o:p></div>
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None of the above factors,
however, made Zimmerman legally guilty. Following a “suspicious” individual
around one’s neighborhood—however unwise it may be, and whatever bigoted motives
one may have for doing so—is not a crime. The police dispatcher advised Zimmerman
not to shadow Trayvon because it was foolhardy and imprudent, not because it
was illegal—and he actually did <a href="http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/326700-full-transcript-zimmerman.html">not
forbid him</a> to tail the boy, but only told him, “We don’t need you to do
that.” Nor did the evidence presented at trial prove that Zimmerman initiated
physical violence against Trayvon; if anything, it suggested the opposite. We
cannot rule out the possibility that Trayvon attacked Zimmerman in a way that
made it reasonable for the latter to think he was in imminent danger of death
or severe bodily harm. For those reasons, acquittal was <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/on-the-killing-of-trayvon-martin-by-george-zimmerman/277773/">probably
the appropriate verdict</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This conclusion in no way denies
that the justice system frequently <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324432004578304463789858002.html">treats</a>
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/us/marijuana-arrests-four-times-as-likely-for-blacks.html?_r=1&">minorities</a>
<a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-07-18-prison-study_N.htm?csp=34">unjustly</a>,
or that the self-defense laws of Florida and many other states may cry out for
reform. Yet on this last matter, too, misconceptions abound. The Sunshine
State’s much-maligned “Stand Your Ground” law was <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/310945-bloomberg-martin-death-evidence-stand-your-ground-should-go">widely</a>
<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/16/entertainment-us-usa-florida-shooting-st-idUSBRE96F19720130716">blamed</a>
for either Trayvon’s death, or Zimmerman’s acquittal, or both. That <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/16/politics/zimmerman-holder/index.html">blame</a>
was <a href="http://reason.com/blog/2013/07/14/sorry-the-zimmerman-case-still-has-nothi">misdirected</a>;
the essence of a Stand Your Ground law is that a person under attack <a href="http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=&URL=0700-0799/0776/Sections/0776.012.html">no
longer has a legal duty to retreat</a> before using deadly force in self-defense.
Zimmerman’s story, however, had him pinned to the ground on his back and being battered
by an irate Trayvon immediately before he fired the fatal shot. Even in
non-Stand Your Ground states, a person under attack has a duty to retreat only
where it can be done safely and practically, an option that was foreclosed to
Zimmerman under these circumstances. Therefore, both the erstwhile duty to
retreat and its nemesis, Stand Your Ground, were moot in this case—which would
certainly explain why <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/us/in-zimmerman-case-self-defense-was-hard-to-topple.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">Zimmerman’s
lawyers didn’t cite Florida’s Stand Your Ground law in his defense</a>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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What is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> moot in the sad story of Martin and Zimmerman is the public
reaction to it. Too many observers posited from the beginning—with little or no
firm evidentiary basis—that Trayvon was totally blameless and that George
Zimmerman was as guilty as sin. Too many people reacted to the verdict by
fulminating that the <a href="http://www.freep.com/article/20130713/NEWS07/307130087/George-Zimmerman-verdict-Trayvon-Martin">justice
system had failed</a>; that the verdict was the <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/trayvon-martin-and-the-irony-of-american-justice/277782/">product
of institutionalized racism</a>; that American law <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/opinion/the-truth-about-trayvon.html">regards</a>
black lives as <a href="http://www.policymic.com/articles/54659/george-zimmerman-jury-to-black-men-in-america-you-re-second-class-citizens">cheap</a>;
that racists now have a veritable <a href="http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_End_Of_The_Daily_Trayvon?src=rss">license
to kill</a> young black men. Such sentiments made this case the latest in a
long, loathsome line of racial confrontations in which many African-Americans reflexively
took the side of the Black disputants, only for the evidence to reveal in the
end that things weren’t so simple. <o:p></o:p></div>
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In 1987, an African-American teenager
from upstate New York, Tawana Brawley, <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/03/al-sharpton-s-long-bill-of-goods-from-tawana-brawley-to-primetime.html">claimed</a>
that a group of white men, including a police officer and a local prosecutor, had
kidnapped, assaulted and raped her. The Reverend Al Sharpton made his bones as America’s
racial-rabble-rouser-in-chief while “representing” Brawley by hurling a string
of libelous charges against the men she accused. In the end, a grand jury
investigation concluded that <a href="http://retroreport.org/the-tawana-brawley-story/">the entire affair had
been a hoax</a>—concocted, according to Brawley’s ex-boyfriend, to protect her
from punishment by her stepfather for running away from home. <o:p></o:p></div>
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A generation later, in 2006, an African-American
exotic dancer, Crystal Mangum, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Until-Proven-Innocent-Correctness-Injustices/dp/B002LITS7K">accused</a>
three members of Duke University’s lacrosse team of racially slurring, beating
and gang-raping her at a team party. In response, the prosecuting D.A., Mike
Nifong, committed a slew of ethical violations for which he ultimately had to
be disbarred. The media predictably sensationalized the case, students protested
at Duke and on college campuses nationwide, and academics excoriated the
athletes without ever laying eyes on a shred of evidence. Even the Duke
administration abandoned its own students to have their reputations dragged
through the mud. Eventually, however, it emerged that Ms. Mangum—a deeply
troubled and mentally ill woman who has <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/04/11/crystal-gail-mangum-profile-duke-rape-accuser/">a
history of making false rape accusations</a> and who was recently <a href="http://www.wral.com/mangum-found-guilty-in-boyfriend-s-stabbing-death/13143246/">convicted</a>
of murdering her boyfriend—had <a href="http://www.thefire.org/presumed-guilty-due-process-lessons-of-the-duke-lacrosse-case-video/">fabricated
the story wholesale</a>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Of course, racially motivated
white-on-black violence is not purely a thing of the past; indeed, a slew of
similar cases garnered attention in the aftermath of the Zimmerman verdict. In
Milwaukee, Wisconsin in July 2013, a 76-year-old Caucasian man, John Spooner,
was <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57594207-504083/darius-simmons-murder-john-henry-spooner-wis-man-76-guilty-in-fatal-shooting-of-13-year-old-teen-neighbor/">found
guilty</a> of first-degree intentional homicide for shooting and killing a
13-year-old African-American boy, Darius Simmons, whom he suspected of breaking
into his house and stealing his shotgun. (The trial court ultimately rejected
Spooner’s plea of innocence by reason of mental disease or defect.) In November
2013 in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, homeowner Theodore Wafer <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-24907851">shotgunned</a>
19-year-old Renisha McBride to death on the porch of his home after she crashed
her car on the outskirts of Detroit. (The case is currently in the pre-trial
phase.) In Florida in December 2012, a 46-year-old Caucasian man, Michael Dunn,
<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/13/jordan-davis-shooting-charges-upgraded_n_2297721.html">shot</a>
and killed Jordan Davis, another 17-year-old African-American, at a gas station
after demanding that the youth and his friends turn down their <a href="http://mayportmirror.jacksonville.com/news/crime/2013-04-15/story/dunns-girlfriend-insisted-going-home-after-jordan-davis-shooting">“thug
music”</a>. Dunn’s lawyer—unlike George Zimmerman’s—actually <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/04/jordan-davis-shooting-death-repeal_n_2240764.html">cited
Florida’s Stand Your Ground law</a> in his client’s defense. That case,
however, had a more unexpected outcome: The jury <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/victim-loud-music-trial-shooter-jailhouse-phone-call/story?id=22558295">convicted
Dunn</a> on three counts of attempted second-degree murder but was inexplicably
hung on the charge of first-degree murder. (Fortunately, the D.A.’s office
announced that they would <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/michael-dunn-verdict-lawyers-plot-next-move-after-jury-deadlocks-on-murder-charge/">seek
a retrial</a> of Dunn on the murder charge, and it now <a href="http://www.baynews9.com/content/news/baynews9/news/article.html/content/news/articles/cfn/2014/6/9/michael_dunn_retrial.html">appears</a>
that said retrial will take place in September.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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If all the facts alleged by the
prosecution in those cases are true, these men would be far better candidates
for public flagellation than George Zimmerman ever was. For reasons made
obvious by video <a href="http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshhgPm03D1Xpi0nM54W">footage</a>
of the shooting of Darius Simmons, self-defense was not even an issue in John
Spooner’s trial. Renisha McBride’s killer <a href="http://www.freep.com/article/20140620/NEWS02/306200056/Theodore-Wafer-Renisha-McBride-pretrial-hearing-evidence">claims</a>
that he was afraid someone was breaking into his house, but it is hard to see
how he reasonably feared death or great bodily harm given that he <a href="http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2013/11/homeowner_charged_in_killing_o.html#incart_m-rpt-1">had
to open his front door</a> to blast her. While Michael Dunn argued
self-defense, Florida’s Stand Your Ground law was of little help to him, and with
good reason. With or without a duty to retreat, self-defense law requires that
a person <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">reasonably</i> believe that
his/her life or bodily safety is in imminent danger before using deadly force. Given
the reported facts in Dunn’s case, his belief was anything but reasonable. He <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/loud-music-case-dunn-portrayed-f-g-victim-article-1.1618186">claimed</a>
that the youths threatened him and brandished a shotgun, but no weapon was
found in or near their car, and whatever verbal threats they may have leveled
at him didn’t endanger his life. The evidence in Michael Dunn’s trial militated
heavily against his self-defense claim—unlike the facts in the Zimmerman case. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I fully understand why the
Zimmerman verdict was so <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/race-shapes-zimmerman-verdict-reaction/2013/07/22/3569662c-f2fc-11e2-8505-bf6f231e77b4_story.html">hard
to swallow for African-Americans</a> who have become bitterly accustomed to
being railroaded by their country’s justice system. President Obama was
absolutely right when he <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/obama-trayvon-could-have-been-me/277960/">remarked</a>,
“[W]hen you think about why, in the African-American community at least, there’s
a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize
that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of
experiences and a history that…doesn’t go away.” There is precisely nothing
wrong with acknowledging those feelings and experiences, and there was plenty
that is wrong with ignoring or dismissing them. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Nonetheless, lambasting a justice
system that actually functioned just as it is meant to function never was an
appropriate response to the outcome of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Florida
v. Zimmerman</i>. The right reaction in this and other such cases is to reserve
judgment until courts of law vet the evidence. That approach does not mean cavalierly
dismissing every allegation of criminal bigotry. If juries acquit defendants in
the face of compelling evidence of guilt, then it is legitimate for informed
observers to point out those jurors’ error. In other cases, however, the
evidence is either highly exculpatory or simply too unclear or flimsy to
establish guilt. Defendants in such cases should be acquitted, and the
uninformed masses should admit that they are not qualified to judge what
happened. I and <a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/13/3499114/state-never-proved-its-case-legal.html">many</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67WhBlXssUA">other observers</a> stayed
off of the outrage bandwagon in the Zimmerman case not because we are unwilling
to hold homicidal bigots to account, but because legal guilt must be judged
based on solid evidence. For all of their flaws, courts of law are far better
equipped to evaluate that evidence than the court of public opinion is.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Injustice in the American justice
system is a reality, and African-Americans disproportionately fall victim to
it. That fact, however, does not mean that the system failed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this</i> time. Nor does it justify the rush
to judgment in this case—one not entirely unlike the mass hysteria that
followed the infamous beating and rape of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUfwUgRwKq4">the Central Park jogger</a>
in 1989. That sensational reaction ultimately sent four young Black men and one
young Latino to jail for more than a decade for a crime they <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/20/nyregion/convictions-and-charges-voided-in-89-central-park-jogger-attack.html">did
not commit</a>. It is fundamentally the same kind of injustice to which the
people wrongly accused in the Tawana Brawley and Duke lacrosse cases fell
victim: the public vilification of criminal defendants by uninformed mobs. The soberer
heads among us must remain vigilant, on the lookout for these public-opinion
stampedes and ready to resist them whenever they rear their heads. In the
meantime, all we can do is <a href="http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2014/07/george_zimmerman_s_terrible_year.html?wpisrc=mostpopular">keep
an eye</a> on the wastrel George Zimmerman, lest his delusional self-regard
make him a continuing threat to public safety—and continue to pray for the soul
of a young man who met his Maker too soon.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-18506441861037737282012-07-27T11:28:00.001-04:002012-07-27T11:28:45.386-04:00Let Chick-Fil-A Open Up Shop in Boston, Chicago<br />
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In outraged
response to fast-food outlet Chick-fil-A’s opposition to same-sex marriage,
Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino has <a href="http://hrc.org/files/assets/resources/menino-letter.pdf">publicly urged</a>
the company not to open an outlet near the city’s Freedom Walk. More recently,
Chicago alderman Proco “Joe” Moreno <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-07-25/news/ct-met-chicago-chick-fil-a-20120725_1_1st-ward-gay-marriage-ward-alderman" target="_blank">has announced plans </a> to try to prevent Chick-fil-A from opening its
second restaurant in the Windy City. This comes hard on the heels of the Jim
Henson Company’s <a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-chick-fil-a-muppets-huckabee-20120723,0,1227873.story">decision
to end</a> its erstwhile business partnership with the chicken-joint chain. As
wrong as Chick-fil-A’s stance on gay rights is, efforts like those of Menino
and Moreno are misguided and wrong. Governments should not be able to block
anyone from doing business in a given jurisdiction simply for espousing the
wrong viewpoints.</div>
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I should begin by
emphasizing that the efforts of private individuals and organizations to
boycott Chick-fil-A are quite legitimate. As other have already <a href="http://www.policymic.com/articles/11815/chick-fil-a-fiasco-mike-huckabee-called-me-an-intolerant-bigot">pointed
out</a>, the company’s right to free speech in no way trumps the right of its
detractors to express their ire with its statements. The rest of us have every
right to make our displeasure with the restaurant chain known by protesting
against it—and by voluntarily withholding our dollars from it. </div>
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The company’s
treatment at the hands of government, however, is a different story. As an
assemblage of private citizens doing business together, Chick-fil-A has a right
to express whatever views it wants, no matter how noxious or foolish they may
be. Government, with its unparalleled coercive power and its constitutional
duty to respect the freedom of speech, has no business penalizing private
actors for uttering the wrong opinions. Speech, by itself, very rarely causes
anyone the kind of harm that government can legitimately punish. Moreover,
there is no right not to be offended by the propagation of ideas that one
deplores. </div>
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Still again,
giving government the power to chastise citizens in this manner sets a
dangerous precedent in favor of censorship. Those who don’t mind such
censorship when it is directed against their political adversaries should
beware, for many can play at that game. Sympathizers of Mayor Menino and
Alderman Moreno should ask themselves how they would react if, for instance, a
Bible Belt town banished a company whose president committed the “offense,” not
of actually performing abortions, but of merely speaking out in favor of
abortion rights. Menino’s and Moreno’s threats smack of the same hypocrisy Nat
Hentoff so adroitly identified as <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Free-Speech-Me-But-Not-Thee/dp/006019006X">“Free
Speech for Me—But Not For Thee.”</a></div>
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<br /></div>
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Alderman Moreno
has dismissed free-speech concerns in this case, sniffing, “You have the right
to say what you want to say, but zoning is not a right.” This is beside the
point. If Chicago stops Chick-fil-A from doing business there in retaliation
for company president Dan Cathy’s pronouncements, it is using its zoning power
to punish the chain for exercising its’ owners’ and managers’ right to speak
freely. Whether they have a general right to be zoned into that particular
location is irrelevant. The issue is that the denial of a permit would be used
as a penalty for unpopular speech. The penalty need not be a denial of a right
in and of itself in order for its use to violate the freedom of speech. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Ultimately, those
who advocate such draconian state responses to unpopular speech are guilty
(however unwittingly) of intellectual cowardice. If the anti-same-sex marriage
position is so wrong—and I wholeheartedly agree that it is—then its opponents
should not fear taking it on in free and open debate. Frankly, they should
welcome every opportunity to expose the weakness of the arguments for it. By
using government power to suppress and intimidate it, however, they only leave
a (false) impression that advocates of marriage equality have no convincing
arguments to make for it. They also <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/266281243473841/">fuel opposition to
same-sex marriage</a> by reinforcing social conservatives’ paranoid belief that
their faith is somehow persecuted in America today. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-indent: .25in;">
It is bad enough
when government chooses winners and losers in commercial markets. Doing so in
the marketplace of ideas is inexcusable. Menino, Moreno and their ilk would do
well to heed the words of the English poet John Milton: “Let [truth] and
falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open
encounter?”</div>Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-50030303933847285632012-05-26T12:33:00.002-04:002012-05-26T12:33:18.260-04:00The Kids Are Not All Right<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
I am fond of
griping that Canadian politics always seem to become most interesting when I am
out of the country. I was away at university in New Jersey when the wily Prime
Minister of my childhood, Jean Chrétien, was supplanted by his restive deputy,
Paul Martin; when the sponsorship scandal terminally weakened the Liberal
Party’s grip on federal power; when Stephen Harper’s Conservatives won a
minority government in 2006; and when the Tories finally won a majority, and
the NDP supplanted the Liberals as Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, last year. (I
was here, mind you, to witness the Opposition coalition power play of December
2008, but of course that died pathetically on the vine.)</div>
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Now, briefly back
from my second year of law school, I hear that Quebec student unions have
organized ongoing street protests and a province-wide “strike” in opposition to the
five-year increase in university tuition fees advocated by Jean Charest’s
Liberal government. To be clear, I slip the word “strike” into quotation marks
because the very notion of students “striking” is rank silliness. It is typical
of the fatuous thinking that is so commonplace on the hard Left. Strikes are
for people who temporarily abandon their work posts in the compensated labor
force to protest unfair pay or working conditions. Such actions directly impact
economies in the short term, by hampering productivity and so on. University
students accomplish no such thing when they play hooky from school. A truant is
a truant, however politically motivated.</div>
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The mounting
demonstrations have seen vandalism, attacks on bystanders and police and the
deliberate disruption and obstruction of classes by some protestors. The movement
has staked its claim on the grounds that during the Quiet Revolution, Quebec’s youth were
promised that higher education would one day be completely free, and that the
tuition hike will risk making higher education unaffordable for many of them.</div>
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<br /></div>
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As a young,
politically motivated Quebecer, I totally reject the movement’s agenda,
primarily because the proposed reform is an entirely reasonable one. It would increase
annual university tuition from a mere $2,168 to a mere $3,793—and incrementally
at that, over five years. At the end of that period, Quebec
students would continue to pay the lowest tuition fees in all of Canada,
as they currently do. As a practical matter, I am deeply skeptical of the claim
that most Quebec
students and their families truly cannot afford to pay less than $4,000 a year
for university. Many of my former high schoolmates—most of whom were not
wealthy by any definition—earned almost that much in a single summer of
near-minimum-wage work. The fee increase will be introduced in $325 annual
increments that amount to less than an extra $6.25 a week—about the price of a
single drink at most of the pubs the protesters frequent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
As a matter of
principle, I do not think it at all unjust to expect students—and, again, their
families—to shoulder no more than 17% of the cost of providing them with higher
education. University is both expensive and valuable, a proposition from which
students stand to gain immensely in their careers. It is only fair to expect
the cost of post-secondary schooling to be borne at least in part by its
primary beneficiaries. If some students truly cannot afford to pay under $4,000
a year, then the government should aim more of its education funding at them
specifically. Indeed, the Charest Government has already planned to do just
that, funneling bursary money toward lower-income families. Let affluent Quebecers
shoulder more of the burden of educating their children. If they can pay
heavier taxes than the rest of us due to their greater wealth, surely they can
pay more to put them through university. Such means-based education funding is
no more unjust than progressive taxation is.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
I harbor similar
doubts about the protesting students’ claim that the tuition hike will make
university less accessible to them and their schoolmates. Young Quebecers are
12% less likely to go to university than their counterparts elsewhere in Canada
at present, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">before</i> the fee increase
and while already paying the lowest tuition in the country. It seems that
keeping higher education dirt-cheap is no guaranteed way to maximize
participation in it. According to Ross Finnie and Richard Mueller of the
Educational Policy Research Initiative at the University of Ottawa, cultural
and psychological factors—such as familial and community expectations and
students’ own career ambitions—have a far greater impact on the likelihood that
youth will attend and complete university.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
Had Charest
proposed to hike tuition up to, say, $10,000 a year at one fell swoop, my
perspective would be quite different. It would arguably have been unfair to
expect Quebecers to adjust to that drastic an increase in the financial cost of
attending university, especially had it not been gradually phased in. Of course,
no Quebec
government would ever have dared implement such a jarring change to a cherished
social-democratic entitlement in this fabled land of “solidarité.” Instead,
Charest has brought in a measured, reasonable and gradual change that is
probably too modest to make a meaningful difference in Quebec’s
sorry public finances as it is…and even <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this</i>
has prompted Quebec
students to take to the streets!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
Then again, let me
be careful with my use of the term “Quebec
students,” which risks leaving entirely the wrong impression. It appears that
this movement is far from representative of the majority of university students
across the province. Last month, for example, I read on The Globe and Mail’s
website that only about 165,000 of the province’s more than 400,000
post-secondary students had gone on “strike.” Moreover, university faculties
and student unions do not require unanimous consent when voting to strike, further
diminishing the proportion of Quebec’s
overall student body that ascertainably belongs to this movement.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
At any rate, even
if a clear majority of Quebec
students do sympathize with the protestors, that still does not vindicate their
stance. When taxpayers pull most of the weight of students’ tuition, elected
representatives are within their rights to cut back on that assistance where
necessary, in the name of fiscal health. It is understandable that this would
irk many students, but their ire is still misguided. Whoever has the gold makes
the rules; whoever foots the bill for one’s education has the power to call the
shots, at least to some extent. Going to school on the government’s dime
necessarily means giving up some freedom to determine one’s educational destiny
to the state. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
Student union
leader Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois is on record as commenting that “the Charest
Government seems to have a complicated relationship with democracy.” This was
nonsense. No facet of public policy is—or should be—decided in the streets,
where only the noisiest slice of the population will be able to make itself
heard. Ultimately, the political process is the only channel through which dissenters
should be able to thwart the government’s agenda, for that is the only place
where the whole society is systematically represented. It is anything but
democratic for a minority faction to use strikes (real or imagined), violence,
and other such tactics to intimidate a duly elected government into changing
course. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
“We are not only
fighting for our own little interests…[or] not to pay more to go to school,”
Mr. Nadeau-Dubois told the CBC’s Mark Kelley in late May. “We are fighting
because we think this government is making bad decisions for the future.” He
averred that the movement had expanded to oppose “all the austerity measures
that were put by the Charest Government in its last budgets.” Even if this is
true, the streets are still no place for the province’s population as a whole
to influence public policy. That policy is written in the National Assembly,
where the legislators who vote for or against them represent the ridings where
these student protestors live. The students should have taken their fight there
from the start, making those MNAs—and especially Liberal backbenchers—fear for
their seats if they did not change course. That is how change should be made in
a democracy. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
(Of course, such
change would be easier to bring about if Canadian politics did not suffer from
such stifling party discipline. Then the student activists could have lobbied
Liberal backbenchers to break with the party line and vote against the tuition
increase. Perhaps then the protestors would have felt less need to demonstrate
in the streets…but let me end this digression. I’ve spilled enough ink on the
subject of executive power and party discipline already.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
This is one reason
why I mostly disagree with those who offer mealy-mouthed praise for the
students’ motivation to participate in politics. Montreal <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gazette</i> columnist and humorist Josh Freed, for example, told Mark Kelley:
“I’m like a lot of Quebecers; I sort of have some sympathy for the kids,
because they’re showing some social conscience. For years, we’ve said, you
know, students don’t get involved in anything; they’re selfish, they’re greedy,
they look after themselves, they’re not socially engaged. In the last year,
we’ve seen Occupy, we’ve seen this student rebellion…a lot of these kids think
they’re changing the world. They might be misguided, but their hearts are in
the right place.” To me, this is faint praise indeed. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
To begin, I
challenge portrayals of the students as purely selfless, altruistic and
idealistic. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pace</i> Mr. Nadeau-Dubois,
they are marching mainly to keep their own costs down—i.e. to keep more money
in their own pockets. In other words, they are largely—and ironically—motivated
by the same self-interest that underpins the capitalist system that so many of
them purportedly despise. Secondly, the students’ misunderstanding of
free-speech principles and their attempts to circumvent the democratic process
cancel out whatever “attaboys” they may have earned by becoming politically
active. Thirdly, the old complaints about young peoples’ political apathy were
always overstated in the first place. The “nuclear freeze” and anti-apartheid
movements of the 1980s and the “anti-globalization” movement at the turn of the
century are cases in point. (For the record, those were much better reasons for
youth to take to the streets than a $1,700 tuition increase over five years.)
The real apathy problem concerned young people’s reluctance to engage with the
organized political party process and their preference for extra-legislative methods
such as street protests. Clearly, today’s young Quebec activists have not
exactly broken that mold. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
The students have
the right to make their displeasure with the government known publicly, of
course. Yet nothing is more aggravating about this controversy than the
students’ habit of decrying any police effort to quell their more disruptive
tactics as violations of their free speech rights. The right to express oneself
is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> a license to prevent other
students from going to school, to stop professors from teaching, or to block workers
from going to work. Sabotaging the orderly conduct of business—the very
activity that finances the students’ matriculation, the hard work of others on
which they depend for their educations—is not protected by the Charter of
Rights and Freedoms. Nor does Canada’s Constitution grant students the right to
demonstrate anywhere or at any time that they please. Municipal authorities
have the legitimate power to circumscribe the geographic range of the protests so
that they do not prevent law-abiding citizens from going about their daily
business.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
Recognizing this, the
Charest Government has introduced special legislation to bring an end to the
disturbances. Bill 78, which is set to expire in July 2013, reportedly
prohibits all demonstrations of more than 50 people unless participants first
notify police of their locations and routes. It also bans demonstrations within
50 metres of the grounds of universities and CEGEPs in the province, and forbids
education employees to strike in ways that stop students from attending
classes. The passage of this law has had the predictable effect of fueling the
demonstrations with a renewed sense of outrage. It has only strengthened the
movement’s hand by further enabling its leaders to claim that they are standing
up for fundamental freedoms against a repressive government. Most
importantly—unlike the government’s previous approach to the protests and quite
unlike the proposed reform itself—Bill 78 has raised legitimate civil-liberties
concerns. The restrictions on the freedom to march are the most odious and the
vesting of added powers in the police is highly troubling. Police officers are
only human, and after months of often violent confrontations with wrongheaded
youths, they cannot always be trusted to exercise this degree of power impartially
or responsibly.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
What, then, is a
beleaguered Premier to do?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
Charest could try
taking a page from Margaret Thatcher’s book. She faced down a year-long coal
miners’ strike in the mid-1980s that could have brought down her government—as
labor unrest in the 1970s had mortally wounded previous British governments—and
emerged victorious. She did so by stockpiling enormous reserves of coal and oil
in advance to keep Britain’s economy moving once the strikers left their posts.
She ordered police to restrain union picketers who often used violent tactics
to try to prevent dissident miners from going to work. She forcefully denounced
the strikers’ efforts to blackmail the British public by bringing the nation to
a standstill in order to achieve their agenda. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
Thatcher also wisely
refrained from using excessively draconian methods that would have alienated
both the miners who stayed at work and the public at large. She refused to take
civil action against the miners’ union—which had called the strike without a
national ballot of its members—so as not to alienate the working miners and
other unions on whose support she depended. She intervened to stop the National
Coal Board from forcing safety personnel to work in coal mines that had been
closed, thus avoiding a parallel strike that would have been fatal to the
government’s reforms. Last but not least, Thatcher hung tough for a solid year,
staying the course in the face of stiff opposition from both the nation’s strongest
union and a vast swath of public opinion that sympathized with the miners.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It can only be hoped that Jean Charest will
prove to have the Iron Lady’s guts—and guile. Bill 78 is an example of
government overreach that risks backfiring spectacularly. Public opinion has
recently shifted in the government’s favor; the latest CROP poll has roughly
two-thirds of Quebecers supporting the tuition hike and three-fifths backing
the government’s general position. Charest cannot afford to alienate this
“silent majority.” While the aforementioned poll also indicates that many
Quebecers also favor Bill 78, this support could easily dwindle following the
inevitable constitutional challenges to the law in court. The government needs
to maintain the high ground, defending law and order and Quebecers’ freedom to teach,
study and work; it cannot risk appearing to trample on civil liberties.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
Charest should continue
to support the majority of Quebec students who have opted to complete their
studies as normal. The police should continue to protect professors and
students who want to carry on throughout the summer semester and into the
autumn if need be. Universities should be given whatever resources they need to
maintain the academic calendars for the 2012-2013 school year in their
originally scheduled form, even with sharply reduced attendance. Any students
who remain on “strike” should simply be given failing grades that will go on
their academic records. Let these youth deal with the natural consequences of
the tactics they have chosen to employ. Then we will see how willing they truly
are to make sacrifices for the common good.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
Finally, Charest
must continue making his case to the public in order to solidify their support
for the reform. He should make a televised address to all Quebecers to explain
the reasons for the tuition increase, the reasonableness of it and the
obstinacy of the student activists who oppose it. He should draw the line at
his agreement to slow down the tuition hike and to provide more generous subsidies
to lower-income students—and retreat no further. Now is the time to give the
student unions a Hobson’s choice: take it or leave it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
If this fails to
quell the disorder, Charest can cut this Gordian knot by taking the advice of
the National Post’s Tasha Kheiriddin and calling a snap election. This would,
of course, entail great risks, especially given Charest’s personal unpopularity
with Quebec’s electorate, the upcoming Charbonneau Commission to investigate
corruption in Quebec’s construction industry, and the fact that he would be
seeking an unprecedented fourth consecutive mandate. Nonetheless, this would at
least force the student leaders to take their case to the political process,
where it belongs. It would also enable them to distance themselves from the
violent <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">agents provocateurs</i> in their
midst—and to surmount the obstacle of Liberal party discipline in the National
Assembly. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
Let Mr.
Nadeau-Dubois and the rest campaign for political candidates who represent
their agenda—or better yet, let them run for elected office themselves. Let the
Parti Québécois demonstrate the real extent and sincerity of its professed
support for the student unions. “Can we have a dialogue?” Mr. Nadeau-Dubois
plaintively asks. “Can we have a social debate about how we finance our
universities?” Yes, indeed, we can and should have that debate—in the halls of
political power, not in the concrete jungle. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
There is a
bigger-picture issue at play here. This showdown is another facet of a
burgeoning crisis that all industrialized nations will face in the years and
decades to come. As birthrates decline and populations age, ever greater
financial strain will afflict the social safety nets that were built on high
ratios of taxpaying workers to elderly retirees. As public budgets worldwide
groan under the weight of these and other increasingly unsustainable
entitlements, more and more governments will cut back on their social
commitments. This retrenchment of the welfare state will inevitably lead to
disturbances of the social peace. Spendthrift governments will eventually reach
breaking points at which creditors both foreign and domestic will refuse to
lend them the money to finance cherished social programs. The cutbacks will
come one way or another, and they will meet with fierce resistance from
populations accustomed to leaning on government crutches. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0in; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
To weather these
storms, we will need to devise more efficient ways for states to fulfill their
basic duties to their people. We will need to reform the welfare state in order
to preserve it in some form. Efforts to do so will inevitably engender
determined opposition. To overcome that opposition for the greater good,
national leaders will have to acquire and hone skills of statecraft and
persuasion—and muster a modicum of political courage. </div>Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-18096631768771879612011-08-12T16:23:00.004-04:002011-08-12T17:44:10.184-04:00Injudicious Activism<div style="text-align: justify;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:relyonvml/> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> <w:lidthemeother>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:lidthemeasian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:lidthemecomplexscript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> 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mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style=""> </span>“‘Judicial activism’ in defence of liberty is no vice,” wrote political columnist David Harsanyi last February on the Web pages of the libertarian magazine <i style="">Reason</i>. In this, he is joined by legions of his sympathizers, who maintain that the judiciary should take the lead in downsizing the post-New Deal regulatory state and curtailing its purported violations of individual freedom. This libertarian case for judicial activism has been iterated with increasing frequency since the recent invalidation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on constitutional grounds this year, first by two federal district judges and most recently by the US Court of Appeals for the 11<sup>th</sup> Circuit. As the argument has it, the judges who ruled “Obamacare” unconstitutional either in whole or in part did not violate Americans’ democratic will as expressed by their elected representatives. Rather, they appropriately exercised judicial review to check an out-of-control government that had violated one constitutional right too many.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">As a libertarian who would like to minimize government intrusion, coercion and confiscation as much as any other, I beg to differ. </p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">For as long as I have known what the term means, I have deplored judicial activism in all its ideological stripes. I first became familiar with the term when I took a course in Constitutional Interpretation in college. I soon learned that no single political camp has monopolized the practice of fighting its battles, and imposing its agenda on the country, via the unelected branch of government. The Supreme Court of a century ago spent a generation obstructing the establishment of the welfare state, based on a “liberty of contract” that is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. The liberal mid-twentieth-century Court brought us other unenumerated rights like privacy in general and abortion in particular while temporarily striking down the death penalty. Through it all, each of the major political factions predictably cheered when its <i style="">weltanschauung</i> was gratified and bleated in protest when it was thwarted. I have always looked with disgust at this most salient of hypocrisies in American politics. Everyone is a judicial activist—when it suits him.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">So I read my fellow libertarians’ defenses of this abuse of judicial review with great dismay, for several reasons. The first is the aforementioned disingenuousness. For instance, it seems to have become an article of faith among my co-ideologues that the Constitution protects the “liberty of contract” recognized by the Supreme Court in <i style="">Lochner v. New York</i> in 1905. This liberty, of course, is conspicuous by its absence from the text of the supreme law of the land; but no matter. According to the Ninth Amendment, “the enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Liberty of contract is one of those other rights “retained by the people,” so the Constitution protects it as well, even without mentioning it. </p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">Were I still the confirmed leftist I was in my adolescence, I would look aghast at the havoc this would wreak on minimum-wage laws and sundry other regulations deemed necessary for society’s general welfare. My retort would not be long in coming. I would see the libertarians’ constitutional right to liberty of contract and raise them a constitutional entitlement to universal health care.” Neither of these “privileges or immunities” is explicitly mentioned in the Constitution; why read one into this venerable eighteenth-century parchment and not the other? Indeed, some liberal legal scholars have already advocated judicial recognition of such “constitutional welfare rights”—particularly Berkeley Law School professor Goodwin Liu.<a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=932099177084998076&postID=1809663176877187961&from=pencil#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" >[1]</span></span></span></span></a> Would libertarian boosters of judicial activism graciously acquiesce if the courts were to read such a government-expanding right into the Constitution? <span class="hps"><i style=""><span style="" lang="LA">Quaestio</span></i></span><span class="shorttext"><i style=""><span style="" lang="LA"> </span></i></span><span class="hps"><i style=""><span style="" lang="LA">respondet</span></i></span><span class="shorttext"><i style=""><span style="" lang="LA"> </span></i></span><span class="hps"><i style=""><span style="" lang="LA">sibi.</span></i></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">At any rate, I have yet to make my peace with the idea of unenumerated constitutional rights. If rights left unmentioned by the document are as valid and enforceable as their textually entrenched cousins, why enumerate any of them at all? What is the larger purpose of putting those freedoms in writing in the first place? In my view, the point of doing so is to create an empirically verifiable, objective record of which rights are in fact protected by the Constitution—and which ones are not. <i style="">Pace</i> the Ninth Amendment, conjuring up brand-new rights and privileges and inserting them into an unamended text vitiates that purpose. For one thing, it is a veritable recipe for judicial overreach, since the courts have the last word on constitutional interpretation. It leaves judges free to run off half-cocked, reading into the Constitution whatever provisions they deem necessary. Why should any American politicos—liberals, conservatives, moderates or libertarians—trust unelected jurists to do the right thing at all times, when the latter need not fear being turfed out of office if they overstep? </p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">For another thing, leaving the process of constitutional interpretation completely unmoored from the text would shield a literally infinite list of privileges against democratic majorities’ ability to abridge them. Those who believe that public policy should be broadly guided by the will of the people should think twice before endorsing this methodology. Is there no form of proactive governance that Americans should be free to implement? Are we to believe that most forms of government intervention are so odious that the Constitution should forbid them—no matter how much the American people might desire them? Yes, it is crucial that a democratic constitution protect certain rights and freedoms from the “tyranny of the majority” of which Tocqueville warned. It is equally crucial, however, that those fundamental freedoms be finite, lest the will of the people be not merely circumscribed, but completely emasculated.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">This brings me to perhaps the most fundamental reason why libertarian judicial activism rubs me the wrong way. First of all, it insinuates that the Constitution is basically a libertarian document, just as liberal judicial activism treats the Constitution as though it were intrinsically liberal, and conservative judicial activism similarly mangles the document from the Right. These philosophical conceits offend the democratic spirit. For any constitution to play ideological favorites, tilting the public policy playing field in favor of one political camp at the others’ expense, would be almost self-evidently unjust. In a true democracy, opposing political visions ought to compete—vociferously, to be sure, but peacefully and equitably nonetheless—for the hearts and minds of the people. In this never-ending struggle, an authentically democratic constitution and the judges who interpret and enforce it are supposed to remain as neutral as possible, not take sides. </p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">At any rate, I think it self-denigrating to suggest that our libertarian philosophy needs such constitutional coddling. Are our powers of persuasion really so feeble that we cannot win our countrymen over to our side? Many argue that “the people” are too easily misled and deceived to see the libertarian light, or perhaps simply too apathetic to follow it. This strikes me as a lame excuse for us to fold our kiosk in the marketplace of ideas. Moreover, it is disingenuous in the extreme for us to look with such contempt on the very people whom we mean to liberate.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;">I am a libertarian. I, too, wish to keep the government out of the people’s faces to the greatest extent possible—in all areas of human endeavor. Nonetheless, such matters are not, and should not be, the province of the Constitution or of the courts; that job should be left to the people’s elected representatives. I recognize that not everyone shares my convictions, and that other worldviews deserve to go a few rounds in the ring with mine. Rather than run after unelected judges’ apron-strings, I prefer to tackle my ideological opponents head-on and beat them fair and square. When government violates a right that the Constitution does explicitly protect, that is the time to take our fight to the courts. When the Constitution is silent about the freedoms we defend, our battle belongs in the court of public opinion. I believe in libertarianism—but I believe in democracy more.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt; text-indent: 0in; line-height: normal; text-align: justify;"><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><b style=""><i style=""></i></b><a style="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=932099177084998076&postID=1809663176877187961&from=pencil#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:10pt;" >[1]</span></span></span></span></a> Goodwin Liu, “Rethinking Constitutional Welfare Rights,” 61 Stan. L. Rev. 203 (2008).</p><div id="ftn1"> </div> <span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" ></span>Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-71038311168484643402009-12-20T09:16:00.000-05:002009-12-20T09:23:02.663-05:00Citizen Chen<div style="text-align: justify;">I have always believed that the citizens of a free society should not be punished for acting, within reasonable bounds, to protect themselves or their property from criminals. When the police are able to deal with the robber or attacker in a timely and effective fashion, the job should indeed be left to them. When this is not the case, individuals who are able to bring the perpetrators to heel in a responsible manner should not flinch from doing so. Nor should the state penalize them for doing what needs to be done, which officers of the peace may be unable—or unwilling—to do.<br /><br />As an ongoing travesty of justice in Toronto in shows, Canada’s criminal justice system would beg to differ.<br /><br />It was last May that surveillance cameras at the Lucky Moose market in Toronto’s Chinatown captured a man stealing $60 worth of plants riding away with them on a bicycle. 51-year-old Anthony Bennett, a man with a petty crime rap sheet 33 years long, returned to the same store an hour later, presumably to help himself to some more merchandise. This time, however, he was confronted by the store’s owner, David Chen, and fled on foot. Mr. Chen and several store employees gave chase and caught Bennett, reportedly hog-tying him with twine and trapping him in a delivery truck until police arrived several minutes later.<br /><br />What happened next boggles the mind and makes a mockery of the very concept of justice. For apprehending the thief and restraining him until the authorities showed up, Mr. Chen was charged by police with unlawful confinement, assault, concealing a weapon (he happened to be carrying a box-cutter at the time), and kidnapping. Worse still, the perpetrator, who was originally supposed to serve a 90-day jail sentence at the prosecution’s request, was able to finagle a mere 30-day bid out of negotiations with the court—in exchange for testifying against Mr. Chen.<br /><br />I would love to be able to say that the Crown did the “decent” thing by dropping the kidnapping and concealed weapon charges several months later. Unfortunately, decency had little to do with it. For the most serious charge, that of kidnapping, Mr. Chen would have had to be tried before a jury, where he almost certainly would have been acquitted. At any rate, the Crown initially offered to drop the more severe charges if Mr. Chen would plead guilty to assault and unlawful confinement—an offer he promptly refused. This plea bargain suggests that Crown prosecutor Colleen Hepburn’s eventual decision to drop the aforementioned charges anyway was not made as a matter of conscience.<br /><br />The legal case against Mr. Chen is that in Canada, such “citizen arrests” are lawful only when the perpetrator is in caught in the act of breaking the law. Since Chen ran Bennett down before the latter was able to filch any more goods upon his return to the market, the argument goes, what he did was illegal. Yet it appears that this is less clear than the Crown and its sympathizers would have it. According to University of Alberta criminal-law professor Sanjeev Anand, Canadian legal precedent permits such citizen arrests if there is reason to believe that the perpetrator has committed an indictable offence. The surveillance camera footage of Bennett’s initial theft gave Chen that reason.<br /><br />Yet even if the Crown is right, Chen’s case raises an important normative question. Should Canada’s laws be amended, as Immigration Minister Jason Kenney recently mused, to protect this sort of citizen’s arrest from prosecution? I, for one, believe so, for I see nothing in Chen’s action that should be considered worthy of punishment under the law.<br /><br />Did Chen and his employees truly “assault” Mr. Bennett in any meaningful sense of the word? I think not. They applied perfectly reasonable force in stopping him; they did not beat the stuffing out of him, as others would have done. Did they “take the law into their own hands”, as some have alleged? Hardly. They did not try to punish Bennett themselves, as real vigilantes do. They trussed him up—strictly to stop him from escaping—and turned him over to Toronto’s Finest at the first opportunity.<br /><br />Some argue, as the Globe and Mail columnist Marcus Gee did last month, that Mr. Chen endangered himself in pursuing the larcenous Mr. Bennett. What if the perp had pulled a knife or a gun on him? This flimsy argument, however, is annoyingly paternalistic in its implications. If an individual is willing to risk life and limb to catch a fleeing thief, that is his business. The government should not punish him for doing so in order to shield him from the potential consequences of his own actions. Eyewitnesses who report violent crimes or rescue their victims, or who testify against criminals in court, potentially make themselves targets for the perpetrators’ reprisal as well. Are they to be prosecuted for that?<br /><br />“In such an encounter, anything can happen,” wrote Mr. Gee. “That’s why we reserve the right of arrest mainly to police…Passions run high when people think they have right on their side, and things can easily get out of hand.” This, of course, overlooks the countless incidents in which things have spun far further out of control than they did in David Chen’s case, despite—and sometimes because of—police involvement. It also ignores the judiciousness Chen exercised by merely restraining Bennett until the police’s arrival. What’s more, since Bennett might have escaped had he not been caught, Mr. Chen, if anything, did the police a favor. Had he handled this situation by the book, calling 911 when he caught the thief without giving chase, Bennett could have made a clean getaway before the police arrived.<br /><br />Can law-abiding citizens afford to depend so heavily on law enforcement for their safety? In a perfect world, in which cops are irreproachable angels who always arrive in time to collar the crooks, this would be the perfect approach. In the world we actually inhabit, however, that is too often not the case. To require citizens to wait for police to rescue them, even when the latter are unable to do so until it is too late, is nothing short of unjust. In some situations, that could cost a victim his or her life. This is one major reason why the law permits, for example, the use of violence in self-defense: because police are not always well positioned to take care of business. Case in point: as Chen and countless fellow shopkeepers—who have rallied to his defence—have pointed out, Toronto police generally give shoplifting cases short shrift. Store owners’ tax dollars, it would seem, are not so hard at work.<br /><br />This case relates to the larger issue of whether restricting individuals’ ability to help stop crime discourages them from acting in cases where such courageous intervention could save lives. In the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre in Montreal, the men in a room commandeered by gunman Marc Lépine meekly obeyed his order to leave, allowing him to slaughter fourteen women left behind. Two summers ago, travelers in Western Canada fled a bus after one psychotic passenger savagely butchered another. (The RCMP, for their part, left the murderer alone on the bus for hours before boarding and arresting him, allowing him to decapitate and cannibalize his victim’s body.)<br /><br />A little retaliation on bystanders’ part might have at least mitigated these tragedies. Consider, for instance, the shooting at Virginia’s Appalachian School of Law in 2002, when a disgruntled student shot six people, killing three, including a school dean. Two other students ran to their cars to retrieve handguns from their glove compartments and confronted and disarmed the shooter. Such bravery need not be expected of all citizens—most of us are not cut out for such impromptu combat—but it is not to be punished either. It is easy to imagine how laws that discourage that kind of intervention could infantilize and enfeeble the citizenry, enabling or exacerbating such crimes in the future.<br /><br />The case of David Chen revives the age-old question of the proper relationship between the citizen and the state. Free men and women should not have to entrust any aspect of their destinies—their health, safety, prosperity etc.—to the agents of government so slavishly. In most cases, yes, the boys (and girls) in blue should be the ones to bring the bad guys to justice. Yet there are times when John Q. Citizen must do his part—beyond cooperating with investigations, serving on juries or testifying in court—to take a bite out of crime. This includes cases in which John Q.’s livelihood is violated by someone whom he can apprehend with minimal violence and without usurping the legitimate role of the police. Citizen Chen does not deserve to be put on trial. If anything, the rest of us should consider taking a page from his book.<br /></div>Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-6333873908259420072009-12-20T09:10:00.002-05:002009-12-20T09:16:00.329-05:00To War or Not to War<meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Cuser%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><link rel="themeData" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Cuser%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx"><link rel="colorSchemeMapping" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Cuser%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> 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<w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="33" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Book Title"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="37" name="Bibliography"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" qformat="true" name="TOC Heading"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:1; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:0 0 0 0 0 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:justify; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:12.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;} .MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; text-align:justify;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:justify; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">In early September, conservative pundit George Will declared in the pages of the <i style="">Washington Post</i> that Afghanistan’s persistent downward spiral is America’s cue to exit. There soon ensued another Will column urging that US troops be withdrawn from Iraq within the next year. Bucking the trend on the Right, the National Review’s Peter Hesgeth argued that the US cannot remain locked into such nation-building endeavors forever. The conservative wall of silence, if you will, is beginning to show cracks over these latest overseas projections of American power.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">The fundamental lesson to be learned from the tortured US missions in Iraq and Afghanistan is the importance of picking one’s fights wisely. There are two main criteria on which the decision to go to war should be based. First of all, is the war necessary? Second of all, is it winnable? In answering these questions, it is instructive to examine how the last counterinsurgent quagmire the US faced, the Vietnam War, became such a drawn-out and futile bloodletting. Notwithstanding the hackneyed use of that war to caution against every new American military adventure, rarely have the correct conclusions been drawn from it.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">In the Korean War of the early 1950s, the coalition fighting to reverse communist North Korea’s invasion of the South was ultimately shoved back by a massive Chinese counterattack. This taught US policymakers that China was loath to tolerate any anti-Communist beachheads on its border. A decade later, North Vietnam’s location next door to China enabled Moscow and Beijing to supply the Vietnamese communists with relative impunity. Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon could not sever the enemy’s supply lines without risking another direct—and possibly nuclear—confrontation with China. Hence they settled for carpet-bombing North Vietnam and slaying as many Viet Cong guerrillas as they could until the South Vietnamese army could defend the country independently. Unfortunately, the South Vietnamese army proved incompetent and cowardly, and the regime for which it fought grew autocratic and corrupt. This, and the military havoc wreaked on the country, alienated South Vietnamese civilians in droves, pushing many into the arms of the Viet Cong. Moreover, the North Vietnamese possessed greater patience—and a far higher tolerance for bloodshed—than the American people had. Conclusion: the Vietnam War was unwinnable.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">Furthermore, in training its sights on Southeast Asia, the United States had picked a fight with the wrong commies. North Vietnam never served as a bastion of Soviet-sponsored subversion. Like Marshal Tito’s Yugoslavia, Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam was Marxist, but neutral between the dueling superpowers, fearing Russian and Chinese as well as American domination. In fact, after Hanoi emerged victorious in 1975, Vietnam was at war with its Communist neighbors in Cambodia and China before decade’s end. Conclusion: the Vietnam War was unnecessary.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">I see the true lessons of Vietnam as follows. First, do not target enemies that pose no threat, for that leads to unnecessary war. Second, avoid fighting counterinsurgencies in locations where the military cannot choke off the rebels’ supplies at the source, for that leads to unwinnable war. The Bush Administration, in its hegemonic hubris and profound historical ignorance, learned not one of these lessons. The guerilla warfare that followed the toppling of the Taliban and Ba’athist regimes caught Uncle Sam with his striped pants down. Having never seen these insurgencies coming, the Pentagon put too few boots on the ground to grapple effectively with the rebels in either country. Hence the belated troop “surge” implemented by President Bush in Iraq in 2007, and the current surge President Obama has ordered in Afghanistan. These have to be two of the deadliest games of catch-up ever played.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">Meanwhile, the Taliban have found supplies and shelter in neighboring Pakistan, while Iraq’s Shi’ite militias benefit from aid from their coreligionists in adjacent Iran. The US military cannot tackle Iran directly, and the Pakistani government has so far proven unable to suppress the Taliban sympathizers within its own borders. Once again, the US has gotten itself—and its NATO allies—into a scrap with guerrillas whose sources of supply are all but untouchable. That US forces have yet to win the hearts and minds of Afghan and Iraqi civilians only compounds these colossal blunders.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">Conclusion: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq may well prove to be unwinnable.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">The news that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction and posed no threat to anyone besides his own people grew stale years ago. At this point, it almost goes without saying that the Iraq War was unnecessary. The <i style="">casus belli</i> in Afghanistan, however, was virtually unassailable, complicating the question of that war’s necessity. Al-Qaeda had planned the greatest civilian mass slaughter in American history from its caves in Afghanistan; their ruling Taliban allies refused to turn the perpetrators over to the US to be brought to justice; therefore Al-Qaeda, Taliban and all had to go.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">Yet the Taliban regime was toppled, and the country cleansed of Al-Qaeda bases, almost eight years ago. The counterinsurgency that ensued has aimed to enable the Afghan government to prevent the Taliban’s return to power on its own. It has also struggled to bequeath to Afghanistan at least the basic framework of a stable, durable democracy. On both counts, the war has thus far gone atrociously. On at least the latter of those two counts, the same can be said for Iraq. Both countries’ new constitutions establish Islam as the state religion and enshrine Islamic <i style="">sharia</i> in the laws of the land. Have we forgotten the Afghan who was prosecuted for the crime of converting from Islam to Christianity some years ago, and had to leave the country? Has the law recently passed by the government in Kabul making it legal for husbands to rape their wives already slipped our minds? Whatever these laws are, they are not democratic. Clearly, the backward cultures that make such injustices possible are inhospitable to democracy.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">Conclusion: the initial military campaign in Afghanistan was necessary; the sanguinary nation-building, democratizing effort that followed it may not be.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">So why the reluctance to “bug out” of both conflicts? Once again, a comparison with the ignominious US retreat from Vietnam in 1975 comes in handy. The US withdrawal was indeed followed by a bloodbath; thousands of Vietnamese refugees fled the country’s Communist crackdown in the late 1970s. The disco era also saw Marxist forces gain strength throughout what was then still known as the “Third World”. From Nicaragua to Grenada to Angola to Afghanistan itself, it seemed that America’s defeat in Vietnam had emboldened its enemies to seek ever greater advantage. Nor was it only the Soviets and their clients who concluded that the US was in fact a “paper tiger”. Iran went Islamist in 1979, and has been a persistent thorn in America’s Middle Eastern flank ever since. Shortly before Syria invaded Lebanon in 1976, President Hafez Al-Assad is said to have sneered to Henry Kissinger: “You’ve betrayed Vietnam. Someday you’re going to sell out Taiwan. And we’re going to be around when you get tired of Israel.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">When the US beats a hasty retreat from a conflict to which it has committed immense amounts of blood and treasure, anti-American forces worldwide take note—and take advantage. Osama bin Laden took inspiration from the US pullout from Somalia in 1993, concluding that the Great Satan lacked the belly to quell a protracted insurrection. Thus American war hawks’ insistence on “staying the course” should not be dismissed out of hand. Islamist forces, whether Sunnis sympathetic to al-Qaeda or Shiites allied with Iran, will not be kind to any country the US leaves in the lurch.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">
<br /><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.3in;">President Bush, then, painted the US into a corner by invading Iraq unnecessarily and arguably overstaying America’s welcome in Afghanistan. In so doing, he has left his successor quite the dilemma. President Obama can either soldier on and risk wasting more American lives and dollars to no avail, or begin pulling the troops out and risk allowing both war-torn countries to collapse into even greater mayhem—and strengthening America’s mortal enemies into the bargain. Either outcome would cost the United States, and those who depend on it for their survival, dearly. If the US is to continue to lead the free world, its leaders must learn to avoid plunging into these dead-end conflicts in the first place. Being—and remaining—the world’s greatest power means knowing when to stay off the warpath. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.<span style=""> </span></p> Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-36118399976737984372009-09-16T16:55:00.002-04:002009-09-16T16:58:01.608-04:00Barack and the Straw Man<div style="text-align: justify;"> In the winter of 2008, knowing that the next president of the United States would be a Democrat, I decided that President Barack Obama, whatever his faults, would be preferable to President Hillary Clinton. This had nothing to do with their policy differences—which were scant—and everything to do with many Americans’ deep personal dislike of Hillary Clinton. The country had just endured eight years of monomaniacal Clinton-bashing from the Right, followed by another eight years of equally unhinged Bush-bashing from the Left. Could America not use a leader whose detractors could oppose his policy agenda without hating his guts?<br /><br /> Silly, silly me. At the time, I failed to anticipate that left-leaning elites in the US media, intelligentsia and commentariat would leap to blame any and all opposition to Obama’s politics on racism. For shame! I might have known that one fault line in American politics would promptly be replaced by another. The partisan vitriol would rage on unabated, thanks to the profound revulsion felt by conservatives and even many independent voters toward the aforementioned insinuation. What else could result from so many liberals’ readiness to paint Obama’s critics with the brush of bigotry?<br /><br /> New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd fairly somersaulted onto that facile bandwagon on September 12, writing, “Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.” This, strictly speaking, was true: some of President Obama’s opponents are doubtless racially motivated. Dowd was reacting to South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson’s disgraceful exclamation at the President during the latter’s recent address to Congress. Wilson may indeed be guilty as charged. His membership in an organization called Sons of Confederate Veterans, and his leadership of a 2000 campaign to keep the Stars and Bars flying over the South Carolina state capitol, are legitimate cause for suspicion. Yet Ms. Dowd and company are not content to denounce Joe Wilson alone; most or all Obama opponents have to roast with him.<br /><br /> Hence Dowd implied, for instance, that South Carolina governor Mark Sanford refused to accept stimulus funds from Washington because the President is Black. Appraising the raucous opposition to Obama-style healthcare reform at town hall meetings nationwide last August, Princeton professor Paul Krugman wrote that “the driving force…is probably the same cultural and racial anxiety that’s behind the ‘birther’ movement, which denies Mr. Obama’s citizenship.” James Ridgeway of Mother Jones magazine declared that the “election of Barack Obama adds even more fuel to nativist rage.” The Washington Post’s resident hand-wringer E.J. Dionne likened the town hall confrontations to the lynching and disenfranchisement of Blacks in the Jim Crow South. Most recently, former President Jimmy Carter told NBC News, “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he’s a Black man, that he’s African-American. […] That racism inclination still exists, and I think it’s bubbled up to the surface because of [the] belief among many white people…that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country.” Interminable is the list of leftists who have refused, as Reason magazine’s Matt Welch put it, “to begin considering that limited government sentiment is not automatically a form of sublimated racism.” <br /><br /> These allegations would be more convincing if there were some indication that a white Democratic president, one as liberal as Barack Obama, would have received gentler treatment from the Republican opposition. I think this question answers itself. It is difficult to imagine Caucasian Hillary Clinton arousing much less ire from conservatives, were she in the Oval Office today. Her equally Caucasian husband was hardly pampered by Republicans during his turn in the White House. So what basis is there for blaming Obama’s opposition on racism?<br /><br /> Last spring, for example, actress Janeane Garofalo insisted that the anti-government activists at one “Tea Party” demonstration must be motivated by racism rather than by conservatism, because they had never protested George W. Bush’s asinine fiscal policies. Of the protestors’ hypocrisy on that score, there can be little doubt. Yet hypocrisy and racism are two different things; to attribute the former to the latter automatically is simplistic in the extreme. Far more likely is that these Tea Partygoers are Republican loyalists, and were reluctant to criticize their party’s leader for any reason. This irrational bias is partisan in nature—not racial.<br /><br /> Lest I overstate my case, let me acknowledge that some of these demonstrators have indeed shown signs of racial bias. Most disturbing to me was a photo of one Tea Party marcher holding a sign reading “Stand idly by while some Kenyan tries to destroy America? HOMEY DON’T PLAY DAT!!!” This, of course, was only one example among many. Yet the photos and footage I’ve seen of Tea Parties and town hall protests suggested that such displays were in the minority. This is corroborated by the testimony of other direct observers of these events (besides Janeane Garofalo, and far less partial). Smearing all the participants as racist is no fairer than characterizing all the anti-globalization protestors of yesteryear as violent anarchists. Would it kill President Obama’s backers to restrict their complaints to the truly bad apples in the barrel?<br /><br /> The principal case against “ObamaCare” has nothing to do with race, one way or the other. There are quite legitimate arguments to be made that the President’s reform plan would exacerbate the federal budget deficit, gradually crowd out private health insurers by luring more and more Americans onto the public option and undercutting private insurance premiums, eventually lead to government rationing of healthcare and the around-the-block waiting lines that come with it, stifle innovation in medical technology, and so on. This case is driven by a philosophical leeriness of activist government. There are fair grounds for rebuttal of all of these arguments. The claim that they are racist is not one of them.<br /><br /> This left-liberal race-baiting is most damnable not in its unfairness to its targets, but in its intellectual laziness, cowardice and perhaps even desperation. Whenever its proponents tire of making the substantive case for Obama-style healthcare reform, they resort to playing the racism card. To fall back on accusations of racial prejudice in this context is to attack a straw man, like Don Quixote tilting at windmills. Employers of this tactic do their own cause few favors, for they are unwittingly responding to only a minority of their political adversaries. These kneejerk allegations do nothing to discredit most of President Obama’s critics, who would hardly be cheering on his big-government policies if he were white.<br /><br /> Liberals forget that two can—and do—play at that game. Does no one remember the political climate in 2002 and 2003, when right-wingers merrily impugned the patriotism of those who opposed the invasion of Iraq? They, too, were attacking a straw man. Most of the war’s skeptics (within the US, at any rate) were anything but un-American. In any case, the point was moot, for even genuinely unpatriotic antiwar sentiment would not have made the war itself turn out any less disastrously. Likewise, even if ObamaCare opponents were racist, that in itself would not make the President’s plan any better an idea.<br /><br /> Can Americans really look forward to another 3 ½ to 7 ½ years in which the President’s defenders see bigoted bogeymen behind all resistance to his policies? If so, we can probably expect the unnecessarily bitter partisan strife of the past sixteen years to worsen. The sentiments underlying Bush-hatred and Clinton-hatred can only be exacerbated by adding race into that already toxic mix. Can liberals imagine no legitimate, non-racist conservative (or libertarian) rebuttal to the change President Obama has in store for America? If not, then the President will have a hard time achieving his aim of bringing Americans back together. Roughly half the country will not take kindly to being portrayed as crazy or evil—or both.<br /><br /> One last issue bears mentioning. African-Americans, in my view, should be leerier of glibly playing the racism card than anyone. First of all, perhaps no other community can less afford to risk undermining its own credibility by repeatedly crying wolf. Secondly, America’s long-awaited “conversation on race” can only be poisoned by this thinly veiled indictment of so many of its intended participants. Moreover, unsubstantiated presumptions of bigotry arguably demean President Obama himself. Surely truly xenophobic opinions have no legitimate place in public discourse. If almost every iota of opposition to the President is held to be the product of white racism, then what are we to conclude? That his complexion should exempt him from virtually all criticism?<br /><br /> I doubt President Obama himself feels the need for such coddling—certainly not on account of his race. Nor, for that matter, does any African descendant. We are a people who suffered more than four centuries of enslavement, subjugation and persecution—and yet still produced innovators, entrepreneurs, financiers, physicians, scientists and, now, a leader of the free world. What we are not is a race of tenderfeet.<br /></div>Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-10306175935264831632009-06-26T19:38:00.001-04:002009-06-26T19:41:23.353-04:00Of Persians and People Power<meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Cuser%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><link rel="themeData" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Cuser%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx"><link rel="colorSchemeMapping" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Cuser%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> 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mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">In politics as in so much else, talk is cheap; it is deeds that have coinage. This has been one of my key criticisms of US President Barack Obama since the spring of 2008, when the luster of his political ascendancy began to fade in my eyes as his gaseous campaign rhetoric burrowed deeper and deeper under my skin. I looked askance as his handlers and speechwriters set him up in one vainglorious set-piece after another—promising to “heal the planet” and “slow the rise of the oceans” after the last Democratic primary, speaking in front of a row of ridiculous Roman columns at the Democratic National Convention, and so on. Windy rhetoric in politics has never sat well with me, no matter how young, intelligent or charismatic the politician.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">Even less am I impressed by the idea that oratory alone can move mountains; hence the skepticism with which I greeted Obama’s “race speech” in Philadelphia last year and his speech at Cairo University earlier this month. America’s perpetual “conversation on race” has not made any readily obvious progress since March 2008; and as for the claim that Obama’s address to the Muslim world has won over many hearts and minds throughout the<i style=""> umma</i>, well, seeing is believing.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">On the whole, eloquent oratory that is untethered to any concrete, effective action is worse than useless in my book. Highfalutin words are best backed up with meaningful deeds; when nothing meaningful can be done, silence—or careful circumspection, at any rate—is golden.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">This is why I look with contempt at the flak President Obama is now taking from the Right over his refusal to openly support the Iranian opposition in its current confrontation with the mullahs in Tehran.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">Iran’s clownish and hateful President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was credited with victory in the theocracy’s recent elections by an absurd margin. (According to <a href="file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/user/Local%20Settings/Temp/www.someecards.com">www.someecards.com</a>: “The unrest in Iran makes me proud to live in a country where corrupt politicians are smart enough to keep rigged elections close.”) Ahmadinejad’s chief rival, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, promptly demanded a revote while his supporters took to the streets of Tehran in multitudes, objecting to this naked affront to the will of the Iranian people. The country has been roiled with protest ever since, prompting widespread speculation about the potential consequences for the regime’s longevity—not to mention the more, shall we say, <i style="">controversial</i> elements of Iran’s foreign policy, namely its nascent nuclear program and its support for terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">President Obama has so far taken the wisest of all available tacks with regard to Iran. He has expressed his skepticism about the election results and his disapproval of the Iranian regime’s thuggish crackdown on dissidents. Yet he has been careful not to go too far in denouncing the regime or in endorsing Mousavi or his supporters—a smart strategy on both counts. The mullahs and their flunkies, after all, are still armed to the teeth, and can brutally crush this largely unarmed uprising at any time, Tiananmen-style. Mousavi, for his part, has not called for an end to the regime’s nuclear ambitions, to its sponsorship of Hamas and Hezbollah or to its enmity with Israel. It remains unclear whether his supporters seek to overthrow the Shi’ite theocracy altogether or merely to replace one mullah-approved marionette with another. This is not the kind of horse on which Obama would be wise to bet.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">The last negotiating partner the US needs is an Iranian regime flush from the victory of flattening an internal insurrection—and incensed at the President’s endorsement of that revolt to boot. In such a scenario, Obama could no longer expect to get the mullahs to beat their uranium centrifuges into ploughshares—and forget about convincing them to rein in Israel’s terrorist tormentors. With the odds already stacked against that success even in the absence of the current strife, President Obama is in no mood for his plans to be disrupted by the events in Tehran.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">Nonetheless, a growing chorus of mostly conservative critics has been braying for President Obama to bless the Iranian protestors with just a touch of his oratorical magic, in the name of democracy. It would be foolhardy for him to take their advice, for the United States has no leverage over Iran at present. Armed intervention is out of the question with American troops still bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Economic sanctions would only supplement the largely ineffectual ones already in place, and it is ordinary Iranians who would probably feel the pinch. A US-sponsored coup d’état is no option; the country’s Islamist theocrats are eager enough to blame the unrest on Yankee interference as it is. In any case, the US and Iran have already gone down that road once before, in 1953—with miserable results for everyone involved.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">Given the limited options available, why pillory the president for exercising caution? How can the same conservatives who, like me, were happy to deride Barack Obama’s treacly cant not so long ago demand even emptier rhetoric from him now? Why vociferously denounce the mullahs’ skullduggery when the US can do nothing to back it up? Of what use would such inspiring words be without commensurate deeds?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">In August 2008, President Bush’s strong objections did not stop Russia from manhandling tiny Georgia. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush’s public musings that the Iraqi people should overthrow Saddam Hussein led to a bloodbath, when the Kurds and Shi’ites proved too weak to finish off Saddam and the US refused to help them get the job done. In 1989, the world watched helplessly as China’s Deng Xiaoping bloodily shattered the Tiananmen Square protestors’ dreams of democracy in a country that called itself a “People’s Republic”. Poland in 1981, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Hungary in 1956, East Germany in 1953: on goes the long, tragic list of popular uprisings that failed because tyrannical regimes had the muscle to suppress them and the will to use it—and because the US had no way of stopping them.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">Displays of “people power” such as the current one in Tehran never fail to thrill and inspire; but their chances of success depend on how well organized and well armed—and how ruthless—both the people and their rulers are. If the latter are mightier, and neither the US nor any other outside benefactor is in a position to step in to level the playing field, the rulers will likely win out, at least in the short term. The Iron Curtain was rent in 1989 primarily because Mikhail Gorbachev refused to use Soviet might to prop up the Eastern European Communist regimes any longer. South African apartheid began to crumble the following year because the regime eventually wilted under the international community’s ostracism. These rulers caved partly because they lacked the bloody-mindedness it took to keep locking up or gunning down their opponents.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; line-height: normal;">Only time will tell whether the mullahs will similarly lose their nerve. If not, then they will probably win this confrontation. It would be treacherous for President Obama to egg the protesters on if he cannot have their back if and when the crackdown begins in earnest. Fortunately, whatever his shortcomings, Barack Obama is not the treacherous type. </p> Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-87821667041097211982009-06-26T19:34:00.001-04:002009-06-26T19:38:09.086-04:00Comfort and Dependency<meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Cuser%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:relyonvml/> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><link rel="themeData" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Cuser%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx"><link rel="colorSchemeMapping" 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style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I will never forget the surprise and disappointment I felt as a child when I first discovered that the word used to describe opponents of Quebec sovereignty was “federalist”. Even at the tender age of ten, I was dismayed that as Canada teetered on the brink of dissolution, this dry, wishy-washy term was the best its principal defenders could do. “Federalist”? Nothing more stirring, such as perhaps “loyalist”? Not even merely “unionist”? “Federalist”?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">What poor ammunition this made for the NO forces in the near-death experience that was the 1995 referendum! Against the YES campaign’s appeals to Quebecers’ fierce pride in their identity and heritage, against the onslaught of Lucien Bouchard’s embittered yet seductive demagoguery, against stirring separatist slogans like “solidarity” and “independence”, Canadian unity revolved around a bloodless geopolitical abstraction like “federalism”. What kind of cause was that, I asked myself. Where was the passion there? Where was the pride? Where was the <i style="">patriotism</i>?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">I eventually learned with great chagrin the reason for this flaccid anti-separatism: that Canadian patriotism <i style="">per se</i> is lost on most francophone Quebecers. Several years ago, pollster Maurice Pinard found that only about 12% of Quebec francophones self-identify as “Canadians”. Approximately 30% identify as <i style="">French</i> Canadians specifically; more than half of the rest call themselves “Québécois” and nothing else. This rings a bell; my Québécois acquaintances’ attitudes towards Canada generally range from shrugging indifference to outright hostility. Whatever patriotic fervor they feel is reserved strictly for Quebec. I cannot but agree with journalist Richard Gwyn that culturally and emotionally, most of Quebec effectively separated from Canada long ago.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Hence the age-old federalist focus on Canada’s capacity to accommodate Quebec’s autonomy, while noting that one can be both a proud Quebecer and a proud Canadian. Since so little passion for Canada beats in the average Québécois breast, the federalist case of the past three decades has also included a less high-minded dimension. I refer to the essentially mercenary argument against sovereignty—that it would endanger Quebecers’ access to unemployment insurance, family allowances, old-age pensions and all the other strands of Canada’s bounteous social safety net. “You may not <i style="">love</i> Canada exactly,” the federalists tell Quebecers, “but you know where your bread is buttered.”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Sovereignists have spent three decades bemoaning the effectiveness of this cynical federalist pitch. Denys Arcand’s 1981 cinematic polemic <i style="">Comfort and Indifference</i>, for instance, blamed Quebecers’ bourgeois comforts for their reluctance to fly the Canadian coop. I used to dismiss this lament as so many sour grapes from separatist sore losers. Arcand’s footage of interviews with ordinary Quebecers during the 1980 referendum campaign made me think twice. A former Radio-Canada employee asked PQ minister Claude Morin what would happen to 5,000 CBC jobs in Quebec. A taxi driver worried that the price of gasoline might double after a Yes vote. A group of retirees fretted over the fate of their old-age pensions, and a middle-aged homemaker wondered whether the loonie’s value might plummet. “Do you bite the hand that feeds you?” asked an elderly film librarian. All of this reminded me of the dire predictions I heard as a child during the 1995 referendum campaign—e.g. then-Finance Minister Paul Martin’s warning that separation would jeopardize up to a million Quebec jobs.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Though they helped avert the separatist threat, these fears troubled me deeply. These fine folks did not resist the Péquistes’ blandishments out of love for Canada; they were simply afraid that their province could not hack it on its own. Was there no way to keep Quebec in Canada without exploiting its dependence on the Canadian social-welfare crutch? Was Canada worth preserving if the task required such Machiavellian tactics?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">This cold-blooded <i style="">realpolitik</i> has elicited justifiable accusations of fearmongering from sovereignists for decades. Yet the separatists deserve little sympathy, for they have brought this on themselves. They have wrapped Quebecers in the embrace of a welfare state so generous that Quebec could never finance it alone without raising its already onerous tax burden—even now the heaviest in North America. This leaves Quebec City heavily dependent on equalization payments from Toronto, Edmonton and Victoria, relayed by the very Ottawa the separatists so despise. Small wonder, then, that Quebecers have twice balked at the sovereignist offer. Indeed, they know where their bread is buttered—with a maple leaf-engraved knife.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Given its strident insistence that Quebec can handle its own business, the Parti Québécois’ history of relying on Canada’s largesse to shower Quebecers with social programs is downright hypocritical. The Péquistes actually have more reason than anyone to try to wean Quebec off of its dependence on Ottawa’s fiscal charity. Quebec would likely suffer a punishing fiscal crisis in the aftermath of secession due to the loss of transfer payments from Ottawa—one of the main fears impeding Quebecers from taking the sovereignist plunge. To rectify this, the Péquistes must either persuade Quebecers of the need to be less dependent on government to prop them up (what a tall order!), or prepare Quebecers for the even higher taxes the province would need to finance its lavish nanny state by itself.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Otherwise put, the sovereignists have a vested interest in nudging Quebecers towards greater self-reliance, either individual or collective. Either course would require great sacrifice on Quebecers’ part; but to reject both would perpetuate their fear of striking out on their own. Many Quebecers find sovereignty appealing, in the abstract at least. They have yet to seize it because too few of them prize independence highly enough to be willing to pay a price for it. To break that logjam, the sovereignists will have to tackle the very culture of entitlement they have nurtured in this province for generations—the mentality that holds that Canada owes Quebec a living.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">When the Péquistes eventually return to power, with or without the “winning conditions” for another referendum, they will be wise to begin building the substance of true independence—the willingness and ability to provide for oneself—if only to prepare Quebec for eventually acquiring its trappings.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">In <i style="">Comfort and Indifference</i>, a succession of YES voters lamented the trepidation that led almost six of every ten Quebecers to reject sovereignty in 1980. A voluble carpenter from Daveluyville diagnosed the malady thus: “You want to know who screwed us? We were screwed by Quebecers—by people who don’t take their responsibilities!” Another artisan from Saint-Jérusalem lamented Quebecers’ bourgeois insecurities: “When the time comes for us to stand up and be counted, the first thing people say is, ‘What’ll it cost us? It’s too expensive!’” Retired boxer Réginald Chartrand, after soundly thrashing his federalist opponent in an exposition bout, proclaimed, “I wanted to show Quebecers that they must take risks. Nothing has ever been given to us for free.” He went on to say, “The only path in life is the difficult path. The easy path is for imbeciles. We Quebecers don’t have the right to choose the easy path, sitting in our slippers, waiting…”</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">If only the Parti Québécois were as hardy as these fearless militants! </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style=""> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-91529004761965781352009-05-06T17:08:00.001-04:002009-05-06T17:10:50.011-04:00Ain’t No Respect in the Heart of the Campus<div style="text-align: justify;"> As a recent graduate of Princeton University, I am occasionally treated to e-mail messages from Princeton Pause, which styles itself as “a monthly e-greeting that brings Princeton closer to Princetonians everywhere”. In short, the university tries to avoid becoming too distant a memory in the minds of its departed students, partly in the hope of eliciting generous alumni donations to its Annual Giving program. The latest such Valentine I received featured a short video clip of a speech by the estimable Anthony Grafton—a former History professor of mine—on “what makes Princeton unique”.<br /><br /> This question has crossed my mind often of late. On the whole, I enjoyed my time at Old Nassau, and will forever cherish the memories and hopefully lifelong friends I made there. In just the past several weeks, I have been pleasantly reminded of the key role my Princeton experience has played in my personal development by sporadic visits to campus, encounters with former classmates and attendance at various alumni gatherings. Yet not until I recently learned of a despicable episode at the University of Massachusetts did I begin to approach answering the question of what makes Princeton unique.<br /><br /> The episode in question concerns the appearance of conservative columnist Don Feder on UMass’ Amherst campus on March 11th of this year. Feder opposes hate crimes laws as a criminalization not only of acts but of thoughts and beliefs—“hate” being a state of mind rather than a form of conduct, or so the argument goes. This viewpoint predictably incurred the wrath of most of UMass Amherst’s student body. The result was that Feder’s speech, which was sponsored by UMass’ Republican Club, was systematically disrupted and derailed by a swarm of left-wing student protestors. As shown in a video posted on YouTube by a group of the protestors themselves (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJPmv1vTbjc), the students hissed and booed Feder. Some noisily reversed their chairs to turn their backs to him. One student loudly interrupted his speech with a statement about one victim of an allegedly racist and homophobic hate crime. The harassment mounted to a fever pitch, until Feder finally gave up protesting this unseemly treatment and left the podium.<br /><br /> The case against this disgrace is obvious—and virtually unassailable. Whatever Feder’s detractors might think of his views, it is beyond dispute that he had a right to express them without intimidation or disruption. Feder’s speech was to be followed with a question-and-answer session in which his student opponents could have critiqued his position as extensively as they liked. They denied themselves that opportunity, however, by effectively running him off the stage. “This is free speech,” cried one young woman in defense of the students’ shenanigans. It seems not to have occurred to her that Feder’s speech deserved to be as “free” as hers and her schoolmates’.<br /><br /> Are there any circumstances under which the protestors’ actions may have been justified? The only such case I can imagine would be if Feder had engaged in what the US Supreme Court’s free speech jurisprudence has described as “fighting words”: speech that deliberately incites violence or other forms of criminal conduct. Had Feder taken the stage to advocate acts that would have qualified as hate crimes, that would have been a different story. Yet he did no such thing, merely arguing that violent crimes committed for bigoted reasons should be punished in exactly the same way as all other violent crimes. There may be a mountain of sound, rational arguments to make against this thesis. Not one of them was heard at UMass two months ago.<br /><br /> This, unfortunately, was not an isolated incident. Such nonsense has become more and more common on college campuses across the US in recent years, as political polarization of the American electorate has set in and the American academy has drifted further and further leftward. On at least two occasions in the past several years, African-American advocate Ward Connerly met a similar fate when he took his campaign against affirmative action to the University of Michigan campus. This unseemly behavior, of course, cuts both ways on the ideological spectrum. I still remember with unease the war fever that gripped the US before and during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the widespread intolerance for the expression of opposition to the war that came with it. New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, for instance, was forced from the stage by protesters during his commencement speech at Rockford College in Illinois after criticizing the war. Conservative pundits in general were as likely to applaud as to protest such shameful conduct.<br /><br /> The relevance of these incidents to Princeton’s virtues is no doubt obvious by this point. I have heard of at least one case in Princeton history in which jeering protesters discombobulated an appearance by a speaker deemed controversial by much of the student body. On March 5th, 1970, during President Richard Nixon’s brief expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia, almost fourscore antiwar students at an ecology conference in Jadwin Gym heckled Interior Secretary Walter J. Hickel to distraction while then-University President Robert F. Goheen looked on furiously. As far as I know, however, such cases have been mercifully rare within the Orange Bubble.<br /><br /> In all my time on campus, I recall no such foolishness taking place. From the “Frist Filibuster” in the spring of 2005, to the running battle over abortion waged in the letters section of the Prince throughout most of 2006, I cannot remember any incident on campus in which one or more parties to a debate found themselves bullied into silence. I remember attending a presentation in the spring of 2007 at which anti-abortion advocate Dr. Charmaine Yoest of the Family Research Council gave a speech entitled “How Abortion Harms Women”. Sponsored in part by the Woodrow Wilson School—it was hosted in Bowl 16 of Robertson Hall—this event, as hot-button as its topic was, proved a model of civility. Dr. Yoest’s speech was followed by a Q&A session in which the students—a mostly pro-choice lot that included Sara Viola ‘08, then head of Princeton Pro-Choice Vox—subjected the speaker to rigorous scrutiny and criticism of her views. Through it all, not a sentence was cut off, not a personal attack made, not a voice raised in anger.<br /><br /> During my time on campus, I heard countless complaints about how politically jaded, complacent and apathetic Princetonians were, at least as compared with their counterparts at, say, Columbia. This criticism was well enough taken by me; but I hope Princeton never travels so far down the road of political activism as to become another UMass or University of Michigan.<br /><br /> Is it too much to ask that all students at all communities of higher learning show a similar tolerance and respect for opposing viewpoints? Am I to believe that only elite institutions like Princeton can hold their students to this same standard? Surely—hopefully—not. However, if civility and rationality in public (and especially political) discourse, and the free contention of a hundred or more schools of thought, are to remain primarily the province of America’s top-notch universities, that makes me that much more grateful to have attended one of those schools. There are many advantages to a Princeton education, most of which are obvious enough that I need not regurgitate them here. One that usually receives far less emphasis than it deserves, however, is that Princeton is the kind of place where neither Don Feder, nor Ward Connerly, nor any of their ilk would ever find themselves muzzled by an unruly mob—no matter how abhorrent their views might be to the bulk of the student body.<br /><br /> This does not make Princeton “unique” in the strictest sense of the word—ours is hardly the only university whose students behave so civilly and intelligently. Yet in these politically polarized times, Old Nassau may find itself approaching this kind of uniqueness asymptotically. And you know what? That’s good enough for me.<br /></div>Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-15795942905638589712009-04-10T10:49:00.001-04:002009-04-10T10:52:32.509-04:00Star Wars Episode VII: Missile Defense<meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Cuser%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><link rel="themeData" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Cuser%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx"><link rel="colorSchemeMapping" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5Cuser%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> 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Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;} p.MsoHeader, li.MsoHeader, div.MsoHeader {mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-link:"Header Char"; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:justify; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; tab-stops:center 3.25in right 6.5in; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;} span.HeaderChar {mso-style-name:"Header Char"; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-locked:yes; mso-style-link:Header;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:12.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;} .MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; text-align:justify;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:justify; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">So President Barack Obama has delivered yet another stirring speech to a vast crowd of European well-wishers, this time in Prague, Czech Republic, on April 5<sup>th</sup>. This time, however, he threw his fans something of a curveball. President Obama made clear that he would not scrap the ongoing development of a nuclear missile defense shield. “As long as the threat from Iran persists,” he declared, “we will go forward with a missile-defense system that is cost-effective and proven.”
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">At this, the raucous crowd fell largely silent. Missile defense rubs Europeans entirely the wrong way. I, however, was pleased to see the president prick his transatlantic pep squad’s bubble. The sooner Obama’s fawning foreign acolytes—and America’s overseas enemies—learn that he will not conduct a “kum-bah-yah” foreign policy, genuflecting constantly before the altar of the United Nations, the better.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">That said, though I am sympathetic to missile defense in principle, I am unconvinced of its desirability in practice.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The policy as we know it originated with President Ronald Reagan’s 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI (derisively nicknamed “Star Wars” by its detractors). The primary purpose SDI served was to flummox the Soviet Union. The Russians feared that their entire nuclear arsenal would be rendered obsolete by Reagan’s proposed anti-nuclear umbrella, while they would remain vulnerable to America’s nuclear ordnance. This realization, combined with the pain Reagan brought to the Soviets by funding anti-Communist insurgencies worldwide, helped propel Mikhail Gorbachev to the negotiating table, ultimately lowering the curtain on the Cold War.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">It was this use of SDI as a geopolitical bargaining chip that Reagan Administration <i style="">officials</i> found useful. Reagan himself, however, eschewed this view. What is seldom remembered today is that Reagan personally advocated SDI not only to “psyche out” the Soviets, but also to render obsolete <i style="">all</i> nuclear stockpiles—including America’s own. To the chagrin of most of his own national security advisors, as well as certain hard-nosed foreign allies like Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, Reagan had come to embrace a seemingly impossible dream, one now espoused by Barack Obama: that of a world without nuclear weapons.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Of course, a generation later, missile defense still has not achieved liftoff, as it were. Nonetheless, Reagan was on to something here. If a Star Wars-style defense shield could be perfected, and could one day be expanded to protect the whole globe, no country need ever again fear being targeted with nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. The best way to dissuade countries from pursuing nuclear missile technology is to minimize its usefulness, and comprehensive missile defense, in theory at least, would do that. For this reason, the <i style="">principled</i> objections raised by opponents of missile defense—that it wrongfully alienates America’s allies, that it violates the arms-limitation treaties of the past, and so on—leave me cold.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">It is the <i style="">practical</i> objections to missile defense that pack some punch. An article I read in <i style="">The Economist</i> soon after September 11<sup>th</sup> argued that jettisoning missile defense at that juncture would be akin to scrapping one’s flood insurance if the house caught fire. This was the wrong analogy. Pragmatically speaking, pursuing missile defense is more like buying flood insurance for a house in the middle of the Mojave Desert.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">What credible threat of a nuclear missile attack against the US or its allies actually exists? The old Cold War doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” remains very much a thing of the present. None of the less responsible nuclear powers—regional rogues like North Korea, hotheads like India and Pakistan or fanatics like the mullahs in Iran—dares ever launch nuclear warheads at anyone, anywhere, for they know the fate that would await them. Even a purely conventional American military response could still bring most nuclear perpetrators to heel.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">This is why I scoffed at the chorus of condemnation that followed Hillary Clinton’s election campaign vow to “obliterate” Iran if it ever tried to nuke Israel. The good Senator, if you’ll forgive the expression, was simply keeping it real.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">It is also why I do not quake at the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. The worst the mullahs would have the chutzpah to do is use their nukes to deter any potential foreign intervention, enabling them to sponsor terrorist groups like Hezbollah with even greater impunity. Quite frankly, this would not be much worse than the status quo.
<br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The real danger is that Iran (or North Korea, or a Pakistan taken over by Islamists) might relay nukes to terrorists who would not hesitate to use them. In such a situation, missile defense would be worse than useless. No terrorist group possesses the resources or facilities to even maintain nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles, let alone deploy them. An antimissile shield would not stop terrorists from carrying nukes in suitcases or smuggling them in cargo containers. This is likely the principal nuclear menace of the 21<sup>st</sup> century—and missile defense would be helpless in the face of it.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Even if the technology is one day perfected, then, it may not be worth the price Uncle Sam will have paid in fiscal and diplomatic capital. The policy has generated as much consternation among America’s allies as among its rivals and enemies. Given this geostrategic disruption, and given its exorbitant expense—especially in this era of industrial bailouts and bloated stimulus bills—how wise an endeavor is this?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<br /></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">On the whole, the technology formerly known as “Star Wars” is a noble pursuit in principle, but a misguided one in practice. It could never rid the world of all nuclear weapons, and the only nukes against which it would protect us are the ones no one would ever have the gumption to launch in the first place. President Obama would do best to heed Winston Churchill’s wise warning in his last address to the US Congress: “Be careful, above all things, not to let go of the atomic weapon until you are sure…that other means of preserving peace are in your hands.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p> </o:p></p> Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-7546332952168051292009-02-27T18:30:00.001-05:002009-02-27T18:32:56.750-05:00A Black "Next Great Prime Minister"?<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">When I was asked to contribute a piece to Concordia University's student newspaper <span style="font-style: italic;">The Link</span> on the role my African-Canadian identity played in my participation in Magna International’s <i style="">The Next Great Prime Minister</i> competition in 2006, I first remembered a passage from Norman Snider’s 1985 book <i style="">The Changing of the Guard</i>. In one passage, then Liberal Party leadership candidate Jean Chrétien was accosted by two rank-and-file Toronto Liberals—one of Portuguese roots, the other Jamaican—protesting the dismissal of their ethnic communities’ concerns by the party’s head honchos. “[Can you] sit down and assure us,” demanded the Portuguese gentleman, “that we are going to get a piece, a small piece of Canada for everybody?”<o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US">According to Mr. Snider, the problem was not the political parties’ prejudice. Leading Liberals in particular would have been delighted to welcome a Greek, Haitian or Vietnamese rising star into the highest echelons of political power. Unfortunately, the pool of ethnic volunteers for such top-tier positions was painfully small and hence largely untapped. The cultural and social cohesion of ethnic groups in Canada makes even their most qualified members reluctant to enter the political arena, lest they lose touch with their origins. “By and large,” wrote Snider, “multiculturalism meant that Canada’s ethnic communities…huddled in on themselves. To date, their bright young men and women had not taken the path out of the neighborhoods and into the corridors of power. […] After all, such a path successfully negotiated would take a man far from his roots, and few seemed willing to attempt it.” This, it seems, is as true today as it was in 1984.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p>In August 2005, when I first heard of <i style="">The Next Great Prime Minister</i> from a friend of my mother’s, I jumped at the chance to submit and defend my own proposals for political reform in the marketplace of ideas. I advocated striking down trade barriers between the provinces and reforming our system of government to elect the Prime Minister separately from Parliament. Good ideas, or so I thought at the time; but they had nothing to do with the peculiar concerns of the Black community. Why?</span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p>Years of avid reading had taught me how rarely Canada’s political establishment tackles issues of specific concern to ethnic communities. Earlier in <i style="">The Changing of the Guard</i>, Mr. Snider noted the paternalistic stance the Liberal Party in particular took towards minority groups—“helping them with immigration matters, giving them grants to maintain their distinctive cultures” and so on. Yet beyond this old time religion, little real political clout accrued to ethnic Canadians from their Liberal loyalties. On those rare occasions when political heavy hitters do address minority concerns, they usually do so superficially and clumsily at best. In one of <i style="">The Next Great Prime Minister</i>’s preliminary rounds, I was asked what needed to be done to stop the wave of killings plaguing Toronto’s black neighborhoods. As a young black man, surely I would instinctively grasp what drives this fratricidal mayhem, right? </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p>Well, actually, wrong. At the time, anyone’s guess was as good as mine. Yet my questioners seemed to assume that as the sole Black finalist—and quite possibly the sole Black contestant—in the competition, I must be their “go-to guy”, their resident expert on all things pertaining to blackness. I will probably never know whether any of my fairer-hued competitors were asked that question.</span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p>It bears notice that beyond Toronto’s murder rate, ethnic issues played no role in the debates around which the competition revolved once I advanced to the final round in January 2006. We focused, rather, on matters such as the health care system, the war in Afghanistan, and Iran’s nuclear program. In truth, that was just the way I liked it. I’m not sure that politicians should be focusing their attention on dealing with specific ethnic grievances. In my view, their energies—and our tax dollars—are generally better spent addressing issues that concern all Canadians, regardless of cultural origin. </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 36pt; text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p>Since participating in <i style="">The Next Great Prime Minister</i>, my congratulators have often gushed that I could be the first Black Prime Minister of Canada. I don’t doubt this possibility, and I refuse to rule it out. Yet I believe that the various branches of the African Diaspora have placed too much emphasis on politics as a means of achieving social equality. Historically, the minority groups that made the fastest rise from poverty and persecution to prosperity and power were those who embraced education and built up their own business and professional classes, as well as those who maintained strong, stable families. Those who prefer to dispatch swarms of politicians to the citadels of government in order to dole out fiscal goodies to their communities, while ignoring aberrant rates of school dropouts and absentee fatherhood and a dearth of entrepreneurial ambition, are doomed to be left behind. Without tackling those problems, even electing a million Marlene Jenningses or Yolande Jameses—or Barack Obamas, for that matter—will never bring us to Dr. King’s proverbial Promised Land.</span></p>Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-14618192339078456472009-01-02T16:52:00.006-05:002009-01-02T17:10:23.236-05:00Race & the RepublicansA friend of mine posted an interesting (if not terribly original) New York times editorial by Princeton economics professor Paul Krugman on Facebook recently:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/opinion/02krugman.html?ex=1388638800&en=f88eb7c84f5e06c5&ei=5124&partner=facebook&exprod=facebook">http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/opinion/02krugman.html?ex=1388638800&en=f88eb7c84f5e06c5&ei=5124&partner=facebook&exprod=facebook</a><br /><br />As usual, Mr. Krugman is on to something here--just not as much as he thinks. The race-related issue he didn't address was how true racial equality is achievable when so many blacks and other minorities remain so dependent on government charity. While the good professor, like most liberals, doesn't aim to keep Americans dependent on government for its own sake, reducing that dependency is not a priority for him.<br /><br />Republicans should make building a maximally self-reliant citizenry part of the centerpiece of their future outreach to nonwhite demographic groups, particularly African-Americans. This may or may not work politically, but it's an infinitely more intellectually and morally respectable position than the politics of racial resentment the GOP has admittedly played since the Nixon years.<br /><br />As for conservative economics being discredited by the financial crisis, Krugman disregards the massive role government intervention played in creating the crisis. Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac were government-sponsored enterprises, remember? But that's a comment for another day...Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-65922973642143360422008-12-08T15:35:00.002-05:002008-12-08T15:47:07.292-05:00Rotten OnionI'm a huuuuuuuuuuuge fan of The Onion, though I have a way of forgetting to check it more than once every, oh say, three weeks or so. And I'm not the only one who has that problem.<br /><br />Strange.<br /><br />Still, I love the website. I especially admire their way of poking fun at politicians and ideologues on both left and right, Democrat and Republican alike. In addition, their satire usually tends to be of a relatively ideologically neutral bent, which I appreciate. However, I just stumbled upon an Onion article poking fun at President Bush that reads more like a typical DailyKos screed than a genuine piece of comedy. Check it out at <a href="http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/im_really_gonna_miss">http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/im_really_gonna_miss<span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></a><br /><br />Which is not to say that I disagree with the piece, necessarily. But does anyone else find this article starkly political in tone, rather than comedic? I don't think couching a political attack in sarcastic tones automatically makes it funny...even if it <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> true! This strikes me as somewhat out-of-character for The Onion...what say you?Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-50107569653542267562008-12-03T18:48:00.002-05:002008-12-03T18:54:14.295-05:00Canadian Politics X<div align="justify">Five years ago, when I first returned home to Canada from college in the United States to enjoy the Christmas holidays, I learned to my great surprise that former Liberal finance minister Paul Martin had taken over from his predecessor Jean Chrétien as Prime Minister of Canada a month previously. About two months later, when I returned home during our week-long holiday between semesters, I learned of the breaking of the infamous “sponsorship scandal”, in which—in a nutshell—hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars were wasted on a campaign to boost the federal government’s visibility and popularity in the province of Quebec. It was then that I realized just how much I had allowed my awareness of recent developments in Canadian politics to lapse during my studies at Princeton. I remember thinking to myself, “Damn—just as I leave to go to school in the States, Canadian politics decide to get interesting for a change!”</div><div align="justify"><br />Now, having recently graduated from university and returned home for the foreseeable future, I no longer feel I am missing out on the action. </div><div align="justify"><br />The aforementioned corruption scandal depleted the Liberal Party’s political capital to the point where it eventually lost power, in January 2006, to Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party, which won a plurality of seats in the House of Commons—meaning more seats than any other single party—but not an absolute majority of seats. As a result, Prime Minister Harper has since then headed a “minority government”, in which his party composes the entire executive branch—the Prime Minister and his Cabinet—but is outnumbered in Parliament by the opposition parties, who have always had the power to unite at any time to defeat a piece of the government’s legislation. Under Canada’s British-inspired parliamentary system, this scenario demonstrates that the government has lost the “confidence” of Parliament, in which case the party in power must seek a new mandate from voters via a new election. Seeking to prevent such a turn of events, Harper called a snap election in early September 2008, hoping to win a majority of seats in the House that would ensure his ability to govern without legislative obstruction for another four or five years. Unfortunately, though Harper’s Tories did increase their seat total from 127 seats to 143, they fell short of the 155 seats needed to form a majority of the 308 seats in the House of Commons. Result: yet another minority government, with all the instability and uncertainty that comes with it.</div><div align="justify"><br />This is where the situation becomes still more interesting. The Canadian political system boasts a so-called “first-past-the-post” system, in which candidates in each electoral district (or “riding” in Canadian parlance) need only win a plurality of popular votes within that district in order to win its seat in Parliament. Moreover, the party that wins the greatest number of seats in Parliament—whether this is an absolute majority of seats or a mere plurality—gets to form the government, composing the entire executive branch and generally driving the government’s agenda. Thanks to the first-past-the-post system, most governing parties in Canada, even when they do win a majority of seats in the House of Commons (which is usually the case), usually fail to win a majority of the popular vote. In other words, political power at the national level is almost always monopolized by a party that commands the support of a minority of Canadian voters.</div><div align="justify"><br />Yet Canada also possesses a badly balkanized body politic, featuring not only the Liberal and Conservative parties but also the socialist New Democratic Party and the separatist Bloc Québécois (whose goal is the secession of the mostly French-speaking province of Quebec, and which therefore fields candidates only in that province). Each of these peripheral parties commands too little popular support nationwide to ever win enough seats to form the government by itself. However, each party still siphons just enough popular support away from the Liberals and Conservatives to make it extremely difficult for either of those primary parties to ever win an absolute majority of Canada’s popular vote. Moreover, in the country’s current political climate, it appears fiendishly difficult for any one party to even win so much as a majority of parliamentary seats. Canadians, you see, are generally a left-leaning lot, and hence remain wary of giving the Conservatives a majority government. Yet they continue to distrust the corrupt Liberals, whose arrogant sense of entitlement to political power has been legendary for decades, stemming from their having governed Canada for two out of every three years in the twentieth century.</div><div align="justify"><br />Thanks to this twisted state of affairs, it remains unclear when Canada will see another stable, durable majority government. This poses a problem, for although whichever party wins the most seats in Parliament—even short of a majority—is supposed to form the government, that party will still lack the support of a majority of Canadian voters. In addition, the current Conservative minority government is outnumbered by the Opposition parties, who between them possess a majority of seats in the House and command the support of a majority of voters. Therefore, <em>should those Opposition parties unite in a solid coalition, acting as a single political party, they will then posses a majority of seats in Parliament—and thus will have the right to force the Conservative minority government from power and form their own government</em>. </div><div align="justify"><br />This, of course, is precisely what took place earlier this week, for the very first time in Canadian history. The leaders of the Opposition Liberal and New Democratic parties and the Bloc Québécois shocked the nation several days ago by announcing their plans to force a vote of no confidence on December 8th to turf the Harper Conservatives from power. These opposition parties have already signed a written agreement to then take power as a unified coalition government. This flies in the face of precedent, for successful no-confidence votes in the House of Commons—which only afflict minority governments—usually result in the dissolution of Parliament and calling of a new election. This time, however, Canada’s Governor-General (who acts as the representative of the Queen of England and thus as the official head of state in Canada’s constitutional monarchy) would be well within her rights to approve the Opposition parties’ request to unseat the ruling Conservatives and form their own government—because that coalition would indeed possess a majority of parliamentary seats.</div><div align="justify"><br />The Opposition parties’ rationale for staging this daring political power play is twofold. First, Prime Minister Harper, after sounding a conciliatory tone in his victory speech after last October’s election, violated the trust of the Opposition parties by announcing his intention to cut off public funding for election campaigns, thereby threatening to effectively bankrupt his political opponents. Second, Harper has thus far adopted a sort of “wait-and-see” approach to dealing with the ongoing global financial crisis, while the Opposition parties clamor for the passage of a massive stimulus package to boost Canada’s sputtering economy. By snatching the reins of power from Harper’s Tories, Liberal Party leader Stéphane Dion claims, the Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition can act to save the country from a grinding recession.</div><div align="justify"><br />In reality, however, the Opposition’s case is irrelevant to the central issue around which the current political crisis revolves: the issue of democratic legitimacy. It has been decades since Canada has been governed by a single party that commanded the support of a solid majority of Canadian voters. Now a coalition of parties threatens to take power without having been elected to the position at all. It is disingenuous to argue that they derive legitimacy from their winning a majority of popular votes between them. In this fall’s election, the Liberals, New Democrats and Blocquistes did not <em>campaign</em> as a coalition; rather, each party campaigned strictly on its own behalf, as in all elections past. Otherwise put, those Canadians who cast their vote for the Liberals, for example, did so in the hope and expectation that only that party would form the government; the same goes for those who voted for the NDP or the Bloc Québécois. <em>Not a single Canadian voted to elect a Liberal-NDP-BQ coalition to power</em>, for Canadians were never even given that option. </div><div align="justify"><br />For all the democratic shortcomings of the Conservatives’ majority-lacking government, at least that party won more popular votes and parliamentary seats than any other. To bring to power a coalition <em>for which not a single person in all of Canada voted</em>, without requiring that coalition to seek a true mandate from the Canadian people, would be to effectively hijack the ship of state. As Winnipegger Reenan Keam told a CTV journalist the other day: “They don’t care what we said. We voted for a Prime Minister, and they’re saying, ‘You know what? That doesn’t matter—we don’t like him’…Then why did we have an election?”</div><div align="justify"><br />Yet at the moment, the aforementioned hijacking remains a distinct possibility. Canada’s current Governor-General, Michaelle Jean, has cut short a trip overseas to return home to deal with this crisis, yet she has yet to signal publicly how she plans to do so; indeed, she may have yet to even make that decision. Her options at present appear to be threefold. First, and most obviously, she can grant the Opposition’s request and allow them to take power in the wake of next week’s no-confidence vote. Second, she can grant Prime Minister Harper’s likely request and “prorogue” Parliament—in other words, shut the whole circus down temporarily and reopen it next January, whereupon the Conservatives will submit a new annual budget for Parliament’s review. Third, she can react to the looming no-confidence vote in the traditional way—by dissolving Parliament and calling a new election.</div><div align="justify"><br />The first measure, as already argued above, would be a sort of legalized, bloodless coup d’état. The second would likely only delay the inevitable, since the Opposition coalition, should it survive into the winter, could always topple Harper’s government then. If Harper can effectively use the intervening time to convince a majority of Canadians (many of whom already seem miffed at the Opposition’s shenanigans) of the wrongness of such a move, he might be able to intimidate his opponents into abandoning their planned power grab, on the grounds that Canadians would eventually punish them for it at the polls later on. Yet it is entirely possible that the Opposition parties would simply call Harper’s bluff, betting that they could ride out any storm of public disapproval that ensued, until ordinary Canadians simply turned their attention elsewhere, leaving the coalition government intact. This would not be an unreasonable calculation on their part.</div><div align="justify"><br />The third measure is, in my view, the only one that would be both feasible and just. I am no more enthused than anyone else at the prospect of facing yet another election campaign, especially so soon after the last, useless, one. Yet if obeying the democratic will of the Canadian people is at all a priority in this situation, then that will must first be ascertained. There is at present no way to be certain how much popular support there is for a Liberal-NDP-Bloc Québécois coalition government, for no such scenario was ever presented to Canadian voters as an option in the last election campaign; indeed, numerous Opposition partisans denied its very possibility at the time. If the Liberals, New Democrats and Blocquistes truly crave a government with democratic legitimacy as they claim, then they should not be averse to making their case directly to the people, this time <em>campaigning</em> for power as a coalition. As Winnipegger John Malek told CTV News recently: “I’d rather vote than be told, ‘Okay, I’m your leader now.’”</div><div align="justify"><br />Should the Opposition coalition then collectively win a majority of seats under that aegis, let them by all means rise to run the show in Ottawa. To pretend, however, that they currently have a mandate to do so is ludicrous. It may be that every Canadian who voted Liberal, NDP or Bloc on October 14th would vote for a coalition of those parties in a new election; but that is a possibility, not a certainty. I, for one, strongly suspect that more than a few Canadians who balked at casting their vote for Harper’s Conservatives last time around would equally balk at voting for a coalition that includes Quebec separatists, whose goal it is to take Canada’s second-largest province out of Confederation forever. </div><div align="justify"><br />Ultimately, if a duly elected minority government can be toppled so abruptly by Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, without an election, on the grounds that the governing party failed to win a majority of the popular vote, then clearly minority governments, by their very nature, are so devoid of democratic legitimacy that they should not even be allowed to take office in the first place. Perhaps we could mandate that in the event of an election in which no political party wins a popular or parliamentary majority, there ought to be a second round of voting in which Canadians return to the polls to rectify the situation. In the event that another minority government ensues, the Opposition would be forbidden by law to carry out a vote of no confidence against the governing party, at least for a certain minimum time period. They would be allowed to vote however they like on individual bills, to be sure, and to defeat government bills if need be; but no such defeat could legally cause the dissolution of Parliament and the calling of a new election, or the replacement of the government by an Opposition coalition, until a certain amount of time—perhaps 12 to 18 months, perhaps more—had elapsed.</div><div align="justify"><br />The only alternative I can see to such a reform would be to institute a system of proportional representation in Canada from the get-go, along with the virtual guarantee of perpetual coalition governments that would come with it. Either measure would be preferable to a system in which an Opposition junta can seize power without the people’s consent.</div><div align="justify"><br />As far as democratic legitimacy is concerned, there is an even deeper and more significant lesson to be learned from the current conundrum. The issue that underpins this crisis is the parliamentary “confidence” convention. As mentioned earlier, a governing party that fails to pass a key piece of legislation through Parliament is said to have lost the “confidence” of the legislature, and must therefore face a new election campaign. (Other than the annual budget, exactly what constitutes “key” legislation is pretty much left to the Prime Minister to decide.) This particular tradition is meant to enable Parliament to check the power of the executive branch of government. Closer scrutiny, however, exposes it as a poorly-thought-out paradigm that throughout Canadian history has actually had the opposite effect. </div><div align="justify"><br />To be precise, the confidence convention inadvertently concentrates more power in the hands of the Prime Minister. When the latter knows that the failure to get his bills passed could result in his losing power, he is driven to bend all his energies toward the goal of ramming legislation through the House of Commons at any cost. In recent decades, this has led PM after PM to ensure the support of his own parliamentary caucus by threatening his MPs with expulsion from the party if they fail to toe the official party line. In other words, the executive branch is normally able to effectively dictate policy to the legislature—the exact <em>opposite</em> of the confidence convention’s original intent. </div><div align="justify"><br />The exception is in the case of a minority government, in which the Opposition parties actually outnumber the governing party’s caucus in the House of Commons. This arrangement makes it much harder for the Prime Minister to bully Parliament; yet it also engenders its own set of problems. As we now know, it enables the Opposition parties to join forces and effectively usurp political power on the misleading grounds that it is they who command the support of a majority of Canadians. This scenario, always a theoretical possibility, has never before occurred because (a) the Liberals governed through most of Canada’s history, usually with a majority, and (b) Canada used to have a three-party system in which the Opposition—usually composed of right-leaning Conservatives and socialist New Democrats—was too ideologically polarized to ever unite to unseat the governing party, even a minority one. On those relatively rare occasions when the Conservatives ran things, the Liberals could usually expect to return to power before very long, and so felt no need to join forces with the NDP to overthrow the Conservatives. Nowadays, with five parties in Parliament—each attracting too little popular support to ensure itself a durable majority—and with an economic crisis providing the Opposition with a convenient <em>casus belli</em>, it’s a different story. </div><div align="justify"><br />The “confidence” paradigm, then, is fatally flawed in all circumstances. It allows the Prime Minister of a majority government to ruthlessly crush dissent within his own party in order to be able to govern without constantly looking over his shoulder, fearing his caucus may stab him in the back. In times of minority government, it engenders instability and confusion; in extreme cases like this, it can even enable the Opposition parties to conspire to depose the duly elected government of the day, regardless of the democratic will of the people. Ladies and gentlemen, in the real world, this is no way to run a government. </div><div align="justify"><br />Yet even if the confidence convention actually defeats its own purpose in practice, is it justified in principle at least? I, for one, think not. Exactly what is meant by “the confidence of Parliament” anyway? No legislature in any true democracy is a monolith; in every responsible government, Parliament is composed of at least two separate parties with opposing viewpoints on most issues. Does “confidence” then mean that the governing party cannot function without the approval of every party in Parliament? Obviously not; the minority parties are not called “the Opposition” for nothing. If anything, it is their <em>job</em> to be thorns in the government’s side. How silly it would be for the governing party to have to seek a new mandate from the people on the grounds that it could not convince the <em>opposition</em> parties to endorse its agenda!</div><div align="justify"><br />Surely, then, maintaining the “confidence” of Parliament does not mean maintaining the confidence of the Opposition—unless “confidence” means merely a faith in the government’s basic managerial competence, rather than an agreement with all of their policy objectives. This, however, is a dubious stipulation at best; in Canadian politics, <em>all</em> opposition parties routinely accuse the government of rank incompetence, among other mortal failings. If “confidence” means “the assent of the governing party”, or even merely “the governing party’s faith in the executive’s administrative competence,” it is largely redundant at best. It is a bizarre political party indeed that willingly follows leaders who do not know how to run a government. And if a party’s leadership is revealed to be so incompetent, then that leadership needs to be sent packing by its own party’s rank and file—not toppled by Parliament in a no-confidence vote. (For more information, see Margaret Thatcher, circa 1990.)</div><div align="justify"><br />The hell of it is that the very inventors of Westminster-style responsible government have moved on from reliance on the “confidence” principle, in practice if not necessarily in theory. The Brits clearly no longer believe that the defeat of a single government bill, or even several of them, necessarily means that the government has lost the confidence of Parliament and must therefore fall. As a matter of fact, every single British government since the 1970s has seen one or more of its bills slapped down by the House of Commons and survived. And quite frankly, why should they not have? </div><div align="justify"> </div><div align="justify">These British governments—both Labour and Conservative, both majority and minority—survived in part because Parliament recognized that occasional legislative defeats need not force a government to seek a renewal of its entire mandate. It simply does not logically follow that because Parliament rejects one or more particular bills sponsored by the executive branch, the people must therefore no longer trust the Prime Minister and Cabinet to govern competently or honorably. There is no reason why Parliament cannot reject a minority of the government’s bills while still approving most of them and maintaining the aggregate integrity of the government during the term to which it was, after all, democratically elected by the people.</div><div align="justify"><br />Nor is there any reason why Canada’s Parliament could not do likewise. Yet even if Canada’s teeming political classes ever are truly awakened to the secret absurdity at the heart of responsible government, the chances of their acting on this enlightenment by relaxing their rigid adherence to the principle of parliamentary confidence are slim. First, clinging to the confidence convention gives impatient and domineering politicians in the executive branch of government the pretext they need to bully Parliament into doing their bidding. Second, equally cynical opposition politicians are only too happy to use any defeat of government legislation as a pretext to fell their opponents in a vote of no confidence. In short, the entire edifice of Canadian political power is built on a disingenuous foundation in whose perpetuation too many politicians have a vested interest. The unlikelihood of our ever seeing that foundation shattered in our lifetimes is all the more tragic because the shattering would be so relatively easy and painless.</div>Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-38693618030264673382008-11-28T21:31:00.003-05:002008-11-29T01:48:28.288-05:00A New Take on Homer<div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: left;">I just read a fascinating essay on the moral and ethical implications of the works of the ancient Greek poet Homer. You can read it at<span style="text-decoration: underline;"> </span><a href="http://www.artsandopinion.com/2008_v7_n5/stevekowit.htm">http://www.artsandopinion.com/2008_v7_n5/stevekowit.htm</a>.<br /></div><br />In a nutshell, the author expresses his dismay and disgust at modern interpretations of literary masterpieces from Antiquity such as the <span style="font-style: italic;">Iliad</span> and the <span style="font-style: italic;">Odyssey</span> that completely overlook the fact that many of the protagonists' exploits are morally reprehensible, at least by today's standards. Here, by way of example, is the paragraph I found most striking (if flawed):<br /><br /><strong><span><strong><span style=";font-family:Arial Narrow;font-size:100%;" ><blockquote> Imagine this: four hundred years from now some inspired bard pens a masterful epic poem concerning the exemplary adventures of that great warrior-king, Adolf the Bold, a leader who, in courage, physical beauty and steadfastness of purpose is almost godlike. For several lines the poet describes, in loving detail, how Adolf's army of stalwart heroes triumphantly throw their malignant enemies -- the Semitic, Roma and crippled captives -- into the ovens by the tens of thousands. It is, however, only a quickly passing episode. In the main, Adolf, Sacker of Cities, is kindly if wily, compassionate if remorseless, and altogether steadfast of purpose. Should enchanted readers simply delight in the splendid hexameters, the bard's wonderful psychological portraits and vividly dramatic episodes and not concern themselves with the fate of those unnamed background characters who are simply part of the heroic pageantry of <em>The Hitleriad?</em></blockquote><em></em></span></strong></span></strong>I'm honestly interested in hearing others' thoughts on whether it is even worth bothering to pass the kind of moral judgments on ancient Greek society that Mr. Kowit urges. It is doubtless that Homer reflected the mores of the society and the era in which he lived--a time and place in which the sexual enslavement of women captured in war, as well as general plunder and pillage of enemy territory, etc., were par for the course. Mr. Kowit leaves this issue insufficiently examined. Moreover, his juxtaposition of Hitler and the Holocaust with the barbarism in Homer's epics is flawed, for part of the reason Hitler's atrocities were judged to be crimes against humanity in the court of global public opinion is that such acts had come to be perceived as heinous by most civilized societies at that point. This distinguishes the Nazis' savagery from the acts of Achilles, Agamemnon, Odysseus et. al., who were simply doing what warriors of their age generally did.<br /><br />Yet to completely whitewash the perfidy of such practices on these grounds smacks of just the kind of relativism I have always deplored.<br /><br />In the same way that certain practices that prevail in certain cultures are intrinsically reprehensible, no matter what that culture's unique perspective (the ancient Hindu custom of suttee, for instance, or the more modern practice of female genital mutilation), so certain practices are intrinsically despicable, <span style="font-style: italic;">regardless of the dominant mores of the era in which they prevailed</span>. For example, slavery is inherently evil, no ifs, ands or buts about it. Therefore, it must have been every bit as evil several centuries or even millennia ago, when its practice was still widespread around the world, as it is today. Accordingly, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are no longer given a "pass" for their ownership of slaves, despite their other towering contributions to human history and the general cause of liberty. So should a great historical poet like Homer be given a pass for the rapacity and bloodlust he glorified in his epics? More significantly (since I doubt Mr. Kowit's essay has Homer spinning in his grave exactly), should current literary and historical appraisals of Homer's works--especially those taught in academia--include an appreciation of the brutality he extolled?<br /><strong><span style=";font-family:Arial Narrow;font-size:100%;" ><em><br /></em></span></strong></div>Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-845383286611732782008-11-21T22:20:00.003-05:002008-11-21T22:50:07.902-05:00Adventures in Absurdity, Pt. II recently came up with the idea to post a comment here every time I come across an example of silly rhetoric in my perusals of political punditry, particularly in the blogosphere. Perhaps one day I can compile all the entries into a reasonably comprehensive list of nonsense that people ought to avoid in their political commentary, yes?<br /><br />So here goes. Why not start with a comment reputed made by conservative commentator and former Bush speechwriter David Frum on National Review Online's Media Blog early last September:<br /><br /><blockquote>"It's often said that some parts of the South (northern Virginia, the research triangle in North Carolina, south Florida) are trending Democratic because migrants from the north are transforming them. If that were true - if the Democratic trend were driven by people's movements - why aren't the places from which the migrants come becoming <i>less </i>Democratic? <span style="font-style: italic;">You know for every action there is supposed to be an equal and opposite reaction</span> [italics mine]..."</blockquote>Oh, <span style="font-style: italic;">boy</span>.<br /><br />"For every action there is supposed to be an equal and opposite reaction"? Sure, I know that--in frigging <span style="font-style: italic;">physics</span>! When it comes to <span style="font-style: italic;">politics</span>, of course, it's a different matter entirely. To put it concisely, in what universe does it make sense to take a law of natural science that determines the motion of inanimate objects in space and time and apply it to the elective behavior of sentient, self-aware life forms who possess the power of free will? As far as I know, no such universe exists. The historical and political landscapes, of course, are littered with examples of quite disproportionate reactions--of actions that provoked barely any response whatsoever (such as Italy's 1930s invasion of Ethiopia, to which the West more or less turned a blind eye) and of those that invited much larger reprisals (like Hezbollah's 2006 kidnapping of several Israeli soldiers in the summer of 2006, prompting an extended bombing campaign that devastated much of Lebanon).<br /><br />As I told Mr. Frum in a direct e-mail response to his comment, that particular Newtonian law of physics may sound clever as hell for the purposes of pithy punditry, but that in no way means that it actually carries logical merit. The hell of it is that it is not even difficult to tell how little sense it makes to apply a law of physics to politics. Yet for some reason, this sorry excuse for a saying keeps popping up in so much of the political discourse I read and hear nowadays. Now it is even being cited as an argument in support of dubious statistical claims, even by a man of Mr. Frum's learning and wisdom. I think my college classmate and good friend Stephan was right: The modern political universe badly needs to take classes in basic logic and good, old-fashioned common sense, especially when it comes to their writing.<br /><br />Hmmm...can anyone say "talk show "? Now <span style="font-style: italic;">there</span>'s a career path. Hell, I could even be like the black Dr. Phil...in politics. Eh? Whaddaya say, folks? Any takers? Come on...you know you can dig it.Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-42948526983599085662008-11-20T21:33:00.001-05:002008-11-20T21:36:07.035-05:00Capitalism in the Age of the Bailouts<div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="" lang="EN-US"> The events of the cruel autumn of 2008 have made me wonder more than ever whether capitalism may be too important to be left to the capitalists.<o:p></o:p></span> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"> Not content with handing Wall Street a $700 billion get-out-of-jail-free card, it seems, Congress is now contemplating drawing America’s bumbling auto industry into Uncle Sam’s warm, loving embrace. Years of mismanagement, engineering mediocrity (at least as far as my gearhead friends are concerned, and I am happy to defer to their infinitely better-informed judgement), and labor union avarice have combined with the recent financial meltdown to bring Detroit’s age-old woes to the boiling point. True to recent, demoralizing form, the managers who have finally run America’s Big Three auto manufacturers into the ground are now going to Uncle Sam on bended knee, fairly begging to be hoisted out of the wreckage—and given a stipend with which to purchase a new ride. <o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"> It was perhaps inevitable that the recent Wall Street rescue package, once approved, would spawn countless demands for similar disbursements of public funds to other struggling constituencies. Hard on Detroit’s heels now follow a slew of fiscally foundering city governments also braying for handouts from the federal government. Apparently, those who run these budgetary basket cases can no longer be counted on to take responsibility for their own failures, as grown men and women are normally expected to do. Perhaps worst of all, these stumblebums show not even the slightest shame at having to beg Washington politicians to rescue them from the consequences of their spendthrift ways.<o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"> This disgraceful spectacle is most galling coming from the same business class that spent decades lecturing Americans and the world about the inefficiency of government and the supremacy of free markets. Mind you, they were correct on that score, in my view; but in so doing they obviously forgot the timeless admonition to “preach by example”. Businesspeople are often the worst violators of the principles of self-reliance, personal responsibility, and survival-of-the-fittest that underpin the capitalist system at its best. While the current bailout brouhaha is the most egregious recent betrayal of free-market values, even it is only the tip of the iceberg. Corporate elites the world over have almost always been attached to their governments by unpublicized fiscal umbilical cords, ingesting copious amounts of state largesse in the form of subsidies, grants and tax breaks. (This, of course, is not to mention the occasional trade-strangling tariff or quota to protect the tenderest corporate feet from international competition.) <o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"> This political-industrial racket flies in the face of a basic home truth: that freedom entails responsibility, and that therefore, if enterprise is to be free, it too must be responsible. More specifically, companies that are unable to compete effectively on their own merits must be allowed to fail, so that more competent merchants can take their places in the market, providing consumers with goods and services of higher quality. When government intervenes to prop up inefficient or obsolescent firms and industries, it wastes taxpayers’ money and risks subjecting consumers to more expensive and/or lower-quality goods and services than they would otherwise be able to purchase. In short, such meddling distorts the market in counterproductive ways. <o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"> In the real world, however, these failing firms are unsurprisingly reluctant to join the dinosaurs in the annals of extinction. They are thus willing to go to remarkable lengths to get the state to tilt the playing field substantially in their favor. That this suggests an inability to stand on their own feet in the business world appears not to faze them. Generations of corporate apparatchiks—in industries from steel to utilities to the infamously subsidy-dependent agricultural sector—have maintained, straight-faced, that society benefits from pampering them. The funds they donate to politicians’ election campaign war chests serve to grease the wheels of this corrupt system of corporate welfare. Invariably, taxpayers and consumers—the vast majority of any country’s population—end up shouldering the lion’s share of the resulting burden.<o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"> This sordid circus has never been lost on capitalism’s most learned defenders. No less an authority on the free market than the late economist Milton Friedman has noted that the business community simply cannot be counted on to consistently observe the principles of free enterprise <i style="">in toto</i>. As Friedman wrote in an article in the libertarian <i style="">Reason</i> magazine thirty years ago: “</span>Business corporations in general are not defenders of free enterprise. On the contrary, they are one of the chief sources of danger…Every businessman is in favor of freedom for everybody else, but when it comes to himself that’s a different question. We have to have that tariff to protect us against competition from abroad. We have to have that special provision in the tax code. We have to have that subsidy.”<span style="" lang="EN-US"> As Friedman understood, too many businesspeople themselves rely on busybody government to be credible defenders of a system that demands that individuals and businesses pull as much of their own weight as possible.<o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"> This is how we end up with a scenario in which auto company executives can fly into Washington <i style="">on private jets</i> to beg Congress to save them from the consequences of their own managerial ineptitude with taxpayers’ money.<o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"> The principal argument advanced in favor of the proposed auto bailout is that the automakers employ far too many workers, and generally take up too much space in the US economy, to be allowed to go bankrupt, especially in the midst of the necrosis the economy seems to be undergoing at present. This begs the question of why the $25 billion that Washington policymakers—primarily Democrats—are contemplating pouring down the Detroit drainpipe cannot be reallocated to the task of helping the automakers’ employees themselves. Of particular use would be programs to help retrain these working stiffs—to build up their skill sets so as to enable to them to qualify for more secure jobs in more viable companies and industries. Now there’s one form of government intervention all of us—small-government conservative and libertarian as well as centrist, liberal or even socialist—should be able to support. I have in mind the kind of government intervention that truly empowers ordinary people, helping them help themselves—one that teaches a man how to fish, thereby feeding him for a lifetime, rather than giving them a fish and feeding him merely for a day.<o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"> What seems utterly lost on both Congress and the Big Three themselves is that allowing these firms to go bankrupt needn’t be the end of the world—or even the end of the automakers. As any expert on these matters will tell you, a company that files for bankruptcy does not necessarily cease to exist. A company that is hemorrhaging cash and yet still has valuable tangible assets can use corporate bankruptcy to reorganize its operations, renegotiate its contracts (particularly the $70-an-hour wages and bloated benefits which the Big Three lavish on their workers), restructure its debt and ultimately emerge stronger and more profitable then ever before. Perhaps Congress should do whatever is in its power to facilitate and expedite this process. One key element of that process should be the requirement that most, if not all, of the Detroit automakers’ current management be jettisoned immediately, without debate, delay or negotiation. It is high time that incompetent executives pay the price for ruining the businesses they are hired to run, rather than their hapless workers.<o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"> I am far from the first to propose such a scheme. Yet the odds of Congress’ adopting so creative an approach to this crisis seem rather svelte. And the incoming President-elect has yet to announce whether he plans to stand up to the relevant special interests—mainly the union that has bedeviled Detroit for so long, the United Auto Workers—to put the kibosh on this latest boondoggle. Only time (another two months, to be precise) will tell; and indeed, even should Obama wish to send Detroit’s malefactors of great wealth packing, he may not even get the chance, as the Pelosi-Reid Congress may cave in before January 20. I suppose I, and all those who prefer their governments small and minimally intrusive and their individuals and businesses maximally self-reliant, will have to content ourselves with daydreaming about a different <i style="">New York Daily News</i> front page spread that, alas, may never be printed: OBAMA TO BIG THREE: DROP DEAD!!! <span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-91869946256857158652008-10-15T21:02:00.002-04:002008-10-15T22:31:21.854-04:00McCain vs. Obama: Debate #3 Real-Time Commentary<span style="font-weight: bold;">9:03:</span> Ask Obama how he can cut taxes for "95% of Americans" when at least a third of Americans pay no income taxes to Washington at all presently.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:04:</span> Is McCain going to try and tie Obama to Fannie and Freddie now...?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:06:</span> Obama: "The fundamentals of the economy were <span style="font-style: italic;">weak</span> even before this crisis..." Clever dig at McCain.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:07:</span> Ah, yes--the plumber incident. I have this feeling Obama's going to slap McCain down on this one. Wait for it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:08:</span> Now McCain looks directly at the screen, addresses Joe the plumber directly, and tries his damnedest to connect with the voters on a personal level. Cute, but it won't be enough. And what's with the <span style="font-style: italic;">stammering</span>?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:09:</span> Okay, so not quite the smackdown I anticipated. But--this is a perfect opportunity for McCain to point out the discrepancy I noted in my very first comment in this post. Will he rise to the occasion?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:11:</span> The answer to the above question, apparently, is "no". And here McCain goes attacking Obama's "spread the wealth around" comment. And, <span style="font-style: italic;">nooooo</span>--not the old "class warfare" chestnut!!!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:12:</span> I'm totally digging this round-table, face-to-face debate format though...can I get a witness?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:12:</span> It should have occurred to McCain and his economic team long before now to tailor his fiscal plan in such a way that oil companies wouldn't benefit. Hmmmm...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:13:</span> All <span style="font-style: italic;">right</span>--a deficit question. Yessss!!! <span style="font-style: italic;">Take</span> it to 'em, Jim!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:15:</span> I'm skeptical of Obama's ability to actually make his proposals revenue-neutral as he's currently claiming. Hard to articulate why at this moment, though. Stay tuned.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:17:</span> A proposal made by Senator <span style="font-style: italic;">Clinton</span>...? Is he <span style="font-style: italic;">still</span> whoring after Hillary's disgruntled base?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:17:</span> At least McCain's answer about his spending freeze proposal directly answers the question--<span style="font-style: italic;">finally</span>--in a head-on manner that voters, I think, can easily understand. How good a fiscal idea it is is a different kettle of fish.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:19:</span> $3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium? Damn. Next we'll hear about the $200 hammer again.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:19:</span> Here comes Obama's wise answer about earmarks--about the tiny sliver of aggregate federal spending they make up. Has no one hyped McCain to this salient fact yet? I was reading about this shit in <span style="font-style: italic;">Reason</span> magazine nine months ago!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:20:</span> Is McCain still promising to balance the budget four years from now? Nut.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:21:</span> "Senator Obama, I'm not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago." Rhetorically, a pretty good comeback--and it just might be the kind that will make an impression on viewers/voters. They'll be cheering over this at National Review Online, I'm guessing.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:22:</span> Challenging Obama on standing up to his party's establishment...ballsy and theoretically a good idea. Unfortunately for McCain, Obama has a plausible (though in my view still somewhat flimsy) answer to it. I wonder who'll come out on top in voters eyes?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:24:</span> So McCain's getting the last word on this matter? No way to tell whom voters will believe more.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:24:</span> McCain rattling off his policy disagreements with his party's establishment....probably helps, I guess...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:26:</span> Hmmm. They're actually going to get into over the mudslinging issue? I don't believe in candidates whining about being the objects of negative campaigning, as McCain is doing now. It's unseemly at best. And Obama, of course, can always come back and point out how McCain's backers have been savaging him for several months now. What's the point?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:28:</span> Obama rightly downplays the candidates' "hurt feelings". I have to say I'm discombobulated to see the liberal Democratic candidate showing more apparent emotional fortitude--balls, as ordinary people usually call it--than the conservative Republican candidate. McCain's whining like a hand-wringing liberal, and it's disgraceful.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:30:</span> Oh, for God's sake, McCain. Didn't you hear what I just wrote?!?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:30: </span>"Unprecedented in the history of negative advertising"? Damn...can you actually back that up, Senator McCain?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:31:</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Still</span> with Lewis' remarks? Come <span style="font-style: italic;">on</span>, John. This is beneath you!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:32:</span> Here comes Obama with the "new style of politics" crap again. Only this time, McCain's lending him credibility on it with his plaintive pleas!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:33:</span> Be careful not to misquote Obama on this rally epithets issue, McCain.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:34:</span> What things have been yelled at Obama rallies? I wonder. Not that I think it hasn't happened--I wouldn't put it past many of the more rabid left-liberals out there, especially those of the DailyKos variety. But wouldn't it make more sense for McCain to either back up this allegation with specific examples, or better yet, just drop it altogether?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:35:</span> Obama's focusing on the issues, and McCain's throwing barbs at Ayers and ACORN?? Have none of McCain's advisers and strategists warned him not to appear to be focusing on sideshows and allow Obama to claim the substantive, policy-oriented high ground?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:38:</span> By focusing on ACORN, McCain's only making it easier for Obama to make McCain look like he's prone to taking his eye off the ball, especially since Obama's connections to ACORN are tenuous at best. Sorry for the redundancy, but this bears repeating.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:39:</span> Oh, boy. Back-and-forth factual disputes between candidates in the heat of debate, I'm convinced, are of little use. How are untutored voters supposed to separate the real from the fake?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:40:</span> Hmmm...questions about running mates? This one's a chin-stroker. Unfortunately, as jokey a character as Joe Biden is in certain respects, and as questionable as his vaunted foreign-policy expertise actually is, I think this issue's a bigger Achilles' Heel for McCain than from Obama, given the Alaskan airhead he chose as his running mate. And believe it or not, it actually pains me to talk that trash about Governor Palin, because I think I would actually like the lady personally if I ever met her. I just don't think she can quite hack it when it comes to in-depth familiarity with the issues.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:42:</span> McCain: "Sarah Palin is...a role model to women": Another play for Hillary voters, perhaps...?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:43:</span> Here McCain goes again, singing his sweeping, vague praises of Palin as "a reformer", etc. I can't <span style="font-style: italic;">stand</span> this shit!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:45:</span> All right, McCain! Way to take down Biden's ridiculously overblown foreign policy reputation! <span style="font-style: italic;">Thank</span> you!!!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:46:</span> Obama should have gotten a chance to respond to McCain's attacks on his spending proposals, there. Not giving it to him opens up the moderator to potential charges of bias, however dubious.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:47:</span> Way to point out that NAFTA-renegotiation crap Obama proposed last winter, McCain, and how it could--theoretically at least--adversely impact US imports of oil from <span style="font-style: italic;">friendly</span> countries like Canada. "Overheated and amplified rhetoric," my ass.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:49:</span> I'm feeling these noises Obama makes against borrowing from China to buy from Saudi Arabia. To hell with them both.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:49:</span> McCain had <span style="font-style: italic;">better</span> point out that these wonderful alternative technologies Obama keeps plugging for (and rightly so) will also likely take another decade or more in their own right to kick in sufficiently.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:51:</span> I badly need to read up in detail about the kinds of labor provisions Obama says he wants to include in trade deals like NAFTA once they're renegotiated. I always wonder exactly what they'd consist of and how enforceable they'd be, given that capital is so mobile and labor is so static.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:52:</span> Ah, yes--Colombia. Point out that now is no time for the Democrats to screw America's honorable and crucial ally, Alvaro Uribe, just when he's been so helpful to the US and when he most needs its help in return. <span style="font-style: italic;">Preach</span>, McCain!!!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:53:</span> Obama and the Democrats are talking out of their asses with this business of Colombian labor leaders being targeted for assassination. This is clearly a facile pretext they're using to oppose the free trade deal with Colombia. From what I've read, killings of Colombian union leaders have plummeted in recent years, thanks in large part to security measures Uribe's government has taken. But since Uribe is a conservative and a US ally (and opponent of Hugo Chavez' odious socialist regime), that's not good enough for the Democrats.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:56:</span> All <span style="font-style: italic;">right</span>, McCain. Way to point out how Herbert Hoover screwed the US economy in 1929-1932 with his tax hikes and protectionist measures, turning a stock market panic into the Great Depression!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:57:</span> Now we're on to health care, Obama's (and Democrats') natural strong suit. There's no way to know how well or how poorly either candidate's plan would work until he gets a chance to actually implement it. As I'm so fond of saying, time alone will tell.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:00:</span> McCain, <span style="font-style: italic;">do not test Obama</span> on this business of mandating the purchase of health insurance by consumers and the provision of it by employers, or on the attendant punitive fines. It's been well known for months that that's not what he's proposed!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:02:</span> An article I read in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Economist</span> today corrected the record on Obama's characterization of McCain's $5,000 health-care tax credit. Apparently, McCain's tax credit is actually "substantially larger than the tax break on employer-provided insurance that it replaces (which is typically worth less than $3,000), <span style="font-style: italic;">the vast majority will be better off</span> [italics mine]." Believe it or not, I really will take <span style="font-style: italic;">The Economist</span>'s word over any political candidate's any day.<br /><br />Now if only McCain would make that point himself now!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:05:</span> "Senator Government": ROTFLMAO. 'Nuff said...except to add that maybe that Freudian slip will become a recurring theme of the rest of the campaign!!!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:06:</span> I have to admit I felt a stone drop into my gut upon hearing the very words "<span style="font-style: italic;">Roe v. Wade</span>". Sigh...my broad pro-life sympathies don't blind me to the tiresomeness of this issue. Mind you, agree with McCain that <span style="font-style: italic;">Roe v. Wade</span> was a garbage decision and has got to go. But good luck explaining that to ordinary Americans.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:09:</span> MCCAIN!!! <span style="font-style: italic;">Ask Obama to quote the passage in the Constitution that mentions "privacy"! Ask him--because it doesn't exist!!!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:10:</span> Hmmm. Partial-birth abortion. Are you sure you want to go there, John?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:13:</span> From everything I've read, Obama's denial of his "no" vote on the Born Alive Infant Protection Act's state-level Illinois cousin is downright dishonest...but I'll admit, maybe I haven't read widely enough.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:14:</span> McCain has what looks like a haughty, shit-eating smirk on his face right now. And it won't go away! <span style="font-style: italic;">Bad</span> form, Micky C.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:23:</span> Obama: "I don't think America's youth are an interest group. I think they're our future." Oh, <span style="font-style: italic;">pleeeeaaaaaase.</span> That one was so cheesy, I'm tasting brie on my breath already.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:25:</span> I can only wonder what voters will make of this education policy debate. I myself have a hard time judging which candidate's plan would be better for American public education.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:26:</span> Too bad McCain's smiles tend to look like snarky smirks. (I chalk it up to the painfully thin lips.) And that seemingly churlish--and not altogether clear--smartass remark about school vouchers at the end may very well work against him. As rough and tough a people as Americans--largely rightly--imagine themselves to be, they are actually quite soft in some respects, and this is one of them: they react badly to any appearance of obnoxious conduct on the part of one candidate to another.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:30:</span> Obama: "...policies that will lift wages and benefit the middle class..." How about policies that will inflate the deficit and national debt?Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-23776784868498049782008-10-07T21:14:00.003-04:002008-10-07T23:28:33.086-04:00McCain vs. Obama Debate #2: Real-Time Commentary<span style="font-weight: bold;">9:16:</span> Smart of Obama to point out how unhelpful it is for candidates to get bogged down in he-said she-said bickering and "pointing fingers". How is any ordinary person, with absolutely no expertise in these complex issues of public policy, supposed to be able to tell who's telling the truth and who's lying?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:16:</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">But</span> I'm not as confident about the economy's short-term prospects as Obama is. Only time will tell who's right.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:18:</span> It's equally smart of McCain to explain precisely what he meant by "the fundamentals of the economy are strong", though he'd do well to go into it in a little more depth. Then again, of course, there are those pesky time constraints...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:19:</span> Thanks, Sen. Obama, for noting that most ordinary people are tightening their belts--spending <span style="font-style: italic;">less</span> money in the midst of this economic crisis. If only the federal government could do the same...but of course, a few seconds later, here the good Senator is already laying out all his plans to spend <span style="font-style: italic;">more</span> money as President, despite the titanic federal budget deficit and national debt.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:21:</span> McCain, if you're smart--and if you've got an <span style="font-style: italic;">ounce</span> of heart left in you--you'll point out precisely what I just did above. But who am I kidding--you won't do that. You're washed up these days. The John McCain of the 2000 Republican primaries is long gone. Plus you'd have a gay old time trying to reconcile that with your own reckless and irresponsible tax cuts anyway.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:22:</span> All right, so there you are pointing out Obama's spendthrift liberal track record and campaign platform. Smart move...though we'll see how many voters remember it on Election Day. And what about your damn tax cuts?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:24:</span> Tom, you're the man! THANK YOU for bringing up entitlement reform!!! Now let's hear McCain...speak <span style="font-style: italic;">on</span> it!!!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:24:</span> Awww, <span style="font-style: italic;">damn!</span> Surely you can give us more on entitlement reform than just "We'll sit down with our friends in the other party [whom we've just spent the past couple of years maligning, lol] to find a solution to this issue." How about some specificity?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:25:</span> Fair comment on energy independence, Sen. Obama. Given the national security implications of it, it makes sense to keep that on the front burner.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:27:</span> And good point on analyzing <span style="font-style: italic;">both</span> sides of the government's balance sheet! If it doesn't make sense to spend recklessly, how much sense does it make to cut taxes recklessly?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:28:</span> So far, McCain's answer to this question on Americans' sacrifices in times of war and crisis isn't speaking to what I think the questioner (a member of the Greatest Generation, if I heard correctly?) had in mind. Cutting the less necessary and least efficient government programs is good talk, all right, but what direct, non-passive sacrifice does that demand of ordinary Americans in their day to day lives?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:30:</span> This preamble of Obama's--as treacly as it sounds--actually hit the question dead on. He seems to have understood the thrust of the question better than McCain did. Not that I think the rest of his response will answer it any better than McCain's did...but we shall soon know for sooth.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:32:</span> Incentives to live more fuel-efficient lifestyles...hmmm. If the government is giving you incentives to do it--essentially making it profitable for you to do it--I don't see the altruistic self sacrifice there. Clearly election campaign debates are no time or place for logical niceties.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:33:</span> Good for you, Senator Obama! There's <span style="font-style: italic;">no</span> reason to expect more financial responsibility of ordinary Americans than of their elected representatives. That damn deficit needs tackling! But how do you do that while still spending an extra several hundred billion dollars--on top of existing expenditures, not to mention this $700 billion bailout of the financial sector?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:35:</span> Oh, boy. Here goes McCain about Obama's tax plans again...well, hear what. Obama keeps insisting he's going to <span style="font-style: italic;">cut</span> taxes for 95% of Americans. Senator McCain, why not point out that approximately 40% of Americans already pay virtually (or actually!) <span style="font-style: italic;">no federal taxes</span> (thanks to America's system of progressive income taxation)? How can as many of 95% of Americans get a tax cut when 40% of them pay little or nothing to Washington already?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:38:</span> All <span style="font-style: italic;">right</span>--back to entitlements! Of course Obama is going to duck this one. He is, after all, a liberal Democrat. And sure enough, here he goes back to the tax issue again, after giving what was basically a vague non-answer on the entitlement issue! Then again, wait--he's doing it to point out the 95%-tax-cut thing. Not like I didn't see that coming.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:39:</span> Hold up. Now it's 95% of American <span style="font-style: italic;">businesses</span> that will get a tax cut from Obama? Is it individual American taxpayers who'll get the tax cut, or 95% of American businesses? I'm no fiscal actuary, but I have this sneaking suspicion that these two different proposals will have very different ramifications--and chances of success. Correct me if I'm wrong, of course.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:41:</span> Social Security will be <span style="font-style: italic;">easy</span> to reform?!? Whatever McCain's hopped up on, I want to know where I can get my hands on some...I'm sure it'll get me through the brutal Canadian winter that awaits me. Or maybe McCain's actually sober, and has simply forgotten how President Bush abjectly failed to reform SS three and a half years ago, despite his party's then-commanding control of both houses of Congress?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:43:</span> All right, McCain, point out your bipartisan work on climate change and environmental issues generally. Whore after those independent swing votes like there's no tomorrow...it's your only hope.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:46:</span> Way to use McCain's 2+ decades of Washington experience against him, Sen. Obama. If he's been there this long, why hasn't he done more about it before now...?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:47:</span> I have another sneaking suspicion: that most ordinary Americans prefer cheap gas to protecting the environment. Call me crazy.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:48:</span> "That one"? I was looking at my computer screen instead of my TV screen just then..was McCain referring to Senator Obama?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:49:</span> Right on, Sen. McCain, pointing out the basic economic fact that increasing supply decreases prices, or at least keeps them from spiraling out of control. But haven't economists objected that there's not enough oil under American soil to make much of a dent in global oil prices?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:51:</span> Aha--here comes the health care bomb! Obama (and the US Chamber of Commerce) are quite right that McCain's proposal would unravel the employer-based health insurance system. But isn't that specifically McCain's <span style="font-style: italic;">goal</span>--and isn't it a worthy one? Hasn't the existing system imposed excessive burdens on American businesses--the very same impediment to their competitiveness that Obama himself referred to earlier in this debate? Isn't the status quo untenable? Wouldn't it be better to free up the whole system, and better enable Americans as individuals and families to buy their own health insurance affordably, without letting their bosses get in the mix?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:54:</span> What's this about hair transplants? Was that a dig at Biden?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:55:</span> Careful, McCain, with these "mandate" critiques. I thought Obama's <span style="font-style: italic;">refusal </span>to mandate health insurance coverage for individuals was the main--if not the only--difference between his and Hillary Clinton's health care proposals? This sounds like a blatant distortion of Obama's position as he's articulated it over the past, uhhh, <span style="font-style: italic;">year </span><span style="font-style: italic;">and a half!!!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:56:</span> Now we get to the philosophical heart of the health care debate--is it a right or not? Obama, of course, said "yes"--straight up. Can someone remind me of McCain's answer to that? I must have been looking at my computer screen again. Or maybe I was flipping through the satellite cable channel guide to find out when <span style="font-style: italic;">Kitchen Nightmares</span> is rerunning...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">9:59:</span> Oooohhh, nice question, Mr. Elliot! Reminds me of the "fungibility" of American economic power as taught to me in my International Political Economy class of two years ago.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:00:</span> Okay, McCain, here we go...keep emphasizing the importance of judging when American military intervention is warranted and when it isn't...remember, I suspect that were you president instead of George W. Bush, you might never have invaded Iraq at all (though I also suspect you would have rightly put the screws to Saddam to make him let the UN weapons inspectors back in.) So <span style="font-style: italic;">prove me right</span>, you old coot!!!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:02:</span> Not that I didn't see Obama's inevitable retort about the Iraq invasion coming! And sure enough, there's my mom hollering "Thank you! <span style="font-style: italic;">THANK YOU!!!</span>" at the TV upstairs in my kitchen!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:03:</span> Hmmm. Obama wants to do something about the genocide in Darfur, does he? Will he go to the UN Security Council for its seal of approval first, like he wanted to do in response to Russia's invasion of Georgia? Fat bloody chance of that happening...America's creditors in Beijing would never allow it. Which is just as well, because even if China (not to mention Russia) were to assent to such an intervention, America's ballyhooed European allies would <span style="font-style: italic;">still</span> sit on their hands, like they've been doing since the crisis started. And even if they didn't, Uncle Sam would still shoulder the vast majority of the burden of any intervention--for isn't that what happened in Bosnia and Kosovo, even with a Democrat in the Oval Office?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:08:</span> Who <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> that bug-eyed, cross-eyed lady behind the questioner?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:09:</span> Fair point about Iraq distracting America's attention from Afghanistan, Senator Obama. Way to take your eye off the ball, President Bush.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:10:</span> I declare, I wish someone would ask both candidates about that British ambassador who recently called for withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan and the installation of "an acceptable dictator". Then again, I don't wish it. They'd both respond with some dismissive bullshit anyway.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:11:</span> Aw, <span style="font-style: italic;">hell</span>. A "my hero" answer, John? "Walk softly and carry a big stick"? You know what always annoyed me about that particular "favorite quote" of Teddy Roosevelt's? The fact that TR himself actually walked--and talked--pretty damn <span style="font-style: italic;">loudly</span>, and carried a decidedly <span style="font-style: italic;">small</span> stick! (Other than that Panama Canal thing, of course.)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:12:</span> John, you're right that an incursion into Pakistan--however brief--would turn Pakistani public opinion against America. But, uhhh--hasn't it <span style="font-style: italic;">already</span> been turned against America for the longest time? And didn't the invasion of Iraq have that exact same effect--and not just in the Arab world, either? Clearly the effect of American interventions abroad on public opinion in the subject countries isn't such a dispositive factor...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:16:</span> AHA!!! An "acceptable dictator" question! Lovely!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:18:</span> Hmmm. Maybe I'm too hard on Sarah Palin. My main criticism of her is of her inability to debate these issues in greater detail and depth. Yet how capable are ordinary people--i.e. voters--of wisely judging which candidate's factual claims are more credible, and which proposals are sounder? Not very, I'm guessing.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:20:</span> There's no point belaboring this Russo-Georgian War thing, Sen. McCain, without pointing out how Senator Obama spent three days scrambling around like a chicken with its head cut off for three days last August before finally coming around to the same position on the issue that you, McCain, staked out right out of the gate.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:21:</span> Senator Obama: "We've also got to provide them [i.e. former Soviet satellite states on which Russia now has resurgent imperial designs] with..."...NATO membership, Senator? Missile defense protection, perhaps?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:23:</span> Good job, Senator Obama, in pointing out how energy independence would blunt the sharper edges of Russia's current muscle.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:25:</span> Audience member question: "Would you react to an Iranian attack on Israel by committing US troops to Israel's defense, or wait on UN Security Council approval?" What kind of transparent softball question for McCain's benefit is that?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:28:</span> Funny, though, how Obama ends up answering that question more directly than McCain did--and turns it to his own advantage, no less? Smart brother!!!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:29:</span> Great idea, Sen. Obama, about choking off Iran's oil supply in order to "put the squeeze on 'em"! <span style="font-style: italic;">Now</span> I want to hear you say you'll take just those kinds of measures <span style="font-style: italic;">before</span> meeting with the sons of bitches--in much the same way that Ronald Reagan spent the first three-quarters of his presidency kicking the Soviets' asses from Afghanistan to Nicaragua to Angola to El Salvador <span style="font-style: italic;">before </span>sitting down with Gorbachev (which I believe is one of the main reasons why those negotiations worked). Now <span style="font-style: italic;">that's</span> what I call a precondition!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">10:32:</span> McCain: "We don't know what's going to happen..." As facile as this sounds, it's actually a very wise and intelligent point. How a potential leader would respond to completely unforeseen occurrences is one of the major factors anyone should take into account in deciding whether or not to follow that leader. As British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan once said, in response to a question about what is most likely to blow a government off course: "Events, dear boy, events."Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-932099177084998076.post-64921485043808356462008-09-25T00:00:00.002-04:002008-09-25T00:03:06.300-04:00Response to "This is Your Nation on White Privilege”<div style="text-align: justify;"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 19.85pt;">Tim Wise’s article “This is Your Nation on White Privilege” (<a href="http://www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/this-your-nation-white-privilege" target="_blank">http://www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/this-your-nation-white-privilege</a>) sure has been making the rounds lately, hasn’t it? I’ve been sent it by three people in the past week alone. All right, since the damn thing won’t leave me in peace, I’ll take a good stab or two at it. Believe it or not, it didn’t <i style="">all</i> sit poorly with me.<o:p></o:p></p><o:p></o:p></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 19.85pt; text-align: justify;">The earliest section of it actually struck a chord with me. I agree that Republicans are being hypocritical in holding Sarah Palin blameless for her daughter’s premature, out-of-wedlock pregnancy; as Jon Stewart hilariously pointed out on The Daily Show a while back, this is the diametrical opposite of their reaction to, oh say, Jamie Lynn Spears’ teenaged pregnancy, for example—not to mention their usual reactions to the out-of-wedlock pregnancies of young, inner-city black women.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 19.85pt; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p>Bristol Palin’s brother is clearly a backcountry douche bag, as his MySpace page originally made clear. Yet he is getting away with this character flaw in ways no black youth ever could. In addition, the critical juxtaposition of Sarah Palin’s academic career and those of many academically disadvantaged black youth also rings true to me.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 19.85pt; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p>I’ll focus the rest of my response on the stuff I disagreed with. Virtually every criticism of Obama by conservative Republicans referenced in Mr. Wise’s article actually stems from the former’s ideology, not his race. On the whole, I don’t think Obama is getting any worse treatment than his <i style="">white</i> Democratic predecessors did in years gone by—not in the areas mentioned in Mr. Wise’s missive, in any case.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 19.85pt; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p>The fourth paragraph is where I begin to disagree strongly. Being an undistinguished first-term <st1:country-region><st1:place>US</st1:place></st1:country-region> Senator and two-term state senator with zero notable legislative accomplishments is hardly superior—as a qualification for the presidency, at any rate—to being a small-town mayor or governor of an oil-rich state. Senator Obama <i style="">is</i> untested, as untested in his own way as Governor Palin. This, mind you, hardly means he can’t be a great president; there are too many historical examples to the contrary. </p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 19.85pt; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p>“If it was good enough for the Founding Fathers, it’s good enough for me”: I’ve heard it argued that Governor Palin was referring to general references to God on government literature and in government correspondence rather than to the “under God” in the Pledge strictly. This could, of course, be quite wrong. Only an incisive follow-up question could set this record perfectly straight, so my personal jury’s still out on that one.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 19.85pt; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p>As for reading criminals their rights: there is actually nothing in the Constitution that says that this practice is required. Liberal judges’ belief that governments <i style="">should</i> have to perform such a practice (which also happens to be my personal policy opinion) does not mean that the <i style="">Constitution</i> actually <i style="">requires</i> it. Neither the US Constitution—nor any other legal document, for that matter—can plausibly be held to “require” something it doesn’t even mention.<o:p><br /></o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 19.85pt; text-align: justify;">I agree that all gun nuts should be perceived and treated equally, regardless of their melanin count. And advocates of excessively stifling gun-control regulations, or outright bans on gun ownership, should take a moment of pause from the little-known historical fact that the first gun control laws in the United States specifically targeted blacks, aiming to keep weapons out of their hands so as to render them defenseless against racist attacks. <a href="http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/cramer.racism.html">http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/cramer.racism.html</a></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 19.85pt; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p>I seem to remember Democratic heavy hitters like James Carville relentlessly mocking Sarah Palin’s erstwhile small-town mayoralty almost a week before she ever got to speak on Obama’s community organizing experience. Democrats with glass jaws should not throw sucker punches. Moreover, Obama’s experience—according to what I’ve read so far, at least—included nothing so momentous as “fighting for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor” but with rather more mundane matters like removing asbestos from housing projects (not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course). As for giving women the vote, ending child labor and mandating the 8-hour workday, those struggles date back eighty years and more, long before Obama was born. They may nonetheless be fair defenses of community organizing in and of itself, but if the first viable black presidential candidate had nothing to do with them, I fail to see how they effectively lend themselves to proving the existence of white privilege in <st1:country-region><st1:place>America</st1:place></st1:country-region>. <span style=""> </span></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 19.85pt; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p>I never figured many women voters would jump on the Palin bandwagon simply on account of her gender—nor should they. On the other hand, do I think her candidacy is “a step backward for women”, as some feminist pundits have been alleging? Hardly. A woman vice-president’s a woman vice-president, no matter how conservative. Moreover, even electing to the vice-presidency a woman who holds views with which most women disagree still furthers the cause of women’s advancement. It demonstrates that a woman needn’t stuff herself inside a left-wing ideological box in order to blaze a trail for her sisters in the professional world. (Think of Margaret Thatcher.) It also reinforces the principle of women’s equality with men by demonstrating that, just like men, women are entitled to their own opinions—even controversial ones—since they are, after all, fully independent individuals who can think for themselves, just like men. </p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 19.85pt; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p><i style="">All</i> politicians are at least somewhat cynical in their behavior over time. It’s almost impossible to be politically successful without it. As for insinuations that Obama is corrupt, they are a product of his having come up through <st1:city><st1:place>Chicago</st1:place></st1:City> machine politics as he has (not merely “knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in <st1:city><st1:place>Chicago</st1:place></st1:City>”). These insinuations are not a product of Obama’s race. The corrupt Chicago ward machines are generally controlled by whites, as they have been for more than a century. That doesn’t diminish their corruption—and wouldn’t make Obama any less corrupt, were he a white man—in conservatives’ eyes.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 19.85pt; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p>I agree that Republicans who associate with far-right Christian pastors should be subject to as much opprobrium as Obama was for his association with Jeremiah Wright. But to describe the latter’s sermons as merely “talking about the history of racism and its effect on black people” is facile and dishonest. For instance, I can hardly give anyone wrong—whether they are white or black, liberal or conservative—for being repulsed by Wright’s moronic and grotesquely paranoid claim that the AIDS virus was invented by the <st1:country-region><st1:place>US</st1:place></st1:country-region> government to kill black people. And Wright did not merely “note that terrorist attacks are often the result of <st1:country-region><st1:place>U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region> foreign policy”; he went beyond that to suggest that <st1:country-region><st1:place>America</st1:place></st1:country-region> <i style="">deserved</i> the attacks of September 11<sup>th</sup> as a result. (That’s what “chickens coming home to roost” means, FYI.) So the 3,000 innocent American <i style="">civilians</i> who died on that tragic day deserved it, because of the vagaries (and admitted flaws) of their government’s foreign policy? Neither Wright’s nor Obama’s blackness is enough to explain white Americans’ disgust with this insinuation.<o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 19.85pt; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p>It’s true that Bush got away with his “regular guy” image waaayyyyy too easily—especially with populist conservatives—considering his <i style="">very</i> blue-blooded pedigree. But as I understand it, it wasn’t “being black, going to a prestigious prep school, then Occidental College , then Columbia , and then to Harvard Law” that made conservatives accuse Obama of “looking down on regular folks”. What brought this criticism down on Obama was his comment about working-class white Americans clinging to their guns, religion and xenophobia out of bitterness at their economic plight. (Mind you, I myself never much faulted him for making that comment, for I’ve always felt there was a powerful element of truth to it—call me an elitist, too, if you will.) </p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 19.85pt; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p>As for Obama’s and McCain’s relative academic records: being a brilliant scholar hardly automatically qualifies a candidate for the presidency. You can be bright and academically accomplished and still screw up big time as president. Don’t take it from me—take it from JFK, with his foul-up of the <st1:place>Bay of Pigs</st1:place> invasion or his embroilment of the military in the Vietnam War. You can also lack a college degree altogether and still make a damn good president. Just ask Harry Truman.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 19.85pt; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p>McCain’s jokey jingle about bombing <st1:country-region><st1:place>Iran</st1:place></st1:country-region> was damned stupid, no doubt about it. Yet Ronald Reagan 1984 joke about “outlawing <st1:country-region><st1:place>Russia</st1:place></st1:country-region> forever” and “beginning bombing in five minutes” didn’t stop him from drastically speeding up the <st1:place>Soviet Union</st1:place>’s demise. And Obama’s proposal to meet, <i style="">without preconditions</i>, the leaders of a host of hostile, repressive rogue states, all in his first year in office, regardless of whether or not he is bargaining from a position of strength, <i style="">does</i> smack of dangerous naïveté and immaturity. This is a product of his liberal worldview and ideology—not his race.<o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 19.85pt; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p>Obama is accused of ducking questions for two main reasons. First, he <i style="">does</i> sometimes duck them, like all politicians do. (Did any of you really fall for that bullshit he told Rick Warren about the question of when human beings begin to have rights being “above his pay grade”? Because it’s sure as hell not above <i style="">mine</i>.) Second of all, he’s a liberal, and so of <i style="">course</i> conservative pundits and campaign strategists will call him out every time he does duck a question, just as liberal pundits and campaigners (rightly) do to conservative candidates. A white Democratic candidate would have been accused of evasiveness—or any other political shortcoming—by Republicans just as much as Obama has been. Or have Democrats already forgotten all about poor John “flip flop” Kerry, Michael “tank commander” Dukakis, Walter “let’s raise taxes” Mondale or Jimmy “malaise” Carter?</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 19.85pt; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p>It can be plausibly argued that being tortured by communist jailers for five years is a greater burden and a harsher experience than anything Obama has ever gone through, <i style="">given</i> his relatively peaceful childhood and privileged higher education at such august institutions as <st1:city><st1:place>Columbia</st1:place></st1:City> and Harvard. I don’t necessarily agree with this argument, but I find it one deserving of serious consideration. What does seem clear to me is the fact that whatever racism Obama has experienced has certainly not substantially obstructed his pathway to success in life. Suffice to say that no Ivy League-trained lawyer, <st1:country-region><st1:place>US</st1:place></st1:country-region> Senator and presidential candidate can plausibly claim to have been the victim of insurmountable racism. </p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 19.85pt; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p>White privilege is <i style="">not</i> the “only” thing that could allow a putative ally of George W. Bush to become president. Voters’ ignorance of political issues, widespread belief that McCain would govern differently than Bush (based on his heterodox track record over the past several decades), and any number of other factors play into it. But of course, that doesn’t make for hardly as catchy or as entertaining an article as blaming all of the electoral hurdles Obama faces on white privilege. <o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 19.85pt; text-align: justify;">An overestimation of the power of white privilege, in short, is arguably as big a problem as white privilege itself.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 19.85pt; text-align: justify;"><o:p> </o:p></p>Akil Alleynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17059220107175436660noreply@blogger.com0