I was in one of my classes today when I noticed, not for the first time, how professors are obsessed with grassroots politics - "the politics of protest."
The trend has come up in numerous courses. I took a class on black politics once, and it focused not on the issues raised by the black diaspora and the different ideas about those issues, but on far-left black political leaders and how their movements succeeded or failed. And an immigration class focused a lot on immigrant political movements - not just how immigration shapes political trends over time but how the immigrants themselves "wield power" on issues like migrant labor.
(I'm not sure the prof took into account the fact that immigrants can't vote until becoming citizens, at which point they're not really immigrants to the same extent. They have historically been pretty ineffective at changing policy. Illegal Mexicans, for example, get support because of the cheap labor lobby and the increasing number of Mexican-descended U.S. citizens [read: voters], not because of their own pretty annoying activism. By the prof's own instruction, widening and narrowing of immigration policy has fluctuated according to the whims and pressures put on the majority, not by concerns about what immigrants think.)
My (quite liberal) girlfriend, majoring in journalism and cultural anthropology, has even taken entire courses about "social movement theory."
Now, things like the labor movement, globalization protests, protest in the civil rights era, etc. are important to the study of politics. But most politics take place in the more traditional political arenas. People vote far more than they scream like banshees while brandishing placards, and with more results. They also change people's minds by buying commercials and doing academic studies. So why the obsession with protesters?
I have two ideas. The first is the nostalgia for the '60s that most professors have. In the Civil Rights Era, protests were widespread enough, and caught the attention and conscience of America enough, to work (by contrast, it's doubtful that most representatives today are influenced on, say, immigration by anyone besides their constituents and contributors). The second is that professors' liberal biases give them sympathy for the notion of the lower classes taking power through a grassroots campaign. Also, of course, most protesters are liberals themselves.
Oddly enough, I have never been assigned an article asking whether protest works. When my girlfriend gets out of class maybe I'll ask her if she has.
Friday, April 07, 2006
Thursday, April 06, 2006
POLITICS: A better way of articulating the problem with the median/mean measure
Was trying to come up with material for my songwriting class when this popped into my head:
The problem with dividing median by mean income is that it essentially allows the very rich to dictate the results. It shows inequality in the sense of the rich having way more money than everyone else, but it hardly takes poverty - the more important and worrisome of the two extremes - into account at all. The Gini coefficient solves this problem by giving weight to the gap between the poor's income and the mean income rather than the gap between the mean and median overall.
Say, for example, we have a society of five people. They make $500, $18,000, $42,000, $83,000 and $500,000 - something like America at the 1st, 20th, 50th, 80th and 99th percentiles. That gives us a median/mean of 32.6 percent. Now, say the society gets much more unequal. The median's income stays the same, as do the rich's and the super-rich's. But the two poorest people see their incomes drop by a whopping 50 percent.
Pretty severe, huh? But wait - the median/mean measure shows only a rounding error's difference at 33.1 percent. The mean didn't change much because the poor people's loss of income didn't mean anything for the overall statistic.
By contrast, if we take the super-rich person's income and increase it 50 percent to $750,000, leaving everyone else's right where they are (including the guy who's just rich), the measure now gives us a radically different 23.5 percent. The mean got pushed up by the rich person. By this measure, then, the very rich getting richer is worse than the very poor getting poorer.
The problem with dividing median by mean income is that it essentially allows the very rich to dictate the results. It shows inequality in the sense of the rich having way more money than everyone else, but it hardly takes poverty - the more important and worrisome of the two extremes - into account at all. The Gini coefficient solves this problem by giving weight to the gap between the poor's income and the mean income rather than the gap between the mean and median overall.
Say, for example, we have a society of five people. They make $500, $18,000, $42,000, $83,000 and $500,000 - something like America at the 1st, 20th, 50th, 80th and 99th percentiles. That gives us a median/mean of 32.6 percent. Now, say the society gets much more unequal. The median's income stays the same, as do the rich's and the super-rich's. But the two poorest people see their incomes drop by a whopping 50 percent.
Pretty severe, huh? But wait - the median/mean measure shows only a rounding error's difference at 33.1 percent. The mean didn't change much because the poor people's loss of income didn't mean anything for the overall statistic.
By contrast, if we take the super-rich person's income and increase it 50 percent to $750,000, leaving everyone else's right where they are (including the guy who's just rich), the measure now gives us a radically different 23.5 percent. The mean got pushed up by the rich person. By this measure, then, the very rich getting richer is worse than the very poor getting poorer.
POLITICS: Income inequality and diversity
Steve Sailer points to this post at The Audacious Epigone. The college student blogger measured income inequality in terms of median income as a percentage of the mean income (that is, he divided the income of the state's middle earner by the income that person would have made if the if the entire state's income was distributed equally). Then, he ran a regression analysis comparing those numbers to the percentage of minorities in each state. Not surprisingly, he finds that more diversity means more inequality, which he argues is bad for democracy.
It's perfectly rational to conclude that more immigration by poor people tautologically translates to more inequality. But while I certainly would agree that inequality can prevent effective democratization (the writer, posting as "Crush41," points to Latin America), I'm a little more skeptical that it poses a real threat to democracies ("quasi-dictatorship") that are already established. In fact, the U.S. has been more unequal than Europe for a long time. I'd be curious to know inequality numbers for the U.S. and Europe before the era of the World Wars, when threats to democracy were very real and even successful, not here but in now-oh-so-equal Europe. If the U.S. was more unequal even back then, it would really question the meaning of inequality for democracy.
One interesting study would be to look at democracies that have relapsed into other forms of rule (as Samuel Huntington pointed out in The Third Wave, the trend of recent history has been two steps forward, one step back, with a bunch of countries democratizing, then some of them going back) to see if they had particularly high levels of inequality, as opposed to other destabilizing factors.
Then again, these countries were probably never all that secure in their democratization to begin with. Though you could make the case that inequality could hurt U.S. democracy in some small ways, the blanket statement "inequality is bad for democracy" is a little overblown.
Finally, median/mean income isn't a bad way to measure inequality, but there are better ones. For example, if three people have incomes of $10, $20 and $30 both the mean and median would be $20. Same with $5, $20 and $35, even though that scenario is much less equal. That is, this measure allows highs and lows to cancel each other out to a certain degree, as long as both the mean and the median still have the same ratio to each other. In America as a whole, the 20th percentile makes about $18,000, compared to $42,000 at the median and $83,500 at the 80th percentile, so the low numbers can drag the mean down toward the median a bit, understating the inequality (this effect is a lot smaller between the bigger income extremes - someone making nothing will not offset a millionaire, which is why the measure is a pretty decent one overall).
The better way to measure it would be the Gini coefficient. Here is a list of the 50 states' numbers.
The Gini coefficient is a number between 0 and 1 where 0 is perfect equality and 1 means one person has all the income. It is based on the Lorenz curve, which documents, starting at the bottom, what percentage of the people have what percentage of income. That is, if the bottom 20 percent of people had 10 percent of the income, there would be a point at (.20, .10). The Gini number itself is the area between the Lorenz curve and a perfect 45-degree angle (or equality, where 20 percent of people have 20 percent of the income and so on).
On a side note, Seymour Lipset once demonstrated that as income rises, democratization is more likely and finally inevitable (though this correlation might be in decline). I wonder if anyone has looked at how controlling for inequality changes this.
It's perfectly rational to conclude that more immigration by poor people tautologically translates to more inequality. But while I certainly would agree that inequality can prevent effective democratization (the writer, posting as "Crush41," points to Latin America), I'm a little more skeptical that it poses a real threat to democracies ("quasi-dictatorship") that are already established. In fact, the U.S. has been more unequal than Europe for a long time. I'd be curious to know inequality numbers for the U.S. and Europe before the era of the World Wars, when threats to democracy were very real and even successful, not here but in now-oh-so-equal Europe. If the U.S. was more unequal even back then, it would really question the meaning of inequality for democracy.
One interesting study would be to look at democracies that have relapsed into other forms of rule (as Samuel Huntington pointed out in The Third Wave, the trend of recent history has been two steps forward, one step back, with a bunch of countries democratizing, then some of them going back) to see if they had particularly high levels of inequality, as opposed to other destabilizing factors.
Then again, these countries were probably never all that secure in their democratization to begin with. Though you could make the case that inequality could hurt U.S. democracy in some small ways, the blanket statement "inequality is bad for democracy" is a little overblown.
Finally, median/mean income isn't a bad way to measure inequality, but there are better ones. For example, if three people have incomes of $10, $20 and $30 both the mean and median would be $20. Same with $5, $20 and $35, even though that scenario is much less equal. That is, this measure allows highs and lows to cancel each other out to a certain degree, as long as both the mean and the median still have the same ratio to each other. In America as a whole, the 20th percentile makes about $18,000, compared to $42,000 at the median and $83,500 at the 80th percentile, so the low numbers can drag the mean down toward the median a bit, understating the inequality (this effect is a lot smaller between the bigger income extremes - someone making nothing will not offset a millionaire, which is why the measure is a pretty decent one overall).
The better way to measure it would be the Gini coefficient. Here is a list of the 50 states' numbers.
The Gini coefficient is a number between 0 and 1 where 0 is perfect equality and 1 means one person has all the income. It is based on the Lorenz curve, which documents, starting at the bottom, what percentage of the people have what percentage of income. That is, if the bottom 20 percent of people had 10 percent of the income, there would be a point at (.20, .10). The Gini number itself is the area between the Lorenz curve and a perfect 45-degree angle (or equality, where 20 percent of people have 20 percent of the income and so on).
On a side note, Seymour Lipset once demonstrated that as income rises, democratization is more likely and finally inevitable (though this correlation might be in decline). I wonder if anyone has looked at how controlling for inequality changes this.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
POLITICS: Texas and teen pregnancy
Mother Jones has a very interesting summary of two posts about how Texas has the highest teen birth rate in the country. Feminists blame the state's lack of funding for family planning (and the fact they teach abstinence), though another blogger pointed out that Latina teens are less likely than those of other races to call their pregnancies "unwanted." Since Texas has a disproportionate number of Latina teens, some of whom might actually want to get pregnant, that might explain some of the disparity.
Another thing I think would be interesting to look into is whether region or family planning policy better correlates with the pregnancy rate. Thomas Sowell pointed out in Black Rednecks and White Liberals that, since colonial times, people in the South have had a higher tendency toward sexual indiscretion. I wonder if that persists to this day. If it does, the Texas teen pregnancy rate could say nothing about current state policy.
Another thing I think would be interesting to look into is whether region or family planning policy better correlates with the pregnancy rate. Thomas Sowell pointed out in Black Rednecks and White Liberals that, since colonial times, people in the South have had a higher tendency toward sexual indiscretion. I wonder if that persists to this day. If it does, the Texas teen pregnancy rate could say nothing about current state policy.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
MUSIC: Witchery's Don't Fear the Reaper
My review:
Witchery back with a vengeance
by Robert VerBruggen
With members of The Haunted and Arch Enemy participating, there was little doubt that Witchery’s Don’t Fear the Reaper would be a masterpiece of extreme metal. Yet the album manages to exceed even those expectations.
Simply put, the guitar riffs on this release are amazing. Each track is loaded with heavy, evil gems with powerful low end and intricate melodies. The occasional high-pitched phrase adds variety and unpredictability.
The credit, of course, goes to The Haunted’s Patrick Jensen – his main band’s Anders Bjorler typically overshadows him, but here he proves himself, unleashing passage after passage of nefarious noise.
Death metal growls can seldom do more than complement a good guitar riff, but “singer” Toxine makes a good go of it on Don’t Fear the Reaper, belting the words rhythmically enough to make them catchy in and of themselves. The most obvious example of this is the chorus to “Ashes,” where he screams: “Ashes to ashes and dust to death / Fade away / Burn away.”
The record is incredibly consistent, though some would argue it is homogenous as well. There is no acoustic instrumental, no ballad – just one great metal track after another. To Witchery’s credit, metal aficionados might note how the band combines the (somewhat different) styles of death, black and thrash.
Perhaps the only standout is the bonus song “Legion of Hades,” a 90-second super-fast death metal hate-fest originally recorded when the band was called Satanic Slaughter in the mid-‘90s. It certainly sets itself off from the rest of the CD.
Don’t Fear the Reaper is targeted to a niche market, and even mainstream heavy metal fans will never catch on to it. But for anyone looking for that extra ounce of aggression only hard-core metal can give, this album is a great place to start.
MUSIC: Rob Zombie's Educated Horses
Here's my review of Rob Zombie's latest.
Educated Horses is consistent, but a little lacking
by Robert VerBruggen
Rob Zombie has never been known for insightful lyrics. Or good singing. Or, since the demise of his band White Zombie, working with particularly talented guitar players. Or inventive album covers – much like Oprah with her magazine, Zombie likes to plaster his face on the front of every single release.
What he is known for, of course, is dark, mindlessly catchy songs with throbbing beats, and the new Educated Horses is adequate if not stellar as far as that goes. However, the record also makes some interesting adjustments in terms of style.
Songs like “The Scorpion Sleeps,” “The Devil’s Rejects” and “Death of it All” play up Zombie’s Alice Cooper influence in a very vaudeville way, with swinging beats and sleazy attitudes. Others, like “American Witch” and “17 Year Locust” are more traditional fare, while “Let It All Bleed Out” and “Ride” capture a heavy-metal intensity the singer’s solo albums have often lacked.
The almost complete absence of industrial tinges also hearkens back to the days of White Zombie. Real drums (courtesy Tommy Clufetos, Tommy Lee and Josh Freese) and chugging guitars are the norm, occasionally complemented by piano, clean guitars and keyboards.
Guitarist John 5 (or, as he’s listed in the credits, John Five, or, as his birth certificate says, John Lowery) is perhaps the most debatable change to Zombie’s sound. Five doesn’t have big shoes to fill – any 17-year-old with two years’ experience could have come up with the music Riggs wrote for Hellbilly Deluxe and The Sinister Urge.
However, while adept at a large number of styles (he’s worked with the odd combination of David Lee Roth, Marilyn Manson and k.d. lang), Five has never been known as much of a riff architect. The guitars on Educated Horses complement Zombie’s vocals well and probably top Riggs’ work, but they add little enjoyment in their own right.
All of that said, the biggest problem this record will have is that it’s missing a song with that special something. Hellbilly Deluxe was an incredibly inconsistent album, but one can hardly hear “Living Dead Girl” without picking up the CD the next day. Educated Horses is much more solid, yet the first single, “Foxy Foxy,” doesn’t have nearly the buy appeal.
At 38 minutes and 11 tracks (two of which are brief and not particularly inspired instrumentals), this album owes its listeners a straight-through good listen, and it provides just that. But the material fails to push it from goodness to greatness.
Monday, April 03, 2006
POLITICS: Some thoughts on polygamy
This article about polygamy marks a pretty significant departure for Reason magazine, detailing the negative effects of allowing multiple-partner marriages instead of representing it as a freedom-of-choice issue. It is an interesting article with some serious insights, but I think it makes the mistake of assuming that polygamy would catch on in the U.S. if it was legal.
I've long been libertarian on the issue, with this reasoning: It's perfectly legal to impregnate a bunch of women, run off and send a child support check every so often. Why allow that, but use the force of the state against people who impregnate a bunch of women and take care of them all?
Also, I doubt it would catch on with mainstream America even if made legal. Few women would stand for it (I have a feeling it's a predominantly male fantasy, one man and many women, and as Rauch points out, that has historically been the case). Even from a man's perspective, based on my experiences in two-partner relationships, one woman is more than enough trouble to deal with at once. (Sorry, honey.)
Rauch's principle argument is that because multiple-women relationships would outnumber multiple-men ones, lots of men would go life alone because their women were taken by polygamists. True enough. But again, since only a few demographics would support it (some Muslims, some Mormons and some Evangelical Christians, says Rauch), there is really no reason to believe the effects would be catastrophic on net. The only groups affected are the victims of their own choices, which they're free to change at will.
As an aside, Rauch also points out that since the state grants marriage licenses, it can decide who gets them. To paranoid-anti-government-redneck me, that seems like a great reason to take the power away from the state entirely. Oddly enough, even Rauch himself doesn't seem to buy this reasoning with regard to gay marriage, calling the prospect of a homosexual dying without marrying "a grave, even devastating, deprivation."
Rauch says "our ancestors were right to abolish (polygamy)," and as a matter of tradition he's absolutely right. As he notes, though polygamy is a major part of human history, it has never had a place in modern democracy.
But as a matter of law he runs into trouble. There are strong pro-freedom reasons for allowing (if not endorsing) the practice, and there is no reason to believe that massive numbers of Americans would opt for it even if it were legal - many of those who would take advantage of the law probably live polygamously as it is. And there's nothing illegal about that.
I've long been libertarian on the issue, with this reasoning: It's perfectly legal to impregnate a bunch of women, run off and send a child support check every so often. Why allow that, but use the force of the state against people who impregnate a bunch of women and take care of them all?
Also, I doubt it would catch on with mainstream America even if made legal. Few women would stand for it (I have a feeling it's a predominantly male fantasy, one man and many women, and as Rauch points out, that has historically been the case). Even from a man's perspective, based on my experiences in two-partner relationships, one woman is more than enough trouble to deal with at once. (Sorry, honey.)
Rauch's principle argument is that because multiple-women relationships would outnumber multiple-men ones, lots of men would go life alone because their women were taken by polygamists. True enough. But again, since only a few demographics would support it (some Muslims, some Mormons and some Evangelical Christians, says Rauch), there is really no reason to believe the effects would be catastrophic on net. The only groups affected are the victims of their own choices, which they're free to change at will.
As an aside, Rauch also points out that since the state grants marriage licenses, it can decide who gets them. To paranoid-anti-government-redneck me, that seems like a great reason to take the power away from the state entirely. Oddly enough, even Rauch himself doesn't seem to buy this reasoning with regard to gay marriage, calling the prospect of a homosexual dying without marrying "a grave, even devastating, deprivation."
Rauch says "our ancestors were right to abolish (polygamy)," and as a matter of tradition he's absolutely right. As he notes, though polygamy is a major part of human history, it has never had a place in modern democracy.
But as a matter of law he runs into trouble. There are strong pro-freedom reasons for allowing (if not endorsing) the practice, and there is no reason to believe that massive numbers of Americans would opt for it even if it were legal - many of those who would take advantage of the law probably live polygamously as it is. And there's nothing illegal about that.
POLITICS: Reducing child poverty
There is an interesting Washington Post article today.
The crux of it is this:
"For anyone interested in reducing child poverty, there was heartening bad news out of Britain last month. In 1999 the Blair government introduced an initiative to end child poverty by 2020, with an initial goal of cutting it by one-quarter by April of last year. Recently the government reported that it missed that target: The number of children in poverty dropped by "only" about 17 percent -- some 700,000 kids over the past five years.
The crux of it is this:
"For anyone interested in reducing child poverty, there was heartening bad news out of Britain last month. In 1999 the Blair government introduced an initiative to end child poverty by 2020, with an initial goal of cutting it by one-quarter by April of last year. Recently the government reported that it missed that target: The number of children in poverty dropped by "only" about 17 percent -- some 700,000 kids over the past five years.
If only we could have such problems in this country.
Since 2000 the number of American children living in poverty has risen 12 percent -- to 13 million. The initial growth was due to the economic downturn. But since then, despite the ongoing expansion, the poverty rate for children on this side of the pond keeps rising, largely because the benefits of the recovery have flowed so disproportionately to families at the top of the income scale."
I'm very keen on facts, and if this British program is working we should use it to replace our system, which hasn't reduced child poverty (not for lack of trying) in 40 years. However, I do see some potential problems with the authors' suggestions.
Much of the effort is concentrated on making things easier on poor, single parents (not to mention economically ridiculous ideas like minimum wage). This poses strong incentive problems. If the government makes it affordable to have children through tax credits and subsidized child care, people who can't afford to have children on their own will be more likely to give birth, actually increasing child poverty (or at least the cost of keeping these children out of poverty) over time as the illegitimacy problem spreads. Like what happened in the U.S.
The program is only seven years old, so if I'm right these effects will be coming out in the near future. Illegitimacy is highly correlated with child poverty, so making life easier for unwed parents is not something the government should be doing - even if, in the short run, it accomplishes the admirable goal of helping innocent children.
POLITICS: Can't say I didn't see this coming
US Rep. Cynthia McKinney, the congresswoman accused of striking a police officer who stopped her for not going through a metal detector (members of congress are not required to go through it), is now claiming that "race," "politics" and "sex" were the reasons for the incident.
I'm still waiting for the details to come out, but it seems unlikely to me for a Capitol Hill police officer to "assault" a woman in public because of her race. Witness statements will probably be public knowledge in the next few days.
If an officer stops you illegally, is it legal to smack him? Obviously in extreme cases it would be - say a police officer is raping or kidnapping you - but if he conducted himself professionally I don't see how her defense is much of a defense at all. Even if she was exempt from going through the detector, the officer had the right to make sure she was exempt if he didn't recognize her (remember there are 535 members of Congress). It will really depend on how exactly he "stopped"/"assaulted" her, and whether his behavior was within proper police procedure.
I'm still waiting for the details to come out, but it seems unlikely to me for a Capitol Hill police officer to "assault" a woman in public because of her race. Witness statements will probably be public knowledge in the next few days.
If an officer stops you illegally, is it legal to smack him? Obviously in extreme cases it would be - say a police officer is raping or kidnapping you - but if he conducted himself professionally I don't see how her defense is much of a defense at all. Even if she was exempt from going through the detector, the officer had the right to make sure she was exempt if he didn't recognize her (remember there are 535 members of Congress). It will really depend on how exactly he "stopped"/"assaulted" her, and whether his behavior was within proper police procedure.
Sunday, April 02, 2006
POLITICS: The Israel Lobby and Foreign Policy
Alrighty...I just slogged through Mearsheimer and Walt's 45-page-plus-endnotes paper "The Israel Lobby and Foreign Policy," a "Case Against Israel" of sorts. Having recently gone through and enjoyed "The Case for Israel," it left me with some mixed feelings to say the least. Here are some comments I have.
Significant Agreement
Though Mearsheimer/Walt and Dershowitz obviously have some severe disagreements (more on this later) there are some major points on which they agree. Both support Israel's right to exist, and both support a two-state solution to the issues in the Middle East. Of course, they disagree on whose fault it is that a two-state solution isn't already a reality. Dershowitz blames the Arabs for repeatedly rejecting offers of land, focusing instead on completely wiping Israel out. M/W contend that Israel is "colonizing" Palestinian-majority areas, seeking to dominate the entire state rather than giving the Arabs the land they've occupied for many years.
One-sidedness
I got the feeling from both pieces that I was being manipulated - they are opinion pieces (and not very good ones at that) cloaked as Harvard-caliber scholarship. They do not weigh various arguments against the evidence; rather, they present their arguments and the evidence that fits them.
Both claim to heavily cite scholars from the opposite camp, frequently saying things like "these facts are not in serious dispute" (which almost always is a way of labeling the scholars who do dispute those facts as cranks). Yet Dershowitz portrays the Jews as angels who bought the land they lived on from absentee landowners, made that low-quality land worthwhile and only were given a state by the U.N. when the Palestinians sided with the Nazis in WWII. M/W contend that the Jewish invasion of Palestine required terrorism, the slaughter of innocents and genocide.
It's incredibly frustrating to try to get an accurate picture of the facts - two Harvard academics are openly contradicting each other. Maybe all of that happened. Maybe none of it did. But either one paper lies, or both mischaracterize the events. The facts don't seem to make either a pro- or anti-Israel position all that convincing.
Since the M/W paper is new, I'll go into a little more detail of its unbalanced nature. They don't even maintain a scholarly tone, at one point referring to "putting the screws to Damascus." It also uses slightly-relevant facts to intimate dark conspiracies (in "The Quest for Cosmic Justice," Thomas Sowell demonstrated how Lenin's work "Imperialism" uses a similar technique - presenting tables and facts that aren't inconsistent with the thesis, but that don't really prove it either).
For example, Charles Krauthammer is pro-Israel. He also supported "regional transformation" through the war in Iraq, and a weaker Iraq would undoubtedly have meant a safer Israel. Therefore, Krauthammer supported the war in Iraq because of Israel, and without Israel he would have (it is heavily implied) opposed the war. M/W repeat this thinking error with regard to a variety of pundits, think tanks and politicians (though at the beginning of the section they concede that Israel was not the "only" reason to take out a homicidal U.S.-hating dictator suspected of possessing WMD). Unless M/W can read people's minds, they cannot tell how much of an influence Israel was in the thoughts of various Iraq war supporters - as compared to, say, the seven U.N. resolutions Iraq ignored, the Kurdish genocide, the terrorism threat (regardless of whether Saddam had anything to do with 9/11, Iraq has long been home to large numbers of fanatics who cloak their beliefs in Islam) and the suspicious unwillingness of Saddam to fully cooperate with inspectors (even after the war, it's really hard to figure out why Saddam would goad the U.S. into war without a prayer of winning).
Regardless of whether Iraq was a mistake in hindsight, there were plenty of reasons at the time to take Saddam out. Israel may or may not have been a deciding factor, but it need not have been, and proving otherwise would take a lot more evidence than M/W present.
The Anti-Semite Card
Much as M/W argue is common, Dershowitz is throwing the anti-Semitism allegation at the scholars to shut them up. As with some major networks. Sorry, but having David Duke on your program to defend a scholarly work isn't journalism, it's smear. Yes, it's troubling when a group called "Nuke Israel" has pictures of Adolf Hitler above a pro-M/W passage, but that doesn't make the two scholars Hitlerites. Neither does the fact that M/W and some hate sites' anti-Israel screeds have some of the same quotes in them. Though I will be looking for the side-by-side comparison chart Dersh and his assistants are putting together.
Conclusions
The world is really in need of a brief, accurate history of the 20th-century Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I've read probably 100 pages of Dershowitz, and 50 of M/W, and I really have no clue what went on there. And either Dershowitz or M/W (probably both) really needs to stop lying to us and sum up the situation accurately.
Significant Agreement
Though Mearsheimer/Walt and Dershowitz obviously have some severe disagreements (more on this later) there are some major points on which they agree. Both support Israel's right to exist, and both support a two-state solution to the issues in the Middle East. Of course, they disagree on whose fault it is that a two-state solution isn't already a reality. Dershowitz blames the Arabs for repeatedly rejecting offers of land, focusing instead on completely wiping Israel out. M/W contend that Israel is "colonizing" Palestinian-majority areas, seeking to dominate the entire state rather than giving the Arabs the land they've occupied for many years.
One-sidedness
I got the feeling from both pieces that I was being manipulated - they are opinion pieces (and not very good ones at that) cloaked as Harvard-caliber scholarship. They do not weigh various arguments against the evidence; rather, they present their arguments and the evidence that fits them.
Both claim to heavily cite scholars from the opposite camp, frequently saying things like "these facts are not in serious dispute" (which almost always is a way of labeling the scholars who do dispute those facts as cranks). Yet Dershowitz portrays the Jews as angels who bought the land they lived on from absentee landowners, made that low-quality land worthwhile and only were given a state by the U.N. when the Palestinians sided with the Nazis in WWII. M/W contend that the Jewish invasion of Palestine required terrorism, the slaughter of innocents and genocide.
It's incredibly frustrating to try to get an accurate picture of the facts - two Harvard academics are openly contradicting each other. Maybe all of that happened. Maybe none of it did. But either one paper lies, or both mischaracterize the events. The facts don't seem to make either a pro- or anti-Israel position all that convincing.
Since the M/W paper is new, I'll go into a little more detail of its unbalanced nature. They don't even maintain a scholarly tone, at one point referring to "putting the screws to Damascus." It also uses slightly-relevant facts to intimate dark conspiracies (in "The Quest for Cosmic Justice," Thomas Sowell demonstrated how Lenin's work "Imperialism" uses a similar technique - presenting tables and facts that aren't inconsistent with the thesis, but that don't really prove it either).
For example, Charles Krauthammer is pro-Israel. He also supported "regional transformation" through the war in Iraq, and a weaker Iraq would undoubtedly have meant a safer Israel. Therefore, Krauthammer supported the war in Iraq because of Israel, and without Israel he would have (it is heavily implied) opposed the war. M/W repeat this thinking error with regard to a variety of pundits, think tanks and politicians (though at the beginning of the section they concede that Israel was not the "only" reason to take out a homicidal U.S.-hating dictator suspected of possessing WMD). Unless M/W can read people's minds, they cannot tell how much of an influence Israel was in the thoughts of various Iraq war supporters - as compared to, say, the seven U.N. resolutions Iraq ignored, the Kurdish genocide, the terrorism threat (regardless of whether Saddam had anything to do with 9/11, Iraq has long been home to large numbers of fanatics who cloak their beliefs in Islam) and the suspicious unwillingness of Saddam to fully cooperate with inspectors (even after the war, it's really hard to figure out why Saddam would goad the U.S. into war without a prayer of winning).
Regardless of whether Iraq was a mistake in hindsight, there were plenty of reasons at the time to take Saddam out. Israel may or may not have been a deciding factor, but it need not have been, and proving otherwise would take a lot more evidence than M/W present.
The Anti-Semite Card
Much as M/W argue is common, Dershowitz is throwing the anti-Semitism allegation at the scholars to shut them up. As with some major networks. Sorry, but having David Duke on your program to defend a scholarly work isn't journalism, it's smear. Yes, it's troubling when a group called "Nuke Israel" has pictures of Adolf Hitler above a pro-M/W passage, but that doesn't make the two scholars Hitlerites. Neither does the fact that M/W and some hate sites' anti-Israel screeds have some of the same quotes in them. Though I will be looking for the side-by-side comparison chart Dersh and his assistants are putting together.
Conclusions
The world is really in need of a brief, accurate history of the 20th-century Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I've read probably 100 pages of Dershowitz, and 50 of M/W, and I really have no clue what went on there. And either Dershowitz or M/W (probably both) really needs to stop lying to us and sum up the situation accurately.
MUSIC: Lacuna Coil's Karmacode
Thanks to Century Media's excellent mail order system, I received Lacuna Coil's Karmacode in the mail yesterday - it doesn't come out in stores until Tuesday! Their prices are excellent too, so stop over there if you like heavy metal. Amazon won't take reviews before CDs are available to the public, and the Chronicle doesn't come out for a week yet, so I'll post my entire review here first. In the future I'll just include a few grafs and link to the Chron. Here it is:
Lacuna Coil improves, evolves with Karmacode
by Robert VerBruggen
Lacuna Coil improves, evolves with Karmacode
by Robert VerBruggen
For years Lacuna Coil’s sound has coupled emotionless, gothic music with the vivacious Italian vocals of Cristina Scabbia. Take the hit “Heaven’s a Lie” from 2002’s Comalies – Scabbia delivers a passionate performance over riffs that chug with Scandinavian detachedness.
But on the new Karmacode the two elements become one, with the guitars often taking up a loose attitude more appropriate for hip-shaking than head-banging. Bassist Marco Coti Lelati furthers this atmosphere with groovy lines that underscore the catchy (and dare we say a little funky?) riffs.
Scabbia’s style evolves as well, most notably in that she sings wordless Middle Eastern melodies quite frequently – for example, listen to the intro to the first single “Our Truth.” As usual, in each song she harmonizes or trades parts with second singer Andrea Ferro (a male).
All this, of course, would be for naught if the songs weren’t there, and in this respect Karmacode delivers magnificently. There isn’t so much as a weak second in the album’s 47 minutes.
The melodies are powerful, the riffs are catchy (if far from dazzling technically) and the occasional instrumental break adds variety. There is a careful balance between all-out rockers (“Closer,” “Fragile”), heavy-handed brooders (“In Visible Light”) and pensive ballads (“Within Me,” the Depeche Mode cover “Enjoy the Silence”). The production does a good job of bringing out the dense arrangements of keyboards, guitars, bass, drums and vocals.
It will be difficult for this band to break into the American mainstream – in part because critics don’t give it enough credit for influencing the American metal sensation Evanescence – but Karmacode has everything it takes. The sound is unique, the songs are outstanding and, let’s face it, there’s some sex appeal going on, too.
Saturday, April 01, 2006
Welcome!
Here it is, my very first post as a blogger. In the near future I plan to offer commentary on everything from politics to music. Right now I'm reading the infamous "Jewish Lobby" paper (I read much of The Case for Israel over spring break and, I must say, am quite confused) listening to new CDs by Witchery and Lacuna Coil and taking classes on immigration, advertising and songwriting - just to give you a taste of what's to come. In the meanwhile, please check out my articles at the Northwestern Chronicle, where I plan to continue to some degree until I graduate in June. Hopefully an article or two for The Chicago Reporter will be in the works soon as well.
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