On Saying One Thing and Meaning Another
In a welcome return to blogging, Jay Rosen turns his attention to the recent New York Times article on the Tea Party phenomenon, lauding reporter David Barstow’s fine work, but critiquing one paragraph.
The excerpt at issue:
It is a sprawling rebellion, but running through it is a narrative of impending tyranny. This narrative permeates Tea Party Web sites, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and YouTube videos. It is a prominent theme of their favored media outlets and commentators, and it connects the disparate issues that preoccupy many Tea Party supporters — from the concern that the community organization Acorn is stealing elections to the belief that Mr. Obama is trying to control the Internet and restrict gun ownership.
Here is Professor Rosen reacting to that passage:
David Barstow is a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter for the New York Times. He ought to know whether the United States is on the verge of losing its democracy and succumbing to an authoritarian or despotic form of government. If tyranny was pending in the U.S. that would seem to be a story… Seriously: Why is this phrase, impending tyranny, just sitting there, as if Barstow had no way of knowing whether it was crazed and manipulated or verifiable and reasonable?
Professor Rosen adds:
In a word, the Times editors and Barstow know this narrative is nuts, but something stops them from saying so — despite the fact that they must have spent over $100,000 on this one story. And whatever that thing is, it’s not the reluctance to voice an opinion in the news columns, but a reluctance to report a fact in the news columns, the fact that the “narrative of impending tyranny” is ungrounded in any observable reality, even though the sense of grievance within the Tea Party movement is truly felt and politically consequential.
On reading Professor Rosen’s post, I thought immediately about The GOP Speaks, a Web project where I asked Republican leaders at the local level to share their beliefs about current controversies. Before the replies stopped coming back (for reasons I still can’t entirely figure out), I received 27 replies to my questionnaire. In response to my second question — “What is the most worrisome part of Barack Obama’s presidency?” — I received replies including the following:
+ “Without question the country has elected a Marxist that hates capitalism and liberty.”
+ “It appears the president is preparing to become dictator.”
+ “The unbridled horse race to Fabian socialism on the one hand, and the fact that there are avowed and unapologetic Communists in the White House being paid by US Taxpayers who are advising the president on domestic policy issues.”
+ “His swift moves towards socialism. He is moving so fast that we may not be able to counter much of what he has done.”
As it happens, I disagree rather profoundly with President Obama’s approach to domestic policy, and on foreign policy I am increasingly dismayed by his assertion of extraordinary, imprudent powers like the ability to assassinate United States citizens without judicial oversight, or his administration’s contention that the federal government doesn’t need a warrant to track the movements of any American so long as it’s done via their cell phone carrier. Put another way, I myself think that on several important issues President Obama is moving us marginally closer to tyranny, all so many recent presidents have done.
Even so, I find it preposterous that anyone believes the United States is on the cusp of impending tyranny itself, or that President Obama is uniquely bad on this metric, or methodically preparing to seize dictatorial power, or that his actions as president are somehow so radical as to be irreversible. Indeed I couldn’t believe that my more animated GOP correspondents believed these things to be true either, even when they seemed to state as much. So I followed up with some of them, pressing them about what exactly they believed, and did additional reporting among other conservative citizens as well, hoping to understand the gap separating the rhetoric they use from whatever their actual beliefs turn out to be.
I found a few things of interest. Foremost is that extreme words like tyranny are almost always useless if the goal is figuring out what on earth someone actually thinks. Five people might tell you that their biggest worry about Barack Obama is his tendencies toward tyranny. Buzz words like this tend to spread. On further questioning, you’ll find one guy means he’s upset that the president might seek a tax hike, while another is literally worried that he’s building secret prisons to house American patriots. The former invocation of tyranny is by far more common, and it doesn’t strike the people who use it as imprecise because they marinate in a political culture of hyper-adversarial cable news, Barnes and Noble bestsellers with hyperbolic titles, and talk radio hosts who cast the political battles between American conservatives and liberals as an epic battle between liberty and tyranny. As the volume of political rhetoric gets turned up, folks eventually lose perspective, and having listened to their very loud stereo for hours, it doesn’t occur to them that on talking to folks outside the room they seem to be shouting. Pin these folks down on their actual beliefs, concerns or objections, however, and often as not they are basically reasonable people whose opinions are no more or less grounded in fact than anyone else.
In the comments to Professor Rosen’s post, Paul Davis writes:
I don’t need a reporter doing Barstow’s job to tell me that the views of the tea party “movement” are nuts, but I do very very much want to get to a deeper understanding of how the people who believe what it espouses can hold the worldview that they do. This is critically important since its reasonably clear that their worldview feels internally consistent to them, just as mine does to me. Barstow doesn’t need to write “Yet this notion of impending tyranny is completely unjustified by the facts of contemporary America” – what he does need to write is a clear account of the things that lead others to believe that it is completely justified by whatever they know about the world.
I’d go a step father: Mr. Barstow, who wrote an excellent story as is, could’ve improved upon it by telling us not just why Tea Party advocates believe we’re on the road to tyranny, but what exactly they mean when they say tyranny. In some cases, their answers will betray a factual misunderstanding of the world, at which point it’ll be appropriate to respond as Professor Rosen would like. Other times, however, they’ll explain that by impending tyranny they believe, for example, that the combination of America’s growing debt and its imploding financial sector mean that Wall Street elites and creditors in China are going to wield ever increasing control over the material well being of American citizens. In other words, fear of “impending tyranny” is sometimes going to be less easily dismissed than Professor Rosen imagines.
I do think Professor Rosen’s observations about the desire of journalists to be innocent in reporting on controversial subjects is often accurate, and that it frequently causes them to refrain from offering relevant information to readers who’d benefit from it. All I can conclude at present is that extra reporting on what exactly participants in political debates believe mitigates the problem. The higher the level of abstraction, the harder it is to judge whether something is a matter of fact, interpretation, or opinion. Would you rather disprove that Barack Obama aims to be a tyrant or that he’s coming to take your guns?
I left a comment on True/Slant.
— mike farmer · Feb 23, 02:17 PM · #
It’s much simpler than that. Movement conservatism, as an entity, has devoted a tremendous amount of attention and effort to branding conservatism as an oppressed minority, in exactly the way that conservatives have mocked black people, women, gay people, etc. for claiming minority status. So the New York Times can’t come out and call this notion wrong, because doing so violates the dictum that conservatism must be treated with kid gloves. This is why, for example, dissident conservatives excoriated liberal policy positions and liberal people, yet hold those same liberals to much higher standards than they hold conservatives. We have come to a place where we all sort of implicitly agree to a two-tiered system of political commentary.
— Freddie · Feb 23, 04:37 PM · #
The “soft bigotry of low expectations.” What we have now is affirmative action for conservatives, or in other words “wingnut welfare.”
— Chet · Feb 23, 06:32 PM · #
Can you share some information supporting this statement:
“and on foreign policy I am increasingly dismayed by his assertion of extraordinary, imprudent powers like the ability to assassinate United States citizens without judicial oversight”
— ratgov · Feb 23, 07:08 PM · #
I feel like this is much ado about not so much. As I read the paragraph by Mr. Barstow in question, it’s pretty clear that he’s simply describing the tea party’s core belief. The question is, is the piece meant to be analysis or merely informative? The more I interact with the judicial system, the more I am learning that this is an important distinction. Was Mr. Barstow charged with performing analysis? If so, then complaints are warranted.
— Erik Vanderhoff · Feb 23, 07:56 PM · #
Where in the world did you get the idea that we have a privacy right in our spacetime trajectories?
Forget the telemetry for a second. Focus on the privacy expectation. What possible expectation of privacy does one have in a set of time-stamped GPS coordinates.
It’s open fields and plain view writ large. See CALIFORNIA v. CIRAOLO, 476 U.S. 207 (1986) (upholding warrantless visual surveillance of a home and holding that visual observation without physical intrusion is no ‘search’ at all). The eye cannot be guilty of trespass. Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 628 (1886) (quoting Entick v. Carrington, 19 How. St. Tr. 1029, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (K. B. 1765)).
Asserting an expectation of privacy in public movement turns the Fourth Amendment on its head. As the Court has repeatedly stated, at the “core” of the amendment “stands the right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion.” Silverman v. United States, 365 U. S. 505, 511 (1961). Leaving the home to navigate social space is the exact opposite of what the founders wanted to protect. One has no expectation of privacy when traveling “public thoroughfares where both its occupants and its contents are in plain view.” Cardwell v. Lewis, 417 U.S. 583, 590 (1974).
The clincher comes from two supreme court cases. In Smith v. Maryland, 442 U. S. 735, 743-744 (1979), the Court held that you don’t have an expectation of privacy in the numbers you dial from your private home. In that case law enforcement obtained consent from a telephone company to install and use a pen register to record the numbers dialed from the defendants home phone. “Since the pen register was installed on telephone company property at the telephone company’s central offices, petitioner obviously cannot claim that his ‘property’ was invaded or that police intruded into a ‘constitutionally protected area.’” The defendant had no expectation of privacy in the numbers dialed.
It’s a well established rule of privacy law that you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy in information you willingly turn over to third parties. United States v. Miller, 425 U.S., at 442 -444; Couch v. United States, 409 U.S., at 335 -336; United States v. White, 401 U.S., at 752 (plurality opinion); Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293, 302 (1966); Lopez v. United States, 373 U.S. 427 (1963). Those cases were about stuff like business transactions and bank statements, things infinitely more personal and substantive than an {X, Y, Z, T} coordinate.
The second significant case is United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276 (1983). In that case police placed an electronic beeper in a five-gallon drum containing chloroform that was purchased by the defendants. The beeper emitted periodic radio signals that could be used to track the movement of the drum from a remote location. When the drum stopped moving at a cabin, police used the information to obtain a warrant and subsequently arrest and convict the defendants of possession and intent to distribute 14lbs of meth.
The court rejected the defendants’ argument that the police invaded a legitimate expectation of privacy by tracking their movement remotely using an electronic device.
As the Court stated, “We have never equated police efficiency with unconstitutionality, and we decline to do so now.”
I don’t expect this to break through to Conor, who readily and unembarrassedly declaims on legal topics, brandishing limp-wristed moral certitude to hide his lack of rigor and expertise. So I’ll say it simply: if a police officer tails you, and reports that you went into Gap at 12:10 then took a dump in the mall stall at 12:45, you do not have a privacy right in that information. If it’s information that could have been acquired by tailing you, and this information has been willingly made available to a third party, and the police did not have to physically intrude into a constitutionally protected zone to acquire it, you don’t have a privacy right in that information.
There, I said it, got it off my chest. Gotta go back to work. Peace.
— John Aristides · Feb 23, 09:24 PM · #
So back a few years ago when there was much wailing and breast-beating on the Left…back when you lefties were absolutely SURE that GWB was going to declare martial law and cancel the elections…
Did anyone ask what their evidence was? Did anyone “pin them down” about their fantastic, OMG!!!TYRANNY!! claims?
— tomaig · Feb 23, 09:34 PM · #
No, damn it, one more thing. Conor begs the question by calling targeted killings “assassination,” since the issue is whether a targeted killing is an illegal political assassination or a legitimate combat tactic. The answer to that question turns on a great many things. Oddly enough, aka typical for Conor, whether the dude is an American is not one of the significant factors that determine legality. If it’s assassination, then it’s illegal no matter what. On the other hand, if he’s an active combatant who can’t be captured without undue risk to our side, then killing him is legal even if he was a blond haired blue eyed native of America that used to play quarterback at the University of Iowa and sing glorious hymns of Jesus in the local tabernacle choir.
— John Aristides · Feb 23, 09:48 PM · #
No, damn it, one more thing. Conor begs the question by calling targeted killings “assassination,” since the issue is whether a targeted killing is an illegal political assassination or a legitimate combat tactic.
Here you go man.
— Freddie · Feb 23, 11:13 PM · #
Tomaig, here’s the proof that bush and cheney were setting up the legal framework for a police state.
Yoo said the president wasn’t bound by the 1st or 4th amendments if he only so much as wanted to “deter” terrorism domestically. From the DOJ report on Yoo’s memo:
“These included Yoo’s findings in the memorandum that: 1) the Fourth Amendment would not apply to domestic military operations designed to deter and prevent future terrorist attacks; 2) “broad statements” suggesting that First Amendment speech and press rights under the constitution would potentially be subordinated to overriding military necessities; and 3) that domestic deployment of the Armed Forces by the President to prevent and deter terrorism would fundamentally serve a military purpose rather than law enforcement purpose and thus would not violate the Posse Comitatus Act.”
— Smolak · Feb 23, 11:30 PM · #
Thanks, Freddie, I forgot. Nuance is stupid, and semantics is moral abdication in the service of the powerful few. And don’t even get me started on complexity in the law!
— John Aristides · Feb 24, 12:32 AM · #
Here’s the problem, Freddie. Not knowing the distinctions and why they exist is laziness, not enlightenment. The argumentative space for targeted killings is highly granular and esoteric. Reducing your strategy to an ought-fisting might surely feel good to you, but it means that your opinion on this subject is entirely irrelevant to the universe.
Amateur improv on an alien instrument rarely results in musical magic. Most of the time it leaves you in a lonely room with stupid people, drinking and leering and watching while a distrait world moves on through a dark and offensive mystery. Tragic, man. Tragic.
— John Aristides · Feb 24, 01:10 AM · #
So that’s it? One paragraph from a DOJ report that has been slapped down as unprofessional and incoherent?
That’s your “evidence”?
Laughable.
— tomaig · Feb 24, 05:00 PM · #
Hey Conor, remember me? I’m the guy you were arguing with at Culture 11 over the impending Obama presidency. Specifically, I took issue with your often-repeated claim that Obama would govern from the center, be “pragmatic,” “moderate,” and so forth. I said that he had no reason to do so, since he was bound to win overwhelming majorities in Congress, along with the presidency.
Again, I took issue with your insistence on the then-future Obama administration mounting investigations against Bush administration officials involved in the enhanced interrogation program (among other things).
Now that more than a year has gone by, and it’s obvious to anyone that Obama is not “governing from the center,” and John Yoo has been vindicated, I ask you, do you think you had it wrong back then? If so, then what was your mistake?
— Roque Nuevo · Feb 24, 05:24 PM · #
“Now that more than a year has gone by, and it’s obvious to anyone that Obama is not “governing from the center,””
What, in your view, would “governing from the center” have looked like over the past year?
Mike
— MBunge · Feb 24, 05:39 PM · #
Right, I mean, that’s why we now have a national, universal health care system, we’ve pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan, big bank compensation packages were outlawed, new regulations prevent banks from getting “too big to fail”, DADT was immediately repealed, and all those other liberal agenda items passed.
Oh, wait, absolutely none of that happened. It’s been clear from last January that the only legislation that could pass the Senate was what Blanche Lincoln would allow. In the face of that how has Obama not governed from right of center?
— Chet · Feb 24, 06:18 PM · #
I don’t get the above comments. I was just saying that Conor lacks all judgment as an analyst. He’s been wrong too many times without acknowledging it at all. Just on to the next mistaken judgment, etc etc. I suppose that because he’s got an “in” with Andrew Sullivan (no pun intended), he gets work.
— Roque Nuevo · Feb 24, 08:24 PM · #
(no pun intended)
No pun achieved.
— Freddie · Feb 24, 08:31 PM · #
Conor’s not an analyst. He’s Andrew Sullivan methadone.
Mostly he wants to self-report when things feel icky. Like Freddie, he’s always “dismayed” or “disappointed” or “wearing panties.” This breed makes System Two System One’s bitch. Unbecoming a species that fancies itself homo sapiens, nicht va? Too much head for the moderns.
— John Aristides · Feb 24, 10:56 PM · #
Oh, I’m sorry. Let me dumb it down for you: when you say “it’s obvious to anyone that Obama is not ‘governing from the center,” which appears to be your sole basis for concluding that Conor is a failure as an “analyst”, you’re wrong.
— Chet · Feb 24, 11:45 PM · #
“On the other hand, if he’s an active combatant who can’t be captured without undue risk to our side, then killing him is legal even if he was a blond haired blue eyed native of America that used to play quarterback…”
I think they asserted that the target didn’t need to be an “active combatant,” just someone in material support. So that’s one thing.
The second thing is, what provisons are there for oversight? Are they adaquate to prevent a stupid president (like Bush 2, for instance) from really screwing things up internationally, much less assasinate political opponants, or his wife’s lover, or whatever. It was not clear that they were.
— cw · Feb 25, 04:13 AM · #
Roque – one indicator that one is governing from the center is whether they are getting pummeled from both sides. Obama certainly is getting hammered by the left.
BTW how’s that William Ayers connection working out for ya?
— Derek Scruggs · Feb 25, 04:30 AM · #
Derek: Wrong. Getting pummeled from both sides is an indicator of political artlessness, not “governing from the center.” As to what the phrase means, ask Conor. He was insisting that this was what Obama would do before the elections.
I don’t get your reference to Bill Ayers. It’s true that Obama lied about his connection to Bill Ayers (“just a guy who lives in my neighborhood”); it’s true that Ayers’s community organizer ethos permeates Obama’s regime; it’s true that this is repugnant to me. But why is it my connection? Is it about his putting Obama on the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge as president and thus providing him with his only executive experience before the elections? Is it about the abject failure of that executive experience as the CAC wasted millions on leftist hobby horses while not affecting school achievement of Chicago children, which was its mandate? Is it about McCain blowing his chance to challenge Obama on his ideology by confronting him with this fact? As far as that goes, Obama’s Ayers connection is working out very badly for me, as it is for the rest of the nation, which lacks presidential leadership entirely.
— Roque Nuevo · Feb 25, 10:45 PM · #
Did Roque Nuevo say a single true thing in that post? I can’t see where.
— Chet · Feb 25, 10:54 PM · #
On the other hand, if he’s an active combatant who can’t be captured without undue risk to our side, then killing him is legal even if he was a blond haired blue eyed native of America that used to play quarterback at the University of Iowa and sing glorious hymns of Jesus in the local tabernacle choir.
— chanel bags · Feb 27, 03:07 AM · #