An ongoing review of politics and culture

Industrial Policy Bureaucrats As Hedge Fund Managers

An old saw in finance research is what you might call the “monkeys at a typewriter” problem. If you put an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters, one of them is going to bang out Hamlet. Does that mean that monkey is a great writer?

Or, if you put a thousand people in a room and tell them to flip coins, one of them is going to flip heads 10 times in a row. Does this mean this person has particular skill in flipping coins?

By the same token, if a hedge fund manager has even a long track record of success, is that due to skill or to random chance?

It’s possible to see how this applies to industrial policy. If you have over a hundred countries pursuing industrial policy for the past 60 years, even by random chance a handful of those countries are going to end up with successful policies in a number of key areas. But that shouldn’t strike us as an endorsement of industrial policy as such, any more than we should listen to Ray Dalio when he says correlation doesn’t exist.

Looking at my own country, I’m struck by how right we’ve gotten some policies (VAT, energy, transportation) and how wrong we’ve gotten others. Is there some overriding logic behind those successes and failures that another country could draw inspiration from to replicate the successes and not the failures? It’s doubtful, at least.

Tit-For-Tat Unilateralism

The great virtue of unilateralism is that you don’t have to get any agreement to execute it.

Consider Sharon’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza. There will undoubtedly, always be debate about why he pursued withdrawal in the face of so much opposition and in direct contradiction of his party’s platform. Was this the first step of a larger plan to withdraw from much of the West Bank, and implement a two state solution on Israeli terms? Or was it intended merely to divide the Palestinian entity into two, making it that much easier to hold on to the West Bank? I incline toward the former interpretation, but many informed observers disagree.

But what we can all agree on is this: Sharon implemented unilateral withdrawal from Gaza because he wanted to withdraw from Gaza.

The alternatives to getting out of Gaza unilaterally were to stay, or to get out as the result of negotiations. Assuming he didn’t want to stay, the question becomes how likely negotiations were to succeed. And I think most honest observers would conclude: not very likely.

To achieve the withdrawal, Sharon had to confront directly those forces within Israel who were opposed to the objective, as well as those who worried about the consequences of unilateral action. But he didn’t have to get an agreement from the other side, and then, if that could be achieved, sell that agreement (which, to achieve, would require very far-reaching concessions) to the Israeli people.

Mahmoud Abbas’s unilateral declaration plan strikes me as a similar gambit. We can debate the longer-term strategy of which such a declaration may or may not be a part. But most simply, Abbas wants to declare independence because he wants the Palestinian Authority to be recognized as a state.

Declaring statehood unilaterally within the 1949 armistice lines requires Abbas to confront those who oppose anything less than a comprehensive solution, as well as those who remain opposed to any two-state solution, comprehensive or no. But it doesn’t require him to get any kind of agreement from Netanyahu. Nor does it require him to sell that agreement – which, no doubt, would require very far-reaching concessions – to the Palestinian people.

Withdrawal from Gaza was something both sides wanted, but neither could achieve because of other issues with which it was linked. Unilateral withdrawal did not take place on terms that made the Palestinians happy, but the result – the removal of the Israeli settlements and the Israeli army – was still a Palestinian objective that was achieved. And likewise an Israeli objective.

Outside of the precincts of Israeli and Palestinian fantasists who believe, respectively, that Jews can rule over a captive Arab population forever, or that the Jews will simply surrender their hard-won homeland one day, a Palestinian state of some sort is understood to be an objective of both sides. Unilateral declaration, if it is followed by widespread recognition in Europe, will achieve that objective. It won’t be on the terms the Israelis want, but it’ll still be an achieved objective. And likewise a Palestinian objective.

It’s not a “solution” to the conflict. But, like the Gaza withdrawal, it would be the achievement of a concrete objective that both sides actually want, but cannot achieve because they cannot agree on other questions with which the question of independent statehood is linked.

And it’s worth pointing out that, had the Netanyahu government seized the diplomatic moment and tried to get a statehood resolution that the Israeli government could endorse out of Abbas, he might have failed. Any declaration that Netanyahu actually could endorse, after all, would surely be understood by the Palestinians as a treasonous sellout of Palestinian interests. It’s one thing if Abbas risks decoupling the Palestinian diaspora from the issue of statehood for the sake of dealing the Israelis a big diplomatic defeat. But in the context of an agreement with the Israelis, such a risk would be totally unacceptable. The most likely result of any hypothetical Israeli engagement on the declaration would be a neutered declaration that didn’t actually achieve the objective of recognition of a state – something more comparable to the 1988 declaration. Such a declaration would not advance the ball one bit.

Tit-for-tat unilateralism is not preferable to a negotiated solution. But it may be preferable to a negotiated impasse.

Declarations of Independence

Yasser Arafat declared an independent state of Palestine in 1988. This state was recognized by the United Nations General Assembly that same year. So what’s the big deal about the current agitation for another such declaration?

Well, Arafat’s declaration specified nothing about particular territorial claims. Moreover, it called for negotiations under existing UN resolutions to establish the borders of this state. As such, the political significance of the declaration was that it signaled the PLO’s formal acceptance of a two-state solution in principle.

As we learned after the Oslo Accords, acceptance in principle is very different from acceptance in fact, and the Arafat tenure as head of the Palestinian Authority was not characterized by the kind of institution-building that could have laid the foundations for an actual independent state. (He’s not alone to blame for that – Israel did many things to undermine the development of such a state – but it is difficult to identify anything Arafat did to lay those foundations, suggesting that it was not really a goal of his to do so.)

A decade after that first Palestinian declaration, during the last Netanyahu government, Arafat began to mutter about another declaration. Netanyahu openly dared Arafat to unilaterally declare Palestinian statehood. The rationale was very simple. Such a declaration would have been a violation of the Oslo Accords. Israel would respond to this unilateralism by seizing whatever chunks of the West Bank it most wanted to retain – the Jordan Valley, the major settlement blocs, etc. Israel would surround and choke the new Palestinian state. But: there would no longer be any question of a Palestinian “right to return” to sovereign Israeli territory – because there would be a declared Palestinian state for them to “return” to if they so chose. And there would no longer be any question of a “one state solution” – there was a declared Palestinian state; the two-state solution would be a fact. Negotiations, when and if they resumed, would be about borders, security, etc. – what would the Palestinians be willing to give up in order to get (some) of the West Bank back and Israeli recognition. Those are exactly the terms Israel would want to be negotiating on, if and when negotiations resumed.

Of course, the diplomatic fallout in the region would have been horrendous – but Netanyahu has never worried about that. He would have been dealing a serious blow to the credibility of the Clinton Administration, which had painstakingly tried to shepherd both sides towards some kind of final status agreement – but Netanyahu has never worried about that either; he spent much of the 1990s trying to figure out how to ditch the American alliance while keeping his friends on the American right.

Most likely, though, Netanyahu knew no declaration would be forthcoming; he understood that Arafat’s threat to declare statehood was a bluff, and he was simply calling it.

Now we’re back again with the possibility of a Palestinian declaration of independence, which would likely be endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly. One might ask: what could possibly be the significance of such a declaration? How would it be different from 1988? The major difference is that, this time, there is a government – the Palestinian Authority – that has (partial) control of territory making the declaration. Moreover, the declaration would clearly be a claim to Palestinian sovereignty over the entirety of the West Bank and Gaza. The declaration would be a prelude to organizing pressure from governments around the world against Israel, aiming at forcing it to withdraw to the pre-June 1967 boundaries. The symbolism of the 1988 declaration was: the PLO accepts the principle of partition. The symbolism of a 2011 declaration would be: the terms of partition were set in 1949.

Formally, the Netanyahu government is lobbying fiercely against such a declaration. But notwithstanding this, such a declaration is probably in the interests of the Netanyahu government, and Bibi undoubtedly knows this. Anything that heats up the conflict probably bolsters the right in Israel. Netanyahu has shown very little concern for the possibility of diplomatic isolation; indeed, he continues to work hard to try to sever what few relatively friendly relationships Israel already has. And a Palestinian declaration would provide the pretext for the Netanyahu government to seize what it wants to keep, and to establish parameters for future negotiations (if any) on terms they prefer. Abbas might claim all of the West Bank, but how many divisions does he have? Meanwhile, by declaring the West Bank and Gaza to be Palestinian sovereign territory, there is implicit recognition of Israeli sovereignty elsewhere. And, of course, if the declaration is never made, then Netanyahu looks like he forced Abbas to back down, which also strengthens him.

So why on earth are the Palestinians considering another declaration?

It’s something of a desperation move, but it also reflects the interests of the Abbas government. Mahmoud Abbas has staked his historical reputation on securing some kind of permanent legacy for the Palestinian people. He is making a similar choice to the one Ben Gurion made in response to the Peel Commission: take something – anything – that would constitute sovereignty, even if the territory is far less than you wanted or thought you might achieve. Get something that is your own, that you can build on.

The United States stands to lose the most in the short-term from a Palestinian declaration. Such a declaration would mean the end of the Oslo process that we have invested so much in. It would place the United States in a very uncomfortable position vis-a-vis our European and Middle Eastern allies; Israel will come under pressure post-declaration to expeditiously exit the West Bank (which would be recognized by much of the world as sovereign Palestinian territory), but will stoutly refuse to bow to such pressure, leaving America stuck in the middle. America will, undoubtedly, not even recognize a Palestinian state, which will make it exceptionally difficult for us to continue to try to be a broker between the two sides, but our non-recognition will stand out like a sore thumb once the bulk of the world has extended such recognition.

In the longer term, though, it’s the continuation of the conflict that creates problems for America. So whether a Palestinian declaration is bad in the long term depends on whether it makes it more or less likely for the conflict to finally be resolved. And that, in turn, depends on whether Abbas’s gamble pays off – whether he can midwife a Palestinian sovereignty that is actually functional and viewed as a modest success. If he can, then Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians would be “normalized” – it would be a conflict between two states rather than a conflict within a state. And the former type of conflicts are much more amenable to negotiated solutions than the latter. So that’s another way that a declaration would serve the interests of Abbas: even though it would represent a kind of slap to the Americans (who have urged him strongly not to go this route), it would tie his fate even more closely to American interests.

And, contra Daniel Larison, it’s not clear that the Palestinian diaspora would materially suffer from a declaration. One must ask what, exactly, the Palestinian diaspora has ever gained by the strategy followed since 1949. Israel is never going to accept a Palestinian “right to return” as part of a negotiated process. The chimera of such a right, however, has been a real obstacle to achieving a final settlement, and therefore achieving anything concrete either for Palestinians in Palestine or for Palestinians in the diaspora. A statehood declaration would sever the negotiating link between the Palestinian diaspora and the Palestinian state. They would be revealed to be separate questions. Which, in fact, they are: the interests of Palestinians in Palestine and Palestinians in the diaspora are wildly out of alignment. Severing the connection might actually make it possible to make some kind of progress on a more realistic framework for compensating Palestinians in the diaspora. It’ll feel like a huge blow, of course. But it might be a blow that opens the path to actual, material progress. And nothing would prevent the Palestinian diaspora from maintaining a strong, supportive connection with a new Palestinian state. (Indeed, such a connection would be vital to any success that state might have.)

A declaration is a high-risk gamble by Abbas, but it makes a certain amount of sense. Boxing Abbas into a situation where he feels he needs to make this kind of desperate gamble is itself a gamble by the Netanyahu government – a gamble that Israel would be better off more deeply isolated but in a stronger negotiating position. It’s not at all surprising that Netanyahu would take that gamble; it’s consistent with everything about his leadership history.

The certain short-term losers are the Americans. Which is why we’re so opposed. But it’s not clear to me how much of what we stand to lose is actually a new loss, and how much is recognition of a loss we’ve been saddled with for some time. And sometimes, recognizing a loss that’s been sitting on your books can be clarifying.

The Mind Killer

I’m looking out my window right now at the cranes on top of the rising Freedom Tower – they only recently became visible, previously being obscured by other buildings in lower Manhattan. And trying to figure out what’s worth saying about the attacks of ten years ago.

I could reminisce about my own experience of the day, but it was not terribly exceptional or interesting. I reacted more like the flag-cake woman than I would probably care to admit. I wandered around in a daze of rage and fear for, oh, days it seems. My boss was actually trapped in Europe at the time, trying to close a critical deal – he didn’t get home for weeks, and I recall my inarticulate amazement that he could focus on anything. I couldn’t do much more than stare out the window at the plume of smoke.

I remember being struck by how nobody seemed to understand that everything had changed – everyone still sounded like themselves, still said the sorts of things that they would have said before, still believed the sorts of things they believed before. And in retrospect, I feel the same way, including about myself. Most people didn’t change their minds about anything. The belligerent ones found a new justification for their belligerency. The self-critical ones found a new justification for self-criticism. The nervous, finger-to-the-wind types found new reason to be extremely careful about figuring out which way the wind was blowing before committing. Even the iconoclasts set out to find a new basis for their iconoclasm. And those who did change, it seems to me, had been primed for a change beforehand in some fashion or other. However people reacted, it said more about them than it did about the attacks, what they might have meant.

Because the attacks meant almost nothing, at least in terms that would mean anything to us (which are the terms that matter in this case). They were not a sign of some kind of essential decadence or weakness. Al Qaida successfully exploited a series of simple loopholes that allowed an unprecedented attack to succeed. If we had had almost any kind of screening for passengers, the attacks would have failed. If cockpit doors had been routinely reinforced, the attacks would have failed. If the officers and crew had imagined that terrorists might not hijack or blow up a plane, but instead want to use one as a flying bomb, the attacks would have failed. And so forth – the attacks succeeded basically because we had no defense in place at all against such an attack, and preventing a recurrence was actually trivial.

The political significance was similarly nugatory. Al Qaeda’s political goals were outlandish to the point of absurdity. Afghanistan was more like Grand Fenwick than it was like the Empire of Japan. Fight Club was probably a better movie to watch to understand the people who attacked us than The Battle of Algiers. All the efforts to ascribe a meaning to the events – the terrorists hate our freedom, or they hate that we are supporting dictators in their region, or they hate that we are infidels, or they hate that we are engaged in wars of aggression against Muslims, or whatever – were responses to our need for meaning rather than to the events themselves. But the indifference of reality to our needs – in this regard as in most – is comprehensive.

In retrospect, what suffered the most lasting damage from the terrorist attacks of ten years ago was my belief in my own rationality. I believed that I was thinking things through seriously, and coming to difficult but true conclusions about what had happened, what would happen, what must happen. Here is part of what I wrote, to friends and family, several days later:

Our President has made it clear: we are at war. I do not anticipate that this will be a short or an easy war. Our enemy has operations in dozens of countries, including this one. He is supported, out of enthusiasm or fear, by many governments among our purported friends as well as among our enemies. He has shown his cunning, his ruthlessness, and most of all his patience, in his successful plot to kill thousands of innocents and bring down the symbols of our civilization. And in striking at him, as we must, we will bring down others who will in turn seek their own vengeance upon us.

There is not a single factual assertion in that paragraph that I had any reason to believe I could substantiate. I did not know anything about the enemy. I had no idea whether or not there were “operations” in dozens of countries – I don’t even know what I meant by “operations.” I know what I was referring to with the business about being “supported” by friends and enemies, but “support” is a deliberately fuzzy word; I wouldn’t have used it if I was trying to make a concrete assertion with clear implications. The purpose of that assertion, like everything else, was to build up my first assertion. We were at war. And it wouldn’t be short or easy. Because that conclusion, though grim, was one that imparted meaning to the murder of 3,000 people. I thought I was being serious – examining the facts, calculating the likely negative consequences of necessary action, preparing myself for the unfortunate necessities of life. But I wasn’t doing anything of the kind. I was engaged in a search for meaning in which reason was purely instrumental.

The great intellectual victors in the immediate post-9-11 period were the people who could imbue it with meaning. To do that required a plausible explanation and the confidence to advance it. Nobody would have that confidence without the explanation being pre-packaged, ready to be deployed in any available circumstances. In other words, the very fact that there was so little we knew, and that what there was to know wasn’t very satisfying in terms of imparting meaning to events, very naturally empowered those whose views didn’t depend on knowledge. That’s how we wound up in Iraq. The advocates of war did not begin advocating for war on 9-11 – “finishing the job” in Iraq had been on the agenda for the entire decade prior. Nor did they need to prove any connection to the 9-11 attacks. We wound up in war in Iraq, in a very real sense, because “finishing the job” in Iraq imparted an appealing meaning to the terrorist attacks. And opposing the war felt like it tore the meaning off that terrible day, leaving its empty horror naked before us. That’s how it felt to me, at the time, when I think back.

And that’s what I mean by saying that what suffered the most lasting damage was belief in my own rationality. Or in anybody else’s.

All I hope is that this has been a fortunate fall from a kind of innocence, that, aware that I – and others – are not nearly so rational as we suppose, that we want to understand more than we do, and that this motivates us to believe that we do understand more than we do – that, aware of this, I will be less likely to lead myself to believe what I do not know.

(But, then again, if I really did that, I suppose I’d have to stop blogging. And if I do that, then the terrorists really will have won. Won’t they?)

No, illegal file-sharing is not theft

Matt Yglesias seems to have gotten himself into a debate about whether illegal file-sharing is stealing. And he’s absolutely right: it’s not theft.

As in the debate about whether corporations are persons, I think it’s important to understand that words have meaning.

One of the cool things about France’s civil law system is that it places a premium on defining things precisely, and thus I’ve never seen a better definition of “theft” than that of the French Penal Code: the fraudulent subtraction of another person’s property.

The word “subtraction” here, of course, is key. To steal something is to fraudulently subtract from their property. With file sharing, of course, no subtraction occurs, since the file is copied.

And under French law, illegal file sharing falls under the rubric of counterfeiting, which I think is accurate. If you create a false document, you are not stealing anything from anyone, but you are fraudulently impinging on legal rights.

Neoliberal fascism

Thanks to Scenester David Sessions for alerting me that Friend of the Scene Freddie thinks I’m a neoliberal fascist because I wrote a column arguing for France to

Insert here a joke about how I don’t know which label to be most offended by.

I’ll only make a couple points, one about process and one about content.

First of all, about process. I am accused of endorsing fascism because I wrote a column urging the President of France to take rapid action to reform France’s economy.

I urge the president to “legislate by decree”—this sounds fearsome, but the process of “ordinances” is routinely used to legislate in France. What happens is that Parliament votes a law that enables the government to pass decrees that have the strength of law, on a certain topic and for a certain period, and after that the decrees have to be ratified by Parliament again to permanently gain the force of law. That’s not how a bill becomes a law in the US, but it is still perfectly consistent with legal democratic process. I’m sure there are also “fast-track” procedures in the US Congress.

I also suggest in one throwaway line that the President might wish to exercise the special powers clause of the French Constitution. It’s unlikely that he would be allowed to do so because, as a Freddie commenter points out, there are strict judicial controls on these war powers.

Second of all, about content. My “neoliberal fascist” policy recommendations for France are the following: enormous short-term stimulus spending, a revenue-neutral overhaul of the tax code and the end of various professional guilds and price controls. I don’t even say anything about unions. This puts me pretty much in line with that other sellout, liberal in name only, Paul Krugman (see e.g. here re: rent controls ).

I mean, we can have different views about financial reform and progressive taxation or what have you, but it’s pretty striking that someone would think calling for no tax cuts and a dramatic increase in government spending (I throw out a figure equivalent of 10% of France’s GDP) is neoliberal bitter medicine.

But hey, at least we now know it’s not only conservatives who suffer from epistemic closure.

The Physics of the Anti-Abortion Movement

Matt Yglesias, a writer whose work I greatly admire, continues to (willfully or not) misrepresent the views of pro-lifers.

He wrote a post last week on Ron Paul’s pro-life stance and its compatibility with his (professed?) libertarianism, and writes:

some people want to tell me that if you accept the erroneous metaphysics of the anti-abortion movement, that then treating women who terminate pregnancies as criminals makes perfect libertarian sense. For one thing, I don’t accept the erroneous metaphysics of the anti-abortion movement.

There’s a crucial point to be made here, which, if it were understood better by pro-choicers, would lead the abortion debate in a much saner direction. Here it is, and I can’t state it emphatically enough: the pro-life position has nothing to do with metaphysics.

In the contemporary United States a lot of people who hold pro-life views are also religious folks, and this understandably leads a lot of pro-choicers to believe that pro-life views are religious in nature, to the point where it’s become a sort of axiom.

But the biological, moral and legal status of the unborn child isn’t a question of metaphysics.

Whether life begins at conception isn’t a matter of religious faith, it’s a scientific question, and the answer isn’t very hard. Of course, you can choose to disbelieve it, just like you can choose to not to believe that CO2 molecules redirect infrared variations.

Now, science isn’t a moral guide. The fact that a fetus is a living human being doesn’t necessarily entail that it should receive legal protection. But again, resolving this issue requires no recourse to metaphysics.

It requires asking what are the criteria for qualifying as a person endowed with rights.

At first blush, it seems to me and many others that the entire project of the Enlightenment and modern Western civilization is premised on the idea that every single human being has certain inalienable rights. That these rights are not earned through accomplishment or inherited from forebears but that they are, well, universal, received simply by virtue of being human, and that it is incumbent on any just, or at least liberal, government to protect the rights of all human beings under its writ, not just the most visible.

And of course, that’s a wholly debatable argument. For most of human history the idea of universal human rights was unthinkable and then laughable and even now some people dispute its relevance. We find many examples throughout history of societies with classes of people bereft of rights, including societies ostensibly founded on liberal principles.

And we can say all sorts of things like, well, maybe a fetus has a right to life, but a woman’s right to not be pregnant is stronger.

We can talk about all sorts of things.

But the idea that the pro-life argument is based in metaphysics is false, and I wish that people would stop perpetuating it. Of course, perpetuating it is politically advantageous for pro-choicers as it frees them from talking about the relevant questions and allows them to instead brush off their opponents’ arguments as “erroneous metaphysics.”

PEG Answers Bill Keller On Religion

Retiring New York Times editor Bill Keller has a column out arguing that candidates should be asked “tougher” questions about their religion.

Tim Carney mocked the column for labeling the Catholic Rick Santorum an Evangelical Christian, and indeed it’s easy to mock the secular Times as seeing all Christians as the same. And sure, though he never comes out and says it, it seems that there’s a bit of a “let’s pin those crazy theocrats” undercurrent to Mr Keller’s column. But I do think the column’s central point — that religion in general, and Presidential candidates’ in particular, matters, and thus should be treated seriously — is quite right.

If “hard secularists” and religiously-motivated political actors have one thing in common, it’s that they think religion is important, and that’s as good a starting point for discussion as any.

In a blog post attendant to the column, Mr Keller lays out a few questions he’d like presidential candidates to answer. Although I haven’t officially formed my exploratory committee, allow me to say how I would answer if I was a presidential candidate. (And also how I would like a Christian presidential candidate to answer.)

1. Is it fair to question presidential candidates about details of their faith?

It’s absolutely fair to question presidential candidates about anything that could affect what kind of president they will be.

2. Is it fair to question candidates about controversial remarks made by their pastors, mentors, close associates or thinkers whose books they recommend?

Sure.

3. (a) Do you agree with those religious leaders who say that America is a “Christian nation” or “Judeo-Christian nation?” (b) What does that mean in practice?

I’m not sure what I can say about the words of unnamed “religious leaders.”

I can tell you what I think.

I think that the principles on which America was founded draw on a number of intellectual traditions, including ideas that are common to the Judeo-Christian faiths. I think that the ideals of self-determination and individualism, and indeed of the separation of church and state, have many roots, but one of the main roots is the Bible. It was Jesus who said his kingdom is not of this world, and who said we should give back to Cesar what belongs to Cesar, and implicit in the New Testament is the idea that a person’s choices determine their fate, not their station at birth.

I think that many people came to America specifically to practice their religion in peace and freedom, and that therefore our history and collective imagination is weaved through with religious fervor in a way that is unique among nations, and that this is good. I think that religion plays a positive role in American society and culture in getting people to care for their fellow Americans, their communities, and yes, sometimes to work towards policies that they believe are best for the common good.

I think that America should and does welcome everyone, regardless of religious belief or ethnicity. I think that the fact that many of our principles come from the Judeo-Christian tradition does not mean that they’re not universal; indeed, the opposite.

4. If you encounter a conflict between your faith and the Constitution and laws of the United States, how would you resolve it? Has that happened, in your experience?

Here’s the oath of office of the president: “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” That’s the job I aspire to.

I also aspire to promote policies that, to my mind, are the best policies for the common good of the American people. I hope to make the case for these policies on grounds that all Americans can understand. And I hope that’s how Americans will judge me.

5. (a) Would you have any hesitation about appointing a Muslim to the federal bench? (b) What about an atheist?

Here are my criteria for nominating judges: whether I agree with their philosophy of legal interpretation; whether I think they are outstanding Americans of great integrity.

6. Are Mormons Christians, in your view? Should the fact that Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are Mormons influence how we think of them as candidates?

I honestly don’t care.

7. What do you think of the evangelical Christian movement known as Dominionism and the idea that Christians, and only Christians, should hold dominion over the secular institutions of the earth?

I think that Dominionism exists largely in the minds of a few agitated cooks and of a lot of media editors based on the coasts of the United States.

And for the record, no, I don’t think Christians, and only Christians, should be able to hold political office. That would be unconstitutional, un-American. And also very stupid.

8. (a) What is your attitude toward the theory of evolution? (b) Do you believe it should be taught in public schools?

a) My attitude toward the theory of evolution is that as far as I can tell it’s settled science, and so I accept it as such. For the record, this is also the stance of the Catholic Church to which I belong. But that’s not why I accept evolution as settled science.

b) I think public schools should teach all kinds of sciences.

9. Do you believe it is proper for teachers to lead students in prayer in public schools?

The federal government’s deficit last year was over a trillion dollars. The national debt is almost fifteen trillion dollars. The unemployment rate is 9.1%. I can’t even keep track of the number of foreign wars we’re in (do drone strikes over Yemen count?).

All of which is to say: I really, really don’t care.

Worst Case Paul

TAS Alum Conor Friedersdorf asks a very sensible question: what’s the worst thing that could happen in a Ron Paul presidency?

Salon’s Alex Pareene gamely takes up the gauntlet, and I largely agree with his diagnosis, although, of course, not always with his characterization of the diagnosis.

This, in particular, is regrettable but probably true:

Hacks with contempt for good government make bad political appointees, as Bush taught us. Ideologues actively opposed to the existence of a powerful federal government probably make worse ones.

In all likelihood a Paul presidency would start with a lot of gridlock and end with Congress basically taking over the country and overriding Paul’s veto pen. And anything that can get two thirds of Congress is certainly not going to be great, but it’s probably not going to be terrible, either.

But, as I told Conor on Twitter, the almost greek tragedy-like dilemma of a Paul presidency would be that to get anything he believes in done, Paul would have to embrace and extend the imperial presidency he so obviously detests.

And if Paul makes this Faustian bargain, then he becomes much more dangerous.

So here’s the worst case scenario of a Paul presidency, as I can see it.

President Paul and his appointees, realizing that they can’t end the Fed through Congress, decide to launch a bunch of far-reaching federal investigations of the Fed. Maybe a true-believin’ special prosecutor is appointed. American law being set up in such a way that if you investigate deeply enough you’ll always find something illegal someone did, the Fed is incapacitated. Maybe key figures and even Bernanke are driven to resignation and put before a Grand Jury but maybe it just makes it impossible for them to do their work.

Then an external shock—or just the market freakout caused by unleashing the Spanish Inquisition on the Fed—causes a financial collapse. Obviously a bailout is not forthcoming, nor is easy money. Maybe it’s not the banks that fail but investors who stop trusting the dollar and buying treasuries. (In which case the banks would fail, too.) The financial collapse turns into another Great Depression.

Fin.

You can also come up with a scenario under which prematurely yanking troops from Afghanistan ends up with such chaos that Pakistan becomes a failed state and nukes end up in the hands of terrorists. (And India invades to prevent that and China meddles and Paul is like “What? It’s way over there! Not our problem!”) But that’s probably fairly unlikely.

The most likely scenario is still nothing-happens-for-four-years. But most people who underestimated Ron Paul’s ability to do damage have been surprised.

Speaking of science and policy

Since we’re talking about the politics of science and the limits between the two…

There’s plenty of scientific advances I wish the US conservative movement would not be so uncomfortable about, like anthropogenic climate change and evolution.

If there’s one scientific fact I do wish, however, that the American left would come to grips with, it’s this one: that an embryo is a human being, by any reasonable definition of those words.

Now, just like recognizing the reality of the warming of the planet does not mean embracing a carbon command economy, recognizing the fact that a unicellular human being is still a human being does not automatically entail embracing the pro-life position.

As Jim rightly notes, the borders of actual science are not as wide as many people seem to think. What kinds of human beings should get which rights is a moral and political decision, not a scientific one.

But if we’re going to insist (as we should) on political actors embracing scientific consensus, we should do so consistently.

The Boundaries of Science

Kevin, you’ve stirred up quite a spat with the left-wing blogosphere concerning how much we should care about the scientific views of politicians, with specific reference to the cases of global warming and evolution. I’m very sympathetic with your frustrations, but I’d put a similar objection somewhat differently. What I think would be most helpful in this discussion is rigor in defining the boundaries of science.

Physical science has enormous, justified prestige as an intellectual discipline that has created vast improvements in our material standard of living. Progressives routinely attempt to drape the label “science” over assertions that do not have the same reliability as physical science in order to create political advantage. This occurs in two dimensions.

First, scientific findings in some area are used to justify some related political or moral opinion. Key examples are exactly the topics you touch upon: global warming and evolution. In one example, the indisputable scientific finding that CO2 molecules redirect infrared radiation is used to argue that “science says” we must implement a massive global program of emissions mitigation, when in fact, the argument for this depends upon all kinds of beliefs about the growth of the global economy, Chinese politics, technological developments and so on for something like the next couple of hundred years. In the other example, the incredibly powerful scientific paradigm of evolution through natural selection is used to argue that “science says” we have just eliminated the need for God in the creation of the human species, when in fact, as a simple counter-example, the genetic operators of selection, crossover and mutation require building blocks as starting points, and therefore leave the classic First Cause argument unaddressed.

Neither the left nor the right is guiltless here. The left attempts to stretch science to justify what are really non-scientific viewpoints, but conservatives often react by attacking the underlying science, rather than making the more complicated, but more accurate, point that the actual scientific findings published in peer-reviewed journals (i.e., “the science”) don’t really imply the political assertion.

In the second dimension, fields such as economics that lack the reliability of physical science are often treated by partisans on both sides of the aisle as if they should speak with scientific authority. Macroeconomics is not valueless, but we should not grant its assertions the same rational deference that we grant to those made by physical chemistry.

The role of rational politicians, then, is to have an understanding of the boundaries of actual scientific expertise, and accept consensus scientific findings within these fields as practical “givens” in determining policy – but not to be snowed by everybody with a bunch of equations into accepting their personal politics as indisputable by any rational human.

(Cross-posted to The Corner)

Why US global hegemony is here to stay

Inspired by a Tumblr conversation, I wrote a piece on Business Insider explaining why US global hegemony is here to stay, and why that’s a great thing, not just for the world but for the US.

The problem with Ron Paul and other isolationists (and their opponents) is that they’re looking at the problem the wrong way and missing the forest for the trees.

They’re missing the forest for the trees because the part about America’s global military power isn’t the part that fights wars. It’s the much, much bigger part that doesn’t fight any war.

And they’re looking at it the wrong way, because people make it a debate about politics, when it’s really about economics.

And the economics part of the discussion is important because there is so much overlap between libertarians and isolationists, and this is where the vigor in the isolationist movement comes from.

In a word, libertarians need to come to grips with the fact that global trade (which they love) is only made possible by global American hegemony (which they think they hate).

PEG Leads, The Economist Follows

…Patent edition.

Previous editions: swashbuckling French entrepreneurs and pensions.

Hey, just sayin’.

Rick Perry's 'Fed Up'

I have a review at The Daily Beast of Fed Up!, Rick Perry’s policy book from last year. I argue that he seems to identify more with the anti-federalists, and the anti-federalist-placating bits of the federalists, than he does with actual federalism. You can check it out here if you feel inclined.

Media Bias

I don’t usually watch network news in France. I get most of my news from the internet and, in case of the TV, the business news channels.

Being on vacation with my parents and grandparents, I watch the morning news shows with them.

This morning, two news items shocked me.

The first was on global population trends. World population will reach 7 billion this year, we’re told. And over the next decades, population in emerging countries, especially Africa, will grow a lot.

Cue concern on the stretch on natural resources, and more generally a dramatic spin with a strong Malthusian subtext.

It seems to me that population growth is very positive news for the world. Each new human is a world of richness and a wonderful thing to celebrate.

And from the point of view of economics, population growth is positive. As Mao once said, for every mouth to feed there are two arms to work. Each new person is a potential future lawyer, doctor, engineer, inventor or entrepreneur. I always worry that the nth child who is population-controlled away would have been the one to come up with the cure for cancer or the common cold.

Economists talk about the lump-of-labor fallacy, but it is equally true that there is an even more pernicious and destructive lump-of-resources fallacy.

It’s just not true, as we’re told, that the Earth’s resources are finite. Throughout history man has not just consumed resources, he has invented new ways to turn the existing world into resources. For most of our history, coal and uranium were worthless rock. Then we discovered how to harness them to produce energy. One day certainly we will figure out cost-effective ways to harness the near-infinite power of the sun, or wind (or the seas, or cold fusion, or God-knows-what). Unless, possibly, that is, we don’t make enough humans and thus reduce our odds to accomplish these breakthroughs.

Just like more workers create more labor, more humans create more inventive ways to harness the world’s resources and create ways to overcome our problems.

From Malthus to the Club of Rome, these guys have been wrong and dangerous, impeding progress for Medieval reasons. And yet the lump-of-resources fallacy proceeds, and is probably the most false-and-dangerous idea that is accepted in polite, erudite society.

The second report was even more shocking.

Right now is World Youth Day, a global gathering of young Catholics with the Pope, in Madrid. And the news report informed me that a bunch of hooligans and thugs had attacked the young Catholics.

But—and here’s the kicker—the report described these thugs as “defenders of secularism.”

The cognitive dissonance with video footage rioting hooligans throwing rocks on peaceful pilgrims and the narration describing these hoodlums as “defenders of secularism” was… something, I’ll tell you that. “Travesty” doesn’t quite capture it.

Since I should probably make a political point, this got me thinking about media bias. (Disclosure: I’m a member of The Media.)

It would be easy to call this liberal bias, and indeed Malthusianism and “aggressive” (ahem) secularism are coeval with the political left. But this is a more subtle ideological bias than you would find in, say, a positive story on rent control.

And it is bias in the proper sense, because I’m almost certainly convinced that the authors of these reports were not trying to advance a political point, overtly or covertly. It’s just that they live and breathe in a milieu where some things are taken for granted. And they probably operate under a system of tight deadlines where there isn’t much time for reflection on how utterly STUPID a phrase like “defenders of secularism” is in that context. But while news reports like that are probably more attributable to sloppiness than malice, it’s precisely that sloppiness that affords such a stark window on the worldview of the people who make (some of) our news.

Christianism redux

In Andrew's measured reply to my recent post he sticks to his guns, in one sense — he still thinks the term "Christianism" useful — but in another sense concedes some of my key points: that there can be Left and Right, good and bad, versions of a Christianity that seeks to intervene in the political arena. But if that's true that Andrew needs to use more adjectives when discussing these issues.

I think he could escape some of the problems I'm noting if he changes his definition of Christianism. He writes, "Christianism, in my definition, is the fusion of politics and religion for the advancement of political goals." This is problematic in several senses, first of all in its failure to acknowledge that such a fusion is also concerned to further religious goals. But the chief distinction Andrew needs to make involves how this advancement is sought. As our own Noah Millman put it in an email to me yesterday — I'm paraphrasing and adding some content of my own, so Noah may want to correct me or dissent from me later — there's a big difference between a Christianity that seeks to bear prophetic witness in the political sphere and a Christianity that seeks to rule. For me — and for me specifically as a Christian — what's most disturbing about conservative (or "conservative") Christian politics over the past thirty years is its frank eagerness for worldly power, its cheerful indifference to the spiritual dangers of that power, its ignorance of the long sad history of Constantinianism and Erastianism.

Indeed, I think this is precisely what Andrew is getting at when he writes of King, "He didn't just preach his faith as politics, but he practised it in a way very close to Christ's, seeking punishment, enduring imprisonment, and risking death, to bear witness to a deep moral truth about the dignity of every person. This submission to violence, rather than its gun-totin' celebration, is what distinguishes King's Christianism from so much of today's." I would just encourage him to add this "desire to rule" to his actual definition of Christianism. If he does that, then he gets out of the problems created by his willingness to define King as "a left-wing Christianist." If the desire to rule is intrinsic to Christianism, then King isn't a Christianist at all. He wanted to see justice flow down like waters, but he wasn't interested in being the Man in Charge.

So I think it's clear even from Andrew's response that he was wrong to say that what we need is "a more private, less political Christianity"; what we need, rather, is a Christianity that's political in a humble and non-coercive way, and that separates itself quite clearly from nationalism. If Andrew wants to criticize a heedlessly confident, power-hungry, jingoistic group of Christian politicians and their followers, I'm ready to hear and often (usually) to join in — heck, I've done it on this site. But please don't call it Christianism. That needlessly sullies the name of Christ. Give it a better name. How about American Constantinianism? Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, I agree, but sometimes euphony must be sacrificed to accuracy.

the cause of all the trouble

Andrew Sullivan writes in his usual vein about "Christianism":

Imagine a libertarian Christianity, which urged individuals to give away as much of their property as possible to the poor, to forget about the sex lives of their neighbors and focus on their own, to pray more than politic and to forgive more than to judge. Imagine, in other words, Christianity, and remind yourself how alien Christianism is to it.

And then later:

At one point, Christians will look back on this period, I believe, with horror. The desire to control others' lives and souls through politics is so anathema to the Gospels it will one day have to be exposed and ended. Until then, we just have to keep our spirits up and attend to our own failures as Christians, which, of course, are many.

I think Andrew has finally convinced me. And as I have thought more about this I have finally realized whose fault all this is: Martin Luther King. He could have stayed in his prayer closet instead of politicking; he could have attended to his own failures as a Christian, which of course were many; he could have forgiven white Southerners instead of judging them. But no. He became an "outside agitator," marching into ordinary American communities and telling them that their local laws, and indeed in some cases federal laws, were not to be obeyed — and why? Because they conflicted with the law of God! Notice the arrogance with which he associates his cause with God Himself. He even asserts that "human progress" only happens when "men [are] willing to be co-workers with God." His whole vision for America is Christian and Biblical through and through: in his most famous speech he simply identifies the American situation with that of the Biblical Israel: "I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; 'and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.'" Talk about "the desire to control other people's lives and souls"!

It's hard to imagine a vision for this country that's farther from a "libertarian Christianity" that minds its own very private business and politely declines to have anything to say about the public realm. So if you too are convinced by Andrew's denunciations of "Christianism," it's past time to point your critique at the source of all this trouble: Martin Luther King, more than anyone else, is responsible for bringing an explicitly Christian and Biblical critique of America into the mainstream of modern politics.

(And if you don't happen to be interested in denouncing Dr. King, then maybe your problem is not with anyone and everyone who brings Christian convictions into the public sphere, but rather with some particular convictions that some Christians emphasize. After all, Dr. King's faith commitments were at least as encompassing in their scope, as universal in their claims, as publicly political as Rick Perry's — and make no mistake, it was that faith that drove and anchored Dr. King, and Fannie Lou Hamer, and John Perkins, and many of the other heroes of the Civil Rights movement. So maybe, just maybe, it's not an utterly privatized and "libertarian" Christianity that we need but rather one that reads the Bible better. But if that's true then the term "Christianism" is vacuous and misleading, and Andrew needs to step back and start over.)

What Part Of China You From?

I’m trying to understand, per this post by Matt Yglesias, why when China asks us to reduce our indebtedness that reflects “confusion” on their part (since their currency policy depends on there being lots of American debt to purchase) while when we ask China to reduce their trade surplus we’re just being clear and honest (even though we’re dependent on Chinese debt purchases to keep long-term rates as low as they are).

It seems to me both countries are dependent on a policy that has risks and unpleasant side effects for both countries. I happen to think the short-term costs are more serious for the Chinese while the long-term risks are new serious for us – but it’s pretty clear that both countries manifest a high degree of policy confusion, at least with respect to our public statements. I see no reason to single out the Chinese for talking “nonsense.”