Conor Friedersdorf : The Atlantic

What Republican Elites Can Learn From the Arizona Debate

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:28:25 GMT

There's nothing to be done about the candidates. But the rhetoric on the right? It cost the GOP Wednesday. Its voters have been lied to for too long.

On an Arizona stage, clad in suits and ties and American flag lapel pins, the remaining GOP candidates debated for the 20th time Wednesday, when voters got perhaps their last chance to see Mitt, Rick, Ron, and Newt taking questions from timid Massachusetts moderate John King. The near consensus among commentators? A certain ornery, sweater-vested Pennsylvanian lost. "Rick Santorum's night was defined by explaining why he voted for things he opposed," National Review's Rich Lowry observed. "He didn't know when to let go on the earmark discussion, which he couldn't possibly win.... Overall, he was too defensive, too insider, too complicated."

I agree. But let's be honest: Journalists who've watched all these debates can't grok the mindset of an undecided voter who just started paying attention. Trust me, I tried my hardest. But on health care, we've heard Mitt Romney defend his Massachusetts bill on countless occasions. Hearing it again was like getting through the first level of a familiar video game. Familiar stuff happened. Then resident Lakitu Ron Paul reappeared to toss out his spiky bits of chaos. In what followed we didn't learn anything new about the candidates, or the horse race. What did Michiganders take from the evening? Who knows?

There were, however, lessons the GOP could learn.

Consider the earmark. It's long been a bogeyman of the conservative movement, and some of the Tea Party backlash against earmarking has been justified: Wasteful spending and illegitimate giveaways to special interests passed into law via the mechanism. Shedding sunlight on the process to reform it was overdue.

What never made sense was the idea that earmarks are a major cause of America's spending problem, or that issuing them automatically marked a legislator as corrupt, or that if only they could be reformed, then our deficit would be significantly shrunk -- it was convenient to pretend that those things were true, but there is a cost to demagoguery, and Wednesday part of the bill came due. On a night when the rank and file got their last real look at the candidates in a crucial primary season, earmarks were being used as a proxy for who was most conservative.

Some spectacular cognitive dissonance followed.

The most fiscally conservative candidate on stage, Ron Paul, is a principled defender of earmarks. And the metric isn't very useful for comparing a former senator to a former governor either. But it's a metric that a lot of conservatives have been conditioned to emphasize far more than is justified by reality. The same can be said about the debt ceiling. Raised for many years without controversy, it emerged during the Obama Administration as a defining issue for reasons more opportunistic than substantive, and was emphasized to a truly indefensible degree.

If votes to raise the debt ceiling were really a cause of our fiscal disease, rather than an effect of it, perhaps it would've made sense to make it a defining symbol. As it happened, the symbol was more convenient than justified. But that hasn't stopped Romney from opportunistically exploiting the issue, as if it's a good predictor of whether he or Santorum will be more fiscally conservative. Why should casual observers think otherwise? It certainly accords with what they were being told when the debt-ceiling vote was being used as a cudgel against President Obama.

It's a familiar pattern.

For fleeting, short-term gain, conservative elites mislead their own, blowing small things up into big things and spending little if any time confronting what really needs to be done to shrink government. It's little surprise that in the long run, the conservative movement's avowed goals are never achieved, even when the GOP wins. Politicians are always going to be opportunistic demagogues. But there's no defensible reason for so many of the right's intellectuals to go along. You'll know things have gotten better when future Republican pols are forced to focus on more useful indicators when discussing who among them is the more fiscally conservative champion.

Image credit: Reuters

The Atlantic Politics Quiz: Presidential History Edition

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:10:30 GMT

Test your trivia chops by taking on this week's 5-question challenge.

&amp;amp;lt;a href="http://theatlantic.polldaddy.com/s/the-atlantic-politics-quiz-6"&amp;amp;gt;View Survey&amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;gt;

The Atlantic Politics Quiz: Centuries of Sex Scandals Edition

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:10:29 GMT

Test your trivia chops with this 5 question challenge

&lt;a href="http://theatlantic.polldaddy.com/s/new-quiz-3"&gt;View Survey&lt;/a&gt;

What if Contraception Could Decimate the Abortion Rate?

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 21:10:29 GMT

A survey of women who terminated pregnancies found 12 percent conceived due to trouble getting birth control.

In Ross Douthat's weekend NY Times column, he mediates in the long-running argument liberals and conservatives have waged over sex, abortion, and contraception. Liberals argue that widespread access to contraception is the surest way to reduce unwanted pregnancies, he writes, whereas conservatives believe "it's more important to promote chastity, monogamy and fidelity than to worry about whether there's a prophylactic in every bedroom drawer or bathroom cabinet."

Both narratives are contradicted by the facts, he argues. For example, socially conservative regions feature higher rates of teenage parenthood and unwed pregnancy than the nation as a whole.

He goes on:

Liberals love to cite these numbers as proof that social conservatism is a flop. But the liberal narrative has glaring problems as well. To begin with, a lack of contraceptive access simply doesn't seem to be a significant factor in unplanned pregnancy in the United States. When the Alan Guttmacher Institute surveyed more than 10,000 women who had procured abortions in 2000 and 2001, it found that only 12 percent cited problems obtaining birth control as a reason for their pregnancies. A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study of teenage mothers found similar results: Only 13 percent of the teens reported having had trouble getting contraception.

Is the takeaway really that lack of contraceptive access isn't a significant factor in unplanned pregnancy? If roughly 1 in 10 unplanned pregnancies is caused by lack of access to birth control, that seems very significant! If I approached Douthat, having devised a way to reduce the American abortion rate by just 5 percent without coercion or significant expense, I suspect he'd be very enthusiastic, and think I accomplished something important. The issue here is that he's unpersuaded these teens would've avoided pregnancy even if they'd been given access to birth control.

As he writes:

...if liberal social policies really led inexorably to fewer unplanned pregnancies and thus fewer abortions, you would expect "blue" regions of the country to have lower teen pregnancy rates and fewer abortions per capita than demographically similar "red" regions. But that isn't what the data show. Instead, abortion rates are frequently higher in more liberal states, where access is often largely unrestricted, than in more conservative states, which are more likely to have parental consent laws, waiting periods, and so on. "Safe, legal and rare" is a nice slogan, but liberal policies don't always seem to deliver the "rare" part.

But the "liberal social policies" he conflates can be teased apart. What if contraceptive access reduces unplanned pregnancies in some jurisdictions, even as women who do get pregnant in those same places have abortions at higher rates due to unrestricted access or the fact that abortion is less stigmatized? As if in anticipation of that very counterargument, he goes on to write:

What's more, another Guttmacher Institute study suggests that liberal states don't necessarily do better than conservative ones at preventing teenagers from getting pregnant in the first place. Instead, the lower teenage birth rates in many blue states are mostly just a consequence of (again) their higher abortion rates. Liberal California, for instance, has a higher teen pregnancy rate than socially conservative Alabama; the Californian teenage birth rate is only lower because the Californian abortion rate is more than twice as high.

But California's higher teenage pregnancy rate is substantially driven by Hispanic immigrants whose religious and cultural background is relatively antagonistic to contraceptives. And if we're citing numbers generated by the Guttmacher Institute, surely the ones that follow are relevant to this subject:

- Publicly funded family planning services help women to avoid pregnancies they do not want and to plan pregnancies they do. In 2008, these services helped women in California avoid 317,900 unintended pregnancies, which would likely have resulted in about 141,300 unintended births and 132,700 abortions.

- Contraceptive services provided at Title X-supported centers in California helped prevent 200,200 unintended pregnancies, which would likely have resulted in about 89,000 unintended births and 83,600 abortions.

If you think that abortion is the killing of an innocent human, surely you should regard a contraceptive policy thought to result in tens of thousands of fewer abortions per year as a significant achievement, unless you think that the policy is causing lots of other abortions to occur. The Guttmacher Institute has published analysis that reaches precisely the opposite conclusion.

And increasing the availability and effectiveness of contraception seems like a more achievable task than reducing abortions by re-establishing bygone norms of chastity, monogamy and fidelity (none of which, by the way, are incompatible with widespread access to effective birth control).

Image credit: Reuters

The Election 2012 Photo That Would Most Unnerve a Martian

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 18:47:44 GMT

Callista Gingrich, a woman in a surgical mask, at least 10 disembodied hands, and a galactic imperialist lurking in the background.

In a way this is a normal scene -- a campaign stop in an American mall, a nail shop where the manicurist wears a surgical mask, the candidate looking on. At least that's what appears to be going on. But a Martian wouldn't know any of that. A Martian would see a bunch of disembodied human hands, a masked woman, the words "trade secret" in one corner of the frame. And in the other? Newt Gingrich, a man who, having announced his colonial designs on the moon, followed up by championing regular flights... to Mars! What Martian wouldn't shiver to see it all?

Admittedly, I haven't yet looked at every Election 2012 photo published. But I defy the Internet to find another that would unnerve a Martian as much as this one. Email me your nominations, put them in comments, or Tweet a link with the hashag #FreakingOutMars.

Image credit: Jim Young / Reuters

Quote of the Day: Confronting the White House

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 18:40:16 GMT

An ABC reporter presses Obama spokesman Jay Carney on the administration's "war on whistleblowers."

video platform video management video solutions video player

"The White House keeps praising these journalists who've been killed. You've done it, Vice President Biden did it in a statement. How does that square with the fact that this administration has been so aggressively trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistleblowers to court? Currently I think that you've invoked it the sixth time, and before the Obama administration, it had only been used three times in history. You're suing a CIA officer for allegedly providing information in 2009 about CIA torture. Certainly that's something that's in the public interest of the United States. The administration is taking this person to court. There just seems to be a disconnect here. You want aggressive journalism abroad; you just don't want it in the United States." -- Jake Tapper, interrogating White House Press Spokesman Jay Carney

I've previously written about this subject here and here.

Who Is the Aggressor in the Culture Wars?

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:04:14 GMT

Traditionalists say it's gay marriage advocates, who want radical change. But settled customs are hardly without their fierce advocates.

America's culture wars make everyone feel like a victim. That is arguably its most lamentable feature. Lots of different kinds of people take themselves to be objects of unparalleled ire. It cannot be so. But we're often most sensitive to criticism aimed at the groups to which we belong.

Take Rod Dreher, a traditionalist, a religious believer, a parent whose children are home-schooled, and an advocate for thick community ties. He is sometimes on the receiving end of intemperate, unfair criticism. And he correctly perceives that the culture is increasingly antagonistic to his world view, his advocacy for preserving marriage between a man and a woman especially. But his description of who the aggressors are in the culture wars isn't persuasive.

Here's how he explains it:

From time out of mind, the idea that marriage constitutes the union between one man and one woman has been the unquestioned standard in our civilization. Same-sex marriage has only been on the national radar since 1993, when a Hawaii court ruled that the state had to demonstrate just cause for why marriage ought to be denied to same-sex couples. That was fewer than 20 years ago, and in that time, support for same-sex marriage has increased at a pace that is nothing short of revolutionary. According the the trajectory of polling, at some point in the next few years, what had been the settled view of the nature of marriage for millennia will have been rejected by a majority of the American people. Whether this is a good or a bad thing, all must agree that it is a revolutionary thing.

This stunning victory has been achieved by mounting an all-out assault on tradition. It wouldn't have succeeded had the tradition not been hollowed out by the (hetero)sexual revolution, of course, but that's an argument for another thread. The point is, the marriage innovators assaulted the settled tradition -- and have just about won. But here's the thing: they won in part by framing their own assault on tradition as self-defense. This is what it means when same-sex marriage advocates talk about attempts by marriage trads to attack their families and their rights. It's brilliant propaganda, because it paints people who preferred the status quo into culture-war aggressors, rather than those who are actually aggressing against the settled tradition. The point is not that the pro-SSM folks are wrong, or that they're right. The point here is that they are by any rational measure the culture-war aggressors, but paint themselves as the victims of a right-wing assault. It's brilliant propaganda.

This is a narrow way of looking at the fight over same sex marriage. It proceeds as if prior to 1993, the status of gays in American culture was uncontroversial -- as if tradition itself is apolitical, by virtue of being the status quo. But that isn't an accurate account of history or politics.

For decades, American culture and law were openly hostile to homosexuals. They were mocked, demonized and beaten. Their relationships were criminalized. Religious observers contended they'd wind up in hell. For all these reasons, many were closeted or self-hating or suicidal. Despite the fact that gays and lesbians bore these indignities across many centuries, no one now defends the sum of their treatment, because tradition alone doesn't confer legitimacy, nor does it define what is "settled," if that word is meant to imply consensus and consent.

This is almost universally accepted when we talk about slavery and bans on interracial marriage. Those abominations reflected longstanding traditions. It is nevertheless absurd to call slaves who sought freedom or mixed couples who wanted to marry "the aggressors" in a culture war. As clear is what's lost by referring to slaveholders or opponents of mixed marriage as merely "preferring the status quo," as if entrenching the status quo in law wasn't effectively an aggressive act. This isn't to say gay marriage opponents are the moral equivalent of slaveholders or mixed marriages opponents -- it's only to say that in all these cases, identifying what is "traditional" or what is "the status quo" doesn't tell us much about who "the aggressor" is in a dispute.

One thing Dreher does in the excerpt above is to conflate the religious, cultural, and legal definitions of marriage. That is misleading. For example, sacramental marriage as defined by the Catholic Church and civil marriage as defined by the state of California aren't equal inheritors of thousands of years of tradition, nor are their avowed purposes identical. I'll defend the Catholic Church's right to marry or refrain from marrying anyone it likes, whether because they're gay or previously divorced or of mixed faith or eat meat voraciously on Fridays during Lent.

Civil marriage is a different matter. Gays and lesbians who want to partake in it are insisting that tradition, embedded in law, treats their relationships as inferior and is aggressively discriminatory -- that it deprives them of practical goods and perpetuates the stigma against them through force of law, even if the fact that it has long been the status quo masks the aggression. They'd point out that many slaveholders thought themselves to be upholding the natural way of things, even as they perpetuated a status quo that in fact aggressively violated core rights.

Guys and lesbians aren't "painting themselves as the victims of a right-wing assault" as propaganda. They earnestly believe, for plausible reasons, that marriage excluding same sex couples is but one part of a status quo that has been aggressively antagonistic and discriminatory for decades, even if we're just starting to realize it. Meanwhile, people like Rod Dreher aren't attempting propaganda when they claim that their opponents are the aggressors in the culture war; they see themselves as defending marriage as a procreative institution, losing a series of cultural battles of which gay marriage is only the most recent, and being wrongfully conflated with anti-gay bigots, though they tout procreative marriage even when it has nothing to do with gays. As I see it, neither principled proponents nor opponents of same sex marriage are necessarily aggressors in the culture war. What I'd encourage, to make the fight a bit less unpleasant, is for gay marriage proponents and opponents to grant that at least some of their interlocutors have good reason to feel as if they've been unfairly demonized by the culture wars.

Image credit: Reuters

The Atlantic Politics Quiz: Big Tent Edition

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:09:42 GMT

Test your trivia chops by answering these 5 questions.

&lt;a href="http://theatlantic.polldaddy.com/s/the-atlantic-politics-quiz-5"&gt;View Survey&lt;/a&gt;

Bill O'Reilly's Surprising Defense of Ellen DeGeneres

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:09:42 GMT

The Fox News host is siding with the lesbian comedian against the social conservatives calling for her termination.

Ellen DeGeneres, the daytime talk-show host and heir apparent to Oprah Winfrey, is likable as all get out, and a lot of women who watch TV during the day prefer her to anyone else. So JCPenney, the discount department store, chose her as a celebrity endorser when it began to re-brand.

The choice is now making headlines, as a group called One Million Moms demands her termination. "Funny that JC Penney thinks hiring an open homosexual spokesperson will help their business when most of their customers are traditional families," the group states on its website, urging the chain to "be neutral in the culture war." Perhaps the threatened boycott will benefit of rival Sears, where traditional families can revel in the tight-knit Kardashian Kollection, or Kohl's, which re-signed family-values icon Britney Spears as a partner in 2010.

More likely, this campaign is going to fail miserably -- trying to get gay people out of fashion? Really? -- but it's nevertheless heartening to see that even Bill O'Reilly, staunch foe of "secularists," perceives its odiousness. Here's a clip of him defending Ellen on The O'Reilly Factor:

To be clear, Bill O'Reilly's blustery faux-reasoning is as typically nonsensical in the clip above as always. Does he really believe that it's always wrong to demand than an organization fire a spokesperson so long as they haven't broken any laws? Of course he doesn't. This is a man who made it his personal mission to attack Pepsi for hiring the rapper Ludacris as a spokesman. What I suspected O'Reilly was thinking, but didn't say: the anti-Ellen campaign is odious because there is nothing objectionable about the mere fact of being an uncloseted lesbian.

But Papa Bear logic is famously hard to parse. In the next segment, Bernie Goldberg, the critic of liberal media bias, was much clearer, and uttered words that I never thought I'd hear on Fox News Channel:

There's something that needs to be said no matter how uncomfortable it makes some people listening to us. There is a strain of bigotry -- and that's the word I want to use -- running through conservative America. That doesn't mean all conservatives are bigots, or even that most conservative are bigots. That's not what I'm saying. But there is a strain of bigotry. And it goes against gay people, for instance. Ellen DeGeneres did nothing wrong. She's gay, right. Reasonable people may disagree on gay marriage. That's fine. But to call on somebody to be fired, to lose her job because she's gay, is bigotry, and I don't care how many people listening to us right now don't like that. It's bigotry.

And he wasn't finished!

Let me say one more thing, Bill. In the middle of the last century, in the 1950s and the 1960s, there was another strain of bigotry on the right, and it was against black people. That has to leave the conservative movement. I used to be a liberal. I became a conservative because liberals were a little too crazy for me. A lot too crazy for me, actually. But you know what? I am immensely uncomfortable with the bigotry on the right. And I don't care how many people don't like it. I am sick of it.

It led to this interesting exchange:

Bill O'Reilly: It's not Ellen DeGeneres's sexuality that they object to, Bernie. It's how she presents it to the public. They believe, the Million Moms believe, that she flaunts it, she puts it in their face.

Bernie Goldberg: She flaunts it? I flaunt my heterosexuality.

Bill O'Reilly: No you don't. We don't know about your personal life. You don't walk around and all of that.

Bernie Goldberg: What do you mean she flaunts it?

Bill O'Reilly: She makes it a cause. She makes it a cause celebre. And that's what they object to.

Bernie Goldberg: They're a minority that in many places are under attack. She has every right to make it a cause. And there's no agenda. She's just gay. She wants to live her life as a gay person. I'm telling you, I'm sick of this.

At this point, O'Reilly quite possibly saves Goldberg's job by expertly drawing him back inside the bubble:

Bill O'Reilly: Now the bigotry against pro-life people, I think, is way more than the bigotry against gay people, particularly in the media, because the media supports gay people, generally speaking.

Bernie Goldberg: (unenthusiastically) Right.

Well, no. Wrong. The fact that the media is more gay-friendly than pro-life-friendly hardly makes the country more bigoted against the latter group than the former, as a casual perusal of hate-crime data makes brutally clear. I suspect that both O'Reilly and Goldberg know that, but grading on the Fox News curve, you've got to give them credit for the above segments. Ellen did.

Image credit: Reuters

Bill Kristol's Hypocritical 'Conservatism of Doubt'

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:09:42 GMT

He still thinks the American military can remake the Muslim world -- but lectures about delusions of rational control at home.

Eager to persuade Republicans that their inability to settle on a nominee isn't anything to worry about, Bill Kristol is embracing the conservatism of doubt:

We moderns like our roads direct, our destinations clear, our paths planned, our routes rational. But we delude ourselves. We presume to know in advance what cannot be known. We bask in the conceit of rational control when such control is not to be had. We're then disappointed, even angered, when we discover that life is in fact -- to quote those perceptive Oakeshottian critics of modernity, the Beatles -- a long and winding road. But long and winding roads can lead to worthwhile destinations. The limitations of modern rationalism don't preclude a reasonable outcome to our quest. Conservatives, of all people, shouldn't despair when the way forward turns out to be murky, and the ascent full of twists and turns. It's the modern left, after all, who are the terrible simplifiers.

Funny, when I think back on the most foolhardy and delusional oversimplification of the last decade -- the occasion when the conceit of rational control wreaked the most terrible havoc -- a leftist wasn't championing it.

Bill Kristol was.

For example, here he is in 2002 testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

American and alliance forces will be welcomed in Baghdad as liberators. Indeed, reconstructing Iraq may prove to be a less difficult task than the challenge of building a viable state in Afghanistan.

The political, strategic and moral rewards would also be even greater. A friendly, free, and oil-producing Iraq would leave Iran isolated and Syria cowed; the Palestinians more willing to negotiate seriously with Israel; and Saudi Arabia with less leverage over policymakers here and in Europe. Removing Saddam Hussein and his henchmen from power presents a genuine opportunity -- one President Bush sees clearly -- to transform the political landscape of the Middle East.

Analysis doesn't get more wrongheaded than that.

Has he acknowledged being spectacularly wrong? Or stopped agitating for more foreign wars, the outcomes of which -- given his spectacular history of bad predictions -- he has no reason to think he can know?

Nope.

He lectures others about "the conceit of rational control."

Heal thyself, Mr. Kristol.

Why Are Some Americans Defending an Iranian Terrorist Group?

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:09:42 GMT

The People's Mujahedin of Iran is generating fans in the U.S. for their alleged role in killing Iranian nuclear scientists.

A policeman walks Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan's car, in which he was killed by an explosion / Reuters

The most powerful word in American politics is terrorist. For the first time since the Cold War ended, America has a consensus enemy (never mind that terrorism is a tactic rather than an ideology). Huge majorities support indefinitely detaining accused terrorists without charges, or killing them without due process. So you'd think that a Muslim terrorist group with Marxist roots would be anathema, especially if it was on the official American and Canadian lists of terror sponsoring organizations. But the People's Mujahedin of Iran, commonly referred to as MEK, has its American defenders.

For them, MEK's history of anti-American violence is forgivable. The important thing is that the group is hostile to the regime in Iran. According to NBC News, MEK fighters are assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists and are being "financed, trained and armed by Israel's secret service." The group has also waged a sophisticated lobbying effort to be struck from America's terrorist list, paying politicians as diverse as Howard Dean, Rudy Giuliani, and Wesley Clark who vouch for it. Jamie Kirchick says whoever is responsible for terrorizing Iranian nuclear scientists deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. Jonathan Toobin names MEK, acknowledges their terrorist past, and argues in favor of collaborating with them. "The MEK may be an unattractive ally," he writes, "but with its Iranian members and infrastructure of support inside the country, it is an ideal weapon to use against the ayatollahs. This is not just the standard and cynical argument about the ends justifying the means but rather an entirely defensible strategy in which a vicious and tyrannical government's foes become legitimate allies in what is for all intents and purposes a war."

Anti-interventionists like Daniel Larison and Global War on Terror critics like Glenn Greenwald are understandably bothered by the hypocrisy in all this. If people are thrown in jail for donating money to terrorist organizations, how can prominent politicians be on the payroll of one without facing arrest? Isn't it hypocritical to decry terrorism as irredeemably evil, only to embrace the tactic when it is used against an unfriendly regime? If Israel is funding MEK assassinations aren't they a state sponsor of terrorism? Aren't these double standards corrosive to the rule of law?

I'd ask MEK enthusiasts a different question.

In your telling, MEK doesn't belong on the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations; Rudy Giuliani shouldn't be arrested for taking their money and speaking out on their behalf; Israel shouldn't be declared a State Sponsor of Terror for funding their operations; and President Obama shouldn't send drones to assassinate MEK leaders. By your logic, America's list of terrorist organizations is therefore overly broad; by your logic, patriotic Americans who've done nothing wrong are nonetheless vulnerable to arrest and imprisonment for giving material support to MEK; by your logic, President Obama could unilaterally order the assassination of valuable allies engaged in righteous behavior.

So why aren't MEK enthusiasts alarmed? If you think our list of terrorist organizations is fallible, shouldn't you be calling for it to be reviewed? If you think American citizens are subject to arrest and imprisonment under laws designed to weaken our enemies, even when they're speaking out on behalf of what is actually an ally, shouldn't you be calling for material support laws to be reformed? If President Obama is empowered under U.S. law to order the assassination of certain foreigners, even as you affirm that they're acting righteously, shouldn't you want to curtail his power?

There is no way to be a conventionally hawkish MEK apologist without revealing part of your world view to be deeply wrongheaded. Either you are supporting a terrorist organization -- something you deem cause for assassination without due process -- or else the extraordinary measures you favor to fight terrorists can be legally applied to people who aren't deserving of it.

Update, Feb. 14: The national security reporter Eli Lake draws my attention to a problem with this post. One of my arguments is that MEK supporters should be alarmed by the over-broadness of our terrorism laws if, according to their own analysis, a benign or even righteous group has been labeled an official terrorist organization. That point stands. Being on the official list of terrorist organizations has all sorts of awful consequences for designated groups and their supporters. Contrary to what's implied above, however, being on the list of terrorist organizations doesn't automatically subject a group's members to death by drone strike. To be targeted for assassination, a group or individual must be covered by the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, and although it's been stretched to cover a dubious array of aggressive actions abroad, it hasn't yet been stretched so far that it would include the targeted killing of MEK members. For a detailed discussion of related law, go here.

National Review to Newt Gingrich: Please Drop Out

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:09:42 GMT

Its editors want a Romney-versus-Santorum race. Its readers are still unhappy with their options.

The flagship publication of the conservative movement is urging Newt Gingrich to drop out of the race for the GOP nomination. "It would be a grave mistake for the party to make someone with such poor judgment and persistent unpopularity its presidential nominee," National Review's editorial board opined Monday. "It is not clear whether Gingrich remains in the race because he still believes he could become president next year or because he wants to avenge his wounded pride." They go on to note that "when he led... he urged the Pennsylvanian to leave the race. On his own arguments the proper course for him now is to endorse Santorum and exit."

The comments section is what one would expect from a rank-and-file without a champion. Everyone is attuned to the myriad weaknesses of their choices and therefore unable to argue for anyone very persuasively. For example, here's the beginning of a comment by a Gingrich supporter. "Yes, Gingrich is arrogant and full of himself. Yes, he has an unpleasant past. Yes, he has too many ideas instead of being Reaganesque and concentrating on the few big ones that matter. Yes, he can't seem to run a good organization," the former House speaker's fan admits. "But he is the only one who tells it like it is. He is the only one to call Obama a Saul Alinsky radical."

Wrote another commenter:

Our choices still stink: Romney - He is clearly uncomfortable with his wealth, which Obama will exploit. Obama will hammer him as a "rich white guy". Organization alone won't win the Presidency.... Just ask Hillary. His passionate defenses of abortion rights are seared into my memory.
Gingrich - His attacks on Romney over Bain were very disconcerting. When he gets down or defensive he seems childish in his attacks. Gingrich's debating strength will be completely nullified by Obama who will heavily control the debate rules. There will only be two instead of 17. I won't forget the Pelosi commercial either, because global warming is such a fraud and Gingrich bought into it. The divorces: if he can't keep a vow before God to his wife, what makes us think he'll keep a campaign promise!?

Santorum - More than just the left have viewed his as a social issues candidate. His economic messages are government involvement, not of tea-party laissez-faire. I'm certainly not confident he'll drastically cut gov't spending. We'll hear how his plan will reduce the deficit to $500 B in 2020. Also haven't seen how he reacts when he is under intense fire.

Paul - Why oh why do you have to fall off the deep end on foriegn issues? Going on Iranian TV to bash Israel? A lot of other things he says are so great. If my state's primary (Texas) was held today, I'm not sure who I would vote for. Right now, I'm an anyone but Gingrich guy.

Other folks attacked Romney over his time at Bain Capital in comments of a sort I never thought I'd see at National Review Online.

For example:

If NRO wanted to contribute something positive they would stop treating Mitt Romney as the "Father of Capitalism" and recognize predatory capitalism that takes the remaining value of companies and ships it overseas leaving destitution behind is NOT a VIRTUE.

Any outside the beltway conservative who has friends, family, and business partners who have suffered from predatory capitalism can attest to that. Romney is not a creator like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Andrew Carnegie. He is a destroyer and is perceived that way - not because he re-capitalize companies - a virtue; but because his deals left more destitution in their wake than improved livlihoods except for Mitt and his friends. And Romneybots, Bain accomplished this predatory capitalism with the help of government bailouts and the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC) - the Fannie Mae of Pensions.

In the past, the GOP has always managed to rally around its eventual nominee. I wonder if that longstanding pattern will hold.

Image credit: Reuters

Where Have All the Deficit Hawks Gone?

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:09:42 GMT

For awhile, the House GOP insisted on paying for the payroll tax cut by cutting elsewhere, but now they've agreed to borrow -- again.

In Washington, D.C., one party -- the Democrats -- insist that this is the wrong time to worry about historic peacetime budget deficits. And the Republicans argue that fiscal profligacy imperils the nation! They've nevertheless decided that the payroll tax cut must be extended, even if the money must be borrowed. "Facing emboldened Democratic negotiators and a quickly thinning legislative calendar, House Republican leaders have offered to extend the payroll tax holiday through the end of the year without paying for it," Brian Beutler reports at Talking Points Memo. "The development represents a dramatic reversal for GOP leaders, who nearly allowed the payroll tax cut to lapse in December in part because of their insistence that the package be financially offset."

Paul Kane lays out the background at The Washington Post:

All sides agree that it will be extended and there will be no repeat of a pre-Christmas showdown over the tax benefit that created bitter political divisions within [the] party's ranks. As part of a December 2010 tax compromise, which extended the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts through the end of this year, President Obama won inclusion of the payroll tax cut that dropped individuals' withholding rate to 4.2 percent from 6.2 percent, giving the average worker an extra $80 a month. Republicans have questioned the efficacy of the plan, while others have lamented its effect on Social Security's future. But Obama trumpeted the idea as a way to put cash quickly into workers' pockets, helping to fuel the improving economy, and in his September proposal he offered to extend the holiday through this year and expand it for workers and employers.

While most of his nearly $450 billion in jobs initiatives fell by the wayside, the payroll tax holiday has survived. When a full-year extension of the existing tax holiday could not be agreed upon in December, the Senate passed, by a wide bipartisan vote, a two-month extension, but House Republicans rebelled. They suggested it was bad economic policy to temporarily adjust payroll taxes, and, more important, many of the 89 Republican freshman lawmakers said it was just the sort of half-a-loaf deal that they were swept into office to correct.

Jonathan Bernstein predicts that this portends more spending in the future:

...This is almost certainly a preview of what eventually happens on the military spending cuts in the scheduled sequester under the debt limit deal. Recall that the Budget Control Act set up a "Supercommittee" to come up with deficit reductions, and when that (predictably) failed, the next step is a future sequestration that would take all of the deficit reductions out of the spending side, very much including military spending. Already, hawkish Republicans have suggested trading in those defense cuts for something else. Eventually, they'll do there what they did today: they'll propose just eliminating the defense cuts with no offset. The question then will be whether Democrats have the leverage (and the inclination) to trade cuts to Democratic priorities for cuts in defense.

And if the automatic cuts don't happen? As Doug Mataconis explains, that could affect revenue projections in a way that triggers another standoff over the debt ceiling before the 2012 presidential election:

A debt-ceiling fight right before an election would likely be a disaster. As I noted when we saw this last year, voting to increase the debt ceiling is the one vote that no member of Congress really wants to cast because it lays bare the Federal Government's fiscal problems, and because it is easy for a political opponent to demagogue. Explaining why voting to increase the debt ceiling is, in reality, a fiscally responsible move because it means authorizing the government to pay for things that Congress has already authorized is hard.
Denouncing a Congressman or Senator for voting to "raise the debt" is very, very easy and you can guarantee that this is exactly what we'd see in the event Congress had to vote on this issue before November. The debt kamikazes would be back in full force, and the world would be sitting back and watching while the United States argued down to the wire over an issue that shouldn't even be in doubt.

Stay tuned.

Image credit: Reuters

How Presidents Used to Take Us to War

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:09:42 GMT

Woodrow Wilson bluntly confronted Congress with some of the extraordinary costs the nation would bear from entering World War I.

Reflect on this passage from the speech that Woodrow Wilson gave when he asked Congress to bring the U.S. into World War I by declaring war on Germany in 1917:

What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost practicable cooperation in counsel and action with the governments now at war with Germany, and, as incident to that, the extension to those governments of the most liberal financial credits, in order that our resources may so far as possible be added to theirs. It will involve the organization and mobilization of all the material resources of the country to supply the materials of war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible. It will involve the immediate full equipment of the Navy in all respects but particularly in supplying it with the best means of dealing with the enemy's submarines.

It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the United States already provided for by law in case of war at least 500,000 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle of universal liability to service, and also the authorization of subsequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they may be needed and can be handled in training. It will involve also, of course, the granting of adequate credits to the Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can equitably be sustained by the present generation, by well conceived taxation....

That came to my attention via Freddie deBoer, whose new blog is worth your while, as are his comments about that passage. "It's necessary to consider the United States at a time when isolation was a far more politically popular stance than it is now," he writes. "Here, Wilson unveils his demands of Congress: we've got to lend tons of money to foreign governments; we've got to start rationing essential goods that Americans rely on; we've got to spend a ton of money on a navy; we've got to take at least 500,000 men from their homes and families and send them to war, through the draft no less; oh, and by the way, we've got to rack up huge debts to do it."

It's hard to imagine a president being so frank today with the American people or Congress. In fact, asking Congress' permission is even going out of fashion.

With Activists Like Breitbart, Who Needs An Establishment?

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:09:42 GMT

He cultivates a gonzo image. But at CPAC, the Los Angeles based provocateur pledged blind loyalty to whoever the GOP puts before him.

Don't let the crazy eyes, gonzo antics or red meat rhetoric fool you: Andrew Breitbart is so GOP establishment. In his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, he vowed that he'd fall in line behind the Republican nominee in 2012 regardless of his record, rhetoric or policies. "I don't care who our candidate is. I haven't cared since the beginning of this," he said, urging the crowd, "Ask not what the candidate can do for you. Ask what you can do for the candidate." It's the sort of thing Karl Rove would program conservative activists to say if they were robots.

Wasn't it supposed to be different this time?

When the Tea Party began, its adherents insisted that they'd no longer blindly support the GOP. The Bush years taught them that Republicans would betray conservatism as readily as anyone. Dozens of Tea Partiers assured me that they'd never again let their movement be co-opted. "Ask what you can do for the candidate," Breitbart now says. "And that's what the Tea Party is. We are here to confront them on behalf of our candidate." His personal pledge: "I will march behind whoever our candidate is because if we don't, we lose... Anyone that's willing to stand next to me to fight the progressive left, I will be in that bunker. And if you're not in that bunker because you're not satisfied with this candidate, more than shame on you. You're on the other side."

Hear that, disaffected conservative? Hold your nose and vote Romney or you're an Alinskyite progressive!

Given how Breitbart's speech ended, the beginning betrays a noteworthy lack of self-awareness. "Everything has changed. Everything has changed in the last few years," he said. "Conservatives used to take it. And we're not taking it anymore." If only that were so. The truth is that after the Tea Party, the Glenn Beck show, Big Government, James O'Keefe, lots of fantastically profitable quarters at Fox News, stellar ratings for talk radio, a booming conservative book market, and Breitbart antics aplenty, the right is about to choose among Romney, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum, three guys who bought into Bush-style conservatism.

Very little has actually changed in the last few years. The main difference is that Romney is a bit less acceptable to the right, but running in a field sufficiently weaker that he is more likely to win.

Breitbart doesn't perceive any of this because he now exists in a strange bubble of experiences: red meat speeches; a Twitter account deliberately aimed at provoking the detractors most likely to hurl vile insults; an email account filled with tips for his Web sites; and street confrontations with leftist activists.

Hence the paranoia.

Remember the people who took to the streets circa 2003 to oppose the Iraq War? "This is my thesis. The anti-war movement was never about anti-war," Breitbart says. "It was a Saul Alinsky organizing tactic to get Barack Obama and the left elected." (I guess Bush played right into their hands!) In the Breitbart bubble, Harvard isn't an elite university populated by careerist students and tenured business and economics faculty with close ties to Wall Street and the Fortune 500. They're "radicals at Beirut on the Charles." (Not that he'd hold attending against Mitt Romney or George Bush!)

In the Breitbart bubble, "Barack Obama is a radical. We should not be afraid to say that." How is he radical? "I've got videos. This time we're going to vet him. From his college days. We're going to show you why racial division and class warfare were central to what hope and change were to 2008."

Personally, I don't think Obama deserves a second term, due to his actually radical, Cheneyesque abuses of executive power, his violating the War Powers Resolution in Libya, his civil liberties abrogations, his broken promises on transparency, and his warrantless assassinations. I'll likely vote Gary Johnson at the ballot box. But if Breitbart plans to persuade the American people that Obama is stoking racial division; if he's seriously going to play the class warfare card against a guy who sinned by bailing out Wall Street rather than raging against it; he and his followers deserve to lose too, and to be ridiculed meanwhile for their absurdist narratives.

Usually, fanatically loyal partisans hurt an ideological movement by giving its leaders cover as they sell out. And hard core activists hurt a movement when they let their rhetoric cross over from rabble-rousing to self-discrediting nonsense. It's rare for someone to simultaneously hurt a movement in both of these ways. As a shameless Mitt Romney apologist, however, I have no doubt that Breitbart will manage it.

Celebrity Is Warping the Career Incentives for Politicians

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:09:41 GMT

Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann turned down gigs on Dancing with the Stars. But it's noteworthy and problematic that they were approached.

After dropping out of Election 2012, Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann were reportedly contacted by Dancing with the Stars producers about competing on the popular reality TV show. Its stage has been graced in previous seasons by alleged "stars" Tom Delay and Bristol Palin.

If the program hopes to appeal to Fox News types in its upcoming season, it'll need to keep searching: neither Cain nor Bachmann was interested. But the fact that the offer was made is the latest example of the new career opportunities available to politicians in this strange new entertainment era. There is plenty of precedent for politicians from Ronald Reagan to Jesse Ventura to Arnold Schwarzenegger benefiting from prior fame. Now people who got famous through politics are scoring remunerative gigs on the cable news networks -- Joe Scarborough, Al Sharpton, Mike Huckabee -- or even going the route of the Palin family, which has leveraged Sarah Palin's political fame into the aforementioned run on Dancing with the Stars and a TLC reality show.

The resulting returns aren't ill-gotten, like the money Newt Gingrich got for influence pedaling on behalf of Freddie Mac. Better a politician earn money selling himself to the public than selling out to lobbyists. It is nevertheless the case that the opportunity for celebrity changes the incentive system in our politics. So long as gigs like Fox News, Dancing with the Stars, and TLC are out there, some people who wouldn't have otherwise run will seek office in pursuit of such gigs. Even politicians earnestly interested in being elected might change their rhetoric, or stay in races they'll surely lose longer than they otherwise might, if it could bring fame or money down the line. Already we've seen people go from politician to news commentator and back to politician again -- between elections lots of pols would now be better served burnishing their credentials on television than burnishing their governing credentials at a think tank or on a board of directors.

And the pervasiveness of political celebrities in popular culture changes the way voters think of politicians. In a profession where name recognition has always been an advantage, it may be the case that aspiring pols uninterested in being TV celebrities dutifully pursue such opportunities in the same way that they once grudgingly committed to kissing babies and asking for money.

Alas, many of the qualities that make someone a successful television celebrity exacerbate the culture wars, and getting good at being famous for being famous isn't work experience that improves someone's ability to govern if they ultimately attain a position of power. The main winners here are entertainment companies, who are finding that they can monetize the political affinities of their viewers. The cost is a political system with yet another perverse incentive for its participants.

Rick Santorum Wants Your Sex Life to Be 'Special'

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:09:41 GMT

He insists that opining on the subject is the kind of thing a presidential candidate should do.

What separates issues that are in the proper purview of politics from matters best left to individuals? I'd hate to draw that line for everyone, but watching Rick Santorum in the much-discussed interview above, I'm confident in declaring that he's put himself on the wrong side of it.

One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea... It's not okay because it's a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They're supposed to be within marriage, for purposes that are, yes, conjugal... but also procreative.

That's the perfect way that a sexual union should happen. We take any part of that out, we diminish the act. And if you can take one part out that's not for purposes of procreation, that's not one of the reasons, then you diminish this very special bond between men and women, so why can't you take other parts of that out? And all of a sudden, it becomes deconstructed to the point where it's simply pleasure. And that's certainly a part of it--and it's an important part of it, don't get me wrong--but there's a lot of things we do for pleasure, and this is special, and it needs to be seen as special. Again, I know most presidents don't talk about those things, and maybe people don't want us to talk about those things, but I think it's important that you are who you are. I'm not running for preacher.

I'm not running for pastor, but these are important public policy issues.

Ponder the implicit claim he is making: that it is desirable for the President of the United States to opine on and shape public policy according to his notion of what is "special." As he surely knows, what is "special," what ought to be kept "special," and what is required to keep sex "special" are all deeply contested matters. They inevitably turn on judgments shaped by faith, moral reasoning, and intuition. The American people, having wrestled with these questions, have concluded in overwhelming numbers either that contraception doesn't make sex less special - or that if it does make sex less special, the tradeoff (less special sex in return for fewer unwanted pregnancies or abortions or STDs or more pleasure or human connection) is worthwhile.

Any politician who regards the adult use of contraceptives as a matter under his purview cannot lay claim to the limited government label, nor can he credibly invoke a tradition rooted in the pursuit of happiness. And it's baffling that a presidential candidate would survey a world of poets, clergy, cognitive neuro-scientists, novelists, happily married elderly people, and a polity with sexual tastes as diverse of ours, and regard politicians as a useful authority on what kind of sex is special.

Memo to the Tea Party: Rick Santorum Rejects Your Message

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:09:41 GMT

If he were somehow elected, the former senator would prioritize social conservatism and a hawkish foreign policy, not the fiscal issues activists care about.

The libertarian Cato Institute's vice president, Gene Healy, is baffled by the recent surge in support for Rick Santorum among Tea Partiers. Ticking off the former senator's various George W. Bush-era heresies, Healy writes, "The Tea Party movement was supposed to represent an end to this sort of moralistic Big Government conservatism. Animated by 'fiscal responsibility, limited government, and free markets,' as the Tea Party Patriots' credo put it, the movement had supposedly put social issues on the back burner to focus on the crisis of government growth."

The most remarkable feature of Santorum's rise is that he cares most about social issues like abortion, gay marriage, and a tax code with more deductions for heterosexual married couples with kids. He cares next most about a hawkish national-security posture, including a war against Iran to stop them from getting nukes if necessary. The alarming deficits that threaten the country's future are his third and final priority. His approach is an inversion of the Tea Party message.

Yet Tea Partiers are flocking to him.

Daniel Larison gamely tries to explain what's going on. What I'd like to tell Tea Partiers is what will go on if Santorum is our next president. He'll talk a good game about shrinking government. But he won't. He'll spend his political capital on the aforementioned social issues, spend a bit more money on related programs at home, and spend a lot more money on the military.

This isn't difficult to predict. "I am not a libertarian, and I fight very strongly against libertarian influence within the Republican Party and the conservative movement," he said openly last summer, adding, "I've got some real concerns about this movement within the Republican Party and the Tea Party movement to sort of refashion conservatism and I will vocally and publicly oppose it."

He's the weirdest choice for Tea Party champion yet.

Image: Reuters

Rick Santorum Would Do Less to Strengthen Families Than Ron Paul

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:09:41 GMT

Social conservatives are most attune to their importance. But libertarians seek to reverse the policy that harms them most.

In a recent Rick Santorum appearance on Hugh Hewitt's radio show, the former Pennsylvania senator talked about the importance of addressing family breakdown in America's lower classes. "Chuck Colson told me when he left prison 30 years ago there were 250,000 people in prison. There's now 2.5 million, and 70 to 80 percent of them grew up without a father in the home," Santorum said. "I mean, there are real world consequences to the actions that people take. And of course, you have politicians who stay away from that. Well, you can't talk about that. The problem is, if you don't talk about it, and if we don't come to grips with the fact that the breakdown of the family and of the culture is going to have a huge impact on our ability to be prosperous."

These comments were aimed not only at the left, but also at the right's libertarian wing. "The idea of just talking about cutting taxes and reducing regulation and everything is going to be fine ignores the fundamental issue that families are a key component of a stable and healthy society," Santorum said. "Unless we have a candidate that's willing to talk about those things and promote that type of healthy family structure, we're talking past some of the biggest problems that confront the country." It's a critique you might hear, footnoted with more sophisticated examples, from smart reform conservatives like Ross Douthat, Ramesh Ponnuru and David Frum.

It is therefore striking that libertarians, who are in fact uninclined to talk about family breakdown, seek to overturn a policy that does more damage to American families than any other.

Santorum laments the staggering number of incarcerated Americans without noting that government is a major cause of their being locked up. Neither absent fathers nor declining traditional values caused legislators to impose mandatory minimum laws on nonviolent drug crimes. But increasingly harsh penalties passed in a failed effort to win the War on Drugs has led to hundreds of thousands of men being imprisoned, left countless kids with absent fathers, and depleted the supply of marriageable men in neighborhoods where family breakdown is most dire.

As Bruce Western puts it in The Nation:

In neighborhoods of mass unemployment, family breakdown and untreated addiction, punitive drug policy (and its sibling, the war on crime) has outlawed large tracts of everyday life. By 2008 one in nine black men younger than 35 was in prison or jail. Among black male dropouts in their mid-30s, an astonishing 60 percent have served time in state or federal prison.

The reach of the penal system extends beyond the prison population to families and communities. There are now 2.7 million children with a parent in prison or jail. There are 1.2 million African-American children with incarcerated parents (one in nine), and more than half of those parents were convicted of a drug or other nonviolent offense.

Libertarians are sometimes mocked for talking as if government is the root of all our problems, and offering little in the way of policy-making save a desire to shrink it. Were the War on Drugs ended, it's true problems like addiction wouldn't just go away. It is nevertheless the case that excessive government regulation of drugs, in the form of our draconian regime of prohibition and imprisonment, has failed to stem addiction even as it destroyed lower income neighborhoods and families.

In this instance, government is a big part of the problem.

Santorum may be more willing than all his opponents to talk about family breakdown. Perhaps he really cares about it most too. As Douthat once put it, the former senator "distinguished himself by talking about issues that most Republicans don't want to touch - the problem of middle-class wage stagnation and the declining social mobility of the poor. Santorum has also framed these issues, correctly, in the context of the crisis in family life that social conservatives have been worrying about for years, making the essential point that absent fathers and broken homes play a greater role in middle America's struggles than the supposed perfidies of the richest 1 percent."

Douthat added that his solutions were inadequate. "Disappointingly, Santorum's specific proposals have focused on reviving manufacturing (and with it, in theory, the solid blue-collar paycheck) rather than targeting family policy directly. But one can doubt his cure and still appreciate his diagnosis." As an alternative, Douthat suggests extended family leave time and a proposal touted by Ponnuru and Robert Stein to "change the way we tax families, dramatically expanding the child tax credit in order to ease the burden on parents with young children."

A safer bet and more urgent priority, if you're trying to strengthen families, is to keep more nonviolent fathers in their neighborhoods, near children they've fathered, rather than locked up in prison. The effect a tax credit might have on the burden faced by parents with young children is uncertain. As uncertain is whether longer family leave would reduce the number of absent fathers. But dramatically reducing the number of fathers who are forcibly removed from their neighborhoods and locked in cages far away from their children? That's guaranteed to reduce the number of absent fathers! Immigration law could also be liberalized in a targeted way that did a better job keeping parents and kids together. And the total number of kids raised in stable, two parent households could also be expanded by permitting gay marriage in every state.

Despite favoring these very practical, family friendly reforms, all of which would result in more kids being raised in stable households, libertarians are often stereotyped as utopian ideologues. Whereas Rick Santorum is credited by smart conservatives who care about families as a particularly effective spokesperson for their cause, even though he wants to keep fighting the War on Drugs, pursuing a hawkish foreign policy that keeps military families separated from loved ones, has no realistic plan for reducing the incarceration rate, and just doesn't include homosexual families or illegal immigrant families among the families he is keen to help. Douthat, Ponnuru and Frum are right. Libertarians don't have anything like all the answers - just more than the hawkish, deportation-happy drug warriors Santorum, Romney and Obama.

Image credit: Reuters

No, Jon Stewart, Opting Out of Health-Care Mandates Won't Destroy Society

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:09:40 GMT

Chaos won't ensue if employers can act on conscientious objections -- in fact, they shouldn't be providing employees' insurance in the first place.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Jon Stewart thinks "chaos" would ensue if employers with a moral objection to birth control were exempted from the federal requirement to provide contraceptive insurance coverage to their employees. Watch his commentary, which comes near the end of the clip above, or read this transcript:

BOB SCHEIFFER: Senator Blunt from Missouri, one of your Republican colleagues, he wants a law that would allow anyone who has a moral objection to this to not have to pay for birth control pills. Would you be willing to push that in the Senate?

MITCH MCCONNELL: Of course I'd be happy to support it, and intend to support it.

JON STEWART: Really? Because you know what that would be? Fucking chaos, you realize that, right? That's chaos. (mocking tone) All right, I'm a Christian scientist. I don't have to provide any health care. I don't believe in it. It's all up to your boss. I work for the new head football coach at the high school. I got my new health care plan, and it just says, 'Walk it off, you pussy!'

You can't just decide on your own. We're either in a society or we're not in a society.

His incredulity bespeaks a faulty memory -- and a lack of imagination.

Prior to the federal mandate that employers provide contraceptive care there was not, in fact, "fucking chaos," and Americans did regard themselves as living in a society. It's clear why people like Stewart value the universal provision of contraceptive care. But the conceit that the federal government must either mandate that some employers engage in behavior that violates their conscience or face chaos is alarmist nonsense. Before Obama's heath-care overhaul, there were 50 different approaches to insurance coverage mandates, many of which left employers alone and focused on what insurers had to cover. Pro-contraception activists argue that the old system -- which governed a non-chaotic society -- did an inadequate job affording access to contraception.

I think they're right.

But folks who want to expand access should acknowledge that there are lots of ways to do it, and that it can be accomplished without forcing employers to do anything that they don't want to do.

This insight applies not just to birth control, but to health care generally.

The U.S. could make it much easier for individuals to purchase coverage apart from their employers. The employer-based system is, after all, a creation of government and unusual in the world. Contraception could also be separated from the health-insurance system and subsidized. As an advocate of greater access, I'd favor eliminating the need to get a prescription for birth control. Let people consult a pharmacist and buy it over the counter (a system within which all birth control, or birth control purchased by poor women, could then be subsidized).

Implicit in Stewart's rhetoric about all of us needing to live together is the notion that subsidized contraception for all is broadly popular, and a few conscientious objectors shouldn't be permitted to stand in the way of implementing that consensus. If that narrative is correct, there should be no problem passing a general law to subsidize contraception separate from the health-insurance system. What I suspect, however, is that while there is near-consensus that contraception is a good thing, a Congressional majority couldn't be found to declare it a "right" or a good that government should subsidize for everyone or that employers should be forced to provide. For that reason, the contraception mandate was introduced indirectly. The Affordable Care Act gave bureaucrats the ability to define what constitutes "preventative care." The bureaucrats decided birth control counts; therefore employers must include it when they offer insurance.

Isn't it possible that -- regardless of the merits -- making this judgment via executive branch rule-making rather than the legislative process is itself destructive of our ability to live together in a gigantic, pluralistic country?

Say that a conscience clause is layered onto the present system.

Any chaos that results isn't inherent to accommodating conscientious objections in a diverse society, as Stewart implies. The core problem is that inserting employers between health insurers and individuals created an unnecessary tension between the provision of certain goods and the consciences and preferences of employers. I'm enough of a pragmatist to concede that conscientious objections can't always be accommodated -- that overly broad opt-out provisions would cause chaos in certain instances. But provision of contraception isn't one of them. What the present controversy shows more than anything else is that the employer-based system should be scrapped. Until it is, we'll be needlessly compelling private actors to do things to which they object, even as the unemployed are effectively frozen out of the system.

Where Rick Santorum Fits Into the American Tradition

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:09:40 GMT

His moralistic conflation of 'God's laws' and society's laws make him the modern descendant of Puritans, Prohibitionists, and anti-sodomy crusaders.

A criticism I made of Rick Santorum is generating a bit of dissent. It all started when the former Pennsylvania senator pledged that if elected president he'll speak out against the use of contraceptives. In his opinion, it isn't ever okay to use condoms or birth control pills because he regards procreative sex as the most "special" kind, whereas non-procreative sex is "simply pleasure." That's problematic in his view because sex "is special, and it needs to be seen as special." He concluded his remarks by saying that "most presidents don't talk about those things, and maybe people don't want us to talk about those things... but these are important public policy issues."

Here's a part of my retort:

Any politician who regards the adult use of contraceptives as a matter under his purview cannot lay claim to the limited government label, nor can he credibly invoke a tradition rooted in the pursuit of happiness.

James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal responds:

In truth, Santorum says only that he would "talk about" what he sees as the social harms of contraception. There is no conflict whatever between limited government and moral exhortation, provided the latter is unaccompanied by legislative or administrative action.

And the quote is very much in keeping with "a tradition rooted in the pursuit of happiness." Santorum is merely making a case for deferred gratification. His claim is that the easy availability of birth control has enabled and encouraged a pursuit of pleasure that is inimical to the achievement of happiness. One may reasonably argue that Santorum is overgeneralizing or that on the whole he is mistaken. But to write him out of the American tradition on the basis of that quote, as Friedersdorf attempts to do, is simply bonkers.

This misunderstands both Santorum's position and mine.

As my excerpt and Santorum's full quote make clear, he asserts that the alleged superiority of procreative sex and the need to keep sexual intercourse "special" are "important public policy issues." To label something a "public policy issue" implies that it is an appropriate subject for policy-making by state or federal legislators (one would hope) or executive branch bureaucrats.*

And Santorum is not merely arguing for deferred gratification because he regards the use of birth control as inimical to individual happiness. If there were a couple that enhanced their total happiness by using birth control, Santorum would still regard their actions to be wrong -- his reason for wanting to keep sex "special" isn't that he wants to maximize individual happiness on a longer time horizon; what he means by needing to keep sex "special" is that it needs to be kept sacred, so that it comports with its divinely determined purpose and improves prevailing sexual norms.

So again, given his opinion that an important public policy matter is keeping sexual intercourse "special" as he defines it, Santorum cannot rightly lay claim to the limited government label; and because he thinks upholding the sacred for the benefit of all society is more important than permitting individuals to pursue happiness as they define it for themselves, he cannot "credibly invoke a tradition rooted in the pursuit of happiness." In standing by that judgment, I do not think that I am writing Santorum "out of the American tradition," as Taranto puts it, because I think that the American tradition includes lots of people who sometimes acted contrary to the principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence -- the Puritans (who, of course, also preceded the Declaration), the Prohibitionists, and every state legislator who ever voted to make sodomy a crime, for example. "The American tradition" is diverse. Santorum just happens to be the modern incarnation of the strains that go unacknowledged because they are so antithetical to the parts of the tradition that make us most proud.

*It's also worth asking if Taranto regards all exhortation as being consistent with small government so long as no legislation or rule-making is involved. For example, if a liberal surgeon general started giving Joycelyn Elders-inspired speeches exhorting the nation's youth to masturbate rather than engage in sex, would Taranto see those exhortations as being consistent with limited government, or an example of the government overstepping its proper purview, if only in rhetoric? I don't know the answer, but I'd be curious to hear it. In my experience, politicians never in fact stop with moral exhortation, and the mere notion that they are appropriately regarded as moral leaders, rather than legislators or executives with specific Constitutional duties, is problematic, if parenthetical enough to this conversation that I've put it here at the bottom in small print.

Politics Q&A: Meet Lisa Stickan of the Young Republicans

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:09:39 GMT

The Ohio activist talks swing state politics, what it means to be part of the GOP, and whether or not she's a member of the establishment.

After graduating from John Carroll University in 1998, Lisa Stickan of Cleveland, Ohio, started law school and joined the local chapter of the Young Republicans. In subsequent years, as she followed in her father's footsteps and became a prosecutor, she rose in that organization, and is now Chair of the Young Republican National Federation, America's oldest political youth organization.

Ask her about politics and her inclination isn't to talk about ideology or policy details -- for her, politics means going door-to-door on behalf of a candidate she believes in, serving on her City Council, dropping off campaign literature, and participating in the regional roundtables and meetings that shape the future of the GOP. We talked about her involvement in politics, her assessment of what younger Republicans care about, the GOP establishment, and Ohio as a swing state.

What follows is an edited transcript.

At what age did you first identify as a Republican?

I was probably between 10 and 12. My mother got involved in the community, and instilled in me a desire to do the same. We met some great candidates and wound up dropping literature for them. And then I came to realize that, with my values and beliefs, I identified with the Republican Party. When you talk to people who are really into politics there's that love of meeting people, discussing issues -- if there's a candidate you really love, promoting them by getting literature out and knocking on doors. I always really enjoyed that sort of activity. I like to meet people.

Do you still go door to door?

I do. I love it. I ran myself for City Council, and I found that in my own campaign nothing is a substitute for knocking on doors. Part of what you would do is an introduction. Who I am, what I do professionally, and especially what I have to bring to the table when it comes to the position I seek. I have a history of working in government. I'm a former county prosecutor. When you serve in government, in that capacity -- that and my interest in politics have exposed me to just how important governmental decisions are. City Council is really the first step, it's the day to day maintenance of someone's life, it's the regular service people sometimes takes for granted that makes life easier. Is your garbage getting picked up on time? Are the roads plowed?

Those things are so important that you want to make sure regular maintenance is made. For someone like myself, starting out in the political world, I think it's a good step to really learn the fundamentals of government on the other side of things. It's one thing to be a prosecutor. It's another thing to actually run a city and help constituents. I've learned so much about the budget, different expenditures. And when I went door to door, I got a good feel for the neighborhood. The biggest issue for people on a given street. It gives you a good pulse on what's going on in the area.

What's your best experience going door to door?

Going to the door of someone I might have helped, which happened when I ran to be reelected to the city council. You get these calls, they have a complaint, you take steps to address it, and you don't really hear anything. But when you meet that person and see that you helped them, you did right by them, that's a good feeling. I haven't really had a horrible experience. I don't tend to get into a lot of arguments. You're at someone else's door, so your role isn't really to argue with them, it's to get them information. At least that's my philosophy. It's to ask them for their support. I don't think you're helping your cause if you're trying to argue ideology at someone's doorstep. It's more a matter of, "We'd love your support," and the ability to answer any questions they have.

Do you identify as a conservative as well as a Republican?

Yes.

When you started to shape your own political opinions, what made you think the Republican Party and conservatism were right for you?

Growing up and meeting candidates, it wasn't even necessarily the most conservative candidate, it was these are good people who have the right temperament or personality or beliefs, and bring some good talent to the table. That is why I got involved. It was candidate specific. I grew up in the Midwest as the daughter of a prosecutor. I'm a prosecutor. And I'm a Catholic. So there are those identifiers for me in terms of the conservative principles. But especially with the economy being what it is today there's more of a shift back to fiscal conservatism that we hear so much about in the Republican Party right now. And sitting on a city council, seeing the importance of guarding the taxpayer dollars, and how precious it is, how entrusted you are as an elected official - that affirms my belief that as an elected official and as a conservative, I do think fiscal conservatism and not spending beyond our means is one of the most important components of government right now. And that's really a strong belief I have.

What caused you to join the Young Republicans?

I first got involved in the Greater Cleveland Young Republicans when I was in law school. I met someone named Josh Mandel, our state treasurer, who is now running for US Senate. I mention him because we have members like that who got involved at a young age. The group serves many functions. As soon as you get involved at the national level you really have a nice network of peers, people around the country who you can discuss different ideas with or even just call friends. You can also get those boots on the ground, get out there, knock on doors, boost candidates, help them get elected. You can really have an impact. And learning first hand about these campaigns, how they function, what it takes to run a campaign. It comes in handy when you decide, I'm going to run for city council or judge or state representative one day.

Is part of the mission outreach to young people? Getting more young people to identify as Republicans?

Yes. A lot of our membership is young people post college who, as they establish their careers, are looking to get involved and learn more. What does it mean to be a Republican? Who are the candidates out there? Part of our job is to provide that information.

What does it mean to be a Republican?

I think generally speaking we talk about fiscal conservatism. If you're asking, what does it mean to be a Republican for these younger voters, what issue is driving them the most, I'd say that a lot of our membership is post-college, they're nervous about their future. They're having a hard time getting jobs. They're struggling, trying to establish their career path, find work, buy a home, start a family. These are obviously critical stages in one's life. Being that there's a lot of turmoil in the economy, it's created a lot of angst. There have been so many surveys about how people are delayed in making major decisions. Buying a house. Starting a family. Because they're worried, and they want to make sure. So I think to be a Republican means to worry about the future of the country, our economic future. To not incur so much debt. The debt we've been incurring over the last couple years is alarming to most of our membership. It's the kind of thing where it's easy money today, but the bill is going to come due tomorrow, and nobody wants their future saddled with these grim economic prospects.

I think that's what it means to be a Republican. It means to be fiscally conservative. It means to care about the future of this country. It means to embrace the American dream, which is to respect capitalism, respect hard work, be there to improve yourself. And not have government dictate to you what your future should be, to not be dependent on government to take care of your family, to be able to provide for yourself. Those are the kind of general concepts. But I think that sort of goes to the concerns of a lot of post-college voters.

What about social issues? The stereotype is that young voters care about them less. Has that been your impression?

It isn't that younger voters don't care about issues like marriage or abortion. I think it's a matter of what the focus should be on. A younger voter may be staunchly pro-life or favor traditional marriage, but when they're talking about politics or our future, their greater concern is the fact that they haven't been able to find a job. It's the economic uncertainty that's driving the younger voters. And to be fair, I think president Obama kind of put himself in a bit of a box with these voters. He did a fabulous job getting his message out, we all agree. He ran a strong campaign targeting younger people, embracing Twitter and Facebook, communicating in places where young people communicate. He got this message of hope and change out to younger voters who really did support him. And now that they're graduating college, these very same voters are unable to find work, so of course they're becoming disgruntled voters. They're not finding hope.

What makes Ohio different than other places?

Ohio to me is a good snapshot of America, with a nice variation of very rural counties, very urban areas, that are a cross-section of America. That's why I enjoy being on the ground in Ohio.

It's the kind of state where you really have to work hard to get your message out. We joke about it. A lot of people in Ohio will say, "oh my God, I get so many robocalls, I get so many pieces of literature," but those same voters, if they don't hear from someone, they'll say, "Oh, can you believe that candidate didn't reach out. No one knocked on my door, no one called me." I think being a voter on the ground, we're used to these candidates really trying to get their message out to us. They know this electorate here wants or needs the information to secure their votes. There are a good number of independents, it's a swing state, and people are really asking themselves why they should give a candidate their vote.

If I were to visit Ohio and I wanted to see the diversity you're talking about, where would I go?

Cleveland is a nice cross-section. You have a lot of people who are very proud of their heritage, whether they're Italian American or Jewish American or what have you. It's like Chicago in that regard. There's a lot of great neighborhoods here, like Little Italy and Chinatown. If you were to come, I would recommend that you come to Cleveland because you'd experience all those different cultures, and it would be a good time. If you went 50 minutes away you'd be in a rural county. You'd see some Amish people. Great people there too. If you went near Ohio State you'd see a lot of young people clustered around Columbus. Northeast Ohio has pockets that we used to call the Rust Belt. A lot of manufacturing has left. Some remains. You talk to voters there and you get that perspective.

Presidential campaigns and TV pundits emphasize certain disagreements among Republicans. If we were to pay attention to Young Republicans in Ohio, what are the big disagreements?

Well, in no group does everyone agree on everything. You might get a Republican, for example, who says I'm a pro-choice Republican but I support this candidate because of his stance on fiscal issues.

You could find a Republican who is supportive of gay marriage rights.

So I think that would be a discussion.

Do Young Republicans reflect the larger disagreements in the GOP about the best presidential candidate this cycle?

Among the remaining candidates you'll find supporters of all of them. But the consensus is that they'll be satisfied even if their guy isn't the nominee. I don't think there's much division on the big issues. A lot of it is manufactured for TV. The Democrat Party had a pretty involved primary between Hilary Clinton and President Obama. But at the end of the day the base does rally around their candidate. I do feel that whoever the Republican nominee is people will support him.

There's been a lot of talk lately about a divide between the Republican establishment and the Tea Party, or the grassroots. There's never a consistent definition about who counts as a member of the establishment. But it seems like you are definitely part of the Republican establishment -- that if it means anything, it's officially joining an organization like the Young Republicans. So what do you think when you hear all this rhetoric? Do people in your organization ever say, "Hey, wait a minute, that's me you're complaining about?"

You're right, there is this question out there, "Who is the establishment?" Is it people in D.C.? The guy who has the most elected officials supporting him? Usually the answer depends entirely on the identity of the person talking about the establishment. I could be called the establishment, but then again, I'm based out of Ohio not D.C., so others would say I'm not in the establishment.

I will disclose to you that although our organization doesn't endorse, I am slated as a Mitt Romney delegate in Ohio. So I do support him in our individual capacity. But our board has Newt Gingrich delegates, we have Rick Santorum delegates. So we have good relationships with all of these candidates. They come to our events. And we're always very respectful of all of them.

So do you think of yourself as a member of the Republican establishment?

No, I don't. (laughs) I really don't.

Not that there's anything wrong with the establishment. But honestly, being in the Midwest, I think I identify the most as a Midwest Republican, as someone from Ohio, and I think that when you think of the establishment you get this image of people just popping a banner up - you get this negative connotation, the way the press uses it. But the truth is we're not just for the party. We're activists. We will go and get boots on the ground. We'll knock on doors. We enjoy it. So if you told someone in my organization that they're part of the establishment - not that there's anything wrong with being in the "establishment" - we're activists, first and foremost.

So in your mind the establishment is people in D.C.?

Yeah, but I think the term is thrown around so much that it's confusing, almost meaningless in some ways. If I have to think this hard about what it means, it's probably being misused.

What do you think the national media gets wrong about Republicans?

There's two things that really stick out.

One is the notion that being fiscally conservative, having concerns about the economic future of this country, you have some members of the press who twist it into being insensitive, not caring about people struggling in this economy. And that isn't the argument. You know, a Republican may look at something and say we have too many people on welfare, we should work to make them self-sufficient. And that shouldn't be spun into not caring about poor people. We don't want people on the government dole. It's a good thing if people can provide for themselves.

So that's something that has always bothered me.

The other relates to our group. The idea that younger people vote like sheep for the Democrat Party. And that is absolutely not true. Did they come out for President Obama? Yes, they did. But he aimed his campaign at those voters, and he's going to have to answer to them, because he sold them a bill of goods. Just because someone is under 40 that doesn't mean they're a slam dunk vote for Democrats.

When the Republican Party is recruiting candidates what do you look for?

Someone who is prepared to do the work. If you're not willing to put yourself out there, meet voters, knock on doors, being good on paper doesn't do you a lot of good. Your number one job is to get information out there. To get out there and campaign. You want good qualifications and background too, someone well-suited to the job they're seeking.

There are more and more people who are identifying as independents. What's the case for joining a party instead?

If you align with the Republican Party, there's a huge benefit to getting directly involved. By coming to events, by hearing the candidates, by knocking on doors, being in the throes of the election, you're directly impacting the outcome through your work, which is rewarding. And you're really given a place at the table, an ability to get your voice heard, even the ability to have leadership in your party, to change it. You can dictate and shape the future. It's easy to stay on the sidelines over small disagreements, but if you want to see positive change nothing beats getting involved and effecting it yourself.

Is there really a meaningful opportunity to change things?

I believe so, yes. If you're able to get your opinion heard, get your voice heard, work hard, you'll have a seat at the table. That doesn't mean you'll always get your way. But you'll never get your way if you're not there. Leadership roles are there at the county level, the state level, in campaigns. It's volunteer work, so people are always looking to fill those positions. In politics there's the impression that older people run local and state parties. Unless younger people involve themselves they won't get their voices heard.

What will the Republican Party look like 10 or 15 years from now? Do you see any shifts happening?

A lot of the party will be shaped by the outcome of future elections. Winning or losing an election, especially a presidential election, can really change a party.

What's changed since you got started in the party?

Younger voters are targeted more. They're not written off as much. And there's less of a "wait your turn" mentality. You used to hear people say, you're too young to run. But we've seen in the Republican Party a lot of young candidates involving themselves. The way younger people communicate, there's Facebook, there's Twitter, all these ways to react to a specific demographic. Embracing these knew technologies, as President Obama did in 2008, really does get the message out. It's effective, so that's one reason younger candidates are attractive.

Why Homeschooling Is a Boon to a Liberal Society

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:09:39 GMT

Don't listen to the progressives who insist that enrolling your kids in public schools is a civic obligation

In a controversial Slate article published last week, the talented education journalist Dana Goldstein laments what she says is the go-it-alone ideology of home-schooling parents, arguing that they harm children in the public school system and do society as a whole a disservice. "In a country increasingly separated by cultural chasms--Christian conservatives vs. secular humanists; Tea Partiers vs. Occupiers--should we really encourage children to trust only their parents or those hand-selected by them," she asks, "and to mistrust civic life and public institutions?"

She goes on:

Although the national school-reform debate is fixated on standardized testing and "teacher quality"--indeed, the uptick in secular homeschooling may be, in part, a backlash against this narrow education agenda--a growing body of research suggests "peer effects" have a large impact on student achievement. Low-income kids earn higher test scores when they attend school alongside middle-class kids, while the test scores of privileged children are impervious to the influence of less-privileged peers. So when college-educated parents pull their kids out of public schools, whether for private school or homeschooling, they make it harder for less-advantaged children to thrive.

...no one wants to sacrifice his own child's education in order to better serve someone else's kid. But here's the great thing about attending racially and socioeconomically integrated schools: It helps children become better grown-ups. Research by Columbia University sociologist Amy Stuart Wells found that adult graduates of integrated high schools shared a commitment to diversity, to understanding and bridging cultural differences, and to appreciating "the humanness of individuals across racial lines."

Before addressing the core failures of this argument, its useful to run through some of its smaller inadequacies:

The fact that a child is home-schooled doesn't mean he or she is being told to trust only his or her parent.

Families that homeschool or send their kids to private school pay into the public school system just like every other local taxpayer, but their kids aren't a burden on its resources. Were everyone to attend public schools instead, would the "peer effect," if it exists, be significant enough to outweigh the extra cost of educating all the homeschoolers and private school kids?

Are the test scores of low-income students really a reliable measure of how much they're thriving?

Amy Stuart Wells was writing about the Class of 1980. Since cultural attitudes about diversity have radically changed in the intervening years, isn't it possible that the effect of attending a diverse high school is less pronounced?

If all we know about integrated high schools is that their graduates are more committed to diversity and better able to bridge cultural differences - good things, to be sure - can we really conclude that these graduates are "better grown-ups" than graduates of less diverse high schools? Hypothetically, what if a less diverse private school produced graduates who were more academically prepared, more committed to gender equality, and more adept at problem solving that brought about social improvements? What if a homeschool collective meanwhile produced graduates who were more inclined to forgive their enemies, more likely to give to charity, and more likely to volunteer abroad? Judging what schools produce "better grownups" is thorny. Doing so by citing three diversity metrics in a vacuum is absurd.

None of these objections explains why I am so antagonistic to the notion that everyone should join the public school system. I'm glad its there. I want it to be well-funded and substantially improved. I presume a majority of Americans will always attend public schools. But I value diversity more highly than Goldstein or Freddie deBoer, however often they invoke that same word. In their vision, kids from different races and classes should come together in public school system that everyone in America is invested in improving. I agree. But I want alternatives to exist too.

There are several compelling reasons why.

One reason is that individuals have different needs. Think back to your schools days. I'm sure you remember people in your class who thrived, and others who'd have learned more and been happier in a different environment. Perhaps an all girls school. Or a military academy. Or a homeschool. You'd think people attuned to the diversity of kids in America would grasp that the public school system is never going to be set up in a way that is best suited to all of them, no matter how successfully it is reformed, or how many resources are poured into constantly improving it. Hurray if public schools exists alongside other options where some students flourish, for those other options accommodate difference far better than a single universalist model.

Society benefits from institutional diversity too. Goldstein writes, "I benefited from 13 years of public education in one of the most diverse and progressive school districts in the United States. My father, stepmother, stepfather, and grandfather are or were public school educators." Says deBoer, "What I learned by coming up, K-12, surrounded by children who were not like me on many dimensions was that this diversity is in and of itself the best education." They seem curiously blind to the fact that many attendees of private schools and homeschooling collectives can speak as eloquently about unique things they learned at school. The Catholic school system, where I was educated, soured me on the faith, but I was able to glean substantial wisdom from the Catholic perspective on the world, and I'd doubtless have learned a different set of valuable lessons had I been educated by Hindus or Muslims or Alan Jacobs.

Would these different sorts of wisdom all survive if an increasingly centralized public school system operated as a monopoly? Aren't we better off in a society that draws on folks who got different sorts of education? Some progressives seem to think a diverse society is one where every 14-year-old in America arrives at school, pledges allegiance to the nation's flag, takes out an American history textbook shaped by panels of bureaucrats in California and Texas, and proceeds to be guided by a teacher with a state issued credential in how best to pass a standardized test. Who is celebrating diversity, the champions of putting every kid in the education wonk's vision of the ideal classroom, or the folks who want some kids to start their day interacting with multi-ethnic classmates while others start their school day praying and still others learn about raising backyard chickens?

The final question is what sort of educational system is likely to produce the best results in the long run, or to be more specific, what system is best suited to evolving in advantageous ways. I'd bet on the diversified system, the one where there are always competitors with different models to measure public schools against. As Friedrich Hayek put it, there is value in "rules which are neither coercive nor deliberately imposed - rules which, though observing them is regarded as merit and though they will be observed by the majority, can be broken by individuals who feel that they have strong enough reasons to brave the censure of their fellows... Rules of this kind allow for gradual and experimental change. The existence of individuals and groups simultaneously observing partially different rules provides the opportunity for the selection of the more effective ones." This philosophy suggests a different message for homeschooling parents than the one Goldstein offers. It might go something like this:

There is value in the public education system. Lots of intelligent, informed people have helped to shape its curriculum and norms. Consider their model with an open mind, and depart from it only after taking their claims seriously. And if you reach an informed conclusion that a different model is better, if that is your strong conviction, go out and be the change you want to see in the world. It may happen that you're right or wrong, but society as a whole requires people who challenge the prevailing system if it is to identify the few who can offer new insights.

This approach ought to be particularly appealing to dissident cultural critics like deBoer, who generally see the value in dissent and radical critiques of prevailing norms. Why is education different?

Image credit: Flickr user IowaPolitics.com

Proof That Mitt Romney Is No Robot

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:09:39 GMT

A machine programmed to pander would do a much better job than the Republican presidential candidate.

Look at the clip above, where Mitt Romney seriously says the following to voters in his home state of Michigan:

I love this state. It seems right here. Trees are the right height. I like seeing the lakes - I love the lakes. There's something very special here. The Great Lakes, but also all the little inland lakes that dot the parts of Michigan. I love cars. I grew up totally in love with cars. It used to be in the '50s and '60s that if you showed me one square foot of almost any part of a car I could tell you what brand it was, the model and so forth. Now with all the Japanese cars I'm not quite so good at it, but I still know the American cars pretty well, and drive a Mustang. I love cars. I love American cars. And long may they rule the world, let me tell you.

The trees are the right height?

I've joked in the past about Mitt Romney's resemblance to a robot, as in this clip, where he says he likes all types of music. But the clip above has made me reconsider. Robots are sophisticated these days. Were there pandering software inside Romney he'd be much better at ingratiating himself to a crowd from his home state. Whereas above he sounds like a rock star on a 39 state tour. "Hello, Michigan! Your cars kick ass! I've got a Mustang outside right now!"

I'm beginning to like it in spite of myself. If only politicians were equally bad at the pandering they all do, maybe we'd be more realistic about the choices before us. Tired as I am of the GOP primary, I sorta hope it gets all the way to California, just so I can see how Romney tries to pander to us. "You've got such gorgeous beaches. And boy is the weather great. It's no wonder Ronald Reagan was an optimist. I've had a soft spot for California ever since it birthed his career. What a leader you Golden Staters produced. And your loose meat sandwiches, or tacos, just delicious."

Does the Media Really Savage Social Conservatives?

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:09:38 GMT

Rick Santorum defenders say his beliefs cause him to be attacked. Actually, it's his high poll numbers and culture warrior stances.

In his latest column, National Review Editor Rich Lowry argues that social conservatism, as embodied by Rick Santorum, is "a standing affront to the sensibilities and assumptions of the media and political elite," who are "constantly writing the obituary for social conservatism, which is supposed to wither away and leave a polite, undisturbed consensus in favor of social liberalism." For this reason, "the media has unleashed the hounds on Rick Santorum," he argues.

I don't buy it.

It is surely true that the employees of many mainstream media organizations are personally put off by social conservatism, and bias against folks who subscribe to that belief system assuredly exists. But the personal biases of the media elite aren't in fact driving coverage in the 2012 primaries.

The professional biases of journalists are more relevant.

Think about the GOP contest so far. If stereotypes about what liberal media workers believe drove coverage, Buddy Roemer, the champion of campaign finance reform, and Gary Johnson, who is pro-choice, pro-immigration, and anti-drug war, would've gotten more favorable press coverage. In reality, they were kept out of debates even when they met the pre-determined criteria. Lowry would also have us believe that the media won't put up with Santorum's "unforgivable opposition to abortion," but the media darling of this cycle, Jon Huntsman, was just as pro-life.

Forget what media types believe. What they regard as savvy is what they'll cover. In the 2012 election cycle, press coverage has been driven substantially by the horse race, and then by real or perceived gaffes. Mitt Romney, the presumed frontrunner, has been written about most. Over the course of the campaign, as various candidates seemed to eclipse him, they were vetted in succession, with reporters delving into their records and opinion writers savaging them for their weaknesses. Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich: they all occupy different places on the spectrum of social conservatism, but all were treated basically the same by reporters and editors at the moment when they seemed like viable candidates.

The same goes for Rick Santorum. I'd guess that if anything, his social conservatism erroneously persuaded a lot of editors that he wasn't a viable candidate, and therefore not worth vetting as thoroughly as Gingrich even after his Iowa upset earned him national headlines.

Now that it seems like he could -- just maybe -- win the nomination, everything is different.

It's also worth mentioning that it isn't just liberals in the media who are "constantly writing the obituary for social conservatism." Lots of conservatives are doing that too, and for good reason: social conservatives keep losing. They can take some heart in public opinion about abortion among the younger generation, though it is almost certainly going to remain legal indefinitely. Medical researchers are going to keep using stem cells. Contraception is widely thought to be good. Hip hop music is mainstream. Gay marriage is spreading every year. The notion that women should stay home with their kids rather than participating in the workplace has been abandoned even by the hard right. Discomfort with Islam is causing many on the European right to rethink how much accommodation the state should afford to orthodox faith communities. And Republican presidents never focus on social conservatism when they're elected. If its premature to publish the obituary for social conservatism, it's only prudent to commission a draft. It would make a great NR cover story if Obama beats Santorum in a landslide. Social conservatism wouldn't then cease to exist. But its influence would be less than it is now.

In fairness to Lowry, I do think that if Santorum wins the nomination, he'll garner more negative press attention than did John McCain circa 2008, or George W. Bush circa 2000, for they ran as "uniters." Santorum is more likely to be treated as Palin was, for he too is running as a culture warrior. Lowry says that "Santorum's social conservatism brings with it an unstinting devotion to human dignity," and while human dignity is a thread that runs through his system of beliefs, it isn't consistent. Santorum originally angered the liberal elite, among others, for an analogy about gay marriage that wouldn't have been uttered by a man eager to grant homosexuals dignity. Folks looking to tease out how much antagonism to Santorum is due to his temperament and personality and how much is due to his social conservatism might compare his treatment to that of another social conservative, media favorite Mike Huckabee. This stuff is seldom about substance.

Image credit: Reuters