And the best part is that K-Lo's snippy response to Matt shows pretty clearly that she didn't even bother to read Matt's whole post, which just isn't that long. On top of everything else, she's just lazy.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/06_02_26_corner-archive.asp#091461 

Posted at March 2, 2006 6:09 PM in response to Feminists and Iran

Another relevant issue that needs to be included in this calculus: Who has the greater tolerance for "pain"? 

 I don't think it's us.

Posted at February 9, 2006 6:19 AM in response to Who Hurts More? Who Cares?

Sorry Rat, but you've got it wrong. Dionne is taking some poetic license, but he's also pretty much on the mark. Canadiansare big fans "strategic voting". There are many Canadians who absolutely wanted the Liberals out, but when they saw that the Conservatives were almost certain to win more seats, decided to vote liberal in their riding anyway so that the Conservatives wouldn't get *too* many seats. It doesn't always work (Ontario was flabbergasted to wake up to an New Democrat majority in the early 90s -- everyone "protest voted" together and the ship capsized), but for the most part people guess right on this.

So while you're right that you can only vote for who you vote for, the "subtlety and prudence" lies in the sheer number of voters who wanted the Conservatives to win but voted against them. And got exactly what they wanted.

Posted at January 28, 2006 2:35 PM in response to Institutions Matter

The mistaken assumption in Matt's argument is that the "people in charge" have absolute control over the situation. The point of the legislation is to clearly state what American values are according to Americans today. It closes up several semantic loopholes that are being used to justify the behavior. More importantly, it changes the tone of the debate for those in the torture loop. Many on the business end of this torture policy are not all that pleased to be in that position (a la Fishback), and would love to have some moral/legal backing for following their conscience.

A clear statement that is a) from the USA, not some international org and b) is drafted post 9/11 and thus fully cognizant of the all WoT arguments, would make it clear to those people that whatever it is they're being asked to do, they're being asked to do it against the will of the country they serve. There would still be "strained legal reasoning" to try and avoid it, but one can even this Administration can only strain it so far. Plus, they would be aware that there is a higher chance of being held to account. That's why they're opposing it.

You may not create an "airtight seal", but you can move from "leaky as hell" to "watertight" in a hurry, and that makes it a very good and important thing.

Posted at December 14, 2005 7:14 AM in response to Law and Policy

Does anyone have a read on when (or at what pace) the media will catch up to all this? I really thought that Katrina was a tipping point, where suddenly the press seemed to have less fear of the power players. Oz was revealed and all that, and perception of power is crucial to this group's hold on power . But now I'm not so sure. When I hear people like Mark talk about "the inability of Republicans to even remotely regain their footing" since the Social Security fiasco, I get this creepy feeling that they've been knocked down and are taking every last bit of the 10 count before getting back up.

 The Republicans have had a really bad year, but it really doesn't matter if they have a really bad odd-numbered year, because it has yet to cost them a whole lot. Especially if you adhere to the notion that it's power and not ideology in the driver's seat. I agree with Matt that the conservatives tend to lack the policy-wonk level of intellectual curiosity (and he didn't call conservatives as such "not all that bright", that was conservative lawmakers), but that doesn't matter if the driving force is maintaining power.

Even if we take the lowest view of contemporary Republicans (corrupt, intellectually bankrupt powermongers), the one thing they do think deeply about -- because it's what they're in it for -- is winning elections. So when Ruy talks about "the public's growing appetite for change and genuine dislike for GOP policies and practices" as the key to reversing this, I don't know what he means. They didn't much like a lot of those policies and practices in 03 or 04 either, and here we are. We're all venting our respective spleens, and the public is all disaffected with the government at the precise moment in the electoral cycle that it doesn't matter at all. You don't think that they might put a little more effort into controlling the topics of conversation leading up to next year's elections?

Posted at December 7, 2005 5:20 PM in response to Agreements, Disagreements and a Modest Suggestion

I don't think this is much of an argument against TV. The idea that you have to be successful in the dominant means of communication of your day is perennial. I've not checked it, but I would assume that everyone from the invention through to Kennedy had a pleasant voice to listen to. And before that the winners had to be even better on the stump or in small rooms of power players, and had to know how to control print media.

One would have to argue that TV necessarily inhibits political discourse in a way that other media do not to go anywhere with this. I think you could, but that's a larger social issue, not a political one. 

Posted at December 3, 2005 2:37 PM in response to Reform, TV, free speech and billionaires.

the sentence "...the upshot is that generalizing from one to the other on the basis of our responses to anything government does" is supposed to end with IS A MISTAKE. Sorry.

Posted at December 1, 2005 3:09 PM in response to Lessons From The North

Here's the wierd thing about Candians: we actually trust our government.  The famous "life, liberty, pursuit of happiness" bit is replaced by "peace, order, and good government." So when the government does things that transgress the boundaries, Canadians tend to bitch very loudly and then shrug.

The most significant thing I learned about politics when I moved to the U.S. from Canada eight years ago is that Americans seems to have an almost pathological fear of their own governement. Canadians don't. It has significant historical roots (Pierre Berton's  very short and funny book Why We Act like Canadians, a fictional letter exchange btw a Canadian and American, covers it well), but the upshot is that generalizing from one to the other on the basis of our responses to anything government does. We have all Patriot Act all the time, and don't really care. Our government is corrupt and self-serving, but if they seem to doing their jobs reasonably well in the process, then we bitch and then shrug.

It has always struck me that the Reform Party's (and the Conservatives are still Reform) chief political is that they campaigned in a very American style, which Candians don't respond to.

 Another important point is that our MSM is much less sensationalist and dominated by paid mouthpieces. But they are also even more interested in the status quo than their US couterpart because they are so used to the Liberals. If someone could duplicate what happened in Ontario in the early 90s when the entire press turned on David Peterson, that would be a political coup. It's also the only way the Conservatives will ever win.

Posted at December 1, 2005 3:07 PM in response to Lessons From The North

Sorry I missed this. I just think that we often choose to surrender home field advantage on this issue. The "disloyalty" or "treason-lite" charge is not just unwarranted, which would imply that we are further down the road toward disloyalty than the person making the charge. Rather, the accusation is nonsense, in that the major oaths in this country are taken to the Constitution -- a system of government. Implying that criticism of a leader (or even an entire sitting government) is disloyal to the country is itself a gesture of disrespect to the country. So the "attacker" is the one who is verging on being disloyal, because if they succeed in altering the conversation, they have endermined a central pillar of national identity.

 So I guess the proper respsonse to "disloyal" or "traitor" is: "You have no idea what it means to be an American. Go take a civics class."

Posted at November 23, 2005 2:12 PM in response to Dissent is Not Disloyalty

Matt, threatening (and being willing) to kill a person's entire extended family if they don't co-operate with you is an extremely effective method of gaining co-operation, so does that mean we could point to "big piles of non-depraved" family threateners?

 But of course the pragmatic and the moral are separable, and importantly so.  The pragmatic axis has "smart" and "stupid" poles, while the moral axis has "depraved" and "honarable" poles. In political decision making, whether an action is morally depraved is rendered moot if it far enough along the "stupid" side of the pragmatic axis. (Eg, whether this war was just or unjust is practically irrelevant if you can show that the stated goals were unattainable.) So the fact that torture doesn't work means that the moral discussion needn't come up. Of course, if you think it does work, then you have to progress to the moral level and weight the urgency and importance of the info against the depravity of the practice.

 One of the better imaginative scenarios of this comes from the author who has done much (if not the most) to shape the average voting Republican's imagination: Tom Clancy. When Clark tortures the terrorist at the end of The Sum of all Fears, the terrorist lies and almost manages to start a war when the President wants to act on the false info.

Posted at November 16, 2005 9:10 AM in response to Torture and Time Bombs