Bloodless war?
In the Christian Science Monitor, Richard Scott discusses a greater role for non-lethal weapons in future war fighting. The morality of physically controlling and coercing people without killing them is different than the one where people die. What does a theory of just non-lethal war look like?
-Jake
Femarxism
The state of the women’s liberation movement is poor, according to British Marxists writing in The Guardian and counterfire.org.
-Jake
For Sale: Acropolis
German politicians yesterday argued that Greece should sell some uninhabited islands and historical monuments, like the Acropolis and Parthenon, in order to stave off bankruptcy. This raises some questions about the E.U. and international justice: What is the moral relationship between EU states? Is the E.U. simply a dense network of treaties amongst independent states or the beginning of a brand new, full-bodied people? How much sacrifice of one E.U. state is required to help another in need? Only that which is required explicitly by treaty? How “special” are the obligations between E.U. citizens in different countries, meaning to what extent are their obligations to fellow E.U. citizens greater than those owed to foreign strangers? What is the relationship between common identity and special obligations? Between shared institutional structures and special obligations?
-Jake
Ideological birth certificates
The National Review asks: Can a true American be liberal?
At The National Review, editors Richard Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru argue, in 5,000 words, that Pres. Obama assaults “American identity” and the concept of “American exceptionalism.” Damon Linker rebukes the piece at The New Republic. Here’s the outline of their argument:
What do we, as American conservatives, want to conserve? The answer is simple: the pillars of American exceptionalism. Our country has always been exceptional. It is freer, more individualistic, more democratic, and more open and dynamic than any other nation on earth. These qualities are the bequest of our Founding and of our cultural heritage. They have always marked America as special, with a unique role and mission in the world: as a model of ordered liberty and self-government and as an exemplar of freedom and a vindicator of it, through persuasion when possible and force of arms when absolutely necessary.
These unique American qualities began with the colonies:
America was blessedly unencumbered by an ancien régime. Compared with Europe, it had no church hierarchy, no aristocracy, no entrenched economic interests, no ingrained distaste for commercial activity. It almost entirely lacked the hallmarks of a traditional post-feudal agrarian society. It was as close as you could get to John Locke’s state of nature. It was ruled from England, but lightly; Edmund Burke famously described English rule here as “salutary neglect.” Even before the Revolution, America was the freest country on earth.
Sarah Palin, elitist
At TNR.com Leon Wieseltier has an interesting piece on the meaning of elitism and populism. He writes:
The wisdom of a policy is not determined by its social origins. There is a distinction between populism and “the people,” though most populists do not want you to know it. The populism that bases its criticisms on a preference for one segment of the populace is merely another special interest, its denunciations of special interests notwithstanding. This does not mean that its criticisms are wrong; but when they are right, it is because their reasons are moral, not sociological.
-Jake
Mt. Vernon Statement
The confusion of conservative fusionism
Here’s my oped on the Mount Vernon Statement in the Christian Science Monitor:
Have you heard the one where Ron Paul, Pat Robertson, and John Bolton walk into a bar? According to the “Mount Vernon Statement,” the declaration of first principles signed yesterday at part of George Washington’s estate by conservatives of varied persuasions, the punch line would be “Constitutional conservativism.” Led by Edwin Meese, President Reagan’s attorney general, the collection of prominent economic, social, and “national security” conservatives aimed to clarify and recommit themselves to conservativism’s bedrock political philosophy.
They modeled the project self-consciously on the 1960 Sharon Statement that ushered in “new conservativism” when the Young Americans for Freedom signed it at William F. Buckley Jr.’s estate in Sharon, Conn. Like those young activists, Frank Meyer’s and Mr. Buckley’s vision of a theory able to “fuse” disparate American conservative ideologies inspired Meese and Co. The resulting mix of pabulum, historical revisionism, and internal inconsistency sheds light on enduring and contemporary tensions within American conservativism.
First, their argument. The main nugget of “Constitutional conservatism” is that America needs to return to the “limited government based on the rule of law” ideals of the Founders, who “sought to secure national independence, provide for economic opportunity, establish true religious liberty and maintain a flourishing society of republican self-government.”
William James on war
Contemporary lessons for the Left?
In a famous 1906 essay, “The Moral Equivalent of War,” William James argues that war, while absurd and irrational, ennobles and steels man’s character.
Fidelity, cohesiveness, tenacity, heroism, conscience, education, inventiveness, economy, wealth, physical health and vigor - there isn’t a moral or intellectual point of superiority that doesn’t tell, when God holds his assizes and hurls the peoples upon one another.
The virtues that prevail, it must be noted, are virtues anyhow, superiorities that count in peaceful as well as in military competition; but the strain is on them, being infinitely intenser in the latter case, makes war infinitely more searching as a trial. No ordeal is comparable to its winnowings. Its dread hammer is the welder of men into cohesive states, and nowhere but in such states can human nature adequately develop its capacity. The only alternative is “degeneration.”
Reflective apologists for war at the present day all take it religiously. It is a sort of sacrament. It’s profits are to the vanquished as well as to the victor; and quite apart from any question of profit, it is an absolute good, we are told, for it is human nature at its highest dynamic. Its “horrors” are a cheap price to pay for rescue from the only alternative supposed, of a world of clerks and teachers, of co-education and zo-ophily, of “consumer’s leagues” and “associated charities,” of industrialism unlimited, and feminism unabashed. No scorn, no hardness, no valor any more! Fie upon such a cattleyard of a planet!
Snownership
When you shovel a parking spot out of the snow, should you own it? Jonathan Chait discusses at TNR.
-Jake
Consumer competence
Gary Becker, famous U. Chicago economics professor, and Richard Posner, famous U. Chicago “law and economics” professor and federal appellate judge, discuss the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The agency is to protect consumers from misrepresentation (and bad personal judgment) when it comes to financial products (e.g. sub-prime mortgages). Their lucid discussion is especially interesting as an example of how economists and “law and economics” scholars think about policy questions.
-Jake
Fish on the First
Stanley Fish provides an interesting analysis of the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Citizens United.
-Jake
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