The David Brooks manual of style
Chait has an excellent post unpacking the Platonic ideal of a David Brooks column. It might have readers nodding along.
It begins with an interesting little sociological ditty:
When reading this, you were probably wondering to yourself, How is this going to lead to the reluctant conclusion the Democrats are wrong? Don’t worry, Brooks has a bridge:
See where this is headed? No? Here you go:
While I tend to give Brooks more credence than does Chait on substance, one has to admit he has his formulas.
-John
Cheney against sanctity of the home!
Julian Sanchez has an additional reason to condemn the deplorable effort by the far right to blame lawyers who defended Guantanamo inmates for…something.
The central, celebrated cases that have established the boundaries of our most cherished civil liberties often involve bad people who are….Few other people have an incentive to bear the burden of fighting all the way to the Supreme Court. If you can get acquitted on the merits, it’s not worth a protracted battle over the procedural fine points.
It’s not only that defending those accused of deplorable crimes is the right thing to do, it’s also the reason we can enjoy a number of important freedoms at all.
-John
Cow ethics ctd.
Marginal Revolution tackles the relevant and complicated world of cow ethics:
If each cow brought to life adds even some small bit of cow utility to the grand total of cow welfare must not beef eaters be lauded, at least if they are hungry enough? Or is the pro beef-eater argument simply repugnant?
Maybe it’s ruining the fun to say so, but the distinction is that, at least to our knowledge, cows are unaware of their impending doom, or at least handle it very well. Overall quality of life for a cow could be very good up until the very last moment. The real challenge is not just the “pro beef-eater argument,” that cows will eventually be slaughtered, but that their lives are often of poor quality.
Then there’s the question of whether an additional marginal cow lowers the quality of life of each existing cow. One could make the argument that additional cows tend to decrease beef prices, forcing ranchers to lower costs by treating cattle worse in some way (overcrowding, low-quality feed, etc).
-John
What is a public intellectual?
Commenter Erik made an interesting point about my Krugman piece:
While you make an (interesting) case for Krugman as a “successful public intellectual”, I don’t think it ultimately succeeds. There is no doubt that Krugman is a first-rate economist, and perhaps, one of the best trade economists of all time.
Having said that, I believe being an even-handed evaluator of ideas is necessary to be a “successful public intellectual.” Krugman falls down on this account. While he sometimes criticizes the left and right alike, most often he brushes aside counter arguments through best at intellectual sophistry, and worst through repeated ad hominum attacks. I have seen him on many panels, and each time he speaks, I don’t come away with a feeling that he has honestly engaged the issue more than using it as a podium to pound his ideological position. Indeed, Isaiah Berlin, perhaps one of the best public intellectuals of all time, was respected for listening and responding thoughtfully to his critics. If that’s even a consideration in determining a public intellectual, Krugman fails miserably.
Religion and foreign aid
I owe thanks to Nicholas Kristof for publishing a piece on religious missionaries in the NYT the day after I was discussing this issue with friends.
Kristof reminds us that religious groups are doing great humanitarian work. He reminds us that
Some Americans assume that religious groups offer aid to entice converts. That’s incorrect. Today, groups like World Vision ban the use of aid to lure anyone into a religious conversation.
I’m sure I’m one of the “some Americans” Kristof has in mind. I’ll freely concede that humanitarian work is good regardless of the reason why it’s done. I think a convincing argument could also be made that humanitarian aid would still be good even if it was used as a “lure” for conversion, if that’s the only way that the aid would be allocated. However, I don’t think Kristof takes seriously enough the case against faith-based intervention. He writes:
A root problem is a liberal snobbishness toward faith-based organizations. Those doing the sneering typically give away far less money than evangelicals. They’re also less likely to spend vacations volunteering at, say, a school or a clinic in Rwanda.
Accusations of elitism or “snoobbishness” generally point to poor argumentation to follow. The critique against faith-based groups is more serious than Kristof believes.
It’s never clear where commitments end and humanitarianism begins. The issue of condoms is a good example. Faith-based organizations that do not provide condom distribution are doing their constituency a grave disservice. if secular international organizations are not on the ground because the most pressing needs are being addressed (hunger, disease) by faith-based groups, there’s no locus in which good policy can be made. When aid money is channeled through government organizations, there’s room for an open debate on best practices. This debate cannot happen when aid money is simply granted to religious organizations. Fundamentally, Kristoff is ignoring that to at least some extent, the aid channeled through religious organizations trades off with aid provided by secular NGOs or governments.
The tragic case of Ugandan efforts to pass a law punishing homosexuality by death are another example. This farce was supported by a few US evangelical groups; probably the groups Kristof praises had nothing to do with it. But what will those groups do to actively oppose such initiatives? (Perhaps this is colonialism, and therefore should also be opposed by us snobs.)
But of course, Kristof is right in his central point — that many faith-based organizations do a lot of good and do not actively contribute to these harms. However, while he’s able to mention one group that seems to keep it’s religious commitments away from its humanitarianism, us pointy-headed liberal snobs are right to stay on guard.
-John
Tea parties and terrorism
Robert Wright, blogging for the New York Times, argues that the Texas IRS plane crasher is “the first tea-party terrorist.” For the record, I’m inclined to agree that whether we call someone a terrorist or not isn’t particularly important. It has little moral resonance, since flying a plane into a building is clearly wrong independent of it being terrorism. I don’t see how the designation really has any policy relevance, either. Wright’s argument concludes by noting that if we do not overreact by labeling the attack “terrorism,” we’ll have short-circuited the purpose of the attack, which was to spur an overreaction. Plausible enough, but I still think that nutjobs will be nutjobs regardless of how the last one was labeled.
Wright outlines some reason that Stack did and did not hold core Tea Party themes, then concludes:
In the end, the core unifying theme of the Tea Partiers is populist rage, and this is the core theme in Stack’s ramblings, whether the rage is directed at corporate titans (“plunderers”), the government (“totalitarian”) or individual politicians (“liars”).
I think this is getting at the core moral issue. It seems uncontroversial to me that threats, veiled or not, against the physical well-being of a sitting president are sedition, and promises to commit acts of violence in the service of toppling the state are treason (terrorism or not). These threats are present in spades in the TP movement. In fact, I can’t really identify what separates TPers from mainstream Republicans except this tenancy towards revolutionary delusion.
-John
Authenticity and the public intellectual
The New Yorker has a worthwhile profile of Paul Krugman. It traces his transformation from a dedicated and accomplished academic who scorned politics to the NYT firebrand we know today. When thinking about Krugman’s appeal, part of it might well be that he doesn’t seem to want to confront the right on a weekly basis. He’d rather be writing academic papers or relaxing in the Caribbean. At a time when it seems that everyone wants their 20 minutes as a “Democratic/Republican Strategist” on the news networks, Krugman stands out as a figure who doesn’t seem to crave more publicity. (Behind his content demeanor, of course, lies the fact that he’s ascended to the pinnacle of both academic economics and political commentary, leaving him really nothing else to aspire to.)
Krugman seems to still see himself as a kind of guard against poverty in the public discourse on economics. He seems just as able to criticize the left as the right, when he sees need; the bio reminds us that Krugman was a vocal opponent of Obama in the democratic primaries. But of course, Krugman is and will always be identified strongly with the left. As his tone has become more partisan, it’s clear that his role is not simply to correct economic misinformation, but to play his own part in moving the discourse.
What has made Krugman a successful public intellectual? Certainly his engaging writing style plays a part, but there are certainly other economists who could manage the same skill. And it’s not simply his vigor in defending his position; those “____ Strategists” can muster more of that. Krugman has been able to meld wonkery with partisan advocacy in a way that makes him one of the few commentators that feels in any way authentic without grandstanding for a cause. It may be impossible to replicate this authenticity without having first accomplished what Krugman has in his field, but commentators looking to survive more than a few news cycles should take note.
-John
The surprising wisdom of Ebert
One associates Roger Ebert with film criticism, but it seems that since he lost the use of his voice, he’s been turning out an incredibly insightful blog of political and social commentary. It’s worth your time; his insights are generally common-sense, in the best way possible. Moreover, his writing style, honed as a journalist, is well worth study and replication.
Here he is on friendship, on political extremism, and on quantum mechanics. Whatever you might think of his film criticism (I like it fine), these pieces are worth your while.
As an aside, I came to Ebert’s journal via this Esquire piece, which is well worth your time as well.
-John
What are the alternatives?
Richard Posner does an excellent job in this piece tying together a discussion on growing debt and the emerging fiscal crisis with the growing consensus that America is “ungovernable.”
But again, no solutions are offered. It may really be an urgent crisis if not even our public intellectuals have proposals to right the ship.
-John
Design as political education
Via Sullivan, designer Jake Lewis is using his talents to make incredibly important political points in a visual medium.
A central concern I think many political experts have is communicating messages in a way that resonates publically. Basic, quantitative truths are so easily sidetracked in the modern political landscape. Heal care reform :: Death panels! Torture :: Enhanced interrogation! The examples are endless. It’s maddening, to me at least, to read poll after poll in which the public at large has little knowledge of public affairs; worse, public opinion often seems to make little coherent sense. The ease at which vast swaths of the population were convinced that the health care reform bill was designed to murder senior citizens seems to be proof enough.
That’s old news. Lewis’s work struck home to me the possibilities of using design to drive home political points in a way that can’t so easily be subverted or distracted in the next news cycle. Lewis demonstrates that it’s possible to present facts in a way that appeals emotionally, since facts that appeal only intellectually are unlikely to resonate.
Certainly, this style can be used by either end of the political spectrum. But liberals, in particular, seem to be adrift when trying to combat the more emotionally charged appeals of their opponents. (This is the old Bush vs. Gore debate dynamic: “He’s just citing statistics!”) To make an impact politically, it’s not enough for a certain fact to be true. It also has to be communicated effectively.
-John
Share us
I’ll have to defer on Krugman’s performance on panels as I’ve never seen him speak in person. My comments below only apply to his NYT column. (I think this focus is justified by the fact that the NYT column is far and away his most “public” venue and the one that marks Krugman as a public intellectual rather than academic or DC wonk.
I think Erik is right that a public intellectual needs to engage the arguments of his or her opponents. To the extent that Krugman doesn’t do this, he should. But, I’m not sure that a public intellectual needs to be “even-handed.” Krugman is, politically, a liberal, and it’s clear that he brings those commitments with him to his work.
I also think that Krugman’s goals in his public work (as opposed to academic work) are political. He’s trying to convince an audience of something. To do this, your certainly want to address relevant counter-arguments, but you don’t necessarily need to address all of them. This may knock you down in the “even-handed” department, but I’m not sure that’s the goal.
As I argued previously, what sets Krugman apart is the sense that he’s making arguments in good faith. While he is advancing his political cause, I myself never get the sense that he’s making arguments disingenuously to that end. His reputation, built as an economist, is what sustains him as a public intellectual.
-John