Monday, November 29, 2004

Don't bogart that Court, my friend

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Today the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in what is arguably the most important federalism case of the decade, Ashcroft v. Raich (Case No. 03-1454). The sheer number (and sophistication) of amici curiæ makes for a daunting reading list, but for those who are up to it, links to the documents are below.

I have opted to link to a document at the organization's own page. If that not available, I have opted for text-PDFs over scanned image-PDFs, because the former are usually smaller. The Respondent's page has all of the relevant court documents, from the very first complaint onwards.

more...
Opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

Parties' briefs

Department of Justice (Petitioner) brief
Angel McClary Raich's (Respondent) brief
Department of Justice reply

Amici for Petitioner

Robert I. DuPont, et al.
Drug Free America Foundation
Rep. Mark E. Souder, et al.
Community Rights Counsel

Amicus for neither party

Pacific Legal Foundation

Amici for respondent

California Nurses Assn. and DKT Liberty Project
States of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi
Institute for Justice
Constitutional Law Scholars
States of California, Maryland and Washington
Cato Institute
Leukemia and Lymphoma Society
Marijuana Policy Project
Lymphoma Foundation of America
Reason Foundation
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws




UPDATE: In an inexcusable lapse of blogging etiquette, I forgot to thank Will Baude for reminding me of today's oral argument. I should also acknowledge SCOTUSblog's coverage of the case; some of the briefs to which I link are in their archive. And I just noticed that Lawrence Solum also has some thoughts on the matter.

UPDATE: Slate's Dahlia Lithwick reports on the oral arguments in the High Court.

Friday, November 19, 2004

Academic blogging survey

Cross posted on Political Arguments.

I encourage all academic bloggers to fill out Crooked Timber's Eszter Hargittai's academic blogging survey. Consider it an external duty of virtue.

Thursday, November 18, 2004

Bible schmeible

A Classics scholar pointed me to a review in CNN of a new translation of the Pentateuch. The news? It's in the Entertainment section. Damn those CNN liberal media elitists trivializing religion!

Maroon blues

Cross posted on Political Arguments.

Via Will Baude. As David Brooks and Tom Wolfe scold academia for being a little loose with its morals, Stanley Kurtz chides the University of Chicago for being a little loose with its intellect. Will Baude comes to the Maroons' defense, and enlists several current and former bloggers with Chicago affiliations to his side.

The point, however, shouldn't that Chicago is a "haven for conservative scholars". It's that Chicago doesn't much care whom you pray to, vote for, picket or boycott in your own free time, as long as you do good research and teach well. There are clearly excesses on the left and right by those who think that all social institutions must march in righteous lockstep to the promissed land. It is the social function of academia to account for it all, not to join in the march.

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

The university's point

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Michael Green, of the University of Chicago Philosophy faculty, has posted a pointed retort to David Brooks's book review-cum-diatribe against universities, which appeared in today's New York Times. Since Green doesn't seem to have permanent links to his posts, I will quote it in toto.

more...
There's just no pleasing people

Was it so long ago that universities were criticized because of their hectoring, moralistic, "politically correct" attitudes?

Now they say we don't teach morality enough.
Highly educated young people are tutored, taught and monitored in all aspects of their lives, except the most important, which is character building. When it comes to this, most universities leave them alone. And they find themselves in a world of unprecedented ambiguity, where it's not clear if you're going out with the person you're having sex with, where it's not clear if anything can be said to be absolutely true.

In other words, we have constructed this great apparatus to fill their minds - with thousands of Ph.D.'s ready to serve. But when it comes to courage, which is the pre-eminent virtue since without it nothing else lasts, we often leave them with the gnawing sense that they really should develop it, though God knows how.

I'm going to pass on the assumption that the most important character traits are linked with sexuality, much less that courage is.

Universities, if they are doing a good job, do teach important character traits, but it's by example rather than by the book. Employees of universities do well if they are open-minded, honest, charitable towards those who disagree with them, sincere about what they believe, and, above all, accurate in their beliefs. Bernard Williams called these the virtues of truth. Well, he called the last two the virtues of truth; I suspect he would say that the others are related to the way we understand the value of truth in our historical circumstances.

Courage is related to the virtues of truth. One must be willing to say what one believes, even if it is unpopular. And one must be willing to abandon beliefs that are not true, even if doing so comes at a high personal cost. But the overlap is only partial.

Students looking to build character traits by observing us should not count on much more than that. Nor should parents, novelists, or op-ed writers.

If they do want more, they're going to get the values held by those who prize the virtues of truth above most other things. And I'm afraid that we tend to think that the range of choices that count as private and not subject even to informal social regulation is significantly broader than they might like. It's an interesting question why that is so. But there's little point in fighting it.

To return to my original question, I think that some of what is going on here is a tussle over "morality." Some people find the attitudes underlying traditional gender roles immoral; others think the opposite. Why both sides come crashing down on sexuality is a good question. (Well, race is usually tossed in there too by the campus left). But it's contentious to say that universities don't teach morality when what you really mean is that they don't teach the moral code that you accept.

Finally, there is a sense in which I agree with both criticisms of the culture in universities: it is overly moralistic in some realms and overly lax in others. I myself don't tend to describe the second problem as one of morality, but I recognize that others do. I don't find their usage objectionable, though I do find it different. I wonder how we move forward from here.

The exchange reminds me of several columns written by Stanley Fish for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Fish's message is in line with Max Weber's "Science as a Vocation"; the academic virtues and the political virtues are distinct, and the role of an academic qua scholar is not to use the classroom as a pulpit, but to research, publish, and instruct. Likewise, the University's role is to produce academic knowledge, not to indoctrinate its students in the "civic virtues", whatever those might be.
The corporate world looks to the university for its work force. Parents want the university to pick up the baton they may have dropped. Students demand that the university support the political cause of the moment. Conservatives believe that the university should refurbish and preserve the traditions of the past. Liberals and progressives would like to see those same traditions dismantled and replaced by better ones. Alumni wonder why the athletics teams aren't winning more. Politicians and trustees wonder why the professors aren't teaching more.

Each of these lobbies has its point, but it is not the university's point, which is, quite simply to produce and disseminate (through teaching and publication) academic knowledge and to train those who will take up that task in the future.

To the extent that a university falls away from this mission and allows nonacademic constituencies (some of which may be residing in its own buildings) to call its tune, it will compromise its integrity and forfeit the respect even of those who succeed in bending it to their wishes.

Stanley Fish, "The Same Old Song", The Chronicle of Higher Education (11 July 2003)

If you or your institution has a subscription to the Chronicle I encourage you to read these pieces.




Sunday, November 14, 2004

Solum on consent

Cross posted on Political Arguments.

Lawrence Solum has posted a new addition to his Legal Theory Lexicon. The topic is consent. Here's a taste:
Most law students begin realize that consent is a powerful legal and moral concept early in the first year of law school. A physical blow to the person is a battery—unless the blow was landed in a boxing match, in which case consent turns the battery into something that is legally permissible and not actionable, even if it results in serious harm. Intercourse without consent is the very serious crime of rape; intercourse with consent is quite something else.

The basic legal structure is easy to grant. But what is consent? Why does it have the legal and moral force that it does? When is it valid and when is it invalid?

Solum's brief outlines of important topics in legal theory are helpful, although sometimes his disciplined attempt to provide a balanced and objective exposition leaves one's philosophical appetite scarcely whetted. In this entry, the most provocative statements are those pertaining to consent in aretaic (virtue) theories, which Solum has defended in the past (on the theory of adjudication, constitutional theory, and judicial selection).

Pluralism, an aside

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Erik makes several thoughtful points about the liberal reaction to the perceived realignment of the American electorate. But I think he is wrong on the meaning of pluralism, the importance of moral sociology, and the shape that institutional design should take. I'll deal only with the first one in this post.

Allow me to reconstruct Erik's argument. Liberals, he argues, are inconsistent when they claim to respect Republican values but then dismiss those same values are wrong. They are also disingenuous in privileging certain kinds of values over others without admitting that such a distinction is not natural, but itself a value judgment. I presume that the values so privileged are things like political liberty, equality of opportunity and economic welfare, whereas religious fervor, tradition, and honor are refused the same importance. But the challenge to democracy lies not in the content of those values, but in the mechanisms that allow Americans to make collective social choices. The issue, Erik argues, is not "the individual psychological, economic, or moral motivations of the persons that voted in this election", but rather "the rules and mechanisms we have in place for forming social welfare functions".

more...I agree that the real problem is institutional design. But a liberal theory does not need to abdicate moral judgment over different world views. Some values are indefensible, some world views abhorrent. Even a theory that eschews making comprehensive judgments over the nature of the good life—Rawls's political liberalism is my paradigm—can nonetheless explain how some world views are incompatible with our best understandings of political society. Inadmissible world views, Rawls writes, are (1) those "requiring the repression or degradation of certain persons on, say, racial, or ethnic, or perfectionist grounds", as well as (2) those that are not objectionable per se, but would "fail to gain adherents under the political and social conditions of a just constitutional regime."

Rawls gives ancient Athens and the antebellum American South as examples of the first case. But the example of the second case should also be familiar: a religion that "can survive only if it controls the machinery of the state and is able to practice effective intolerance" as an example of the second. (PL, p. 196) The dismissal of the first kind of world view, one would hope, is uncontroversial. But the second appeals to a great number of American voters, who are wedded to the idea that the United States is not only historically but normatively and teleologically a Christian nation. Bob Jones is the most vitriolic example:

In your re-election, God has graciously granted America?though she doesn't deserve it?a reprieve from the agenda of paganism. You have been given a mandate. We the people expect your voice to be like the clear and certain sound of a trumpet. Because you seek the Lord daily, we who know the Lord will follow that kind of voice eagerly.

Don't equivocate. Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ. Honor the Lord, and He will honor you.

(Via Josh Marshall)

Now, there is a difference between recognizing the central tenet of value pluralism and respecting a world view that rejects all pretense of reasonableness. In its essence, value pluralism postulates that there are multiple sources of value in the world—duty, happiness, beauty, honor, liberty—and that these values are not reductible to each other (they are ultimate) and cannot be measured on the same scale (they are incommensurable). Some values we may recognize, but not share, in the same way that I accept that Vosges are delicious chocolates, although I despise the taste and smell of chocolate. A world view that cherishes religious faith, nationalism, and honor I can also recognize as worthy of respect, although I prefer a world view that favors skepticism, cosmopolitanism, and a good credit record.

Bob Jones is something of a scarecrow, I admit. Others have made more compelling arguments for policies with which I disagree. Take, for instance, the view of some Mormon and Catholic opponents to same-sex marriage:
I am certain that should same sex marriage be allowed, private religious universities such as my alma mater, Brigham Young University, would still consider same sex relationships to violate their honor codes (in that link, see especially the section governing conduct- all students must commit to living the honor code and live it or they cannot attend Brigham Young University) or bylaws or other university regulations. Since these schools would then be "discriminating" against same sex relationships by forbidding them amongst their students, they would likely be denied their tax benefits, which the Bob Jones University court noted "will inevitably have a substantial impact on the operation of private religious schools," id. at 603-04, as well as on any donors whose donations would no longer be tax deductible.

(Via Will Baude)

The reference is to Bob Jones University v. United States, 461 U.S. 574 (1983). In that case the United States Supreme Court held that a fundamentalist Christian University could be denied the tax-exempt status usually enjoyed by institutions of higher education because it discriminated on the basis of race. The worry, some religious folks argue, is that, if homophobia ever invoked the same moral opprobrium as racism, then religious institutions could be stripped of state subsidies if they did not extend spousal benefits to same sex partners.

This is a ripe occasion for both sides to show reasonableness, in Rawls's sense, to extend to the other fair terms of cooperation that the other can accept. For liberals to insist on every church's endorsement of non-discrimination is simply unacceptable. Even to accuse traditionalist Christians of not being good liberal citizens unless they carry out all of their civic engagements in a liberal fashion is, if not unreasonable, at least in poor taste. But for those same traditionalists to want to legislate their comprehensive doctrines on a host of people that do not, will not, indeed cannot accept them is also unreasonable. A sensible solution would be to guarantee strong associational rights to churches and other civic groups that would insulate them from having to justify their beliefs to the public at large.

Some such overtures are surely being done. But I suspect that it is easier for the political liberal to do this than for the traditionalist Christian. That is because political liberals—unlike comprehensive liberals like Susan Okin—are not committed, in principle, to proselytism. Traditionalist Christians are so committed. It is indeed a tenet of the faith to witness and seek converts, and it would be selfish, sinful even, to allow hapless sould to be tempted by worldly pleasures if one could avoid it. That proselytism, when it turns political, is simply unacceptable in a liberal democratic society, because it frames the terms of cooperation as either coversion or exclussion.

I can understand the value of faith and tradition although if I don't share it, and even respect the genuine good that a believer draws from her religion although if the content of her particular faith is one I find distasteful. But liberal respect is reciprocal, even by definition. I cannot give equal consideration, than, to a world view that can only thrive under conditions of illiberality.


UPDATE: Maureen Dowd makes a similar point about the take-no-prisoners attitude of the evangelical conservative vanguard in today's New York Times.
Yet somehow I'm not getting a peace, charity, tolerance and forgiveness vibe from the conservatives and evangelicals who claim to have put their prodigal son back in office.

I'm getting more the feel of a vengeful mob - revved up by rectitude - running around with torches and hatchets after heathens and pagans and infidels.

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

Let the Eagle Soar

Via Wonkette, John Aschcroft has resigned as Attorney General. You may recall Mr. Ashcroft as the man who lost the 2000 Missouri Senate race to a dead man, and was rewarded for his political magnanimity with the top legal appointment in the country. In a telling display of Christian charity, Mr. Ashcroft ran a well-regarded clothing drive for poor Washington statues. In the interest of full disclosure, I admit—not without regret—that he ia a graduate of my institution's law school.

In his honor, we reproduce the stirring lyrics of his now famous hymn, Let the Eagle Soar...

Read more!Let the eagle soar,
Like she's never soared before.
From rocky coast to golden shore,
Let the mighty eagle soar.

Soar with healing in her wings,
As the land beneath her sings:
'Only God, no other kings.'
This country's far too young to die.

We've still got a lot of climbing to do,
And we can make it if we try.
Built by toils and struggles
God has led us through.

You can listen to it here.

Monday, November 08, 2004

Shameless self-promotion

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

My review of Harold Berman's Law and Revolution II: The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition is up at the Foundations of Political Theory Bookstore. Berman is one of the great legal historians of our time and his sequel to the acclaimed Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983) is a remarkable achievement.

Sunday, November 07, 2004

Le rouge et le bleu, Part 1

Cross posted at Political Arguments

As Erik rightly points out, political scientists don't understand values. Or rather, one might say, they understand "value" as something that can be paid, as an interest that may be met, or a need that could be satisfied. Enamoured as many of them have been of economic analysis, they seem unable to comprehend why a sizable portion of the population seems to "vote against their interests". The claim may be extended to social scientists generally. Tommy Franks' What's the Matter With Kansas is the whipping boy of the day, seemingly for good reason, but the problem goes all the way back to Marx, and even Plato. That some may be deluded, or be victims of false consciousness is not only condescending (which liberals are often accused of being) but also unbearably reductionist. Why must the interest of the stomach and the purse trump those of the the heart?

Read more!I do not think that red states are mistaken about their interests, because I think their actual interests are plural—both of the purse and the heart—and that they are genuine. But I also think they're wrong, and dangerous to liberal democracy (emphasis on the liberal).

This leads me, perhaps, to a position that I believe at once more respectful of red-state America—and even through the purple haze we see that there is one— and more hostile to it. It is truly insulting to try convince "values voters" that what they should really push for is their piece of the Washington pie. It is just as insulting as the repeated attempts at conversion that those same "values voters" foist upon us who'd find our own way to Purgatory.

It is also pointless. As Erik rightly point out, maps make things clearer. Those to which he points show, for instance, that Democratic power is concentrated in the cities and Republican power in rural America. As Al Franken said last night on the Late Show with David Letterman, Wyoming has five people: two senators, a representative, and the five members of the Cheney family. (Actually, it should have over half a million by now, but you get my point.) New York had 8 million in 2000, Los Angeles had 3.8 million and Chicago 2.8 million. All were pretty solid blue, as were nearly all major metropolitan areas in the United States. Maps make things clearer, and these two together tell a hell of a story.


© 2004 M. T. Gastner, C. R. Shalizi, and M. E. J. Newman
Via Mark Newman



© U.S. Census Bureau.

Now, major cities happen to be on the Pacific coast, around the Great Lakes, and on the northern Atlantic coast. The great centers of the population of the United States have been there for quite some time. And the distribution between the secular and the evangelical vote has mapped the urban-rural divide for quite some time, even as both parties trades positions on "values".

So there's something to be said for the effect of urbanization on political attitudes, especially for the effect of large, rich, coastal cities. The Athenian Stranger in Plato's Laws raged against them:
For if [the city] was to be right on the sea, with a good harbor, and not productive in all respects but lacking many things, why, with such a nature it would have required some great savior, and some lawgivers who were divine, to prevent it from coming to have many diverse and low habits. [...] For although a land's proximity to the sea affords daily pleasure, the sea really is a "briny and bitter neighbor." It infects a place with commerce and the money-making that comes with retail trade, and engenders shifty and untrustworthy dispositions in souls; it thereby takes away the trust and friendship a city feels for itself and for the rest of humanity. (704d-705a)

Now, one philosopher's low habits are another's virtues, and I side with David Hume on the salutary effect of luxury and trade. Voltaire, I think, puts it best:
Enter the London stock exchange, that place more respectable than many a court. You will see the deputies of all nations gathered there for the service of mankind. There the Jew, the Mohammedan, and the Christian deal with each other as if they were of the same religion, and give the name of infidel only to those who go bankrupt; there, the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist, and the Anglican accepts the Quaker's promise. On leaving these peaceful and free assemblies, some go to the synagogue, others go drinking; this one goes to have himself baptized in the name of the Father, through the Son, to the Holy Ghost; that one had his son's foreskin cut off and Hebrew words mumbled over the child which he does not understand; others go to their church to await the inspiration of God, their hats on their heads, and all are content.

This is the effect of life in a major metropolitan center—diversity is lived in daily dealings, it cannot be escaped, it inspires forms of cooperation and reciprocity grounded on something other than common belief and common tradition.

Now, sharing a common faith is a good thing, and its value cannot be denied. And the pace and rootlessness of life in an urban center can be confusing, frustrating, even overwhelming. But the rural life makes for a different ethos than the urban; each produces, in effect, a different world-view. My point is not to praise the urban life unqualifiedly (With some qualification, I willingly defend it, and would emigrate to red America only to the blue colonies that are college towns.) My point is that there are different value systems clashing in this country, and that the conditions that produce them are enduring and probably insurmountable. I believe we are indeed in the midst of a "culture war", a religious war, and we should bid the lessons of Westphalia before we find ourselves in a Thirty Years War. No, I don't mean secession, but I do mean a return to federalism, especially when it comes to the collection and use of taxes. But on that later; even the haughtiest heathens need their sleep.

Saturday, November 06, 2004

Losing which left?

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Enough comments have followed my previous post on the results of the election to warrant a new entry.

I'm always skeptical of predictions that any party in the American electoral system is going to lose the fringe if it moves towards the center. The problem is that, in the last four elections, the Democratic party moved first and unilaterally, which allowed, and maybe even forced, the Republicans to go further to the right. The center wasn't captured; it was simply conceded. Barring a major political realignment, median voter dynamics is a kind of prisoner's dilemma, and those who move first have no assurance that the others will act as they expect.

Read more!But, in any case, don't think that a move to the right would lose Democrats the "safe states", as Andrew says. It may lose them some funding and a lot of enthusiasm, but as long as the other option is repugnant enough, liberal Democrats don't have anywhere to go. They could stay home and just not vote, but the prospect of an Alan Keyes representing them in the Senate is likely to keep bringing them to the polls, even if they hold their noses while voting for a conservative Democrat. The Socialists who stayed away from the polls in the first round of the last French presidential election did show up to vote in the second round, not for Jacques Chirac but against LePen. Many of them actually wore clothespins on their nose as they cast their ballot. After all, the candidate who, not too many years prior, had complained of the foul odors coming from immigrants' apartments was the one running against the neo-fascist.

The argument about losing the safe states also disregards the difference between federal and state parties. In true-blue states, liberal Democrats are likely to maintain control. And in those states the ideological center of gravity is likely to stay put. Urban-dominated states like Illinois, New Jersey and the New England states breed moderate Republicans. Think of the long line of Rockefeller Republicans that held the Illinois governorship for 35 years. When we think of moderate Republicans, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (R-ME) come to mind, and Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) and Arlen Specter R-PA). The apparent oddities (Rick Santorum R-PA, for instance) are easy to understand: Pennsylvania, as James Carville said, is "Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between". Just look at the county vote.

At the national level, however, Democratic concessions on "values" will shift the gravity-center of politics further to the right. The Republicans need to differentiate themselves from the Democrats, and a right-leaning Democratic party structurally requires them to go further in that direction. If that's the case, the Democrats will not avoid the fate of becoming a "regional party." They'll be more conservative, but remain clustered in the coasts and urban areas. The Republicans, of course, are a regional party already: their region is the Midwest mountain states and the Old Confederacy. (As Charley Daniels sang, "The South's gonna do it again!") And they're likely to keep it. The North South corridor that runs from Montana and North Dakota down to through Oklahoma is losing population. It is less likely to sprout liberal-breeding cities in the near or far future.

That's why I doubt that a shift to the left will hurt Democrats too much. Will the empty ideological space in the center even ease the pressure on Republicans and cause them to neglect the religious base? That might open a window for Rockefeller Republicans to climb back into the GOP. But if it's going to be dome, it best be done quickly. The loss in a mid-term election will not be disastrous; true-blue states will return Democrats to the Senate. But to try this in a presidential election year would be McGovern all over again.

Poster therapy

I wouldn't link to this stuff on Political Arguments, but here at the pilcrow I don't have no stinkin' standards! So head over to the poster section at whitehouse.org and take a trip down memory lane. It's not Zoloft, but the lookin's free.

Be aware, Ashcroft would not approve of some of this stuff. Well, none of it really.

Via a commenter on Typographica, who didn't mean it in a good way.

Friday, November 05, 2004

Jesusland

I don't advocate secession (well, not quite anyway) but I could not resist this...

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Simplicity, etc.

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

I'm burned out and mildly nauseous this morning, for obvious reasons. So I'll do what I always do in these circumstances, and try to rationalize it all away.

William Saletan has some quick but thoughtful words on the failure of the Kerry campaign. Kerry was constitutionally unable to be simple. That is not a backhanded compliment of his intelligence. Bill Clinton (bless his heart!) was at least as smart, but he could carry a message better than anyone. Remember "It's the economy, stupid!"?

Read more!
Bush is a very simple man. You may think that makes him a bad president, as I do, but lots of people don't?and there are more of them than there are of us. If you don't believe me, take a look at those numbers on your TV screen.

[...]

Now look at your candidate, John Kerry. What quality has he most lacked? Not courage?he proved that in Vietnam. Not will?he proved that in Iowa. Not brains?he proved that in the debates. What Kerry lacked was simplicity. Bush had one message; Kerry had dozens. Bush had one issue; Kerry had scores. Bush ended his sentences when you expected him to say more; Kerry went on and on, adding one prepositional phrase after another, until nobody could remember what he was talking about. Now Bush has two big states that mean everything, and Kerry has a bunch of little ones that add up to nothing.

This race brings back the bad memories of the last French presidential election. There were only insignificant differences between Jacques Chirac—the Gaullist candidate—and Lionel Jospin—the Socialist. The result was an uninspired electorate, a record low Socialist turnout, and an unexpected and alarming second place finish for the neo-fascist Jean-Marie LePen. France was apalled at LePen's victory and saw it as a harbinger of a far-right surge in future polls, but that concern was misplaced. LePen did not get a larger number of votes; rather, Socialist absenteeism—wholly blamable on Jospin's centrist electoral strategy—pushed up LePen's percentage of the vote to record levels.

The lesson? The politics of the median voter may work in any given election, but they must be dispensed with in order to effect a realignment. And if a country is tightly and rigidly divided, the minority party cannot afford to continue losing per sæcula sæculorum, albeit by ever closer margins. Wasn't that the lesson of Barry Goldwater?

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Exit Poll Numbers

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Servers are crashing all over. Wonkette is down, which has brought me to the verge of tears. But Brad deLong has exit poll numbers and Zogby International predictions. And co-blogger Deva (or is that "deva") links to Real Clear Politics, which leans the other way. (Say it ain't so!)

This is just candy, folks, empty calories. The big friggin' meal starts in a few hours. Hope you're hungry.

Kerry's good for business

Good for my business, that is. I'm not predicting that a Democratic administration will shovel truckloads of money to political theory programs. My take on this is more personal. The end of the election means that I won't be wasting so much time on political blogs and poll-tracker sites, regardless of the outcome. But a Kerry win means I won't be substituting poll-trackers for court-watcher as I brace myself for the a civil rights debacle.

Read more!It's a flip on the single-issue anxiety. Frankly, I think that there won't be much of a difference on U.S. foreign policy regardless of who wins tonight. If anything, a Kerry administration will be less bumbling and mendacious than the Bushies, and may end up scaling back on the pace of military intervention. But on the single issue that monopolizes my allegiance—the culture war—a Massachussets liberal in the White House will let me sleep at night. And the thought of social conservatives pulling their hair out and smearing ashes on their face will give me sweet, sweet dreams.

And maybe you'll get some actual work done? That was the point of this post, no?

Yes (ahem!) that too.

Monday, November 01, 2004

Ohio, Ohio, Ohio

It is now less than twelve hours until the polls open in Illinois, and a curious coincidence just struck me. Since I turned eighteen, I've gone to the polls in every election in which I've been elegible to vote, but all of those have been in Puerto Rico, and residents of Puerto Rico can't vote for the U.S. President.

Read more!It's complicated; I'll explain later.

So this is the first time that I'll vote in a U.S. Presidential election. Now, the pundits are all claiming that Ohio will decide the election (via Dan Drezner). And it struck me: my first year of college—1992—I sat in a dorm lounge with my new-found friends and added up the states as they were called. We were young, we knew nothing of polls or predictions, so we were all anxiety and expactation. And then the networks called Ohio for Bill. We jumped into the air and laughed and roared and then we stormed the room of the dorm's Resident Head, who was from Ohio (her name was Lori, I think), and carried her on our shoulders through the halls as we sang of the end of the Reagan-Bush years. I don't even know if she was a Democrat.

That memory will get me though the night. OHIO, Ohio, ohio, o... hi... o... zzz.

And the night after that...?

Zzz...

Hitchens comes clean, or at least dusts himself off

Cross posted at Political Arguments.

Via Instapundit, Christopher Hitchens has clarified his presidential endorsement: he's for Bush. I suspected as much in my previous post on this matter. His apparent endorsement of Kerry was a mistake of the editors of Slate.

Not that he's all that ringing in his preference. He's all for Bush in principle, yes, but when the small matter of reality sets in, well...
If I could choose the person whose attitude toward the immediate foe was nearest to mine, I would pick Bush (and Blair). But if I departed from the strictly subjective, and then considered the ways in which this administration has bitched things up, and further imagined what might happen to a Democratic incumbent who was compelled to get real, I could see a case the other way.

In the end, however, it's nice to know that we've settled the British ex-pat former-Trotskyist hawk vote. Oh, that it were so clear in Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Pennsylvania...

One and one

Via Foreword, a New York Times article on "What Makes an Equation Beautiful."
Mr. Harrison wrote: " '1 + 1 = 2' is the fairy tale of mathematics, the first equation I taught my son, the first expression of the miraculous power of the mind to change the real world. I remember my son holding up the index finger, the 'one finger,' of each hand as he learned the expression, and the moment of wonder, perhaps his first of true philosophical wonder, when he saw that the two fingers, separated by his whole body, could be joined in a single concept in his mind."

This makes me all warm and fuzzy in a curiously Kantian way. Who would think that a synthetic a priori judgment could sound so beautiful?