FURTHER LEFT THAN ATTENTION IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA, DEEPER TROUBLES IN THE ECONOMY?

The public doesn't need to search for far right views, including the views farthest right. The media push such views forward -- most notoriously on the Fox channel, of one thing. The sam cannot be said for views on the left. The spectrum offered falls short of bringing on Paul Krugman prominently (as on PBS) very often, with his apprehensions about one or another stimulus being too little and being cut too early, with his disgust, too, at the callousness and confusion that leads to unemployment insurance lapsing for so many. The media do not bring the views of Noam Chomsky forward either, in spite of Chomsky's unsettling record of extreme good sense. The upshot, however, for the general public is only misgivings about the slowness with which full employment seems to be returning. Even Krugman seems not to be ready to suggest that full employment may not return at all, that we may have run out of Keynesian soltions to stimulate the economy, even if we press them vigorously. The time has come, perhaps, to fall back from Keynes to Marx. Marx much admired the impressive performance of capitalism as a system for promoting economic growth, but he held that in time the performance would falter: booms would be shorter, and busts longer. In time -- maybe now -- we have to face an economic reality in which large-scale unemployment under capitalism is irreducible. What then can be done? The central thing to do would be a permanent program for public employment, which would expand when unemployment in the private sector explanded and contract when and to the extent that private employment increased. By regular rotation, workers with special skills in construction, for example, would use those skills in the public sector when they were not demanded in the private sector. Would this be "socialism" ? Until we can use the term intelligently, perhaps the term "socialislm" should be relegated to the sidelines. On the field itself, the game could allow for a vigorous private sector and even aim at making it more vigorous all the time.

RAND PAUL:EMINENTLY LOGICAL, CHALLENGED BY THE FACTS

Most people, one may expect, talk politics without being conscious of being logical (when they are) or illogical (when they are not logical). If our current politics are any guide, moreover, they are not prepared to deal with thinking in which logic thrusts to the fore -- as it does in the public position expressed by Rand Paul. In this position, libertarian principles drive straightforwardly to logical conclusions that challenge conventional opinions about the tasks of government. The logic is fine, however; and there are no grounds for suggesting, as one TV pundit did, that Paul is lacking in a sense of morality. On the contrary, he has clear moral convictions perfectly consistent with his principles. What opens him to attack, as discussants should keep steadily in mind, is not anything wrong with the logic of his principles or the logical use that he makes of them. What is wrong with his views is the radical lack of fit between the principles and the populous industrial society to which Paul seeks to apply them. They might suit a society composed of independent subsistence farmers, hunters, and fishermen, in which self-reliance could figure as a principal virtue. They do not suit at all a society in which almost everybody is an employee and lacks the means for an independent livelihood. Unfortunately, it is not just Paul's views that are lacking in this respect. The received conception of "American values" does not take the distinction between one society (now mythical) and the other into account.

STEREOTYPES UNFAVORABLE TO DEMOCRATS IN MEDIA TREATMENT OF RECENT ELECTIONS

Recent election results have been more favorable to the Democrats than the stereotypes invoked by pundits and the press have allowed. Who could reasonably have expected that an endorsement by President Obama would offset the discrepancy between the fading and inconsistent Arlen Specter and his vigorous rival Joe Sestak? The upshot in Pennsylvania is a strong progressive candidate that the Democratic side can rally around. If Blanche Lincoln is squeezed out in the Arkansas run-off, another strong progressive Democratic candidate will emerge. The media, fascinated by Rand Paul's victory in the Republican primary, have ignored the heavy turnout in Kentucky in the Democratic primary, but it suggests that in the general election Paul will face a winning opposition. So all these elections have had results so far favorable to the Democrats. That cannot be said of Scott Brown's election earlier, with "tea party" support, in Massachusetts, but there little has been made after the first shock of the lack of vigor of his Democratic opponent. Too much, moreover, has been made of the tea party support. Brown, once installed in the Senate, has been acting and voting, in line with Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, as a traditional New England Republican, perhaps another Saltonstall. Democrats should not write him off as unpersuadable.

AFGHANISTAN: ARGUMENT FOR STAYING; SUPERARGUMENT FOR GETTING OUT

After impressively long and careful reflection, President Obama has decided to stay in Afghanistan, with reinforcements. It is easy to understand how he could have found the argument for staying a compelling one. To leave would jeopardize whatever progress the United States has made in fostering the powers of the Afghan government to keep order, leave the Afghan popoulation (in particular Afghan women) subject to oppression; and no doubt encourage the Taliban and Al Quaeda to redouble their efforts to undermine United States policy elsewhere in the world. The trouble is that this argument, at this level of logic, is incomplete. It does not take into account, as a superargument on the next level of logic up would, the possibility that the argument for staying will be just as compelling at every reiteration in an unending succession of repetitions. That sort of reiteration kept the Vietnam War going; and trench warfare in World War I. Has the possibility of reiteration in respect to Afghanistan been evaluated as carefully as it needs to be? Is there present evidence that, even if some improvements are attained by present military policy, there will be grounds for a compelling reiterated argument next year and the year after, and so on indefinitely? If so, should we not get out now?

A JUST HEARING EVEN FOR THE UNRULY AND INDECOROUS

12 September 2009
A JUST HEARING EVEN FOR THE UNRULY AND INDECOROUS
The media have handled Joe Wilson’s breach of decorum ineptly. On the first day, the PBS Newshour made no distinction between the breach of decorum and the misrepresentation that Wilson’s charge of lying amounted to; or for apologizing about the breach and apologizing about the misrepresentation. The President, quick to dampen down the outrage and characteristically conciliatory, did not help matters by ignoring the issue about an apology on the latter point. A clear distinction between the two issues emerged on Olberman’s talk show the next day. Olberman made it clear that Wilson had not apologized about the misrepresentation; and that there was no basis in the President’s plan for thinking that it was intended to have insurance cover illegal immigrants. Olberman went further; he cited a passage from one of the bills that specifically forbade such coverage. Unfortunately, that is not, logically, the end of the matter. For which of the several bills before Congress did the forbidding? And what were the two amendments that Wilson cited as the basis for his belief that illegal immigrants were to be covered? There may well be nothing to them, or at least nothing to show that the President supports them. However, the point should have been followed up and clarified.

A LOOK BACK AT THE SOTOMAYOR HEARINGS

20 July 2009

The hearings, among other drawbacks, failed to observe the distinction between easy cases, in which what the Constitution prescribes is unambiguous and unmistakable, and the harder cases in which judges have to choose among interpretations of the Constitution in some particular connection. The easy cases – for example, whether any state can be deprived of equal representation in the Senate – rarely come before the Supreme Court, and would invite unanimous decisions if they did. The Court typically divides on the harder cases. It does so conscientiously; at least all the justices will claim that they are deciding the cases with fidelity to the law, to use Sotomayor’s motto. What does that mean, however? Circumstances have changed radically since the Constitution was drawn up: Does the Second Amendment apply to personal ownership of assault rifles? Machine guns? Anti-tank guns? Does the First Amendment protect personal liberty as well in a society in which almost all people are, not an independent farmers, but employees dependent on the good will of their employers? Do employees need more legal protection for economic security than independent farmers? The Sotomayor hearings hardly made a beginning at sorting out such issues and considering how judges or justices should approach such issues. It is typical, however, in this and other connections that our political system falls down in sorting out issues.

THREE LITTLE WORDS

The White House has chosen to back away from Sotomayor's (one-time) claim that "a wise Latina" might be a better judge than a white male by saying that she made a poor choice of words. This suggests mainly using a word out of place, like calling the bankers and brokers who profited from trading in derivatives "embezzlers." But "a poor choice of words" might also mean using too many words or using too few. Sotomayor used too few. If she had simply qualilfied her claim for a wise Latina judge by limiting it expresslky to being a better judge "in some cases" -- three little words -- she would have made an interesting and defensible claim, and one that could have led to an illuminating debate, though not with the blowhards who took the lead in attacking her.