More on the Turkish coup attempt—“democracy” at any price?

The New Neo Posted on by

In one of my first posts on the coup attempt in Turkey, I mentioned that Daniel Pipes had written a 2015 article asserting that Erdogan’s 2014 electoral victory was bogus. Many people in the west who have championed Erdogan against the coup plotters have cited the fact that Erdogan is the democratically elected leader of the country as the foundation of their defense of him, but even that fact may not be true, according to Pipes.

Now Pipes has written another piece entitled “Why I rooted for the Turkish coup attempt.” Well, I was certainly rooting for it, too (although I saw it as doomed almost from the start). And even though I don’t tweet, I pretty much agree with Pipes in his first paragraphs here:

Every major government condemned the coup attempt in Turkey, as did all four of the parties with representatives in the Turkish parliament. So did even Fethullah Gé¼len, the religious figure accused of being behind the would-be take over.

All of which leaves me feeling a little lonely, having tweeted out on Friday, just after the revolt began, “#ErdoÄŸan stole the most recent election in #Turkey and rules despotically. He deserves to be ousted by a military coup. I hope it succeeds.”

Pipes goes on to explain further:

ErdoÄŸan stole the election. ErdoÄŸan is an Islamist who initially made his mark, both as mayor of Istanbul and as prime minister of Turkey, by playing within the rules. As time wore on, however, he grew disdainful of those rules, specifically the electoral ones. He monopolized state media, tacitly encouraged physical attacks on opposition-party members, and stole votes…

ErdoÄŸan rules despotically. ErdoÄŸan has taken control of one institution after another, even in the two years since he became president, a constitutionally and historically non-political position. The result? An ever-growing portion of Turks are working directly under his control or that of his minions: the prime minister, the cabinet, the judges, the police, the educators, the bankers, the media owners, and other business leaders. The military leadership has acquiesced to ErdoÄŸan but, as the coup attempt confirmed, the officer corps has remained the one institution still outside his direct control.

ErdoÄŸan uses his despotic powers for malign purposes, waging what amounts to a civil war against the Kurds of southeastern Turkey, helping ISIS, aggressing against neighbors, and promoting Sunni Islamism.

Military intervention has previously worked in Turkey. Turkey is the country where military coups d’état have had the most positive effect. In all four of the modern coups (1960, 1971, 1980, 1997), the general staff has shown a disciplined understanding of its role — to right the ship of state and then get out of its way. Their ruling interludes lasted, respectively, five years, two and a half years, three years, and zero years.

Pipes goes on to say that he thinks Erdogan’s days are numbered, and that his downfall will be to overplay his hand in the international arena. I’m not as expert on this as Pipes is (to say the least), but I think he’s being too optimistic. I think that the moves Erdogan is making to solidify his power will indeed solidify his power, much like what happened after the 1979 revolution in Iran. That regime is still in place, although some of the players are gone.

I think it’s also of note that Pipes has long been lumped with the neoconservatives:

Pipes had previously considered himself to be a Democrat, but after anti-war George McGovern gained the 1972 Democratic nomination for President, he switched to the Republican Party. Pipes used to accept being described as a “neoconservative”, once saying that “others see me that way, and, you know, maybe I am one of them.” However, he explicitly rejected the label in April 2009 due to differences with the neoconservative positions on democracy and Iraq, now considering himself a “plain conservative”.

My change experience was complete by around 2003, and thirteen years isn’t so “neo” anymore (although it’s shorter than the amount of time for Pipes, who left the liberal camp in 1972). I also have thought from the beginning that there’s no magic about “democracy” itself without guarantees of liberty and the rule of a law that protects individual liberty. When a dictatorial tyrant is elected, and that person dismantles the structures that protect people’s rights, to defend that person in the name of “democracy” is an absurdity and an outrage.

Articles by Pipes such as this one from 2012 may explain the sort of thinking that led him to differentiate himself from some neocons. I agree with him on the problem with supporting democracy so matter what it looks like; many of my posts about democracy (see this, for example, as well as this) contain such caveats. For example, the following is from that latter post (written nine years ago):

In the many posts I’ve written attempting to explain the basic neocon attitude towards the spread of democracy-(see this and this) I’ve tried to be careful to use the term “liberal democracy” to describe what is advocated. Why? Because democracy alone is not enough.

Democracy can devolve into tyranny almost as easily as a powerful central government can…

History teaches that the Bill of Rights was adopted with an eye to limiting the power of both the executive and the legislative branches, as well as to make clear that all powers not specifically listed in the Constitution as belonging to the federal government were retained by the states and the people. But what would prevent the people from voting away any of those rights? History also teaches us that crowds are strange and fickle things, subject to persuasive demagoguery as well as coercive threats, and that Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor wasn’t lying when he said that humankind is often willing to lay down the burden of freedom for easy answers and the promise of protection from its responsibilities…

Without these guarantees, democracy can mean “one person, one vote, one time.” The Ayatollah Khomeini was given dictatorial powers in a process that began, after the fall of the Shah and the Ayatollah’s triumphant return, with a nationwide referendum that was passed with an extraordinary 92.8% percent of the vote. This established the theocratic dictatorship that exists to this day, with the constitution of Iran being totally rewritten shortly afterwards.

Hitler came to power without ever winning a majority vote for his party, but the German government had another weakness””under its constitution, it was relatively easy to suspend civil liberties and establish a dictatorship. This did not even require the vote of its people, merely a two-thirds majority of its legislature. Therefore it was done by republican means; the Reichstag obligingly voted to abolish itself, although not without the “persuasion” of Hitler’s storm troopers surrounding the building with cries of ““Full powers””or else! We want the bill””or fire and murder!”

And recent less dramatic, but similar and still worrisome, events by which Venezuelan dictator Chavez has seized power with the full cooperation of the Venezuelan legislature””which, as in Germany of old, can amend the constitution by a mere 2/3 vote””demonstrate once again that there are not only “democratic” ways to seize power, but “republican” ones as well (and please note the small “d” and the small “r”)…

How does this apply to the attempts to spread democracy to a country such as Iraq? It makes it clear that democracy itself is a highly flawed “solution” without the guarantees inherent in a liberal democracy, and that none of it is of much use if the constitution of a country is too easily amended or suspended.

It is unsettling to see how many people—on left, right, and in the middle—do not see the truth of this.

Trivial fashion interlude: on the other hand…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the makers of Melania’s dress must be very very happy. It sold out immediately, and at over $2,000 a pop that’s not chump change (although it may be Trump change).

I wish all the Melania-dress-buyers well, though, in wearing it the way she did. I noticed the dress immediately; it’s unusual and to me somewhat reminiscent of perhaps the early-to-mid 60s. But it would be very unflattering for most people. My first thought on seeing it was that I could never pull it off—it would make me (and most women) look like a flour sack tied in the center with a bow (I couldn’t quite tell if it was a bow, but something like that).

No, I don’t really look like a flour sack. But my point is that you have to be tall and very long-waisted (I’m not) to wear that thing, because the high neck (as opposed to the more flattering V) and the belt and the sheath skirt all conspire to make for the lumpy/bumpy divided-in-half look—although not on Melania, who after all was a model:

melaniadress

The puff at the end of the sleeves is also an idiosyncratic touch that’s hard to pull off unless you have marvelous runway panache. Mrs. Trump has it, so it works for her. And white is famously un-slenderizing, so there’s that, too.

There’s also an interesting backstory about the dress:

Melania is originally from Slovenia, which, while she was growing up, was part of Yugoslavia. The dress designer, Roksanda Ilincic, is a Serbian native, which was also part of the former Yugoslavia. In her dress choice, Melania makes a direct nod to her homeland and supports a “local” designer who, like herself, left for her career ”” Ms. Trump’s in modeling, and Ms. Ilinicic’s in fashion.

But, secondly, the choice to not wear an American designer seems to reinforce another message frequently repeated by the Trump campaign: that Melania is the “right” kind of immigrant. In a February interview with Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski, Melania explained that she “followed the law,” working in the U.S. on a work visa before applying for a green card and then, ultimately, citizenship.

Melania’s story is one being carefully presented as the polar opposite to the kind of immigrants her husband has regularly disparaged on the campaign trail.

Who knew a dress could say so much? So maybe fashion isn’t always trivial, after all.

Day Two of the RNC (plus, the continuing furor over Melania’s speech)

The New Neo Posted on by

I didn’t watch the convention yesterday. Mega-busy—and also there’s a limit to the number of political speeches I can stomach, and that limit has always been set very very low.

But other people did watch, and if you want to read about the speeches I suggest you take a look at this, this, this, and this, as well as this.

Even though I didn’t watch the speeches, having read the commentary I have to say that a convention should be a showcase for a party, but it should also have a trajectory that builds to the best of all: the candidate. It should not cause people to sigh and moan, “Oh, I wish he (or she) was the nominee instead,” nearly every time someone other than the nominee gives a speech. This convention always threatened to present viewers with the latter situation, and that’s the way it seems to be shaping up so far.

As for Melania Trump’s speech—when I glanced at Memeorandum earlier today, it still was the lead story with multiple articles on how awful her plagiarism was. I already have written what I think of the whole ridiculous brouhaha, and in that post one of the many things that I mentioned sometimes happened with actual plagiarism (in connection with academics) is that it is a result of careless error. Today we learn that this was the case with Melania’s speechwriter:

[Meredith] McIver helped Melania Trump write the speech, and said in the statement that she included lines from Michelle Obama’s speech by mistake after Melania Trump read them to her over the phone.

“Over the phone, she read me some passages from Mrs. Obama’s speech as examples. I wrote them down and later included some of the phrasing in the draft that ultimately became the final speech. I did not check Mrs. Obama’s speeches,” McIver said in the statement. “This was my mistake, and I feel terrible for the chaos I have caused Melania and the Trumps, as well as to Mrs. Obama. No harm was meant.”

She said that she offered her resignation from the Trump Organization, but that the Trump family rejected it.

“Mr. Trump told me that people make innocent mistakes and that we learn and grow from these experiences,” she said.

Sounds very plausible to me.

The article also mentioned that McIver is a former ballet dancer turned writer. Oh my! I apologize to the world on behalf of all former ballet dancers turned writers. We are indeed a sorry bunch.

Ah, but there’s no way the foaming-at-the-mouth Trump-haters (I can’t stand Trump, but I don’t hate either him or his wife) will let it pass. Not even the fact that the story revealed that Melania admires Michelle Obama was enough. The comments at that article I just linked are now focusing on the fact that Melania said she wrote the speech (actually she said she wrote it “with as little help as possible”), that McIver was really just the fall guy, as well as the fact that the Trump camp initially denied the words had been copied. Of all their sins, that is probably so small as to be non-existent—after all, I would imagine it took even McIver a while to figure out it was copied, since it was inadvertant, so how could they immediately know?

Anyway, I’ve spent way too much time on this topic as it is. But before I leave, I have to add something I had written late last night, when the origins of Melania’s “plagiarism” were still a mystery, and it was thought that perhaps a mole in the Trump speechwriting camp was the culprit. I was going to write that perhaps this mole had “Mrs. Danversed” Melania.

For those of you who don’t get the reference, Mrs. Danvers was a character in Alfred Hitchcock’s film adaptation of the Daphne DuMaurier novel Rebecca. The movie was one of my favorites when I was in my early teens; it used to play all the time on television. The plot features a very rich man (played by Laurence Olivier) who has been widowed. On holiday in Monte Carlo, he falls in love with a very shy and naive young woman (Joan Fontaine) who is working as a companion to a rich and obnoxious American lady. He sweeps her off her feet and then sweeps her away to his huge British estate, where an enormous staff is present to wait on them hand and foot. This makes her very uncomfortable because she feels incredibly awkward in this unaccustomed milieu, and she is especially upset by the constant comparisons with her beautiful, sophisticated, and much-admired deceased predecessor, Rebecca, to whom she feels indescribably inferior.

To make matters worse, Rebecca’s extremely devoted (to say the least) former ladies’ maid Mrs. Danvers (played by Judith Anderson) is ensconced as the head housekeeper who hates the newcomer and resents her very presence. The new lady of the house wants to revive the fancy dress balls that once were the talk of the county, and as the following scene opens she has convinced her husband Max (Olivier, grayed up a bit to look older) to say yes to giving the lavish costume party. That means she has to come up with a costume.

I’ve cued up the scene; it lasts about 8 minutes:

That scene used to fill me with horror when I would watch it as a child: her innocent excitement and joy, followed by the terrible and completely puzzling reaction from her husband, and then the dawning realization of how she was set up. And actress Judith Anderson—well, just perfect.

[ADDENDUM: It strikes me—and not for the first time, either—that Trump, who became very famous on TV for a show that featured him saying “You’re fired!” to someone at the end of every segment, in real life seems less likely to fire people (particularly those who have worked for him a while) than most politicians are, not more. Whether this is a good or a bad thing I’m not sure; depends on the people, I suppose.]

More triumphs for Erdogan’s “democracy” in Turkey

The New Neo Posted on by

Now they’ve come for the teachers.

It’s purge time. Yes, that coup certainly was fortuitous for (or staged by) our Turkish democracy champ, Erdogan:

Turkey’s post-coup crackdown took a more sinister turn on Tuesday after tens of thousands of teachers were fired and all the country’s university deans were told they faced suspension.

The licenses of 21,000 staff working in private schools were revoked, more than 15,000 employees at the education ministry were sacked, and the state-run higher education council demanded the resignation of 1,577 university deans…

The suspensions followed Monday’s purge targeting other ministries and state institutions.

The employees include 9,000 police, 2,745 judges, 8,777 from the interior ministry 1,500 from the finance ministry, 257 staff working at the prime minister’s office, at least 100 from the National Intelligence Agency MIT, 399 from the family and social affairs ministry and 492 from the religious affairs ministry.

Officials signalled that the country was to undergo further major changes in the coming days…

There was speculation that Mr Erdogan might try to put in place a state of emergency so as to take full control of all state institutions.

This was all exactly as foreseen by anyone who’s been studying Erdogan, especially after his subverting of term limits in 2014 (see this and this). I don’t know how to convey the requisite bitterness and horror I feel, but in this post I’ve used the rather inadequate tool of sarcasm.

There’s more, if you can stomach it:

It also emerged on Tuesday that the military received intelligence rogue elements of the army were embarking on a coup more than six hours before before hijacked tanks took to the streets and rebel-piloted F-16s bombed key buildings in the capital. The delay raises questions about why quicker action was not taken to interrupt the plot.

The army forces said in a statement that it was given information on the coup plot by the National Intelligence Organisation at 4pm local time and informed relevant authorities. That was several hours before bridges in Istanbul were cut in one of the first public signs that a power grab was underway.

The did not appear to have shared the information with the government, which yesterday claimed it did not know about the plot until tanks were out on the streets and jets in the air.

From the start, many people have been saying that the Erdogan forces either planned this coup or knew about it in advance and winked at it for the exact purpose of instituting a crackdown. The extreme weakness of the plot itself argues for the former, and everything else argues for the latter.

NeverTrump forces lose at RNC

The New Neo Posted on by

It was predictable, of course. Quite a while ago it became apparent—particularly when they couldn’t come up with a viable Trump alternative—that the NeverTrumpers had lost steam and would be defeated at the convention.

This is how it went down yesterday. Not good.

I am sympathetic to the NeverTrump forces, but they could not come together on someone credible and I have been trying to deal with the reality for quite some time now (probably since last March): that in this year of all years, Donald Trump will be the Republican presidential nominee. And that he’s running against Hillary Clinton.

That’s the choice we face.

Fourth Freddie Gray defendant found not guilty on all charges

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s deja vu all over again in the most recent of the Freddie Gray trials:

…Lt. Brian Rice was acquitted of charges involuntary manslaughter, misconduct in office and reckless endangerment…

Previous Freddie Gray trials have resulted in one hung jury in the trial of Officer William Porter, and two bench trial acquittals in the cases of Officers Edward Nero and Caesar Goodson. Still awaiting trial are Officer Garrett Miller and Sergeant Alicia White. State prosecutors have also scheduled a re-trial of Officer Porter.

The state’s theory of the case has only grown weaker and more laughable with each successive trial, and there is no reason to believe that the prospects for conviction will be any greater in those trials still to come than they have been previously.

Indeed, one cannot help but wonder whether State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby has some motive other than criminal justice in persevering in her prosecutions of these officers when the overwhelming weight of the evidence not only indicates they did nothing criminal but that they their conduct was clearly that of reasonable officers on the scene.

Yes, one cannot help but wonder.

In fact, even before the trials—as the facts surrounding Freddie Gray’s death originally emerged over time—one could not help but wonder about Marilyn Mosby’s motives in charging these police officers. Over time, the weakness of the cases has meant that one could not help but wonder whether Mosby felt she had to placate the angry crowds, and decided that these were the convenient scapegoats to charge with crimes in order to do just that.

Freddie Gray’s death and the death of Michael Brown—and the subsequent trials of police officers in both cases—have had a similar trajectory. At least with Darren Wilson (Michael Brown’s death), there was a case to be made that Wilson was guilty. It wasn’t a good case, but it wasn’t utterly frivolous either. In the Freddie Gray cases, they really seem to be show trials—although they are show trials that have backfired on Mosby by showcasing the utter bankruptcy of the prosecution.

It’s part of the “get the police” frenzy, though, and has contributed to and augmented it.

Meanwhile, the mayhem and madness continues: terrorist attack on German train

The New Neo Posted on by

Now that the MSM and the blogosphere and social media have offered the requisite in-depth analysis about the burning issue of Melania Trump’s speech—and this blog has weighed in, too—we can return to the real world in which there was an Islamist terrorist attack on a commuter train in Germany.

Fortunately, although four people were critically injured and another person less so, no one has died except the attacker, who was shot by police. But there are some elements to this crime that makes it especially troubling:

(1) The attacker was an “Afghan man who came to Germany as a ‘so-called unaccompanied minor refugee’. He was living in a refugee housing in Ochsenfurt, Wé¼rzburg since March. About 2 weeks ago, he was moved into a foster family.”

This is exactly the situation feared by those who objected to the recent flood of immigrants from the Middle East into Europe. Exactly.

(2) Guns had nothing to do with it; this was a knife and machete attack, as seems to be becoming more and more common in Israel and around the globe. Such items are simplicity itself to obtain.

(3) And then there’s the absurdity of the refrain that we are oh-so-puzzled as to the perp’s motive. In this case: “German authorities expressed their cluelessness about the motives of this latest terror attack. Despite eyewitnesses confirming that the perpetrator repeatedly shouted the Islamist war cry ‘Allahu Akbar,’ the spokesman for the local police department told reporters that ‘the motives of the crime are completely unclear at this point.’”

Completely unclear, if you’ve just dropped in from planet Xenon.

The Western world seems more and more to be composed of both knaves and fools, and it’s hard to see any good end to this.

shipoffools1

Can there be a more important issue than Melania Trump’s plagiarism?

The New Neo Posted on by

I usually don’t watch convention speeches or speeches in general, but I was curious about two last night and decided to watch them. Neither was so very long, and both were interesting.

The first was Guiliani’s fiery anti-Hillary pro-Trump shoutfest, in which he really roused the rabble. And I mean that in a good way:

The second was that of Melania Trump, wife of Donald. I was curious about her not because I saw her speech as important, but because I wondered what she was like, whether she’d be nervous, what she’d wear, that sort of thing.

Now, you might say such concerns of mine were trivial, and I wouldn’t disagree on that. But hey, a lot of what catches our interest is that sort of thing; we’re human, after all.

Here’s the speech:

Afterwards I thought I was going to write a little blurb about Melania’s speech in which I would say that she did a good job at seeming beautiful and sexy, dignified and calm, foreign and domestic, and altogether riveting when she narrowed her beautiful eyes and looked sternly into the camera for emphasis. She gave out the aura of a Bond Girl in one of the older Bond movies featuring all those statuesque vaguely-European beauties with the chiseled features, the hot bods, and the take-no-prisoners attitudes.

Well, I’ve just managed to sneak that paragraph in there before getting to what is apparently the biggest and most important story of the day, which is that the speech Melania delivered contained several lines and phrases identical with some in the speech Michelle Obama delivered back in 2008 at the DNC. The MSM and blogosphere and social media coverage of this issue (some of which you can see here) is hot, heavy, and relentless—and although nearly meaningless, it may or may not be damaging to Trump depending on whether the American people care.

I sure hope they don’t, but you never know with Twitter nation.

If you want the details of the purloined speech and the exact phrases involved, see this. The lifting is of phrases so hackneyed and mundane that they could have been computer-generated, so it’s hard to see why anyone would want to borrow them. But it does seem that someone did.

That someone, however, would not be Melania Trump, who almost undoubtedly did not write the speech. It would be her speechwriter, who should be fired (Reince Priebus agrees with that latter sentiment).

This was not Melania’s doctoral dissertation. Nor was it her short story, or novel, or newspaper column, or anything she wrote that could make a person care about whether a paragraph of it was plagiarized or not. Nor was it any more important than the fact that Joe Biden gave a speech that plagiarized that of a British politician—somehow he has managed to become VP despite that, and the MSM seems rather calm about it—or when the Great Orator Obama himself cribbed lines from Deval Patrick (see this for those stories and others along the same line).

To me, a politician or his/her speechwriter borrowing a few lines in a prepared speech is of such small importance that I haven’t made a fuss about it even when the error was committed by a candidate I bitterly oppose, such as Obama. Now, if that person were found to have plagiarized work in an academic paper such as a thesis—and if the borrowing is not a careless error of failure to attribute but is in fact a real effort to pass the work of another off as one’s own—that is more serious (not to mention outright cheating in college such as acts that got Ted Kennedy suspended from Harvard). Still, on the list of transgressions of which politicians are regularly guilty, plagiarism of parts of a prepared speech barely registers on my radar screen and I don’t seem seem to have covered it except to mention a couple of times that Biden once got into trouble for it.

And these are candidates, for goodness sake. Melania Trump is a candidate’s wife.

I did write a couple of posts about plagiarism, but they were all about academics or journalists accused of plagiarism in their writings, not in their speeches, and sometimes involving a lot more “borrowing” than was present in Melania’s speech (see this, for example, as well as this and this). These people are supposed to be resting on their journalistic or academic laurels and writing their own work, so it’s of more importance for them who wrote what (and even there, I have given them somewhat of a pass when the errors appear to be careless ones).

There is no comparison to what happened last night with Melania. But the press adores catching any Republican in any sort of gaffe, and it gives them an excellent excuse to ignore just about everything else that happened at the convention that may have impacted negatively on the Democrats or on Hillary Clinton.

[NOTE: Did Melania’s speechwriter also include a rickroll in the speech? If so, I’m starting to wonder whether the speechwriter was a mole. Who was this person? Haven’t read anything about that, but a lot of other people are wondering, too.

Prior to giving the speech, Melania claimed she wrote it with “as little help as possible.” That certainly doesn’t mean she didn’t have a speechwriter. Most people need help writing a speech like that, and they get it.]

Religious Literacy

The New Neo Posted on by

I recently came across an interesting book entitled Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know–And Doesn’t, written by religion professor Stephen Prothero. The subject matter is the lack of education in the US about religious history worldwide, and what effect that ignorance has had on the public:

While it is plausible to claim that religion no longer counts for much in [some western European countries] religious beliefs and practices continue to have undeniable impacts on social, economic, and political life in virtually every other country in the world…

You wouldn’t know any of this by reading high school world history textbooks, however…[S]tudents are led to believe that religion somehow belongs to the past; the present (and presumably, the future) belongs to secularity. As philosopher Warren Nord has observed, in the case of Islam, the typical textbook teaches students a bit about Islam’s origins in the seventh century only to see the tradition disappear for more than a millennium before popping up, quite unexpectedly, in the form of the Iranian hostage crisis of the 1970s.

Interesting and almost certainly the case. If we know nothing or next to nothing about these things, how can we understand the religiously-inspired events occurring all around the globe? Here’s more from Prothero:

Schoolbooks tell us what we need to know and what we ought to value. They tell us what matters and what can be ignored, what is worth dying for and what (or who) is to be shunned. They tell us what America is, both as an ideal and as a reality,and they interpret the wider world—the beaker in which the American experiment is forever bubbling up. This is no small power: telling children what to think about themselves, their country, and the world—telling them as well what to think of Islam and Christianity and Judaism or whether to think of religion at all. At least for the time being the gospel that these ministries are peddling is that religion is moribund…

Things were not always so.

Much of his book is a study of the history of religion in this country, and in particular of the history of the teaching of facts about religious history in US schools. Whatever a person’s beliefs or lack thereof, he maintains (and I agree) that knowledge of religion is key.

And here’s what he writes in the introduction of his personal experience of teaching about religions (he is not a minister and is not trying to inculcate any particular religious belief, by the way):

When I first began teaching in the early 1990s I was a follower of Dewey and the Progressives. In high school I had come to the subject of history as nothing more than the mindless accumulation of names and dates, and I vowed upon entering college in the late 1970s that I would study every subject except history. Happily, I came across a professor who taught me that the vocatiion of history in not about memorizing names and dates but about forming judgments and contributing to debates about what happened in the past. So when I finished graduate school and became a professor myself, I told students that I didn’t care about facts. I cared about having challenging conversations, and I offered my quiz-free classrooms as places to do just that. I soon found, however, that the challenging conversations I coveted were not possible without some common knowledge—common knowledge my students plainly lacked. And so, quite against my prior inclinations, I began testing them on simple terms. In my world religions classes I told my students that before we could discuss in any detail the great religious traditions of the world, we would need to have some shared vocabulary in each, some basic religious literacy. In this I became…a traditionalist about content, not because I had come to see facts as the end of education but because I had come to see them as necessary means to understanding.

It’s hard to believe that such an intelligent man once believed that students could intelligently discuss a subject without knowing much about it. And yet theories of education can often lead people in such directions.

Baton Rouge shooter identified, and his belief system is no surprise

The New Neo Posted on by

The killer is black separatist and former Marine Gavin Long, who murdered three police officers and wounded three more on his 29th birthday, and was in turn killed. He was also a former member of the Nation of Islam and railed against the police, “crackers,” and several other ethnic groups in his Facebook account.

Here are photos of the three murdered officers:

threeofficers

You will notice that one of the slain men is black, as was the perpetrator. This incident reminds me of the shooting of another black officer by black power separatists and members of the BLA, the murder of police officers Greg Foster (along with his partner Rocco Laurie) in New York City in 1972, which I wrote about several times, including in this 2014 post.

So this speculation about the Baton Rouge killing is just plain wrong:

Law enforcement officials said Sunday that the shooting does not appear to have been race-related. At least one of the officers killed in the attack was black.

Greg Foster was black, and his shooting was absolutely “race-related.” Black officers are seen by killers like these as the enemy, as betrayers who are working with the white man to oppress black people.

You can read about the police officers who were killed in Baton Rouge here and here.

And then there’s President Obama:

It may be too late to stop this fire from spreading. But Obama has one more chance to try to put it out. He failed that opportunity in his remarks hours after the Baton Rouge carnage, delivering instead an anodyne call to heal “our divisions” and discard “inflammatory rhetoric thrown around to advance an agenda.” Implication: Blame for “inflammatory rhetoric” is equally shared by those who attack cops and those who defend them. Sorry, Mr. President, those who tell the truth about crime and policing are not part of the problem and they bear no responsibility for the massacre of cops. The killing of cops is furthered exclusively by those peddling a false narrative that cops harbor lethal bias toward blacks. Obama should call for the Black Lives Matter movement to fold its tent””and he himself should start telling the truth about inner-city crime.

Here goes: the Republican National Convention begins today

The New Neo Posted on by

And it certainly promises to be somewhat more “interesting” than usual. Even if all goes according to the book and Donald Trump becomes the nominee (as I believe will happen), he’s such an unconventional candidate that it promises to be different.

Many prominent Republicans are absenting themselves from the festivities:

In a historic break from tradition at this week’s four-day celebration of the Republican Party in Cleveland, at least a dozen Republican senators, four governors, the past two Republican presidents and the past two GOP nominees intend to skip their party’s national nominating convention””just as presumptive nominee Donald Trump tries to show he is unifying the party.

It isn’t unusual for politicians to skip a convention, particularly for those who are facing tough re-election challenges and must devote their time to campaigning. But the sheer number of high-profile Republicans avoiding the party’s marquee event in 2016 is noteworthy, signaling the extent to which the billionaire businessman’s coronation has fractured the party.

I don’t blame those not attending, despite the incredibly high stakes and the need for the GOP candidate to win. If I were in their shoes I would find it difficult to stand up there, too, and speak for him—although I might try to force myself, if only to take a strong anti-Hillary stand.

But I don’t think Trump’s “coronation” (note the loaded word) has “fractured the party.” It’s not that I don’t see the fractures. But I think Trump’s nomination is a symptom, a result of an already-existing fracture that has widened somewhat but had already been getting large before Trump ever declared himself a candidate in the 2016 race.

Here’s a handy chart of who the speakers will be this year by category, as compared to previous years:

speakersrnc

Here’s the schedule for some (not all) of the speakers, subject to change. C-SPAN covers the whole thing, including non-prime time events, if you’re really into seeing every little last bit (some of the following names were not at the link, but appeared in an email I got from the GOP about the convention):

Monday evening: Melania Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Joni Ernst, Willie Robertson (of Duck Dynasty), Rick Perry, Scott Baio (!), Marcus Luttrell (retired SEAL), Pat Smith (mother of one of the men killed in Benghazi), Jeff Sessions, and Tom Cotton

Tuesday evening: Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, Chris Christie (otherwise known as The Bridesmaid), Ben Carson, UFC (that’s Ultimate Fighting Championship) President Dana White, Tiffany Trump, and Donald Trump Jr.

Wednesday evening: Mike Pence, Newt Gingrich, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Eric Trump

Thursday evening: Ivanka Trump, Reince Priebus, Jerry Falwell Jr., Peter Thiel (libertarian tech entrepreneur), and of course the piece de resistance—Donald Trump himself.

I’ve never been a fan of political conventions, but the prospect of this one makes me feel especially sad. I suppose it’s a good thing that Trump has a lot of telegenic children to fill up those empty spots. I have no idea how a disaffected non-Hillary Democrat or an undecided Independent will feel about the lineup, but I comfort myself with the idea that I can’t imagine that the DNC lineup will be so very compelling either.

Of course, many people expect and fear that the more “interesting” events won’t be on the convention floor, but in the city of Cleveland, and that the racial unrest and political unrest that’s been escalating around the country will take disruptive and violent hold there. Let’s hope not.

What a year.

[NOTE: See also this.]