While Europe slept

The New Neo Posted on by

The current riots in France are another indication that Europe is having difficulty dealing with a long-neglected problem: its huge and largely unassimilated Moslem immigrant population (originally of immigrants but now including their European-born children), bulging in its belly like the meal of a boa constrictor afflicted with terrible indigestion.

Some time ago I read this sobering and chilling article by Theodore Dalrymple entitled “Barbarians at the Gates of Paris,” describing some of the conditions that have led to this mess. It was written in the fall of 2002 and is very long, but here are some excerpts:

But what is the problem to which these housing projects, known as cités, are the solution, conceived by serene and lucid minds like Le Corbusier’s? It is the problem of providing an Habitation de Loyer Modéré””a House at Moderate Rent, shortened to HLM””for the workers, largely immigrant, whom the factories needed during France’s great industrial expansion from the 1950s to the 1970s, when the unemployment rate was 2 percent and cheap labor was much in demand. By the late eighties, however, the demand had evaporated, but the people whose labor had satisfied it had not; and together with their descendants and a constant influx of new hopefuls, they made the provision of cheap housing more necessary than ever…

A kind of anti-society has grown up in them””a population that derives the meaning of its life from the hatred it bears for the other, “official,” society in France. This alienation, this gulf of mistrust””greater than any I have encountered anywhere else in the world, including in the black townships of South Africa during the apartheid years””is written on the faces of the young men, most of them permanently unemployed, who hang out in the pocked and potholed open spaces between their logements. When you approach to speak to them, their immobile faces betray not a flicker of recognition of your shared humanity; they make no gesture to smooth social intercourse. If you are not one of them, you are against them…

When agents of official France come to the cités, the residents attack them. The police are hated: one young Malian, who comfortingly believed that he was unemployable in France because of the color of his skin, described how the police invariably arrived like a raiding party, with batons swinging””ready to beat whoever came within reach, irrespective of who he was or of his innocence of any crime, before retreating to safety to their commissariat….

Antagonism toward the police might appear understandable, but the conduct of the young inhabitants of the cités toward the firemen who come to rescue them from the fires that they have themselves started gives a dismaying glimpse into the depth of their hatred for mainstream society. They greet the admirable firemen (whose motto is Sauver ou périr, save or perish) with Molotov cocktails and hails of stones when they arrive on their mission of mercy, so that armored vehicles frequently have to protect the fire engines.

Benevolence inflames the anger of the young men of the cités as much as repression, because their rage is inseparable from their being. Ambulance men who take away a young man injured in an incident routinely find themselves surrounded by the man’s “friends,” and jostled, jeered at, and threatened: behavior that, according to one doctor I met, continues right into the hospital, even as the friends demand that their associate should be treated at once, before others…

Whether France was wise to have permitted the mass immigration of people culturally very different from its own population to solve a temporary labor shortage and to assuage its own abstract liberal conscience is disputable: there are now an estimated 8 or 9 million people of North and West African origin in France, twice the number in 1975””and at least 5 million of them are Muslims. Demographic projections (though projections are not predictions) suggest that their descendants will number 35 million before this century is out, more than a third of the likely total population of France.

Indisputably, however, France has handled the resultant situation in the worst possible way. Unless it assimilates these millions successfully, its future will be grim. But it has separated and isolated immigrants and their descendants geographically into dehumanizing ghettos; it has pursued economic policies to promote unemployment and create dependence among them, with all the inevitable psychological consequences; it has flattered the repellent and worthless culture that they have developed; and it has withdrawn the protection of the law from them, allowing them to create their own lawless order…

…imagine yourself a youth in Les Tarterets or Les Musiciens, intellectually alert but not well educated, believing yourself to be despised because of your origins by the larger society that you were born into, permanently condemned to unemployment by the system that contemptuously feeds and clothes you, and surrounded by a contemptible nihilistic culture of despair, violence, and crime. Is it not possible that you would seek a doctrine that would simultaneously explain your predicament, justify your wrath, point the way toward your revenge, and guarantee your salvation, especially if you were imprisoned? Would you not seek a “worthwhile” direction for the energy, hatred, and violence seething within you, a direction that would enable you to do evil in the name of ultimate good? It would require only a relatively few of like mind to cause havoc. Islamist proselytism flourishes in the prisons of France (where 60 percent of the inmates are of immigrant origin), as it does in British prisons; and it takes only a handful of Zacharias Moussaouis to start a conflagration.

That last paragraph can be read as though it is offering an excuse for this turn to violence and to violent Islamic supremism. If that’s the case, I certainly don’t support such an excuse. But I do think Dalrymple’s article represents a good description of the phenomenon, an explanation that makes a great deal of sense.

It seems to be no coincidence that the current French riots are said to have been set off by an incident in which two youths suspected of a crime were accidentally electrocuted and died while being chased by the police. Whether the police were in fact chasing them is still an open question, apparently, but in a sense it almost doesn’t matter. The belief that they were, and the antagonism towards the police in general, is very clear, as well as the impotence of those police in dealing with crime and/or unrest in these immigrant strongholds.

If you read to the botton of this article, you will discover that part of the underlying reason for the riots at this point in time is a reaction to a recent attempt at a general police crackdown on crime in these neighborhoods by the new interior minister, Sarkozy:

Sarkozy, who returned as the interior minister in late May, began a new crime offensive this month, ordering specially trained police to tackle 25 problem neighborhoods in cities throughout France.

Opposition politicians say he has made things worse.

Laurent Fabius, a former Socialist prime minister and also a potential presidential candidate in 2007, mocked Sarkozy’s frequent visits to areas such as Clichy.

“When he announces that he’s going to visit such and such a commune or suburb every week, that’s not how we resolve those problems,” Fabius told Europe 1 radio.

“We need to act at the same time on prevention, repression, education, housing, jobs … and not play the cowboy.”

As one might expect, there is deep disagreement between those who believe only in prevention and think they have a kindler, gentler answer–the leftists and Socialists–and those who believe that the situation has gone on long enough and a firm and immediate crackdown is necessary. The latter group, of course, is labeled with that popular European epithet for what they see as the oh-so-simplistic law and order approach, American-style: “cowboy.”

I don’t have a solution, but common sense dictates it would have to involve approaches that are both long-term and immediate. A situation so long ignored is going to be all that much more difficult, if not impossible, to treat. As the Dalrymple article says, “Benevolence inflames the anger of the young men of the cités as much as repression, because their rage is inseparable from their being.” If this is true–and I believe it definitely is–it does not bode well for the future.

This article by Francis Fukuyama, appearing in today’s Wall Street Journal, contains a description of some short-term and long-term approaches. It’s a beginning, anyway:

New policies to reduce the separateness of the Muslim community, like laws discouraging the importation of brides from the Middle East, have been put in place in the Netherlands. The Dutch and British police have been given new powers to monitor, detain and expel inflammatory clerics. But the much more difficult problem remains of fashioning a national identity that will connect citizens of all religions and ethnicities in a common democratic culture, as the American creed has served to unite new immigrants to the United States.

Since van Gogh’s murder, the Dutch have embarked on a vigorous and often impolitic debate on what it means to be Dutch, with some demanding of immigrants not just an ability to speak Dutch, but a detailed knowledge of Dutch history and culture that many Dutch people do not have themselves. But national identity has to be a source of inclusion, not exclusion; nor can it be based, contrary to the assertion of the gay Dutch politician Pym Fortuyn who was assassinated in 2003, on endless tolerance and valuelessness. The Dutch have at least broken through the stifling barrier of political correctness that has prevented most other European countries from even beginning a discussion of the interconnected issues of identity, culture and immigration. But getting the national identity question right is a delicate and elusive task.

Halloween

The New Neo Posted on by

Oh, how I wish I had taken my relatively new and unused camera with me on a walk I took late yesterday afternoon, right before sunset on Halloween. One of these days I will even learn how to reliably transfer photos from said camera to my computer, and put them on this blog. (I know, I know, it’s not that difficult, but trust me when I say that I’m very technically challenged.) Till then I’ll have to make do with word pictures.

It was unusually warm for Halloween–always a wonderful thing, as I recall from my childhood when Halloween was pretty much my favorite holiday. Nothing seemed worse back then than having to wear a heavy coat over a carefully-planned costume–nothing, that is, other than rain. Rain necessitated going over to my grandmother’s apartment building instead, to trick or treat with all the residents there who hadn’t even bought candy for the occasion and who might end up giving you a mealy old apple–ugh!

In the Fifties, Halloween meant being out in the dark with all the other spookily-dressed children and no adults in sight, the possibility of getting huge candy bars rather than today’s tiny ones, and even sometimes a homemade treat. We went out for hours, till 9 PM or even later, and visited the houses of strangers as well as friends, with little or no fear.

Well, those days are gone, like many things. But what remains is the trick-or-treating children, and last night brought its full complement to my door, as well as the wonderful fact that finally, after decades of trying, I managed to buy the correct amount of candy. Only seven bite-sized pieces were left at the end of the festivities.

There were dogs dressed as pumpkins, and cute and polite kids–even the teenagers. Every now and then one of the children would exclaim that my selection of candy contained “OOO, my favorite! Wow!” This year’s favorite favorite seemed to be Skittles, a candy I detest; but there’s no accounting for taste, especially that of children.

But back to that neighborhood walk at dusk. The sense of anticipation was in the air, kids still playing in the streets but talking excitedly about the upcoming night, parents out on their porches and front lawns, putting the finishing touches on decorations. The decorations are the one thing about Halloween that’s much better than I remember from when I was young.

Some seen on that walk, and not at all atypical: a lineup of smallish pumpkins placed in two window boxes, nestled in straw and colorful fallen leaves; a harvest figure featuring a stuffed moosehead (not real) and dressed in lumberjack clothes, lounging on a deck chair with an empty beer bottle next to it; a huge sprawling old-fashioned porch entirely draped in fake cobwebs and laden with pumpkins and lights, with a recording of spooky music and maniacal laughter playing in the background.

I managed to eat a bit of candy myself, and am suffering from a sugar hangover today. Hope you all enjoyed your Halloween, too, despite the possibility of similar indiscretions.

Has this special counsel/prosecutor thing gotten out of hand?

The New Neo Posted on by

In an article in the Christian Science Monitor about the charges against Libby, Paul Rothstein, a law professor at Georgetown University, is quoted as stating that:

…the Libby case raises questions about the fairness of appointing a special counsel to engage in open-ended investigations that involve political officials in Washington.

[Rothstein] says political officials are under more pressure than most other Americans faced with a criminal investigation. “Because they are afraid of political embarrassment … they can’t do what normal people would do in this situation and simply take the Fifth – plead the privilege against self-incrimination and not answer,” Rothstein says. “They take a big political hit for that, so they lie,” he says.

Rothstein says to avoid this kind of trap, special prosecutors should use their prosecutorial discretion not to file coverup charges when there is no evidence related to the alleged underlying crime.

Rothstein isn’t saying he knows Libby’s motivation for lying, but he does state that he thinks it more likely than not that his actions:

were aimed at heading off political embarrassment, rather than covering up criminality at the White House. “He knew it would be embarrassing politically if the government even accidentally and innocently was the source of [the leak of the agent’s name],” Rothstein says.

Many are likely to embrace the nefarious explanation, Rothstein says, but the actions of the special counsel in declining to charge anyone with illegally disclosing secrets suggest the innocent explanation may be closer to the truth.

I don’t think Rothstein means to excuse perjury by making this point, and neither do I. But the fact is that, unfortunately, the special prosecutor/counsel is in danger of becoming just another political tool, a set-up that is often used by enemies to trap public officials–even previously innocent ones–between the rock of embarrassment and the hard place of perjury. In fact, perhaps that transformation of the special prosecutor/counsel function already happened quite some time ago. So Mr. Rothstein’s suggestion that the scope of charges filed as a result of such investigations somehow be more strictly limited makes a great deal of sense to me.

Now, what was the original purpose of Fitzgerald’s appointment?

When Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald began his investigation in December 2003, his instructions were to identify who leaked the name of a CIA agent to columnist Robert Novak and determine whether that action violated any secrecy laws.

It wouldn’t have been a bad idea if he’d kept it to that, since there’s a great deal of speculation that Plame was not even a covert agent to begin with, as she apparently would have to have been for the secrecy law in question to have been violated. Even Fitzgerald himself has alluded to this issue, and has only referred to her as “classified.”.

Oh, and in addition: it wouldn’t be such a bad idea if the Supreme Court, with its brilliant new justices we’ve all heard (and will hear!) so much about, could decide differently the next time this little question comes up: should a person be allowed to sue a sitting President?

So, what’s the connection here?

You may recall that the Supreme Court’s decision in Clinton v. Jones was unanimous, and I quote:

Respondent is merely asking the courts to exercise their core Article III jurisdiction to decide cases and controversies, and, whatever the outcome, there is no possibility that the decision here will curtail the scope of the Executive Branch’s official powers. The Court rejects petitioner’s contention that this case–as well as the potential additional litigation that an affirmance of the Eighth Circuit’s judgment might spawn–may place unacceptable burdens on the President that will hamper the performance of his official duties. That assertion finds little support either in history, as evidenced by the paucity of suits against sitting Presidents for their private actions, or in the relatively narrow compass of the issues raised in this particular case.

Even I could have told them differently; but they didn’t ask.

Well, you may also recall that the deposition in which Clinton lied and perhaps committed perjury (depending, of course, on whether the lie was both intentional and material) was a direct result of the Supreme Court’s decision in Clinton v. Jones to allow the Paula Jones lawsuit against Clinton to go forward. You may also recall that the motive for Clinton’s lie in that case about his relations with Lewinsky–which, unlike Libby’s alleged lies, did not even involve official conduct–was clearly and indisputably the desire to avoid personal embarrassment. Rothstein mentions the motivation of even innocent public officials to lie to avoid political embarrassment, but there is at least as strong a motivation for them to lie to avoid personal and familial embarrassment, which of course has political repercussions as well.

The above-linked 1997 Washington Post article about Clinton v. Jones contains the following statement, which in my opinion shows more prescience than the Supreme Court did in handing down their decision:

The ruling not only has historic consequences for the institution of the presidency, it also could have a bruising political effect on Clinton: He now can be required to answer potentially embarrassing questions about Jones’s claim that he propositioned her and exposed himself to her in a Little Rock hotel room while he was governor of Arkansas and she was a low-level state employee.

The questions were embarrassing indeed, and were not limited to his sexual conduct with Jones, but involved his sexual conduct with Lewinsky.

Perjury cases are very rarely pursued, as we saw here. But they can be a particularly dangerous trap for public officials: just get a special prosecuter or special counsel to go on a fishing expedition and someone, somewhere, somehow (even a heretofore legally innocent person) is going to lie to protect him/herself from embarrassment or from the need to plead the Fifth and expose him/herself to accusations of cowardice. Or, alternatively, allow a sitting President to be sued and force him to answer personal questions about his sex life and extramarital liasons–again, despite the fact that the original lawsuit itself ends up going nowhere–and you have a setup for him to lie to save himself and his family from embarrassment or the need to plead the Fifth and expose himself to accusations of cowardice or coverup.

That’s the symmetry between Libby’s situation and Clinton’s. It’s a dilemma: we do not want perjury condoned or winked at, or to go unpunished (even though it turns out that in practice it usually does). But we also do not want each political party to sequentially set up a series of traps–open-ended investigation after investigation, civil lawsuit after civil lawsuit–that can be used to get public officials into situations in which they are more and more likely to commit perjury to protect themselves from embarrassment.

And lest you think my suggestion that further civil lawsuits against sitting Presidents might be in the offing is farfetched, please read this:

In addition to the prospect of indictments looming in the CIA leak case, the Bush administration faces another threat: civil litigation that could expose top officials to damage payments and years of wide-ranging scrutiny.

Former diplomat Joseph Wilson, whose criticism of the administration’s Iraq policy sparked the current furor and led to the outing of his Central Intelligence Agency-operative wife, Valerie Plame, isn’t saying for sure if he will sue. But one recent precedent is the debilitating civil suit against his former boss, President Clinton. “What would be interesting to us would be to get the justice that a civil case offers,” Mr. Wilson says.

Interesting, indeed.

How could we put an end to this tit-for-tat mess, while still holding public officials accountable? I would hope, for starters, that the Supreme Court has learned its lesson, and if the question comes up again will rule that there be should be no civil lawsuits against a sitting President. Next, when a special prosecutor/counsel is appointed, the scope of the charges he/she can bring might be limited to ones that are reasonably related to the original matter for which the investigation was ordered, or to charges of a more serious nature. To discourage perjury, perjury charges could also be brought in connection with the investigation even if there are no other indictments, but not in the latter case for answering questions in which a public official, by answering, would be incriminating him/herself and for which most people would ordinarily be taking the Fifth.

Again, I’d be especially curious to hear what any lawyers among you have to say–whether these things are possible or desirable, and whether they would actually work. If anyone has any better suggestions than mine, please feel free–I’m all ears.

Let the festivities begin!

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, this should be interesting:

Alito, 55, is considered a conservative in the mold of Justice Antonin Scalia. Alito is sometimes given the nickname “Scalito” — a comparison to Scalia, who shares his Italian heritage as well as his reputation for conservatism and a strong intellect. He is a judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.

Conservatives should be starting to bind their wounds and gear up for the coming battle with the Democrats that some of them so deeply desired. Liberals, no doubt, are hopping mad.

It’s OK, they’re only anti-Zionists

The New Neo Posted on by

Dymphna and the Baron, the Anchoress, and Dr. Sanity are among the many bloggers who have discussed Iran’s “World Without Zionism” conference, which featured the following poster:

Lovely, isn’t it? I mean that sincerely. One of the more pernicious aspects of much modern propaganda is its slickness and polish, its ability to appeal to the most sophisticated among us. This aesthetically pleasing poster is no exception–in fact, it’s an excellent example of the genre.

Note how the conference and the poster focus on the word “Zionism,” not “Jews.” The old argument about whether one can be anti-Zionist and nevertheless not anti-Semitic keeps cropping up around the blogosphere and elsewhere. The comments section of the thread linked above at Gates of Vienna contains a good example of such a discussion.

I’m sure there truly are people who have objections to Zionism but honestly feel they have no objections to Jews themselves. But I’m just as sure that such people would have been hard-pressed to have explained where else the leftover Jews were supposed to go right after WWII, when Europe had killed so many of its Jews and was in the process of spitting out the exhausted survivors. Even the UN, that august body which in recent decades has been the very poster child for “anti-Zionism,” voted at that time to partition Palestine and give the Jews their own tiny piece of land.

In the years since Israel’s founding, the sophisticated propaganda which has over the last few decades managed to demonize it in the eyes of many has emboldened the Iranian mullahs. It is possible for them to speak quite openly of wiping Israel off the face of the earth, and trust that at least some will defend such a statement on the grounds that it’s not technically “anti-Semitic,” it’s merely “anti-Zionist” (see this).

Poor, poor Hitler, so ahead of his time! If only the state of Israel had already existed when he offered his Final Solution, he could have phrased it in terms so much more acceptable.

And of course it’s just a coincidence that the mullahs would love to destroy both Israel and America, the little and big Satans. If by some twist of fate they were to be successful in both goals, they would have annihilated virtually all the Jews on earth–a Final Solution, indeed.

Perjury update

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an update on the post “Calling all lawyers”:

The call has been answered. I consider the following e-mail response from a trusted legal source to be definitive:

There’s no question that perjury can be prosecuted if the defendant lied about something that was material to the investigation, even though the investigation did not otherwise result in charges being brought.

As for how often such cases are prosecuted, the reality is that perjury is a relatively rarely prosecuted crime. No doubt the vast majority of people who lie under oath, in trials, let alone grand jury hearings, are not prosecuted. However, Libby certainly should have expected that in this kind of high-profile, no-stones-unturned investigation, any perjury as stark as his allegedly was, would be prosecuted.

In the previous thread, commenter “the Unknown Blogger” offered the following statistics about perjury prosecutions, which dovetail neatly with the above information:

There are relatively few federal perjury prosecutions. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in fiscal year 1999 there were 126 perjury defendants disposed of in U.S. District Courts. One hundred and six of these defendants were convicted and 80 imprisoned. The average sentence was 22.9 months.

And I’m still wondering about the observation of commenter Holmes, who wrote:

In this instance, the original charge wasn’t dropped for lack of evidence despite having probable cause as in Stewart’s case, but that there was no case to begin with. An element of the CIA law was that Plame be a CIA covert operative who had been overseas in the past 5 years. That was clearly missing. It would be like prosecuting a murder where the victim was alive and had been unharmed. This is the danger in Congress’ power to call investigations.

I don’t think I can press for any more free advice from my legal source. But I’m wondering about Holmes’s point. Were some of the elements of the crime clearly missing from this case in the first place? And, if this were in fact true, would it even matter in regard to the perjury charges? Or does perjury stand alone once it’s committed, needing no original valid cause of action?

An apology? Not good enough!

The New Neo Posted on by

Do you think this public apology thing may have gotten just a wee bit out of hand as redress for every possible error, including those not made by the one asked to do the apologizing? I do.

But Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid doesn’t agree with me. Au contraire. In fact, Reid has called on both Bush and Cheney to offer the American people a public apology for the possible perjury of Cheney’s aide Lewis Libby:

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said Sunday that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should apologize for the actions of their aides in the CIA leak case…There has not been an apology to the American people for this obvious problem in the White House,” Reid said. He said Bush and Cheney “should come clean with the American public.”

Well, I think apologies are not going to be good enough–after all, an aide to the Vice-President has been indicted (although not convicted) for perjury in a grand jury hearing based on a case that doesn’t seem so far to have any legs. Quelle horreur! (And yes, yes, yes, perjury is a serious offense, but one that resides so far only in the innocent-till-proven-guilty person of one Lewis Libby).

I think the proper course of action, and one that the American people would probably appreciate far more than mere apologies, would be a stint in the stocks for Bush and Cheney. It would be especially apropos for some time around Thanksgiving, recalling one of the more quaint and endearing customs of our Pilgrim forefathers/foremothers.

Harry Reid requires more even more of Rove than of Bush and Cheney. An apology simply won’t do in his case:

Reid also said that Karl Rove, the president’s closest political adviser, should step down. Rove has not been charged with a crime.

As far as Rove goes, Reid might want to look into pillory in addition to the resignation. Or Reid might perhaps want to “roll out the barrel”–as in barrel pillory (boy, Wikipedia is edifying!), to wit:

There even was a variant (rather of the stocks type, in fact), called barrel pillory, or Spanish mantle, to punish drunks. It fitted over the entire body, with the head sticking out from a hole in the top. The criminal is put in either an enclosed barrel, forcing him to kneel in his own filth, or an open barrel, leaving him to roam about town and be ridiculed and scorned.

Strategic quote-cropping at the NY Times

The New Neo Posted on by

An especially pernicious example of quote-cropping at the NY Times has been noted in the blogosphere, most prominently by Michelle Malkin, here.

One can’t help but conclude that the Times‘s omission of the most telling parts of Corporal Starr’s e-mail was quite purposeful. I suggest you take a look at Malkin’s post and write the ombudsman at the Times if you are upset by what they’ve done.

Henry James missed his calling

The New Neo Posted on by

I think he should have been a blogger.

Oh, I don’t mean he shouldn’t have written his novels. I’m referring only to the last year or two of his life, when he became very politically active as a result of WWI.

I had first learned of the fact of James’s strong reaction to WWI a while back. But I was reminded of it by some passages in the book Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi, which I’ve recently finished (and may write a separate post about).

I was struck by the fact that James could be roughly classified as a “changer,” WWI having been the catalyst for his change, much like 9/11 has been for so many people recently. Previously, he’d been relatively apolitical. But after WWI began James, who was living in England, became consumed with the need to turn his energies to the war:

In the last two years of his life, Henry James was radically transformed by his intense involvement in the First World War. For the first time, he became socially and politically active, a man who all his life had done his best to keep aloof from the actual passions of existence. His critics, like H. G. Wells, blamed him for his mandarin attitude towards life, which prevented him from any involvement with the social and political issues of the day. [James] wrote about his experience of World War I that it “almost killed me. I loathed so having lived on and on into anything so hideous and horrible.”

James had lived through the Civil War as a young man, but hadn’t served due to a back ailment. According to Ms. Nafisi, James:

wrote in part [during the Civil War] to compensate for his inability to participate in the war. Now, at the end of his life, he complained about the impotence of words in the face of such inhumanity. In an interview on March 21, 1915, with The New York Times, he said: “The war has used up words; they have weakened, they have deteriorated like motor car tires; they have, like millions of other things, been more overstrained and knocked about and voided of the happy semblance during the last six months than in all the long ages before, and we are now confronted with a depreciation of all our terms, or, otherwise speaking, with a loss of expression through increase of limpness, that may well make us wonder what ghosts will be left to walk.”

Oh, that Jamesian sentence structure!

I think it’s interesting that for James the human suffering, which obviously deeply moved him, led to a deep mourning of the loss of the power of language to convey what was happening. For a man like James this was terribly important; as a writer, words were key to him. Clearly, though, he was undergoing a deep crisis which led to a turning point, because despite that despair about the power of words he began using them in an activist way for the first time in his life:

…this time to write not fiction but war pamphlets, appeals to America to join the war and not to remain indifferent to the suffering and atrocities in Europe. He also wrote poignant letters. In some he expressed his horror at events; in others he consoled friends who had lost a son or a husband in the war.

He fell into a round of activities, visiting wounded Belgian soldiers, and later British soldiers, in hospitals, raising money for Belgian refugees and the wounded and writing war propaganda from the fall of 1914 until December 1915…What inner horror and fascination drove this man, who all his life had shied away from public activity, to become so actively involved in the war effort?

One reason for his involvement was the carnage, the death of so many young men, and the dislocation and destruction. While he mourned the mutilation of existence, he had endless admiration for the simple courage he encountered, both in the many young men who went to war and in those they left behind…He lobbied the U.S. ambassador to Britain and other high American officials and reproached them for their neutrality. And he wrote pamphlets in defense of Britain and her allies.

That’s the point at which it occurred to me that James, had he lived today, might have become a blogger.

I won’t even venture a guess as to whether James would be a hawk or a dove in the present conflict. However, it seems clear that, despite his deep distate for killing, he was a hawk during WWI. But not a bloodthirsty one–au contraire. It seems that he wanted the sacrifice of so many courageous young men and their families to be meaningful and not wasted; he wanted the war to be fought decisively rather than go on and on in a bloody stalemate. I have not been able to find his actual writings about the war online, so I’ve not read them, but my guess is that he reasoned that the entrance of the US into the war would enable the allies to win and therefore would staunch the bleeding.

James suffered a stroke on Dec. 2, 1915, and died three months later. When James had written that the war had “almost killed” him, perhaps he spoke too soon.

Calling all lawyers: about perjury

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s about perjury.

“Perjury” is a term that’s being used in connection with the Libby indictment. It’s often loosely defined as “lying under oath.”

But it turns out that lying under oath is a necessary, but not sufficient, element of perjury. I remember learning this way back (seems like decades ago, doesn’t it?) during Clinton’s impeachment. It turns out that the lie involved in perjury must be about a fact material to the case.

Take a look; here’s the “material” part:

a) Whoever under oath (or in any declaration, certificate, verification, or statement under penalty of perjury as permitted under section 1746 of title 28, United States Code) in any proceeding before or ancillary to any court or grand jury of the United States knowingly makes any false material declaration or makes or uses any other information, including any book, paper, document, record, recording, or other material, knowing the same to contain any false material declaration, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

“Material” in this context means “relevant to the case at hand.”

So my question is actually quite simple (and please don’t call me a simpleton for asking it): can someone be indicted for perjury–that is, lying about a material element of a case–when there is no other case? If perjury ends up being the only charge in a long-term investigation, what case is the lie material to?

The answer, of course may be “the one that was suspected, but for which not enough evidence was found to sustain an indictment.” Doesn’t this seem a bit strange, legally speaking?

Of course, one could argue that, even when there ends up being no primary case, the secondary case–perjury–still needs to be prosecuted to make it clear that lying under oath about a fact that would have been material had the case gone to trial is a serious offense.

But I’m wondering, if that’s true: how often are such cases actually prosecuted? And under what circumstances?

All you lawyers out there, please feel free to comment.

Pundits, bloggers, sharks, and feeding frenzi

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve referred to the swirl of criticism around the Miers nomination as a “feeding frenzy” a number of times (for example, here). Like many other metaphors, it’s become less colorful through overuse: “feeding frenzy” has come to be a sort of cliche meaning “intense attack by a group.”

But, in an attempt to give the phrase back some of its original force, I offer you the following, from Melville’s Moby Dick, the best description I’ve ever read of how a feeding frenzy actually works in nature among its prime practitioners, sharks:

…when, accordingly Queequeg and a forecastle seaman came on deck, no small excitement was created among the sharks; for immediately suspending the cutting stages over the side, and lowering three lanterns, so that they cast long gleams of light over the turbid sea, these two mariners, darting their long whaling-spades, kept up an incessant murdering of the sharks, by striking the keen steel deep into their skulls, seemingly their only vital part. But in the foamy confusion of their mixed and struggling hosts, the marksmen could not always hit their mark; and this brought about new revelations of the incredible ferocity of the foe. They viciously snapped, not only at each other’s disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent round, and bit their own; till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound.

So, that’s a feeding frenzy, folks: sharks, excited beyond measure by the smell of blood, bite and bite and bite until they rip each other–and even themselves–to shreds.

A cautionary tale, no? Pundits and bloggers, known for the sharpness of their opinions–and, as with sharks’ teeth, such sharpness is often a necessary part of the arsenal of such creatures–need to be careful that, in the group excitement of the fray, they don’t end up destroying more than they intended.

First, a caveat (always have to try my best to head the critics off at the pass): when I say the Miers nomination response has resembled a feeding frenzy, I’m not for a moment saying people have no right to criticize her, or that there weren’t some very excellent grounds for criticism. They do, and there were. No, I’m talking about the nature of the criticism, which was in many cases more degrading and personal than necessary, amounted virtually to mockery of the intelligence of a woman who had done nothing to deserve it, and had a sort of synergistic quality.

One of the commenters here, John Moulder, wrote the following about blogs:

For every 2 Memogates & Condi Rice photo corrections there will be 1 Miers assassination. Nope, the blogs ain’t no panacea, that’s for sure,’cause their medicine sometimes causes nausea. And doc, these 2-edged swords are killing my neck.

So, what’s going on with bloggers and pundits? To simplify, I’d say the whole thing comes down to ego.

By “ego” I do not mean something mostly bad. Notice that there are multiple definitions of the word: (1) self-importance (an inflated feeling of pride in your superiority to others); (2) your consciousness of your own identity; and (3) a technical Freudian term meaning the part of the personality responsible for reality-testing, defense, synthesis of information, intellectual functioning, and memory.

So yes, bloggers and pundits tend to have ego in all senses of the word–lots of it, plenty to spare. In order to put one’s opinions out there as though they matter, a person must have the courage of his/her convictions. But that can sometimes spin out of control due to a number of factors, including but not limited to definition #1.

For example, there’s the actual activity of blogging or writing a column. Doing this day after day and week after week tends to sharpen and hone the ability to define and have strong opinions, to express them, and to feel they have value. It’s almost like developing a muscle through exercise, and it usually happens whether or not the pundit/blogger/columnist realizes it or not or wants it to happen or not.

Personally, I think that realizing it is half the battle. I’m not saying that pundits or bloggers should be shy and retiring, with an attitude of “well, I don’t really know, but maybe perhaps it might possibly be the case that…” But I think they (we) do need to be careful not to get carried away with the sheer brilliance of their (our) rapier wit and trenchant opinions.

Alone in front of the computer (or, increasingly less often, a pad of paper), the pundit/blogger sits. Inspiration strikes, and the need to be wittier, sharper (there’s that word again!), more opinionated–to be noticed–rises up in folks who tend to be pretty witty and sharp to begin with. “The pen is mightier than the sword” is a cliche because it has some truth to it–and the sharper the words the mightier they sometimes sound, especially in the solitude of the act of composition. And once put down and published, they can’t be recalled.

Then there’s the group aspect. Bloggers and pundits write in isolation, but they’re not really in isolation at all, except physically. Mentally and emotionally they are part of one huge mass shouting out at each other and at everybody else, the sounds of the exchange echoing and ricocheting and reverberating all over the country–and in some cases the world. As such, we influence each other greatly. It’s not even a case of following the herd, it’s more a case of being influenced by the opinions of others, a process we are all susceptible to no matter how independent we may think we are. We influence each other directly by our words, and also indirectly by the sense of competition that’s inherent in this pundit/blogger game–the need, for some at least, to try to outdo each other.

So what’s the result? Sometimes it’s wonderful–in fact, since I’m a fan of blogs, I’d say it’s often wonderful–a liveliness of writing and thinking and interacting that you just can’t get in the staid old MSM. There’s an energy here, and part of it is the energy that comes with a bunch of sharp (in several senses of the word) and verbal people mixing it up and trying to say intelligent things in a way that’s interesting to read. Sometimes it segues into a group of people trying to say outrageous things, either to amuse or to stir up or out of anger or the desire to call attention to themselves, or some of the above or all of the above.

When is the line crossed and it becomes a feeding frenzy? I don’t have the answer; each person has to decide that for him/herself. But when there’s a lot of blood in the water and people find that their own entrails, and those of their allies, are hanging out–that could be a sign.

[ADDENDUM: To those of you who may have thought I misspelled the word “frenzy” in the title of this post (“frenzi”) in order to show solidarity with Ms. Miers–oh, would that you were right! Actually, my solidarity with her seems to be deeper than just a show; it was a bona fide typo, and one that spellcheck didn’t catch because apparently spellcheck doesn’t do titles.

That said, I’m leaving it in to demonstrate solidarity with Ms. Miers (actually, in truth, I’m leaving it in because I fear that, were I to change it now, the link wouldn’t work). Anyway, the perfect is the enemy of the good, right?]