International law, and order?

The New Neo Posted on by

Belmont Club, by way of The American Future, offers the following Guardian quote. :

The [Iraq] war was a reckless, provocative, dangerous, lawless piece of unilateral arrogance. But it has nevertheless brought forth a desirable outcome which would not have been achieved at all, or so quickly, by the means that the critics advocated, right though they were in most respects.

Poor old Europe–how to reconcile its worship of international law (and its idee fixee that the US flouted it) with the slowly dawning recognition that Iraq may be turning into some sort of success story?

International law is a beautiful idea, but it can work only with the consent of the governed. Ideally, all nations would hold hands and sing “Kumbaya,” and then international law would function seamlessly. Short of that, the “law” has to have the “order” part as well–the teeth, as it were. And that requires force.

Ideally again, that force would be multilateral–even by old Europe’s definition, which means: they would be included in it. But, short of that sort of overwhelming consensus, a consensus unlikely to appear in the real world of real nations (and we’ll leave aside for the moment that the Guardian article conveniently ignores that most of the involved nations were on the take from Saddam, and would never have acted against him)–what to do?

The Guardian, along with much of Europe, doesn’t seem to know what to do with outlaws. Saddam was an outlaw from international law. It’s as though Europe thinks of the world as a sort of tea party, and that anyone knocking on the door and wanting to come in would quite naturally play by tea-party rules: pick up a cuppa, grab a cucumber sandwich, sit down and chat a while.

But it’s no tea party, it’s an armed world of high-stakes power struggles, with vicious and tyrannical killers such as Saddam holding the reins of an entire country and flouting international law. Then the European tea party breaks down, and the lawmen have to be armed. And sometimes outlaws have to be taken out, especially if they are holding an entire nation hostage, and have designs on others.

And if those efforts are successful in freeing the hostages and putting the tyrant behind bars, then one needs to reconsider whether the means used to accomplish that task may not have been right, after all. Acts need to be evaluated by ethical standards that take into account some sort of notion of the real world and how it operates.

Watch “High Noon” sometime. In the end, even Will Kane’s pacifist Quaker bride learns the bitter and terrible lesson that force is sometimes necesssary for the enforcement of the law–and that it can’t always be multilateral, if the townspeople just won’t cooperate.

Barriers and walls: Iraq and elsewhere

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When I turned on the news today, first thing I heard was that there had been another car-bombing of a police station in Iraq, with the death of 15 brave policemen. It seems the bomber got past the guard at the gate by wearing a police uniform.

I’m glad they have gates and guards there, although in this case the bomber managed to foil them. But I think they also need concrete barriers between the road or parking lot and the police stations themselves, to contain the concussion of such explosions. Not that a determined bomber still couldn’t get in, but it would help make the task much harder, I assume, although I’m no engineer.

Thinking about that made me think of the old Cambridge Trust Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Now, that may seem an odd juxtaposition–and it is, to be sure–but there is a small connection. This story may seem frivolous, but the place I’m trying to get to with it isn’t.

I lived in Cambridge for about seven years back in the late 60s through the mid-70s, back when a person with normal finances could actually live there and have enough money left over to eat every now and then. When I first arrived, the bank in the middle of Harvard Square had a huge glass window in front, light and airy. During some sort of demonstration or demonstrations (Cambodia bombing? after Kent State?) the window was repeatedly broken by stones heaved by angry demonstrators or vandals, or perhaps a combination of both.

And so the bank decided to brick up the entire front. It created a gloomy fortresslike facade that was a sad and tangible reminder of the anger and discord in our society (and, although I wasn’t throwing any stones, I went to a few antiwar protests in my time).

And then one day, many years later, perhaps in the 80s (I was in the Square on a visit), I noticed a change. The glass front was back again. And it remained that way last time I looked, several years ago. For all I know it’s that way still–I’ll have to check next time I go there.

The reinstatement of the glass facade coincided with the transformation of the Square into a consumer haven. The old Design Research morphed into Crate and Barrel, and the much older Wursthaus became Abercrombie and Fitch (or is it Banana Republic? Oh dear; sometimes I confuse the two.) And El’s, wonderful El’s, dead and gone, although Bartley’s remains.

So, the barrier went up, and it worked as long as it needed to. Years passed, the situation became calmer, and some higher-up decided the solid brick front was no longer needed.

The same process of building barriers is happening now in Iraq, for far more urgent reasons, against a far more vicious and implacable foe. The barriers will have to go up, lots of them. But it’s my fervent hope that some day, even if it takes many years, they will come down again, because they will no longer be necessary.

Same for all those protective walls, I say (although here in New England we also say–or, actually, Robert Frost says we say, “Good fences make good neighbors.”)

And some day soon when I visit Harvard Square again, I’ll take a look at that bank building. Maybe it’s not even a bank anymore, I don’t know; maybe it’s a Dunkin Donuts. But I like Cambridge and I like the Square, even though now I’m the oldest person strolling around there, except for a few fusty old professors, and even though I have to keep my mouth shut about politics lest I become the target of at least a few stony glances.

Ward Churchill, proud Native American…

The New Neo Posted on by

…not.

Well, as Emily Litella would say, “Never mind.”

If Colorado ends up firing him on the basis that he made false claims of ethnicity to get favoritism in hiring, he can always say he’s a victim of affirmative action. It wouldn’t surprise me if he claimed some sort of victimhood, anyway, after gaining notoriety by slandering the true innocent victims of 9/11.

UPDATE: Instapundit now writes that there is some question about the authenticity of the Churchill quote. We’ll see–maybe in the end it’s the blogosphere (wonderfully self-correcting organism that it is) that will have to say, “Never mind.”

UPDATE OF UPDATE: Yep, it’s official. The blogosphere says, “Never mind.”

So now it seems that Churchill is actually “less than a quarter Native-American.” Whatever that means. It all only serves to point out how absurd these fractional racial classifications are. And, apparently, Mr. Churchill can finally claim to be a victim of something: being misquoted in the MSM. Join the crowd, Ward!

Press pass: spread the word

The New Neo Posted on by

I think it’s a phrase whose time has come: press pass

Definition: the strategic spiking of a story that, if properly investigated, would be likely to reflect poorly on someone the MSM considers a friend or a good guy.

Usage (examples):

“The NY Times gave a press pass to Eason Jordan for his Davos remarks.”

“The MSM gave a press pass to John Kerry on his failure to sign a form 180.”

Spread it around, if you see fit.

Big Pharoah speaks…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and he says “let my people go.”

Right around the time of the build-up to the Iraqi war, the first Iraqi blog came into being, Salam Pak’s, now defunct. It was fascinating to read an actual Iraqi’s words, emanating almost magically from behind Saddam’s iron curtain. From the start, Salam wasn’t any sort of generic Iraqi, he was his own extremely unique person with an instantly recognizable voice, sardonic and clever, funny and iconoclastic.

Since the war there’s been a proliferation of Iraqi bloggers with a huge readership hungry for their unique points of view. My own personal favorites, Iraq the Model and Free Iraqi, eloquent and stirring, are on my blogroll. Sometimes I think of them as the Patrick Henrys and Thomas Paines of their time and place.

Big Pharoah is another of these distinctive blog voices from the Middle East, this time from Egypt, where he seems to be the only blogger writing in English. Fascinating stuff. Despite the distance and the exotic locale, one of the things that struck me when I first read his site last spring was something he and I seemed to have in common: he reported being surrounded by people who don’t share many of his political viewpoints.

Yesterday Big Pharaoh wrote some words that made my heart glad. Maybe they’ll do the same for you. Listen:

something is beginning to happen in Egypt. In fact, something is beginning to happen all over the region, from the revolution of the purple fingers in Iraq to Lebanon’s anti-Syria red demonstrations today. The enemies of freedom as well know that something is happening and they are trying to stop it.

Something amazing does seem to be stirring, the power of freedom. And recently freedom’s enemies actually appear to be getting weaker–although that story is far from over, and probably never will be over.

It seems those long-ago framers of our Declaration of Independence really were onto something big, something well-nigh universal. Isn’t it ever and ever more “self-evident” that people desire liberty–as much now as they did in 1776, perhaps even more?

Although, of course, not every single person on the face of the earth wants it. Some are afraid of it–afraid for themselves, or, more commonly, afraid for others–but that’s another story, for another essay.

Condi and Jackie

The New Neo Posted on by

Those not interested in fluff, please skip this post.

Am I the only one who thinks that Condoleezza Rice and Jackie Kennedy bear some sort of resemblance to each other? Physically, I mean. Think about it. The extraordinarily slender clothes-horse elegance, the erect and regal posture, the wide-set eyes and proportionately large head, the hairdo–and, of course, the beautifully tailored suits, not to mention the nicknames. Stick a pillbox on Condi’s head and call it done.

UPDATE: Well, someone else made a connection, but it’s not the same one.

Nature, red in tooth and claw

The New Neo Posted on by

When I signed up for the Truth Laid Bear ecosystem, I did it for the laughs. Likening the forms of life in the blogosphere to the Linnaean classification system and the Great Chain of Being (both which I had to learn about in some detail–and even, in the case of the former, laboriously memorize–way back when) gave me a chuckle.

But I’m not chuckling now (oh, well, maybe just a little bit). Because it turns out this is a heavy responsibility, and hard work not to slide back down the slippery slope.

Not that anyone cares but me, and I’m not sure how much even I care, but still–how often in life does one receive such a quantitative and seemingly objective rating of one’s rank and station? I started out an Insignificant Microbe or Lowly Insect or whatever it was I started out as. But now, thanks to a few gracious links, for one brief shining moment I’ve crawled out of the primordial slime (at least partially) to reach the relatively exalted rank of Crawly Amphibian.

But I’d ascended before, only to fall. I hadn’t realized when I signed up for that thing that you’re only as good as your last weeks’ stats. I had slithered up in the Truth Laid Bear world before, and yet it had taken only a week of slothfulness to ooze back down again to Lowly Insect.

It’s a jungle out there.

Instapundit: the Ed Sullivan of the blogosphere?

The New Neo Posted on by

An amusing post at VietPundit (be sure to read the comments section, too) raises a somewhat serious question, at least for us bloggers toiling away at our keyboards: how does Instapundit Glenn Reynolds do it? How does he churn it out, day after day, night after night, through rain and snow and sleet and…well, you get the idea. And manage to hold down a full-time job of some distinction, have a family–and, I suppose, eat? And still get more traffic than the San Diego Freeway at 5 PM on the Friday before Labor Day?

VietPundit’s answer–that Instapundit is not one, but many–is one I’ve entertained. Perhaps he has a fleet of unpaid law interns scanning the internet in search of nuggets to highlight. Perhaps there was a typo, and his blog title was supposed to read “Instapundits” instead, and now that he has such brand recognition he can’t change it. Perhaps he, like many bloggers, has a combination of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and insomnia. Or perhaps he doesn’t need more than a couple of hours of sleep a night, anyway.

But all of that only explains how Glenn does it in terms of mechanics. The question that interests me more is: what is it about his blog that generates all that traffic? He’s not the most flamboyant or polished writer, although his prose gets the job done with clarity and an economy of effort impressive to those of us inclined to be a bit wordy (who, me? couldn’t be!). Unlike LGF or Powerline, he was not a major player in exposing the CBS forgeries. He’s smooth, with the smoothness that hides all trace of effort. And the fact that he was one of the earlier bloggers and thus built up his base before there was much competition still doesn’t explain why that fan base has stuck with him and actually grown, along with the blogosphere.

So, I submit my own Theory of Glenn. He’s one of the first bloggers I ever found, and I still read him pretty much every day. He fills a niche in the blogosphere that no one else occupies–that of companion, generalist, and affable guide. It doesn’t take a whole lot of time to read him, and people are busy. There are very few bloggers who seem to have less ego, who are merely saying, “Here, read this, it’s interesting,” in a low-key and unthreatening way. The blogosphere can be a pretty heated place, with lots of sturm and drang, full of prima donnas and flash. Glenn is quiet and calming, but he can zing it with a pithy (that’s pithy, not pissy) comment now and then. His “Heh” says volumes.

Pardon me, Glenn, I don’t mean this in a bad way–but he’s the Ed Sullivan of bloggers. Always brings you a really good show, and then steps back and lets you enjoy it.

Is this the real “Arab street”?

The New Neo Posted on by

Is this the real “Arab street”? Somehow, I think so.

Beirut used to be a wonderful, cosmopolitan city, before all the troubles. Funny, too, how all those bleating about the US occupation of Iraq are curiously silent when asked about the Syrian occupation of Lebanon.

I submit that, if the Syrians leave Lebanon soon (a consummation devoutly to be wished), no small part of the reason will have been the infant democracy building in Iraq as a direct result of that US occupation.

A Minstalanch (Instalanch, twice removed)

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been the pleased and fascinated beneficiary of a mini-Instalanch (for which I hereby coin the phrase “minstalanch”). Meaning? Dr. Sanity linked to me in this post, then Carpe Bonum linked to Dr. Sanity here, and then voila!, Instapundit, the great Hub of the blogoshere (see my blogroll), linked to Carpe Bonum here. A simple and elegant two degrees of separation.

So there you have it: an Instalanch, twice removed. Minstalanch. Not really akin to an avalanche–but relatively speaking, a pretty big snowfall, good for skiing and sledding, and fun to see on the old sitemeter. Welcome, all!

A mind is a difficult thing to change: Part One–Intro

The New Neo Posted on by

When I first started this blog, one of the things I was sure I’d do an awful lot of writing about is what it means to change one’s mind on a topic as fundamental and emotional as politics: who does it, why they do it, how they do it. I thought I’d explore the ways in which “changers” differ from those who don’t ever change, and the repercussions changers face among friends and family who often consider them to be pariahs. I even thought that, if a bunch of these people ever migrated to my blog, it could function as a sort of combination support group (sorry, it’s the therapist in me!) and clearing house on the topic of political changers and what makes them tick.

Somehow I haven’t gotten around to doing any of this until now. Hmmm. Procrastination. Whatever. But I hope to finally start tackling this vast and unwieldy subject, bit by bit. I’ll be thinking this through as I go along, so please bear with me.

Of course, the political change I know best is the one I’ve already made–from liberal Democrat to whatever it is I am now (what I call “neo-neocon,” as a sort of joke). Nowadays, “neocon” is a term used most often as a pejorative, but its actual definition is something like “liberal hawk” (see this article for a more complete explanation, containing one of my favorite definitions, “the kind of right-winger a liberal wouldn’t be embarrassed to have over for cocktails.” Or, in my case, dinner. I’m much bigger on dinner. Especially if it’s any kind of ethnic food.)

Way back when I was in graduate school getting my Master’s degree, my fellow therapists-in-training and I (Democrats all, by the way) were forced to think long and hard (and to talk and talk and talk and write and write and write) about how it is that people change. Therapists are change-agents by definition, and it helps if a therapist actually believes that people can change. But every therapist knows a bitter truth, and that is that true and fundamental change is both difficult and rare, and that it is often exceedingly painful for the person who changes, and for everyone around him/her. The old standby about how many therapists it takes to change a lightbulb (“one, but the lightbulb has to want to change”) is not only true, but insufficient–it would be great if wanting to change, and talking to a therapist about it, were all that was necessary for the desired change to occur. But of course it’s not.

I not only spent years thinking, talking, and writing about how people change, but also trying to help people accomplish it–and, sometimes, actually even succeeding (although maybe they did it in spite of my help–one never knows).

But all clients who come to a therapist want to change–or, at least, they pay lip service to the fact that they do. So they start ahead of the game, because they are strongly motivated, motivated enough to pay a substantial sum (or have their insurance pay it) to a total stranger to whom they also must tell their deepest–and sometimes most shameful–secrets.

Political change is different. I think it tends to happen against one’s will, often very much against one’s will. The changer is dragged kicking and screaming to a different point of view by something–but what?

I’m not aware of any studies done on the subject, although I certainly haven’t done an exhaustive search–unless you count reading a bunch of blogs written by people who’ve done this very sort of changing. These blogs appear to attract an audience with a high percentage of people who’ve undergone a similar political transformation. Changers seem to want to talk about it a lot with each other, much like those in 12-step programs, and there are a lot of jokes about that on these blogs (“recovering liberals” and the like).

Some of what I write here will be based on what I’ve gleaned from those blogs. Some will be based on any research I might be able to dig up on the subject (suggestions are welcome). Some will be based on–well, my thoughts on the subject.

To be continued….

[ADDENDUM: For Part II, go here.]

Harvard in peril

The New Neo Posted on by

Larry Summers is under fire for daring to suggest that research be done into whether there are biological differences that account, at least in part, for the paucity of women at the pinnacle of science. Summers seems to have been persona non grata for a long time to a lot of people at Harvard and in academia, and now they’re really sinking their teeth into him with relish.

Now, I’m somewhat of a feminist myself, although I part company with many of the more doctrinaire ones. But I’m also a person interested in rationality and the pursuit of truth. And, once again, this is a case where feelings seem to have triumphed over reason. That academics–and scientists, at that–would allow this to happen is not a good sign. Whatever happened to the Enlightenment? If Galileo were to return at this point, he might be in grave danger again–at least, if he were to suggest that the earth didn’t revolve around women.

In my own experience in an academic environment during the ’90s, after decades of being away, I was shocked at how far the PC police had come in stifling academic freedom. It seemed the new criterion for censure was whether a remark had offended someone. However careful the professor might be to couch the remark with qualifications, however delicately it was stated, if it offended the tender sensibilities of anyone in the audience, the professor was in trouble.

My guess is that therapists bear part of the responsibility for this. The popularization of therapy and its portrayal in legions of self-help books and talk shows has helped foster an idea that, since all feelings are in some way valid (if only in the intrapersonal sense), therefore people have a right to demand that their feelings never be hurt. This is a distortion of what true therapy is all about, but it’s a popular one–even among some therapists, unfortunately.

So, Larry Summers seems to have stepped into this particular pile of steaming do-do. The first reports of the reaction to his remarks contain the following gem from MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins, “I felt I was going to be sick…My heart was pounding and my breath was shallow. I was extremely upset.”

I assume that, as a scientist, Ms. Hopkins had other, more rationally-based objections to Summer’s remarks. But I have yet to read any that make sense. How could anyone have a rational objection to Summer’s call for research into this question? Unless that person were afraid of the truth.

Now, I can certainly understand a concern that, if it were to be discovered that there are innate differences between men and women in that respect, the results could be used to harm women or discriminate against them in the sciences. But all scientists–even female ones–should know that that’s no reason to stop the research. All scientific research is a double-edged sword that can be used for good or ill, and we never can know the ultimate results of any research before it is done–or even afterwards, for that matter. At no point did Summers suggest that the results of any research should be used to hold women back in the sciences–au contraire.

So, I’m with Andrew Sullivan on this one. As Sullivan writes, “[I]f Summers goes down, the chilling effect on intellectual freedom in this country will be intense.” Preach it, brother Sullivan, preach it.