But, Wilson says, "our great universities seem to have redefined what it means to be an exceptional student. They are producing top students who have given very little thought to matters beyond their impressive grasp of an intense area of study. This narrowing has resulted in a curiously unprepared and superficial pre-professionalism." For example, "[a]n outstanding biochemistry major wants to be a doctor and supports the president's health-care bill but doesn't really know why. A student who started a chapter of Global Zero at his university hasn't really thought about whether a world in which great powers have divested themselves of nuclear weapons would be more stable or less so, or whether nuclear deterrence can ever be moral."
The students are, in short, not being asked to dig into the big, permanent questions of human life and society. They don't get anything like a liberal education--one designed to cultivate free human beings who can think for themselves about the great questions. They are what David Brooks once called "The Organization Kid".
Here at Ashland we're trying to do things differently with the Ashbrook Scholars. It starts the day they arrive as freshman, when they have a seminar with Peter on a great text from a statesman (Churchill's My Early Life this year). They talk about big questions like "What is education?" "What is justice?". It continues through their education in US history, Western Civilization, ancient and modern political thought, and American political thought. And it culminates in their senior year, when they write a thesis on some important question that really matters to them as a person and a citizen.
Wilson says that the Rhodes Scholarship is "looking for students who wonder, students who are reading widely, students of passion who are driven to make a difference in the lives of those around them and in the broader world through enlightened and effective leadership." Whatever others do, we at least are trying to cultivate just that kind of student.
]]>While we're at it, maybe the FCC can muzzle politicians who are bad for "political discourse", or at least the ones who hate the Constitution.
When is that guy up for re-election?
First, if conservatives are going to build November 2 into an enduring political majority, they need to start by understanding their political opponents, the progressives. Today the Democratic Party is the home of progressives, who according to Olsen are more or less defined by their idea of freedom, which is that government must remove "material and immaterial obstacles to some individuals' ability to make the decisions they would prefer to make, even if removing those obstacles places obstacles in the paths of other Americans."
Olsen notes, however, that there is a running civil war among progressives over how to advance their goal. Liberal progressives (the "wine set") have "lofty ambitions" for transforming America right now while moderate progressives (the "beer set") want to work more modestly and slowly. (EJ Dionne has written the liberal argument in The Washington Post; Evan Bayh makes the moderate's case in The New York Times.) The two groups don't have fundamentally different goals (for example, Bayh calls universal health care a "noble aspiration"), but they do have very different attitudes. Liberals are impatient and willing to act without public support if they have the political power; moderates believe in accommodating and working on public opinion before advancing. Bill Clinton was a moderate (at least after 1994); Barack Obama is a liberal.
Second, conservatives need to understand when and why progressives crash politically, as they did on Tuesday. Olsen shows that since the Democrats have become the party of the progressives, they have suffered big defeats four times after holding both the White House and Congress with "large supermajorities": 1965-1966; 1977-1980, 1993-1994; and 2009-2010. Each time, it was the loss of working class voters (including independents) that ruined them, as we saw in the Midwest this election. (Both Ron Brownstein and David Brooks have recently made the same argument.) Such voters deserted the Democrats in reaction against the policies and attitudes of liberal progressives (something the Blue Dogs have been warning about for a while).
This is because liberal progressivism runs contrary to a number of what Olsen calls "The Seven Habits of the Working Class": hope for the future; fear of the present; pride in their lives; anger at being disrespected; belief in public order; patriotism; and fear of rapid change. He explains these at some length (it is really worth reading), but for now it is enough to note that in some of these habits the working class is aligned with conservatives (hope for the future, pride in their lives, patriotism), in some with progressives (fear of the present), and in other habits they are aligned with conservatives or progressives depending on the policy. For example, Olsen argues, working class people like the police (conservative) and public education (progressive); and they do not like ObamaCare and privatizing Social Security for the same reason (fear of rapid change).
Third, Olsen argues that conservatives need to understand what it means when working class voters abandon the Democratic Party (as they did in this election). As many people have said, conservatives shouldn't overinterpret their mandate like the liberals did in 2008. On November 2 working class people did not so much vote pro-conservative as anti-liberal. This means that conservatives need to win these voters over to their principles if they want to begin to really make limited government conservatism the center of gravity in American politics.
Here, according to Olsen, is where conservatives run into a problem. To win working class voters, conservatives need to understand and respect their "Seven Habits" when running for office and when advancing policies. According to Olsen, Ronald Reagan was great at doing both (hence Reagan Democrats). George W. Bush also did a good job in 2000 and especially 2004.
Yet Reagan created Reagan Democrats, not new conservatives committed to limited, constitutional government. He tapped into the conservative elements in these voters, but he did not convert them. Olsen suggests that Reagan went as far as a conservative could go because working class voters simply will never wholeheartedly embrace limited government conservatism just as they have never really embraced liberal progressivism. They may not want ObamaCare but they do want the security of Medicare.
The question then is whether it is possible for conservatives to persuade such voters. The only way would be to show working class people that the principles of constitutional self-government fit with their "habits," especially if those habits can be broadened by persuasive arguments. For example, conservatives could talk about education not by calling for the immediate abolition of the Department of Education or by attacking public education altogether (which the working class respects and depends on). Rather, they could emphasize reform ideas like school choice, which is consistent with the working class "habits" of hope for the future and of taking pride in knowing what's best for your kids and being responsible for doing it. Of course, school choice is an idea rooted in the principles of limited government, but conservatives don't have to talk that way in order to begin to persuade working class voters to support conservative education reforms. Persuasion has to happen step by step. Once the idea of school choice becomes part of their "habits," for example, the working class would move further away from any alignment with progressives on the issue. The same could be possible for health care and Social Security.
In considering the problem that Olsen poses to conservatives, we shouldn't forget that enduring political change only happens in American politics with the right combination of principle and persuasion. Persuasion must be rooted in principle, but it also must respect people's habits, interests, and attitudes. You don't persuade people by shouting at them to change their habits when they don't fit with the principles of limited, constitutional government. You go to them, talk to them as equals, and try to persuade them that their concerns are met by those principles. You respect them as fellow citizens. Then they can hear what you are saying and start to embrace your principles. If conservatives could be persuasive in that way, November 2 could be the beginning of a new political alignment.
]]>How is this happening? Trees are returning in great numbers. Why? Rainfall has increased, and farmers are no longer ploughing trees under when they plant crops but are keeping and cultivating them, which has a tremendous effect on soil conservation. What has caused this change in behavior? Surprise, surprise:
Another change was the way trees were regarded by law. From colonial times, all trees in Niger had been regarded as the property of the state, which gave farmers little incentive to protect them. Trees were chopped for firewood or construction without regard to the environmental costs. Government foresters were supposed to make sure the trees were properly managed, but there were not enough of them to police a country nearly twice the size of Texas.But over time, farmers began to regard the trees in their fields as their property, and in recent years the government has recognized the benefits of that outlook by allowing individuals to own trees. Farmers make money from the trees by selling branches, pods, fruit and bark. Because those sales are more lucrative over time than simply chopping down the tree for firewood, the farmers preserve them.
It bears repeating: economic growth is the best weapon against problems of poverty and the environment in poor countries, and property rights are the key to economic growth. How long will it take for securing property rights to be high on the agenda for international aid groups?
]]>This little story is a prelude to explaining why Adam Nagourney of the New York Times is right when he offers a sobering note to the GOP after the Connecticut primary. As he says, while the Lieberman defeat creates a number of problems for national Democrats, Republicans should especially beware because "the Lamont victory suggested that many Democrats — stirred by their opposition to the war and hostility toward Mr. Bush — are as energized as any group of voters in years, enough so to move them to the voting booth in huge numbers." Of course, punishing Bush is not a political platform and really doesn’t play well with moderates and independents, but the ordinary person on the street also doesn’t like $3 gas and the perceived failure to win in Iraq.
All politics may be local, but not all the time. DeVos is strong but Hoekstra is weak. And if the Democrats can somehow marry liberals’ anger with moderates’ unease, Precinct 6 may be a harbinger of serious trouble for the GOP in the fall.
]]>"It should have been an easy shot: five rounds at 25 feet. But the gunman, Giuseppe Zangara, an anarchist, lost his balance atop a wobbly chair, and instead of hitting President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, he fatally wounded the mayor of Chicago, who was shaking hands with F.D.R."
But for a piece of furniture, John Nance Garner might have become president.
]]>Besides criticizing Ebadi for not being able to really, fully break from the Khomeini revolution, Nasr provides a long and detailed account of the internal situaton in Iran. The conclusion is sobering but leaves some room for hope:
"What, then, of the search for democracy in Iran? It seems to be everywhere and nowhere at once. There is no other country in the region more suitable for the nurturing of the sapling of democracy. Iranians want democracy, and they cherish democratic practices. But there is no simple and straight path to democracy in Iran. The battle lines are unclear, and as the elections last year showed, open political contestation has favored populist authoritarianism over democracy, albeit through the ballot box. Talk of democracy in Iran is rife, especially in the West; but the reality is that Iran now has a stable authoritarian regime, and there is no obvious way to dislodge it.
It will be difficult to make up for the opportunity that was lost during the Khatami years. Building a viable movement for full and politically secular democracy will take time. It needs organization and coalition-building; but above all it needs a convincing and uncompromising message -- one that breaks absolutely with the legacy of the revolution and the nostalgia for its promise, and rejects any half-hearted attempts at reforming the theocracy."
]]>Actually, the American standard for violent speech is much more liberal. In a case that remains the foundation for how courts think about such speech, Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the Warren Court overruled many years of precedent and legal tradition and held that advocating violence against a legitimate government or its officials is protected under freedom of speech. According to that decision, speech can only be punished when a person incites someone else to "imminent lawless action" that is likely to happen under the circumstances (for example, telling an angry mob gathered in front of a city hall occupied by officials that "You should string up these infidel dogs right now!"). Until that point, government is powerless to intervene.
So far in the war on terror, the problem of violent advocacy has not mattered much in the US because we have been able to prosecute terrorist cells based on their actions under anti-conspiracy laws. But if the problem of radical imams preaching violence ever surfaces here, American authorities will be powerless to act directly, at least according to the Supreme Court’s current view.
Maybe this is the price we pay for free speech. But contrary to what many Americans might think, this is a new view and it is far from clear that it was the original meaning of the First Amendment.
]]>I didn’t know Lance Corporal Lyons, but my wife and I were in the same hospital birthing class as his wife Bethany, who had their daughter Ella three months ago while he was in Iraq. He never saw his daughter in person, but Bethany once talked in class -- with tears in her eyes and ours -- about how she looked forward every day to him coming home. It was moving then; it is even more moving now.
Christopher Lyons gone, but his service never forgotten.
]]>Call me old-fashioned, but a glaring computer screen can never replace a well-worn copy as a students best friend.
]]>This enduring lesson is brought home in an unusually interesting and balanced article from The New York Times on how the US military got control of a Sunni insurgent hotbed in northern Iraq. By being incredibly patient, flexible, and willing to work with what they had in front of them, Captain Kevin Burke and his men struck a delicate balance between cultivating former regime elements who would cooperate and rounding up those who would not (and figuring out which was which). According to the piece, the Sunni villagers began to provide Company C with some very good intelligence that led to the capture of "Mohammed Shakara, Al Qaedas leader for northern Iraq and its biggest city, Mosul." The intelligence flowed once the Americans showed that they were serious about keeping order but did not want to rule the place by themselves. The Americans are not loved in that town, but neither are they hated -- except by the irreconciliable jihadists. They still have to watch their backs, but now they are feared and even respected in a certain way. As Capt. Burke says, that’s as good as the "reality" of the situation permits.
No doubt, the Florentine thinker would be proud.
]]>An estrangement had been growing for Thompson since "a dinner party on the day Ronald Reagan famously described the Soviet Union as the pre-eminent source of evil in the modern world. The general tenor of the evening was that Reagan’s use of the word "evil" had moved the world closer to annihilation. There was a palpable sense that we might not make it to dessert.
When I casually offered that the surviving relatives of the more than 20 million people murdered on orders of Joseph Stalin might not find "evil’" too strong a word, the room took on a collective bemused smile of the sort you might expect if someone had casually mentioned taking up child molestation for sport."
Another decisive moment, he says, happened after Sept. 11, when "I watched with astonishment as leading left intellectuals launched a telethon- like body count of civilian deaths caused by American soldiers in Afghanistan. Their premise was straightforward, almost giddily so: When the number of civilian Afghani deaths surpassed the carnage of Sept. 11, the war would be unjust, irrespective of other considerations.
Stated simply: The force wielded by democracies in self-defense was declared morally equivalent to the nihilistic aggression perpetuated by Muslim fanatics."
The final break occured on the day of Iraq’s first free elections: "I choose this day for my departure because I can no longer abide the simpering voices of self-styled progressives -- people who once championed solidarity with oppressed populations everywhere -- reciting all the ways Iraq’s democratic experiment might yet implode." As a liberal, he had to leave the cultural Left because of its fundamental hostility to freedom, which is summed up in its terrible response to the courage of American soldiers in defeating tyranny and of ordinary Iraqis in defying terror.
There is still a long road ahead in places like Iraq, but Thompson’s piece brings to mind a passage from another essay, this one written in 1787. The Federalist says everything Thompson has learned and we must not forget, especially on this Memorial Day:
"From the disorders that disfigure the annals of those republics, the advocates of despotism have drawn arguments, not only against the forms of republican government, but against the very principles of civil liberty... They have indulged themselves in malicious exultation over its friends and partizans. Happily for mankind, stupendous fabrics reared on the basis of liberty, which have flourished for ages, have in a few glorious instances refuted their gloomy sophisms. And, I trust, America will be the broad and solid foundation of other edifices not less magnificent, which will be equally permanent monuments of their errors."
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