In direct contravention of my wife's explicit instructions, herewith I inaugurate my first blog. Long may it prosper.

For some reason, I think I have something to say to you. You think you have something to say to me? Email me at: gideonsblogger -at- yahoo -dot- com

 
I think I've been pretty good lately at avoiding talking about anything newsworthy. I haven't opined on Dick Grasso's departure from the NYSE (unfortunate and undeserved, I think, and a function of the unfortunate decision by the NYSE not to go public, which would have required it to split the SRO from the money-making exchange); I haven't opined on the Wilson/Plame affair (I'm concerned, in the dark, and waiting to hear more); I haven't even said anything about the disastrous Cancun round of trade negotiations (it would be too depressing). I've said precious little about the California gubernatorial race (why, precisely, is the GOP happier about Schwarzenegger this year than they were about Riordan in the last real election?).

And I admit, not trying to be topical or relevant has been a real relief. So here's a totally irrelevant topic to keep everyone amused and fill up the comments box: what are the 10 most important books you've never read.

I'll take "most important" to mean: the books that would make the most difference to you, on a deep level. Not the technical books you ought to read for your job, or the books you feel guilty about not having read but don't think you'd get much out of: the books you know you should have read, that you think would be significant to you if you read them, but that you haven't managed to pick up or get through.

Here's my list, in no particular order:

1. Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War
2. Virgil: Aeneid

I really can't believe I haven't read either of these books. But it's worse than that: I haven't read *a word* of either of these books. I've only read parts of Herodotus, for example, but I give myself credit; no such luck with these two. It gets worse still: I've read essentially nothing written by citizens of the Roman Republic and Empire. My classical education is highly defective, clearly. Why do I think they would matter to me? Well, Thucydides is a classic of history, of political science, and of rhetoric, three things I care a lot about. And the Aeneid made the cover of the latest Weekly Standard, so it's obviously highly relevant. Anyhow, New Year's resolution: read these two books.

3. The Talmud

My ignorance of the Talmud is essentially complete. I never studied it in school, and I've never studied it on my own. Oh, I've probably looked at a handful of pages over the years, but nothing that would count as actual study. This is a major religious lapse on my part - and it's not as if I've been without opportunities. The Talmud is a hard text, by all accounts, and one doesn't read it; one studies it, preferably with a partner. So, another New Year's resolution, to (at least) crack open a volume of Talmud with a study partner.

4. Aristotle: Poetics
5. Ruskin: The Seven Lamps of Architecture and/or The Stones of Venice
6. Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals

I've read some late 20th-century literary and art criticism that I like a great deal (some of Northrop Frye's stuff on the Bible and on Shakespeare, for example), but I am insufficiently grounded in basic aesthetic ideas. The fact that I haven't read books like the above might be a reason why. Some people might be surprised by the inclusion of Ruskin in the above; I'm looking for a great Christian writer on aesthetic matters to balance two great pagans (one the consummate Apollonian, the other the consummate Dionysian), and Ruskin immediately came to mind. Also he's writing about architecture, a subject I care about very deeply (as all New Yorkers should), and which is rather different from the other arts, so reading him might throw some interesting light on the pagans.

7. Wordsworth: The Prelude

My education is poetry is abysmal, as bad as my education in the Latin classics. I have read bits and pieces of this and that - a good bit of epic poetry, actually - but nothing systematic. It is a major objective of mine this year to correct this defect in my education. It is too late for me to acquire a fluency with poetry; you need to read this stuff when the mind is still plastic, and that period is probably over by the time one hits twenty-five. But I can still read. And if I am going to get an education in English poetry, I need to read the poet who more than anyone represents its modern beginning. Besides which, from what I hear and from shorter poems, I suspect I would like Wordsworth a great deal. So here's another New Year's resolution: read the Prelude.

8. Bialik: Songs

Chaim Nachman Bialik is the founding poet of modern Hebrew literature. I read a handful of poems as a child, but they did not lodge in my brain. Who knows why; I was a kid, and I had very little interest in literature. Now, I want to go back and see what I missed. While I am pretty well-versed in Israeli politics, know many Israelis, am at least somewhat familiar with the land, I am badly ignorant of its great literature. Reading Bialik would be the right way to begin: at the beginning.

9. The Mahabharata

I've read most of the Hebrew Bible many times over; I've read much of the Christian New Testament; I've read Homer, a good bit of Plato and Aristotle, and some of the Pre-Socratics; I've read a little of the Quran; I've read the Epic of Gilgamesh and fragments of Canaanite Epic from Ugarit; I've read some Confucius, some Chuang-tzu, and (for what it's worth) Lao-tzu's little book. But I've read essentially nothing from the vast literature of ancient India. I doubt I could possibly get through the entirety of the Mahabharata; perhaps a more realistic target to set my sights on is to read the Gita. But be that as it may. To at least dip a toe into this vast ocean would significantly expand the horizons of my mental world. Plus I have a funny feeling I'd like it.

10. Gonick: The Cartoon History of the Universe, Volume III

All work and no play makes Noah a dull boy. Volumes I and II are among my favorite books. I appear to be the only Gonick fan not to have known that Volume III came out a year ago. Off to the bookstore!

So, gentle readers: what are the 10 most important books you still haven't read?
posted by Noah at 4:24 PM

 
A follow up to the previous post. Whever I talk about homosexuality being a "compulsion" that thereby excuses sexual behavior that would otherwise be objectionable, I get emails asking, "what about paedophilia? Isn't that also a compulsion? Does that make it OK?"

Yes, it is, and no, it doesn't. There are sins that are an offense against God; sins that are an offense against others; and sins that are an offense against the self. All sins fall into the first category, but not all fall into the other categories. Sexual relations with children are clearly harmful to the child as well as to the adult, and therefore fall into all three categories. I would argue that homosexual relations between consenting adults cannot very plausibly, or at least do not have to, fall into the second category. The third category - offense against the self - is still a real issue, but I would address it by pointing out that mandatory celibacy is also potentially harmful, and so one has to weigh to strategies - a gay lifestyle and a celibate lifestyle - each of which has risks of harm to self, and find the lesser harm and greater good. As for offense to God, well, I have to fall back on the same general principles that animated the rabbi's talk, about how halachah is yielding in the face of human suffering.

Another analogy often made is between being gay and being an alcoholic. An alcoholic operates under a compulsion to drink; but we don't therefore encourage him to persist in his drinking, but to give it up. The reason, though, is that continuing to drink does him palpable harm, and giving it up is a realistic possibility, whatever the transient traumas of getting from here to there. The course that avoids - or minimizes - harm to self (and to others) is giving up the bottle. I simply don't think the analogy to gay sexuality holds. I don't believe that trying to make oneself straight is the course of lesser harm.

One might say that in past ages it was plausible to lead a celibate, and private, life in perfect health, and that this must be the case or the gay "problem" would have existed in rabbinic days, and we would know the "solution." Therefore, we should not accept homosexuality but change the culture so that a healthy celibate life is more plausible. I have some sympathy for this line of argument. But I'm not sure this is true, and I'm not sure it's dispositive if it is true. I'm not sure it's true because we do hear about men who seem to have a special attraction for other men in past ages; if nothing else, insulting jokes about such individuals well antedate the modern concept of homosexuality. And the fact that the rabbis assumed that the inclination could be successfully overcome does not prove that it could be eradicated. As for why I'm not sure it's dispositive: because we cannot live in the past merely by wishing it so. Take an analogy: the rabbis never seriously considered a world in which women were, in terms of economic, social and political rights, the equals of men. That is, however, the world we live in, and it throws up interesting challenges for various aspects of Jewish tradition. To say, "oh, the problem of the agunot would never have come up in the 5th century" is not to answer the question of how to handle the problem today but to ask it in other words: we have this problem precisely because it was not a problem in the 5th century. So, perhaps in the past a man attracted to other men would have married or not, and would not have concerned himself with the question overmuch in a world where many if not most marriages were rooted in convenience. And perhaps in a world with far more serious problems, the occasional boy who vanished into a life of self-abasement and sin would not have been much noticed. One thing I can say: the most strenuous attempts to build a cloister against the outside world in the frum community have not succeeded in eradicating homosexuality. There are strictly Orthodox gays living double lives and refugees from the strictly Orthodox world who could not live doubly in that fashion.

Another objection often raised is that any recognition of the legitimacy of a gay relationship would effectively be endorsing a fraud; that perhaps it is acceptable to tolerate such relationships, but not to recognize them in any way. I don't think this is the case, even though I do think it's the case with regard to so-called gay marriage. I think the analogy between being gay and having a disability is a pretty good one (and I wonder what the disabled think about the fact that gays generally bristle at such an analogy?) and provides the following analogy. A quadraplegic cannot be strictly Sabbath observant without danger to life. But there remains the question of whether to be as stringent as possible in avoiding impermissable activity, or whether to be more lenient. For example: should the quadraplegic travel to synagogue in his wheelchair, or remain stationary for the duration of the Sabbath? Now, I'm not Sabbath-observant myself, much less a rabbinic decisor, so I'm not the best person to make an argument here. But it does seem to me that remaining stationary for the duration of the Sabbath is a terrible burden to put on someone, and that while it's conceivable that someone would choose to be stringent in this way, it is hard for me to believe that God expects it, or that a rabbi should do anything but be as lenient as possible in applying the Sabbath laws in such a situation. Now, someone who was a quadraplegic who, because he could not avoid using electricity on the Sabbath, chose to watch television would be a different case. But I would argue that to tell a quadraplegic that he ought not travel to shul - or move at all - because doing so would be using electricity is wrong. I think this is reasonably analogous to the way I approach homosexual relationships. Tolerating them without recognizing them would be politely looking away when the kid in the wheelchair rolls into synagogue, not making an issue of it but never giving him any guidance about how, as a wheelchair-bound person, he can properly observe the Sabbath. I think you can recognize an honorable way of dealing with what I would treat as a species of disability without suggesting either that the disability itself is deserving of honor, or that there's no different between being disabled and being hale.

A more telling question, which I don't get often enough, is how to deal with gay teens. And this is, indeed, an extremely difficult problem for anyone with respect for traditional ideas of modesty and sexual restraint. I refer a lot of the time to an "irreducible core" of gays who cannot be otherwise; this is deliberate, because I think there is a larger "penumbra" of individuals whose sexuality is more complicated. All of what I've been saying about accommodations for homosexuality is predicated on the notion that we can identify this core of individuals, and make a home for them, while still making it clear to everyone that there is a moral norm that they should properly conform to, to the best of their ability. But the process of identification is far from easy, and raises a whole host of problems. The "questioning" teen has been the wedge for the introduction of a thoroughly radical sexual program into secondary and even primary education, a program that actively encourages promiscuity and experimentation with different "sexualities." Conservatives need to do more than point out how terrible this program is (which they do); they need to come up with an alternative way of talking about these matters - even if we agree that they properly should not be discussed in school, at least not in ordinary classes and certainly not in primary schools.

I don't pretend I have this stuff all figured out. This is a vexing question. I've definitely moved to the right on this whole question over time in terms of my attitude, a function of (mostly) becoming a father, thinking harder about the topic, and being confronted very specifically with the idea of gay marriage. But I don't think my fundamental positions have changed all that much. I used to think, and still do think, that gay people have to have a place in society, and a place in Judaism. I still think that to have no sexual life is a sad thing, and I'm not willing to condemn someone to that. I don't have a problem with the idea of a gay rabbi. (I don't have an opinion about gay priests or ministers; not my religion, not my business.) I never thought about gay marriage until it became a realistic possibility, and having thought about it I am strongly against it. I still think that gay adoption is more problematic than adoption by a traditional family, but less problematic than adoption by singletons, and that divorce has caused far more harm to children than gay parenting ever could. I have real trouble with people who divorce their spouses for reasons other than real abuse or betrayal; here, too, the stories I know of gay marrieds who divorced fall somewhere in the middle between the more and less justified divorce stories. I did not, and do not, think gay is "just as good" as straight any more than I think deaf is just as good as hearing. But you will be hard-pressed to find someone who advocates persecution of the deaf or wants them to shut up about their problems. I thought, and still think, that conservatives have to address homosexuality on terms other than simply "go away" or they will lose the argument - and much else besides.
posted by Noah at 5:00 PM

 
I learned something about myself this past weekend: I'm still a liberal at heart. How do I know this? Because my antennae are poorly tuned to signs that a serious conservative would pick up in a heartbeat.

The rabbi at the synagogue I attend chose as the topic of his sermon on the second day of Rosh Hashanah the Jewish perspective on homosexuality. He predicted (accurately, I think) that the Rabbinical Assembly (the governing body of Conservative Judaism in North America) was going to "revisit" its decisions on the question from several years ago. He predicted that, whatever the RA decided, the decision would be constroversial. And he said that it was important, therefore, to be very clear on the halachic process to justify any decision.

He then talked about that process as he saw it. He revisited classic Jewish texts, starting with the famous passages in Leviticus and extending through the early rabbis and the Talmud, and admitted that the best reading of all this precedent is clear opposition to homosexual acts as sinful, even especially sinful. He stressed two points about the character of this sin. First, that it is not a matter of sex being dirty or evil and marriage therefore being a unique concession to human needs, but about human sexuality being holy and therefore needing to be treated with care, and not with a cavalier and profane attitude. Second, that the rabbis did not have a concept of a homosexual individual, but only of homosexual acts, and therefore their condemnation of those acts rested on an explicit premise that these were sins that anyone might chose to commit or not to commit.

He then went on to argue that the traditional fate of a homosexual male - to live in the closet, to try to change his sexuality, or to live in exile from the community - was profoundly destructive, psychologically and socially. We now know, he said, that homosexuality, whatever its biological etiology, is innate and unchangeable. It is not a choice; it is a fate. And he felt that as a matter of morality it was inappropriate to condemn these people so fated to a life of chastity, and that therefore the challenge was to find some way consistent with Jewish law and tradition to allow gay men (and lesbians, though there is no biblical prohibition to overcome in their case) to live with "dignity." He cited rabbinic maxims to the effect that human dignity overrides the specific requirements of halacha (the original context, if I recognized the quotes correctly, was not causing social embarrassment to someone who performs a mitzvah incorrectly through ignorance - not a perfect analogy for his point).

He bloviated a bit about the beauty of diversity and not judging people unless you've walked a mile in their shoes and not losing the valuable resource of gay congregants and so forth; this was so much wasted breath, from my perspective. On the other hand, he stressed that he felt that male/female complementarity was an important fact of human nature, and something very important to parenting - not that gay parents would be harmful to children, but that, if possible, it's best to be raised by a man and a woman, and this I appreciated. All told, I thought the sermon was well-balanced, laid out where he stood on this question (on the liberal end of Conservative Judaism) and reassured those who disagreed that in reaching his conclusions he was respectful of the text and not merely saying "this bit of the Bible is bigoted; let's change it."

On all this, I basically agreed with him. As I think should be clear to readers of this blog, I *do* believe that there is an irreducible core of homosexuals who, from a halachic perspective, operate under a compulsion, and I *do* believe that mandatory celibacy is harmful (even if chosen celibacy can be a legitimate spiritual choice, something that I question in a Jewish context but can keep an open mind about more generally). For that reason, I think there needs to be some mechanism for saying to Jewish gays: here is how you should properly live your life as Jews - a way that does not deny traditional teaching about sexuality or impose a destructive androgyny, but that also doesn't simply throw up its hands and say "Judaism has nothing useful to say about this problem." Judaism has to have something useful to say about every problem, or it can make no real claim to universal religion.

So I went around to a number of more conservative congregants to take their temperature, and discovered that they had heard a rather different sermon than I had. Three times, independently, I heard a variation on the theme of: the rabbi is warning us that he's going to push for gay marriage at the RA, whether we like it or not.

One made the following analogy: a blind man is not at fault for being blind. And we don't shun him, we don't make him sit in the back of the congregation; indeed, we make every effort to accommodate him and make him comfortable. But he can't read Torah before the congregation, because doing so requires reading from a kosher scroll, and a blind man physically can't do that. So I don't want to shun gays or lesbians or their children, I welcome them into the congregation, but they just can't say what they have has the kedushah of marriage. And I sat through the sermon in dread that he was going to utter the "M" word and [here he listed several more conservative members of the congregation] would all walk out on the spot.

Another said the following: he talks about a dialogue, about listening to the congregation and having this kind of process, but he doesn't care what anyone thinks. He didn't warn anyone - the President of the synagogue, for instance - that he was going to give a controversial sermon. He's too scared to tell us that he's going to push for gay marriage, because then he'd get pushed back by some of us, and he's intimidated by healthy, self-confident people. But now he's going to go to the RA and get authorization to do whatever he wants, and we'll just have to live with it.

Said another: I don't understand what the sermon was about if it wasn't about gay marriage. We already have gay congregants - the rabbi at NYC's gay synagogue is a member of our congregation! They're welcome, their kids are welcome, nobody says boo about the fact that they are gay. What more does he want? How much more accepting can you get? The only thing I can think of is that he wants to have commitment ceremonies or gay weddings. But of course he didn't say that. I wonder why not?

Of course, as readers of this blog know, in my view these folks are also right. Whatever gay relationships are, they aren't marriage, and we shouldn't call them that. I believe that Jewish tradition can endorse the view that it is no averah - transgression - for a gay man to have a loving sexual relationship with another gay man, precisely because a gay man operates under a compulsion. I can even accept that you could somehow recognize that relationship Jewishly, praise it, tell gay youngsters: you should grow up to be like these two. But I can't accept that such a relationship has the same kedushah as a married couple. I don't see how you accept that notion without essentially throwing everything Judaism teaches about sexuality and relations between men and women out the window. I'm one of Derb's "acceptors" - but I can't accept that accepting a gay couple requires me to deny what I know about my own marriage.

I still agree with what the rabbi actually said. Assuming he's acting in good faith, he'll surely recognize that for him to read the seven blessings for two men standing under a huppah would be an atrocious travesty and would make it impossible for men and women to get married under his aegis. If he is acting in good faith, I have to trust that he'll understand this, and, whatever else he argues for at the RA, he won't argue for this. But it's obvious that the more conservative congregants do not think he is acting in good faith, and they are preparing for battle.

I wish this issue would go away, but it's not going to. The culture war is coming to my synagogue, and to a synagogue near you.
posted by Noah at 9:45 AM

 
Well, tomorrow night is Rosh Hashanah, Yom Hazikaron, Yom Zichron Teruah (this year, at least). My own teshuvah is going . . . pretty lousy. Not much time for reflection. No new mitzvot assumed. Haven't undertaken a course of study. Haven't apologized to those I've harmed or offended over the past year. Work and immediate family have been kind of all-consuming. And so, in light of the foregoing, a final, comforting parable of teshuvah, for Elul:

When Joseph and his brothers were in Egypt, Joseph went in to his father's house and saw his brothers, Judah and Benjamin, engaged in Torah study. And Joseph thought to himself: here I have been engaged as Vizier in Egypt, and before that I was imprisoned, and before that I was a slave in the house of Potiphar, and I have neglected Torah studies since arriving in this country. But now I am grown, how shall I undertake to study at my age?

So Joseph took his sons, Ephraim and Menasheh, to his father, and placed them on his knees to be instructed. And they took to their studies as a child takes honey. But when they returned home, they would laugh at their father, Joseph, saying, "does the Vizier of Egypt not know the proper way to wash his hands?" or "does the Vizier of Egypt not know the proper way to put on his shoes?" And Joseph was afflicted on their account, crying, "woe unto me, that the accusations of my heart are now on my son's lips!"

That night, Joseph had another dream, his first since his brothers came to Egypt. In the dream, he was climbing a mountain carrying across his back a thick rod from which there hung two buckets full of water. He walked with care so as not to spill, and as he walked he saw others climbing the mountain, some with flasks upon their hips, some drinking from the streams that ran down the mountain. The other climbers, unencumbered as he was, passed him easily on their ascent.

Then Joseph looked down at his heavy buckets, and he saw his brothers hanging from the chains, and dipping their cups in the buckets to drink. And Joseph thought to himself: is this the adoration that my youth foretold?

So he climbed, burdened with the water and the weight of his brothers.

In his dream, then, Joseph died, and he watched himself and his brothers from a high vantage point on the mountain, a spot that he had never reached. And he watched as his brothers gathered up his bones, and wrapped them in a shroud, and placed them in one of the water buckets. And he watched as his brother, Judah, shouldered his burden, and continued the ascent. And he watched as his brothers climbed, bearing his bones and the buckets of water, as they passed, one by one, the skeletons of climbers who had sprinted past him on his own climb, their bones bleached white and dry as the stones of the mountain.

When Joseph awoke, he called his brothers to him, and bound them by an oath: to bring his bones up out of Egypt. (Breishit 50:25).

It is said there will be two Messiahs, and that one, from the seed of Joseph, will come before the other, from the seed of Jesse. And while the former will not himself bring redemption, nonetheless we should pray for him. For by his efforts is the path of his successor smoothed. And but for his efforts, the son of Jesse would come with a scythe in his hands to clear a path, and those who merit his coming would scatter before him, lest they be cut down.
posted by Noah at 7:15 PM

 
Did anyone notice this item from earlier in the week on the proposed prisoner swap deal with Hizbullah?

I keep my eye out (to the extent I can) for news about Barghouti. Barghouti was, at one time, a favored "successor" name of Israelis interested in a deal with the Palestinians. He is a native Palestinian, not an exile. He has street cred from his time in Israeli jails. And he has for a number of years advocated a two-state solution (albeit he has not actually said the so-called "right of return" is a dead letter, or even negotiable). Many hard-headed but deal-minded Israelis considered him the most plausible next-generation leader of the Palestinians, a rare individual who might have the credibility to close a deal and the interest in doing so.

Then, in 2000, he was front and center in supporting Arafat's new intifadah, the campaign of murder that continues today under the auspices of Fatah as well as Hamas and Jihad Islami. As a consequence of his support for Arafat's terror war, Barghouti was arrested by the IDF last year, and is in the process of being tried for conspiracy to commit murder.

Now, when he was first arrested, there was a lot of speculation as to *why* Israel decided to arrest him. If he was certainly compromised by involvement in the terror campaign, then Arafat was equally or more so. Was his arrest an attempt to signal Arafat? And if he was viewed as a possible successor to Arafat, then why remove him from the game? Or (as DEBKA speculated at the time) was this part of a complicated plot to both increase his street cred and remove him from the field of battle as Israel waged war on the terror groups?

No scenario was terribly satisfying, and some speculated that the Israelis were making things up as they went along - that they had no plan to arrest Barghouti but, having captured him inadvertently, they could hardly just let him go, and they certainly couldn't kill him.

So now the rumor is that he's to be part of the prisoner exchange with Hizbullah. There are a few interesting things about this prospect.

For one thing, if Barghouti still has stature among the Palestinians (and all evidence is he does), then his release represents a big coup by Hizbullah. Why would Israel want to grant them such a coup?

Relatedly, if Israel was planning to build Barghouti up as an alternative to Arafat, what does trading him to Hizbullah portend? An end to that strategy? Or is Israel actually contemplating bringing Hizbullah into the circle of legitimate players in the territories?

Most importantly, this is a warning to those who, like me, have advocated the trial and conviction of Arafat for conspiracy to commit murder. Israel is in danger of demonstrating yet again that its assertions of serious, criminal behavior ultimately amount to politics. If Israel really wanted to ultimately make a deal with Barghouti, they should never have put him on trial. If they now trade him away with Hizbullah, they've given him - and Hizbullah - the kind of credibility they don't need, and they've damaged Israeli justice and Israel's deterrent in the process.

Worrisome, anyhow.
posted by Noah at 6:51 PM

 
Well! I'm back from a fun few days in Canada at the Stratford Festival. Reviews to follow hopefully this week (maybe even today, work permitting). So stay tuned.
posted by Noah at 9:18 AM

 
"When it comes to predicting presidential elections, the pace of economic growth clearly matters. The stock market matters. Inflation matters. Local economic conditions matter. Incumbency matters. War matters. But statistics on payroll employment and income inequality matter only to guilt-ridden multimillionaires, partisan journalists and political speechwriters."

Okay. So how do you explain G. H. W. Bush's loss in 1992? 3%+ GDP growth for 3 quarters leading up to the election. Low and declining inflation. Stock market up over 40% from the market low in 1990. The power of incumbency. Victory in war at low cost in money and lives lost. Why'd he lose? The conventional wisdom is: the economy, stupid. But there were only two stand-out economic indicators that were negative: a high deficit, and (relatively) high unemployment. These are the very indicators that supposedly don't matter according to guys like Alan Reynolds.

Assume the statistical discrepancy between the two figures Reynolds focuses on is due to temporary and/or self-employment. To the extent that this reflects under-employment, will this make people feel good about the recovery, or lousy? My bet is: lousy. And more amenable to "economic security" arguments from Democrats - pitches for more government-provided health insurance, for example.

Reagan won in 1984 in spite of huge deficits because voters associated those deficits with the dramatic economic recovery (readily contrastable with both the depth of the 1981-2 recession and the late-Carter "malaise" years) and with the Reagan military buildup (which the public largely supported). The Bush pere deficits were caused largely by the economic slowdown and the Savings and Loan crisis. The recovery felt anemic to many people, and even people who were doing okay were worried about the fact that we'd been running large deficits for a decade (I know; I was one of them). So two things that aren't supposed to matter - unemployment and deficits - got traction.

Now we've got large deficits again and significant under-employment, if not widespread unemployment. Will they matter? Question 1: what are we getting for these deficits? If the economy stages a robust, obvious recovery, people will give Bush - and his red ink - some credit for that. If he can convincingly tie the deficits to the war, or to "homeland security" spending, people will give him credit for that. But if people believe he spent the money on pork and entitlements (which is largely the case), my bet is Congress gets the credit for that (all incumbents, both parties) and Bush gets the blame for the deficits. And if people believe he spent it on guys like Dick Grasso, then yes, I think the Democrats can get traction with "income inequality" arguments.

If economic forecasts determined elections, Al Gore would now be President, because *everyone* running such models said he would win in a walk. They don't, and he didn't (yes, he won the popular vote - but in a squeaker; these models were predicting a 5% victory margin or thereabouts).
posted by Noah at 7:08 PM

 
It goes without saying, of course, that the 9th Circuit's actions are "the wages of Florida." That doesn't mean that without Bush v. Gore there's no chance that the 9th Circuit wouldn't have done the same. But Bush v. Gore set a precedent that is hard to keep in bounds. Moreover, it has changed the political terms of debate. There's a reason why Senator Schumer, for example, is able to get away with blacklisting conservative judges. Part of that reason is that no one on the left end of the spectrum is really embarrassed anymore by politicization of the judiciary. And a major reason for that is Bush v. Gore, which convinced Democrats that GOP judges are at least as nakedly partisan as Democrat judges. Folks in The Corner are already speculating that this turn of events is good news for the GOP, whatever it means for California taxpayers. But I'm a seller of that. After all, if the Supreme Court overrules the 9th Circuit, Democrats will be absolutely furious, and that fury will come out in the recall vote and in 2004 in California. Ever want to take back Boxer's Senate seat? Kiss that possibility goodbye. And if the Supremes take a pass, it's not obvious to me that the GOP will be able to generate any meaningful righteous anger over the issue.

In any event, it's a good idea for Republican partisans to remember that Bush v. Gore did *not* throw the election to Bush. It ended the recount. Had the recount not been terminated, there were two possibilities: either the recount would have shown a Gore victory or a Bush victory. If it showed a Bush victory, the game would have been over, and Bush would have had marginally more legitimacy in the eyes of Democrats (for what that's worth). If it showed a Gore victory, the Florida and national GOP would have had to decide whether to recognize the legitimacy of a recount obviously rigged by the Florida Supreme Court to produce a Gore victory. There's no doubt in my mind that they would not, and that two slates would have been certified by Florida - one by the Secretary of State, and one by the Florida Supreme Court. If the U.S. Supreme Court continued to refuse to opine on the matter, the matter would have been resolved by the House of Representatives, and the vote would have been by state delegation. And the majority of state delegations were controlled by the GOP. There is no doubt in my mind, then, that the GOP could have assured a Bush victory *if it had the political will to do so.*

The U.S. Supreme Court wanted to spare our democracy that raw contest of will. It feared that, where any outcome would necessarily have been the result of sheer partisan will - Florida Supreme Court Democrats versus U.S. House Republicans - the outcome would not have been deemed legitimate by the American people. But they were mistaken in thinking they could engineer political legitimacy. They did nothing of the sort. All they affirmed was judicial supremacy, and that supremacy necessarily leads to the politicization of the judiciary, as the major parties rightly refuse to bestow so much power on "impartial" and "well-qualified" professionals when they could vest it in partisan hacks.
posted by Noah at 3:28 PM

 
California Recall Postponed by 9th Circuit!
posted by Noah at 1:35 PM

 
A parable of teshuvah, for Elul:

It is said of the four who entered the Garden, and gazed: one died; one went mad; one became apostate; and one departed in peace. What did they see?

At the entrance to the Garden stands an angel, and he brandishes a whirling, flaming sword. For what purpose does he wield this sword?

For our righteous deeds, we are promised a share in the world to come. But for our transgressions, we are punished in the world to come. How can this be? For who among us is wholly righteous?

Some have said that when righteousness outweighs villainy, he merits a share, but when it is less, he is judged wanting. But can the man who steals from the orphan atone by giving to the widow?

We are our deeds. Our righteous deeds adorn us; our transgressions are blemishes. The dead approach the garden, and the angel faces them with the sword. And with a burning stroke, he cuts out the blemishes of their transgressions, and leaves their flesh gaping. For we are told, that none with a blemish may approach the Lord (Vayikra 21:23), and none with a blemish may be offered (Vayikra 22:20).

But their flesh gapes, for there is no Experience in the next world, no way for souls to heal the wounds of the angel's sword.

And this, perhaps, is what the four saw there, the maimed and crippled souls stumbling in Paradise.

The tongues that gossiped, the lips that spoke falsely, the eyes that coveted: cut out.

The hands that struck in anger, the fingers that stole, the legs that ran to do evil: lopped off.

And the poor souls who huddled in the dark, who buried themselves in their caves, so fearful of evil that they hesitated to do good; pale souls who pass almost unnoticed through the byways of the garden, they live in the poor houses that their deeds built while they lived.

Who would not die, go mad, or lose their faith, gazing at stumps of the saved?

Achim! The flaming sword is waiting for you, not at the end but now, and you weild it yourselves. Cut out these blemishes while the wounds have time to heal, the limbs to grow anew, in righteous activity!

(But do I listen to my own words? . . . )
posted by Noah at 6:20 PM

 
One more thing: the expectation that, with Arafat in exile, a more moderate leadership could take the reins is almost certain to be disappointed. Anyone who directly challenged Arafat's supremacy would risk assassination at the hands of the Fatah Tanzim. So I do not expect anyone to be willing to assume leadership of the P.A. in Arafat's absence or after his violent demise. The most likely outcome of Arafat's expulsion - or his arrest, or his assassination - would be the re-imposition of the Israeli occupation, including the full civilian administration. At this point, I do not see a plausible alternative to doing that. But if you want to know why Israel continues to hesitate, THAT is why - they do not want to reimpose the occupation, with all the costs and obligations and diplomatic consequences that entails.
posted by Noah at 2:40 PM

 
I yield to no-one in my longing for Arafat's imminent demise. He is at least 21 years late for his date with the Angel of Death, and had he not earned death by then he has earned it many times since.

I understand the opinion of many Israeli political and military leaders that expelling Arafat would solve little, since he would make as much or more trouble from exile as he does from house arrest in the Muqata. But I understand - and agree with - those who say that the status is untenable, and Arafat must be removed, one way or the other, or the war of attrition will grind on with no end.

But I have a question for the Israeli cabinet, which has now voted to expel Arafat without setting a date for such expulsion: what is the point of this posturing? What "signal" are you trying to give? If Arafat must be removed, the "signalling" only gives him time to maneuver; it accomplishes nothing, and is even counter-productive as it makes Israel look indecisive. And if Arafat can be "signalled" into behaving, then the case for expelling him at all falls apart, and Shimon Peres should be made Prime Minister. The cabinet seems to be losing touch with reality, "trying" to expel him without actually doing so. As a wise Dagoban once said: "do, or do not; there is no try."

And I have a question for the Jerusalem Post, who wants Arafat's head impaled on a spike in front of the Knesset: why has Arafat not been arrested? And why do you not advocate apprehending him? If Arafat is truly a war criminal (we all know he is; the question is whether there is enough hard evidence to hold up in court), why not try him for war crimes and execute him? Why have some sniper, or a 2-ton bomb take him out? Is he a "ticking time bomb" that can't be dealt with except by killing? Is he so well-protected that there's no way to get close to him and arrest him?

Slobodan Milosevic was an obstacle to peace and, more importantly, a war criminal. He was not assassinated. If Arafat were deep in a bunker, surrounded by a massive army, as Hitler was in Berlin or Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, then of course he would be a legitimate target in war. But he's not. The Israelis have almost total control of his environs. What is the possible justification for killing him rather than arresting him and putting him on trial?

Sure, it's a bit unfair to ask Israel to play by Marquess of Queensbury rules when the enemy murders a doctor and his new bride daughter and calls it holy martyrdom. But Israel claims to be a civilized country. Israel can legitimately kill Arafat if the direct costs and risks of taking him alive are too great. They can't kill him just because doing so would send a more ruthless signal, or because they need him out of the way. That way lies the abyss.

This is a fateful Rubicon that the Post would have Israel cross. They should not lightly suggest crossing it.
posted by Noah at 2:37 PM

 
Laura Mylroie's book earlier book, on Iraq and the first WTC attack, is pretty high on my list of things I ought to have read by now. Her new book looks even more important. This interview gives a good idea as to why.

I'm one of those people who assumed, almost immediately after the WTC attacks, that Iraq was involved. But I've been inclined to assume that this was not the case since the Bush Administration - clearly intent on waging war on Iraq - would not provide evidence to that effect. The fact that Bush was willing to wage war based on very reasonable conclusions but not hard evidence of WMD makes we wonder why, if 9/11-connection intelligence is of similar quality, Bush hasn't been willing to make that part of the case.

Mylroie's conclusion is that Bush doesn't want to take on "the Beltway." Could be. That's consistent with his personality generally. Remember, this President was once a cheerleader. He knows who's on his team, who's on the other team, and who's in the audience. And he's going to pull for his team, and get the audience on his - and their - side. That's an essential political skill. But it's not the only one, and it leaves him with a blind spot (potentially) to weaknesses on his team. Same thing with his business experience. He was CEO of a start-up oil exploration company. Much of his time was spent trying to sell the company in one fashion or another. Then he was manager of a baseball team - a consummate salesman-as-CEO position. He's never been a turnaround artist, a "neutron Jack" type who comes in and nukes business divisions that aren't working and straightens out the guts of an organization. Sometimes an organization needs a guy like that. Rumsfeld's applying that kind of treatment to the US Army. They resent it, but it's getting results. Who's doing the same to State, or the CIA? And would Bush necessarily know - or want to find out - if such a person was needed?

BTW, as readers well know I have been and continue to be highly skeptical of the INC, and of Ahmad Chalabi in particular, whom I think is basically an opportunist with no credibility on the ground in Iraq. That Mylroie is clearly an enthusiast makes me cautious at accepting her account of pretty much anything related to Iraq. I don't trust any intelligence that comes from that outfit, and if that's her only source (and I don't say it is) then she has a major credibility problem. But the fact that I don't trust the INC doesn't mean I trust the CIA or the State Department. Far from it.
posted by Noah at 2:16 PM

 
A joke apparently current in Palestinian circles:

Yasser Arafat is riding in a car with Mahmoud Abbas, when he spots an obstacle. "Abu Mazen, there's a tree in the road!" Mr. Arafat cries. But the car continues on its way. Mr. Arafat's warnings grow more frantic as they approach collision.

Finally, the car hits the tree, and as the two Palestinian leaders stumble from the wreckage, battered and bruised, Mr. Arafat turns to Mr. Abbas and says, "Abu Mazen, I told you there was a tree!"

Mr. Abbas replies, miserably, "But you were driving."
posted by Noah at 12:16 PM

 
So a few days ago I mentioned that Kerry was in free fall and, for the first time, Dean looked to me like a real possibility as nominee. And I suggested that the response of the DLC types would be to rally around Kerry. Well, I've found an indicator to watch, in that regard: The TNR Primary.

TNR has, of course, been pulling for their candidate - Joe Lieberman - for some time. And, indeed, his scores in August were pretty darn good: a grade of 3.7, where his nearest rival - Edwards, another pro-war Dem - was at 2.6.

Watch Kerry pull ahead, and Lieberman fall behind over the next few weeks. "Stop Dean" is the order of the day. The field will be narrowed, one way or another.
posted by Noah at 7:26 PM

 
Well, the Palestinian strategy is pretty clear at this point: if Israel doesn't surrender to its demands, the P.A. will simply disestablish itself.

It's certainly a novel strategy. And it's not obvious how to counter it except by calling the bluff, arresting the man who's still calling the shots and reinstating the occupation.

That would, of course, be very inconvenient for the United States, which puts Israel in a difficult position. But I don't think that's the real reason that Israel hasn't done anything about Arafat yet. The real reason is that they really, really don't want to reinstate the occupation, with all the costs that entails. They really want to have a negotiated settlement on reasonable terms.

Doesn't look too likely, though, does it?
posted by Noah at 7:15 PM

 
The chief neo-conservative insight in foreign policy is that the internal character of a regime determines its foreign policy. Liberal societies may expand aggressively to "fill the space available" (as, for example, Britain did into Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and as the United States did across the American continent) but they will not generally undertake aggressive war against other powers. Traditional authoritarian regimes *will* intiate aggressive wars, because in these regimes the state in an instrument of the autocrat rather than of the people, and the autocrat's power, wealth and prestige is enhanced by conquest. But these regimes can be deterred - not by the prospect of loss, since loss is borne by the people, but by the prospect of defeat, for defeat can be fatal to regimes like these that depend on the tacit support of a large minority of the people (see, for example, Argentina after the Falklands War, the coups in various Arab states that followed the Israeli War of Independence, or the uprisings that might have toppled Saddam Hussein after the Gulf War had they not been betrayed).

By contrast, radical authoritarian regimes - totalitarian, if you prefer - mobilize all of society in an all-consuming ideological war; and to maintain this level of mobilization - which is essential for the regime to survive - generally requires actual war. Thus: Nazi Germany, militarist Japan, Leninist Russia. This warfare can be turned inward into a kind of state-run civil war (China's cultural revolution, Pol Pot's Cambodian auto-genocide), but even in these cases it generally spills outward. Because these radical states must make war or die, they cannot be handled the way states traditionally are, with a combination of threat and conciliation. It is not that these states are irrational; it's that they cannot survive peace. You can't deter them into making peace, and you can't conciliate them into making peace; if they make peace, they collapse, and so they do not - cannot - make peace, no matter what you do. This is how the Soviets behaved from the 1950s through the early 1980s: when America threatened and confronted, they responded aggressively; when America conciliated, they took advantage by engaging in aggression. "When we build, they build; when we don't build, they build." The first Soviet leader to seriously attempt to make peace with the West, Mikhail Gorbachev, was astonished to find that his efforts promptly resulted in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The implication of this understanding - that some regimes are so constituted that they *necessarily* wage war, and are therefore a threat (to the extent that they have power) by their mere *existence* - is that some regimes must be *obliterated* as a matter of self-defense. What looks like aggression - FDR demanding "unconditional surrender" from Germany, Reagan calling the Soviets an "evil empire," Bush referring to an "axis of evil" and his deputies talking about "ending states" - is merely the logical consequence of joining traditional notions of self defense with the neo-conservative understanding of how the character of a regime affects its foreign policy. When dealing with radical enemies like these, the only defense is a good offense.

I happen to think this neo-conservative insight is correct. But it has not escaped my attention that the chief foreign policy insight of their ideological opposites within the conservative camp - the libertarians - is the precise converse of the neo-conservative insight - to whit, that a state's foreign policy affects the character of the regime. And this insight also strikes me as correct. It is an older insight, one that animated Washington's farewell warning against entangling alliances, and one that animated Eisenhower's farewell warning against the military-industrial complex. War *is* the health of the state. The Civil War and World War I each ushered in dramatic expansions in Federal power and authority that have never been meaningfully reversed. That war is sometimes necessary does not alter the fact that it has important domestic consequences. I believe strongly that our current war is necessary, and it will necessitate future battles - possibly on the Korean penninsula, possibly in South Asia, possibly in Lebanon, possibly in yet other theaters. But that doesn't mean I don't worry about the consequences of a long, drawn-out conflict on our culture and or habits of governance.

Which is one reason why, contra Stanley Kurtz, I am pleased that we are not entertaining thoughts of a draft, in spite of our military manpower needs. I acknowledge those needs; we ought to be building up our military to something like its Reagan-era size - which, I note, was achieved without conscription. But we shouldn't, if at all possible, do it through conscription. Conscript militaries are deeply contrary to Anglo-Saxon traditions, and very dangerous to a liberal order. Yes, conscription is the cheapest way to raise an army (though if you factor in the cost of the economic dislocation caused thereby, I suspect you'd discover that it is cheaper, all-around, to raise taxes and pay more for a larger military than to conscript). But for many advocates for conscription the key arguments in favor are cultural: it will reduce the culture gap between military and civilian, imbue the country with a spirit of solidarity and purpose, etc. These are Prussian ideas, and we should be wary of them.

There are necessary wars that can't be won without a draft. This isn't one of them. And that criterion - can we win without it - should be the only one used when evaluating the question.
posted by Noah at 4:57 PM

 
Three small, maybe snarky questions about Andrew Sullivan's flirtation with Howard Dean:

(1) Do you actually believe that Howard Dean, Vermont liberal, would do more to rein in Federal spending that George W. Bush? Granted that Bush has been completely hopeless on this front. You don't want Dean to spend less on defense, or on homeland security (and, indeed, Dean has promised to *increase* spending in these areas). You can't expect him to cut spending on health care, 'cause he's running on national health insurance (among other things). Education? You must be joking. What's he gonna cut? You can believe that Dr. Dean will take a scalpel to all the pork being barbecued on the House floor, but that tooth fairy's been seen a few times before. Or you can believe something more plausible: that Dean will balance the budget by raising taxes - income taxes, corporate income taxes, and Social Security taxes (by raising the ceiling on the amount of income subject to the payroll tax). I suppose you could buy into some Mickey Kaus-like notion that a Democrat President and a GOP Congress are, collectively, more fiscally conservative than any other combination (this was part of Kaus's convoluted justification for voting for Gore last time around). But that's a bit of a stretch as a reason to vote for him, isn't it? So tell me: are we supposed to take this flirting seriously? Or what?

(2) Aren't you still, nominally, a Catholic? If so, doesn't it bother you that Dean is an abortion-rights absolutist? Or that he has expressed considerable sympathy for physician-assisted suicide? I'm not a Catholic, nor am I in favor of banning abortion, but *I'm* troubled by these things. For a Catholic, I should think they would be paramount. Indeed, on these sorts of questions, unless I'm mistaken, the Church instructs Catholics how to vote. Okay, you disagree profoundly with the teaching of the Catholic Church on homosexuality, and you have lost confidence in the heirarchy generally because of the pedophilia scandals and the clerisy's response to them. Does that mean that Catholic teaching on other matters, matters the Church deems fundamental, is now no longer of interest to you?

(3) Do you actually trust Howard Dean to follow through in the War on Terror? Dean's been making noises lately about how we have become committed to Iraq and have to win the peace, even if it means more troops. He's also said he supported the first Gulf War and the war in Afghanistan. And he's talking tough about Saudi Arabia. Do you buy all this? Do you think Dean is a closet anti-Iraq-war hawk a la Heather MacDonald? If so, what makes you think so? What makes you trust this man to be Commander in Chief in a time of war? And what makes you think his party has the resources to draw upon to prosecute such a war? I'm interested, because I was under the impression that this was *the* deciding issue for you, overriding everything else, a question that will determine the fate of Western Civilization itself. You've got legitimate questions about Bush's follow-through; so do many supporters of the war. Notice anyone else defecting to Dr. Dean?

Of course, these questions are not seriously asked. We know why Dean is appealing: he signed the nation's first civil unions law. I understand that this should warm the cockles of Andrew Sullivan's heart. But could he at least be honest and say that, in a pinch, gay marriage trumps the war, rather than play with the notion that Dean trumps Bush?

I mean, here's the question: if you want to defect to a Democrat who'll plausibly be tough on spending and on the war, why not defect to "emergency Republican" Joe Lieberman? He's not out of the race yet, last time I looked. And if you want to send a signal to Bush to stop spending, shouldn't you be threatening to vote Libertarian? The GOP really does worry that Libertarian votes cost them elections. A 5% Libertarian showing in this election would send a strong signal, wouldn't it?
posted by Noah at 6:28 PM

 
A parable of teshuvah, for Elul:

A man is marooned in the desert, and wanders for many days. He learns, perforce, to live in this difficult environment, to draw water from the thick-leaved plants while eluding the thorns; to capture the dew that settles on his cloak at night; to travel in the early dawn and late evening, and hide from the mid-day heat that would suck the moisture out of his open mouth.

Many times, he has seen pools of shimmering water on the horizon - especially when he has travelled too far into the morning, and the sun has risen to its full white power, and the rock and sand begin to bend under the blows of the sun. And sometimes he runs out to taste the waters, hoping they are sweet and not bitter, only to find that they are neither sweet nor bitter, for there are no waters to taste, only the laughing sunlight.

Then, one day, he comes upon an oasis. There are palm trees here, and the rocks and sand that ring the pool are darkened with moisture, not shining, and the pool lies just below the surface of the land, and the air above is still, not shimmering. This is no mirage.

And yet the man hesitates. Not because he has been fooled before, though that is part of it. But because he fears drowning. So long wandering in the desert, he fears what he would do if he immersed himself wholly in these cold waters, whether he would go into shock from the sudden change in environment - or whether, worse, he would so love the deep that he would hold his head below the surface too long, and drown.

And so the man stands at the edge of the pool, and cups his hand, and raises a portion of the water to his lips, and drinks from his hand, just so much as one can drink in a single swallow. Perchance he takes two drinks, or three, or more, until he first senses the fading of thirst, then pauses, lest he forget to be thankful.

Perhaps of this man, too, one might say: by [those] men who lapped will I save you. [Judges 7:7]
posted by Noah at 6:54 PM