from milan to mumbai

The Travails of the "Ultra-Orthodox"

2011-12-29T16:30:00.000-05:00

Stories have been floating around the international media about various outrages attributed to Haredim or "ultra-orthodox" Jews in Jerusalem and other cities.   These include forced segregation of men and women on buses, efforts to keep women off the sidewalk (I'm not making this up), and so forth.   Most recently, in the town of Bet Shemesh, an 8-year old girl was verbally assaulted because she wore immodest clothing.

This kind of stuff is obviously unacceptable and has been rightly condemned.   However, I am concerned that such behavior, which involves a relatively small portion of Orthodox and even Haredi Jews, is being used as an excuse for a more general anti-Haredi prejudice that I think unfortunate.   Specifically, I question how much of this behavior is really "religious" as opposed to economic and social in origin.

Israel provides draft exemptions for Haredi men who are "studying" in approved institutions.   The Government likewise provides economic subsidies for young families that become larger as they have more children.   These policies, originally designed to benefit a few hundred scholars, now benefit tens or even hundreds of thousands.

Not surprisingly, when you provide a large number of people with powerful incentives to do nothing, nothing is precisely what they will do.   (Many of the "students," like those in Italian universities of the 1970s and 1980s, appear to do relatively little studying.)   More precisely, young men who are unemployed for extended periods will tend do what young men always do in such circumstances: make babies and get into political trouble.   The particular kind of trouble they get into will of course depend on circumstances: perpetual students in the US or Western Europe tend to drift into leftist politics and (perhaps) avoid pregnancy by means of birth control or abortion, while those in the Haredi communtiy are more likely to be right-wing and have children. But the basic phenomenon is much the same.

If Israel wishes to solve this problem, it needs to change its incentive system and begin integrating Haredim (and especially Haredi men) into the economy and, eventually, the armed forces or other national service.    A model for this is, ironically enough, provided by the US, where the equivalent populations is economically productive and generally speaking well-behaved. (When did you ever hear of someone trying to segregate a public bus in New York?) Arguing about religious "extremism" is understandable but beside the point.    The devil, or the yetzer ha'ra, finds work for idle hands, and it doesn't much matter if they're Jewish or not.

Israel: my last few days

2011-11-28T11:27:00.001-05:00

My class is over and I'm using the last three days to see parts of Israel that I might otherwise miss. Last night I headed to Jerusalem for a workshop at the Van LeerInstitute on Arab and Jewish demography, not normally one of my core interests,but one of timely importance and an opportunity to improve my vocabulary. (You can only get so far saying “a shortespresso and a cheese cake with crumbs, please.”) Today I’m headed for Ramle, once a largeArab city and now a struggling but still fascinating mix of lower- to-middleclass Israelis and Arabs who chose to remain when others fled in 1948. (There are some funny, or not-so-funny,stories about the city being confused with Ramallah, on the West Bank, which Iwon’t visit this time but would love to when and if things calm down). Tomorrow, if I haven’t collapsed, I’ll headto a talk on Italian Jewish architecture which will give me a chance to meetsome of the small but spirited Israeli-Italian community. You can’t say it’s not a diverse place.

The demography workshop was in part an excuse to walkthrough Rehavia, where my grandparents had an apartment until my grandfather—incensedthat the owner was supporting herself wholly withh is rental payments—left fora noisy, entirely inferior apartment near the Jerusalem bus station. (The Rehavia apartment was down the blockfrom the President’s residence, leading my grandmother, noticing the armed menpacing in front of the gate, to utter the words “Sure, security,” a remark thathas become the gold standard for obvious or trivial comments in myfamily.) Memories aside, the conference was interestingfor its distinction between myths and realities in the demographic issue andmuch else about the country. Forexample, while Israeli Arabs have one of the world’s highest birth rates, ithas been declining—radically—for more than thirty years, and variestremendously between region, religion, and social class. Indeed, Israelis living on the West Bankhave a birth rate that, if present trends continue, will exceed that of Arabsor anyone else in the country within the next few years. “If present trends continue . . . ;” but ofcourse they never do, which is one reason predictions about the region are sodifficult and so risky. One of mystrongest childhood memories is looking up “Jews” and “Germany” in mygrandfather’s 1912 Encyclopedia Britannica, which had stayed with us when hemoved to Israel in the 1970s. There’sstill some antisemitism in Europe, the encyclopedia said, but it’s a problem ofdeclining significance and will probably be forgotten in the next couple ofdecades. My grandmother would probablyhave made a better prediction.

You may be wondering why there is a Van Leer Institute inIsrael altogether. Well, probably forthe same reason there are conferences financed by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (Foundation),the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Jean Monnet Foundation and an organizationnamed for just about every famous European Jew, or non-Jew, that you can thinkof. Whatever else you can say ofIsrael, it’s a pretty high-profile place, and it seems to be an irresistibletemptation for foreigners of all sorts to set up shop here and tell people howto do things. In recent weeks right-wingmembers of the Knesset have introduced legislation to force left-leaning lobbyingorganizations (B’Tselem, New Israel Fund, etc.) either to stop taking foreignmoney, to pay punitive taxes on foreign contributions, or both. The problem is that, if you took this logicfar enough, have of the country’s intellectual life—or certainly the morecritical and thoughtful part—would come grinding to a halt. Perhaps this is what the NetanyahuGovernment wants, but in the end it is self-destructive, as even someconservatives are coming to see. I would personally rather see leftist intellectualsattend a series of poorly attended conferences—there were twenty people in theaudience last night, barely outnumbering the presenters—than actually get angryenough to change things. (Think Italyin the 1970s to get an idea what I mean.) Besides, it’s the people who read Ha’aretz and go to snooty conferencesthat pack restaurants and drive up real estate prices --good for the economy ifnot necessarily its individual components. If present trends continue, of course.

Addendum: Just back from Ramle which was delightful . . . a mix of Jews and Arabs, a bit downscale, but tons of history and a wonderful museum that the locals are obviously proud of. The sad part: a wall with drawers for each person killed in one of the many wars, with a book of personal memorabilia inside A vision of the brighter, more tolerant side of Israel with a reminder of what it took to get here.

a day (or two days) in jerusalem

2011-11-16T01:53:00.001-05:00

There's good news and bad news about the new light rail system in Jerusalem.   The good news is that it's efficient, spotless, and at least for the time being free of charge.   The bad news is it doesn't come very often and, when it does, doesn't go most of the places you would want to get to. Oh, and a few stones were thrown at it when it passed through an Arab area recently.

The light rail is a good metaphor for the city itself. Many Tel Avivians avoid Jerusalem, which they regard as backward, poor, overrun by religious zealots, and generally speaking out of the Israeli mainstream. There's something to this: much of the city is indeed slumlike, it takes a surprisingly long time to get here (the rail line stops in the suburbs and the main road hasn't been updated since the 70s), and there appears to be an informal agreement to keep women--any women--off public advertising, leading to an aggressive countercampaign. But the city has grown enormously--there are something like a million people if one counts all the Arab areas, certainly if one reaches out to nearby Bethlehem and Ramallah--and more to the city than first meets the eye.

Part of the variety, of course, involves those very Arab areas--the Old City and surrounding suburbs--together with the remaining secular enclaves (The German Colony, parts of Rehavia, etc.) But there is also a surprising degree of diversity among the "religious" elements, who range from secular Zionists to ordinary Haredim ("ultra-orthodox" or "black hats") to sects actively opposed to the entire Zionist enterprise.   For example, the city is the birthplace of the Shira Hadasha minyan, which retains a division between men and women but allows each of them to lead various parts of the service.   Even among the Haredim, there are divisions: many of the complaints against religious excesses (e.g., separate sidewalks for mean and women) are brought by Haredi women themselves, and a recent poll showed that a third or more of Haredim disapproved of such zealotry.

There's also just an extraordinary amount of cultural activity going on in the city, although some of it is admittedly esoteric in nature.   Today I am visiting the Museum of the Italian Jewish Community, while already this week I've passed on lectures about the attitude of European rabbis to the Land of Israel between the two world wars (Hebrew University) and the poetry of Avraham Sutzkever (Agnon Institute). Much of this, like the city itself, does not easily fit any category: it is "Jewish" (or "Arab") in a broad sense but moves easily across boundaries and challenges easy assumptions about people and categories.

The other day I saw the movie Footnote (he'arat shulayim), which tells a story about a father and son who share positions in the Hebrew University Talmud Department--and not very much else. Unlike many other films that I've seen, the picture neither glorifies nor demonizes the study and practice of religion, but simply presents it as another aspect of life worthy of observing and retelling.   I saw it in Tel Aviv, but it is in a sense a quintessential Jerusalem story. We need to hear more stories like it.

a weekend in haifa

2011-11-13T02:31:00.001-05:00

The choice in Israel is frequently framed as Tel Aviv--modern, fast-paced, and at least superficially secular--against religious and traditional Jerusalem.   There is a third city, Haifa, many outsiders don't bother with. Perhaps they should.

Haifa is a port city constructed on various levels, with the better off mostly residing on the upper levels and the lower and middle levels somewhat more seedy.   The city had a large Arab population before 1948, and even today has a visibly larger Arab presence than Tel Aviv or the western half of Jerusalem; it is not unusual to hear Arabic (or Russian) spoken in stores and restaurants and there is at least some social mixing between the two populations, which is rather rarer in other parts of the country.  Not surprisingly, foreigners like this tolerant aspect, so such tourists as come to Haifa tend to flock to the German Colony, a formerly Christian neighborhood that has been restored with a mixture of Arab and Jewish residents, or else to the gardens adjoining the Baha'i temple, yet another religion that began in Persia but has its world headquarters, somewhat improably, here.

Although picturesque and dotted with hillside neighborhoods, Haifa is also the most industrial of Israeli cities and has housing prices barely half that of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, which somewhat gives the lie to the idea that wealth creates tolerance.   Rather, the more relaxed nature of the city appears to owe more to who lives here--an electic mix of mostly European (including many Russian) Jews and frequently Christian or Druze Arabs, most with deep roots in the area--and who doesn't: there are relatively few extremists on either side and the refugee element, which so colors relationships in the West Bank and Gaza, is largely absent here.   Interestingly, the nearby city of Akko (Acre, Akka), while also having a mixed population, appears to attract more political stridency: the town was dotted with Islamic wall posters and had more of the feeling of a conquered Arab city than an authentic melange.

Haifa is at once the least and most American of Israeli cities. There's a good bit less English here than in the middle of the country and, allowing for the occasional cruise ship, fewer foreigners overall.   But it also has an American-like, spread out feeling--a car seems more important than in other parts of the country--and is the undisputed leader in shopping malls.   Aside from the infamous Grand Canyon (a play on "Kanyon" or shopping center in Hebrew), there are a series of malls along the highway north to the Krayot (suburbs), Akko, and Nahariya, all with American-sounding names like Gulf Center (Lev Hamifratz), Gulf Approaches (Hutzot Mamifratz), and Gulf Springs (Ein Hamifratz) and all exceptionally ugly, at least from the outside. A burgeoning protest against offshore gas exploration in the area--"Put the gas back in the water," one sign read--gave a further American feeling, as did the obvious contradiction between expressions of environmental concern and the long lines in local parking lots. Still, it was nice to be in a place where the biggest story wasn't ethnic or religious tension, but plain old self-centered politics.   Maybe the rest of the country should spend more time here.

israel iii: some thoughts on longer-term themes

2011-11-09T09:45:00.000-05:00

I wrote previously of what I see as the biggest issue in Israel today: not the Palestinians, the religious-secular division, or even economic inequality--although these are all important--but the failure of the country's political and social institutions to keep pace with present-day reality.   Indeed, all of the other issues are to a degree parasitic on this broader failure.   I would like to develop this theme further.

One of the things that strikes you in Israel is the disconnect between the country's impressive people and its rather less impressive public debate. The country had, in one accounting period, more high-tech startups than the entire EU combined.   The level of culture, even allowing for some rather dismal TV programming, is generally high.   Israel is astonishingly diverse and, with some obvious exceptions, surprisingly tolerant\; individual Arabs, in a restaurant or public place, attract virtually no attention, and even the much heralded split between religious and secular is a matter of degree rather than kind.

So why does the country always seem to be in trouble? Leaving aside plainly simplistic answers--Jews are too contentious to run their own state, everyone hates us anyway, etc.--I think there are three basic reasons, each of which boils down to an institution inherited from the early days of statehood that has lost, or is in the process of losing, much of its original relevance.   To wit:

1. The Army.--Everyone agrees that Israel needs a strong army.   But does it need to dominate the country in quite the way that it does? It is not just a question of the absurdly large number of people in uniform at any given time (see previous post). It is a question of a formative experience that colors perceptions of every conceivable problem and the choice of solutions.   A country that has 500+ combat planes will necessarily think that it can deal with any problem (Gaza, Iran, etc.) by launching an air strike. A country close to half of whose political leaders have been former generals--and the percentage gets higher not lower with the passage of time--will inevitably have difficulty achieving true democracy.   The groups that are excluded from political power (Arabs, haredim, to a large degree women) are precisely those who are excluded from the army or its higher ranks.   When Ben Gurion was prime minister and defense minister he typically worked out of the latter's office in Tel Aviv rather than the former's in Jerusalem: it's hard to think of another country in which this would happen.

2. The Predominance of the Coastal Elite--The division in Israel used to be Jews against Arabs, ashkenazim against sephardim, religious against secular. Increasingly it is Tel Aviv--or a certain image of Tel Aviv--against everyone else. Talk of tzedek hevrati (social justice) cannot mask the fact that virtually all of the country's wealth is controlled by a relatively small group of people, heavily European in origin, primarily secular or at least non-Haredi in orientation, and almost exclusively Jewish, overwhelmingly concentrated
in Tel Aviv or small, mini-Tel Avivs in Jerusalem, Haifa, and other cities. But, you will argue, it is precisely the "liberals" in Tel Aviv who want peace and the others (religious, Eastern etc.) who are opposed to it.    Think again. Blaming the poor and religious for the country's problems is like blaming the hard hats and rural southerners for the onset of the Vietnam War. People who are excluded from economic and political power
will always take refuge in excessive patriotism, osentatious spirituality, and so forth.    The common wisdom is that social issues in Israel cannot be addressed until "the situation" (i.e., the Arab-Israeli crisis) is resolved. I would argue the opposite: the situation will never be resolved until everyone inside the country finds a common language with which to address it.

3. The Ideology of a "Jewish State"--Israel was created to be a Jewish State and (not coincidentally) to provide a safe homeland for Jews after centuries of persecution. To a remarkable degree that goal has been accomplished. In two generations the country has amassed the largest number of Jews in the world; in another decade or two more than half the world's Jews will live here.   Notwithstanding residual fears, the likelihood of the country's outright destruction is minimal.   But ideologies--even (and perhaps especially) successful ones--sometimes outlive their usefulness. At this point talk of the state's "Jewish character" serves mostly either to celebrate the past (which is irrelevant) or as a club to exclude people one doesn't like from discussions of its future (which is actively destructive).   No serious person thinks that Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank will suddenly come together in a "one state" solution that creates anything but more violence.   But even assuming a territorial compromise--hardly a small assumption--more than a third of the Israeli population will be Arab or Haredi and therefore outside the central Zionist consensus, a percentage likely to grow, not shrink, in the coming years.   This is not necessarily a reason for panic, any more than the coming of the Mizrachi Jews in the 50s or the Russians in the 90s; but it means that serious, constitutional change, to make the country a genuine medinat kol ezrakhekha--a state of and for all its citizens--cannot be indefinitely avoided.   Properly constituted, such a state would be more not less Jewish in its basic essence, and infinitely more attractive to those of us who remain in Galut, as well.

Skeptics will suggest that, by compromising on #1 and (especially) #3, Israel would be giving up on the "Zionist Dream" and surrendering its very reason for being. But Zionism was supposed to make the Jewish people more normal, not less so.   It's hard to see how the current arrangements are achieving that goal.   Nor does the "reform" program of the coastal elite, which really means making the second problem worse so as to solve the remaining two, hold much promise either.   Rather it is time to transcend current debates and begin a serious discussion of underlying beliefs and practices--what Ze'ev Sternehll has aptly called the "founding myths of Israel"--in a fundamental way.   My guess is that the country, for a variety of internal and external reasons, is still a decade or so from this rethinking.   But in the long run it seems unavoidable.

israel ii: notes on a conference.

2011-11-03T02:28:00.001-04:00

Notes after attending a conference--well, part of a conference--sponsored by the INSS (Institute for National Security Studies, the sucessor to the old Jaffee Center at Tel Aviv Univeristy) on the EU, Israel, and the Palestinians:

1.   Sa'eb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator when there are actually negotiations is a very good speaker indeed. His pitch to the (at least partially sympathetic) crowd--we are open to negotiations but will not be dicated to--was a point well taken if perhaps more emotional than logical in nature.   His handling of a heckler who asked would they accept Israel as a Jewish State--"it's ok, I'm used to it, that's the very point about dictation that I was making"--was masterful.   His fashionably late arrival, which he left people thinking might at least conceivably have resulted from an Israeli roadblock, only added to the allure.

2.   You can see why Europeans like Tzipi Livni: she's tall, speaks perfect French, and simply looks like a European professional woman.   Unfortunately she's a wooden speaker with a knack for saying the wrong things at the wrong time.   Neither her speech at the conference nor her general performance--she seems easily maneuvered into unpopular positions (opposition to Shalit deal, opposition to Iran attack) which she then has to wiggle out of--have impressed me in particular.   Avigdor Lieberman may be a thug, but he knows when to keep his mouth shut.

3. Why do Israelis insist on giving retired generals positions in "think tanks" where they offer opinions on numerous subjects they are not expert on?   Most are poor speakers and, even if they weren't, it isn't exactly clear what their "expertise" consists of.    Nothing hurts Israel's image more than a bunch of military people giving opinions in bad English on essentially political issues.

The event fed my growing conviction that the problems in Israel have less to do with any inherent flaw in the Israeli character than with the country's institutional structure (see previous post).   If you have a parade of "strategic studies" institutes, whatever that means, they are going to tend to see every problem as strategic (i.e., military) in nature.     If your political parties are organized around ethnic and religious divides, people will (surprise) tend to do things that exacerbate these differences.    The problem is that, right now, the pressure of day to day events--combined with a good bit of sheer inertia--prevents people from recognizing this problem and, instead, makes them pursue their own agendas even more aggressively.   The "left" is as guilty of this as the "right": Ha'aretz regularly puts rocket attacks in the south on page two which would never happen if its own readers, i.e. those in the coastal plain and Jerusalem, were affected.    But nothing lasts forever, and my guess is that when the dust settles many institutions and political parties will prove a lot less permanent than they now seem.   Maybe that's why peace makes some people on both sides nervous.

report from israel: one month

2011-10-31T11:30:00.000-04:00

You don't need a newspaper to know that there is a war going on in Ashdod.   For one thing there are the planes that streak overhead, in the general direction of Gaza, every hour or so.   For another there are the children, out of school as a precautionary measure despite Government reassurances, who clog the malls and keep their parents from doing anything more productive.   Only at the Cafe Francais (Ashdod has an unusually large immigrant population) does everything seem normal, the waitresses chatting away in a mixture of texbook French and French-accented Hebrew, the customers in Russian and other languages.

The mall itself is an experience which, as the little girl in Peanuts might say, should not be confused with the experience of being in Israel itself. In four weeks here I have not seen anyone except me pay full price for anything.    Everyone has some kind of mivtza, a word that used to mean military operation but now means discounts, and there is almost invariably a discussion (argument) about some aspect of the transaction.    It's obvious that people are stressed financially: I've seen several pay part of the price in cash and the rest with credit cards, or put back items that didn't qualify for the intended price break. The stress shows up on highways too: even in Philadelphia I have never been passed on the right in an exit lane, a nearly daily occurrence here.

What is interesting about all this is that it is taking place in a country which, in many ways, is doing quite well. New roads are sprouting everywhere, the rest stops including book stores, espresso bars, playgrounds, and multiple varieties of food. The stock market appears to go up every day.    The cultural level, at least in the coastal region, is plainly higher than in the US (admittedly a faint compliment): one could fill every day attending lectures, debates, and artistic presentations. The diversity is striking, even overwhelming, both within the Jewish community and outside it: the percentage of Arabs, even within older "green line" Israel, is higher than that of the Black and Hispanic communities in the US combined, higher still once one leaves the Tel Aviv region.

The problem, as is so often the case, is that the country's institutions have failed to keep pace with the changes in the population and its environment. One sees this most plainly in the army, which has a couple of hundred thousand people at any time, but only a fraction of whom appear to be doing much that has to do with traditional military objectives. (I spent too weeks on a notoriously inefficient supply base, so I may be somewhat biased).    But it is also true of the political system, which reflects the divisions of prewar Europe more accurately than today's realities, and of the general society, in which a European-oriented elite--represented most clearly by the Ha'aretz newspaper--dominates economic and cultural life but is increasingly swamped politically by a coalition of religious and Middle Eastern ("Mediterranean") Jews who believe it to be unrealistic, condescending, and generally out of touch. All this is before one even reaches the problem of the Palestinians, whose cities (Kalkilya, Taiba, Tulkarm) drivers streak by on the new Highway Six but who most people realize are probably not going away.

Motzei Shabbat, Saturday night, my host interrupted dinner at the sound of a siren. "We have a bomb," he said calmly, and we heard the explosion--which apparently wounded someone a few blocks away--about a minute later.   Later the same evening we returned to Tel Aviv and attended a somewhat halhearted demonstration for social justice--a follow-up to the summer's tent city movement--at which the attacks were mentioned but seemed somehow far away.    It was a day that encapsulated the contradictions of a country with enormous problems but also incredible energy, and a kind of dignity under stress that makes many of the things Americans worry about seem, well, trivial.   I'll be back with more about politics and other matters in a later post.

football, "moneyball," and the universities

2011-09-23T17:06:00.000-04:00

One of the fascinating things about academia is the disconnect between what people say and what they do.   In theory, universities exist to provide things of long-term value that aren't adequately provided for in the surrounding society.   In fact, they are subject to the same destructive trends as anyone else . . . or more so.

Two examples have recently caught my eye. The first and larger is college sports (especially football). University Presidents have recently been in the news, not for new research facilities or Nobel Prize winners, but because they have final say--and are sometimes the prime movers--in the realignment of athletic conferences. The latter are, increasingly, designed solely for revenue purposes with no pretense of regional rivalry or educational synergy to speak of: TCU last year joined the Big East, while Oklahoma and Texas were seriously considering the Pacific 12.    The Universities defend these moves with reference to terms like "branding" and "revenue streams" that have little if any relationship to their academic mission. At many or most schools the highest paid individuals are the President and football coach (not necessarily in that order): professors rank far behind.

A second, more limited example pertains to my own field of tax law.    An number of tax professors have decided that theoretical scholarship is passe and embraced an "entreprenurial" model--what used to be self-promotion--in which an ability to generate electronic downloads and blog hits is the sine qua non of academic success.   In an especially entertaining twist, several of them write articles and blog posts on the ranking process itself, which then lead (or so they hope) to more hits and downloads, which they then report in a sort of never-ending cycle of trivia. The scholarship of such people, if such it may be called, is laced with terms like "moneyball" and "added value" that make the sports and business analogy that much clearer.

I wouldn't begrudge people their success: it's a free country and, if universities want to pay professors to rank each other, or administrators to trade football conferences, they surely have the right to do so.   But they should do it with their own resources, without tax exemption and without contributions from alumni that are (in turn) subsidized by tax exemption.   The purpose of the exemption for educational institutions is, well, education: people are free to play all the "moneyball" they want, but not with someone else's money.

There is also a point here about competition and globalization. Every week or two we see a new survey suggesting that the US is behind everyone--China, Israel, Bangladesh--in educational achievement. Is that really any surprise when our universities are organized around football and our law schools self-promotion? I don't know much about Chinese universities, but I'll bet that football plays a relatively small part in the admissions process.   And blogging even less.

still more on coffee and community: herein of the female side

2011-08-13T14:01:00.003-04:00

I noted in my last post, a month ago, the "rules" that seemed to apply to men at indie coffee bars and how they could be interpreted as efforts to carve out a distinctly male sphere in at least nominally egalitarian world. There are also of course rules that apply to women, in dress and other behavioral manners. Herewith a few, as best I can relate them:

1. It is forbidden for any woman under the age of 50 to wear a brassiere or other underwear above the waist. (My research does not permit me to go beyond this.) When entering an air conditioned location, or for reasons of modesty, it is however permitted to place a shawl or other similar covering above one's shirt or blouse.

2. Tattoos are permitted or even encouraged for women as well as men, but they must be of an approved female variety. Flowers, or flower arrangements, are preferred. Sports or similarly violent motifs are prohibited: at very least, women wearing them should be given a wide berth.

3. An air of postfeminist indifference--neither the hostility sometimes associated with the feminist movement nor the overt flirtation of the "Madmen" era--should be cultivated in all dealings with men and perhaps older women, as well. A tight-lipped smile and a brief "Hey! or "How are ya?" may be offered on repeat encounters with the same person. There is a marginally greater likelihood of women than men engaging in conversations with real people as opposed to electronic devices, although it is unclear if this difference is permanent or transitional in nature.

It is interesting to note that the supposed "convergence" of the sexes has been accompanied by a re-emphasis on sexual characteristics in grooming, with men more likely to sport facial hair, etc. and women displaying more of their breasts with each passing year. Yet--inasmuch as few men go for an ultra-macho biker look--few real women seem to imitate Lady Gaga, whose exaggerated hair and body can only be understood as a sort of adolescent response to the strictures of a unisex world. Instead most people seem to be, well, at least superficially comfortable with what they are, neither trying to be the other gender nor making a special effort to run away from it. Which, as these things go, is probably not so bad.

more on coffee, community, and gender relations

2011-07-06T15:39:00.002-04:00

I stop sometimes on my way to work at an "indie" coffee place in Philadelphia that has, well, very good coffee and slightly weird people. This is not to be confused with my morning tea or coffee or my daily trip to the gym, which is also not to be confused with my occasional trip to the local pool after lunch, although I invariably take work to the latter and sometimes to the former, as well. (Are you beginning to see why my productivity has fallen off?)

One thing I notice at all of these places is the various ways that men have reacted to changing gender roles and the more general challenge of modern life. This is most obvious at the gym, where several people seem to spend the better part of the day [they're invariably there when I arrive and when I leave] and many of whom are in awesome physical shape. It's less obvious, but still noticeable, at the coffee place, where a disproportionate number of men seem to have some kind of facial hair, distinctively male tattoos, and other stylistic affectations (notably hats) that emphasize their maleness but in a largely nonthreatening--dare I say nonsexist--way. There are, of course, some less trivial examples, as when men come in pushing strollers or carrying children around. One fellow at the gym provides a neat combination, having an image of his children (grandchildren?) tattooed on his arm.

It's easy to make fun of these sometimes trivial manifestations of maleness, or to caricature them as examples of men in retreat before powerful women (she goes to the office, he spends all day at the gym, and so on). But isn't there something vaguely comforting about it, as well? Broadly speaking there are two ways for men to respond to feminism. One is to try to encourage and comfort your womenfolk, do your best not to be (or at very least not to act) threatened, and carve out a distinctively male space for one's self that neither endangers nor is endangered by the other sex's advances. The other is literally or metaphorically to wave one's prick at the nearest woman in an increasingly desperate effort to reclaim one's lost prerogatives. Many political figures, as of late, appear to have adopted the second alternative. The average Joes seem, by and large, to be adopting the first. Maybe this is one case where the average guys are smarter?

the trouble with tony

2011-06-07T15:37:00.002-04:00

Has anyone noticed how many Jewish (or half-Jewish) people named Tony have gotten into trouble lately? First it was Tony Judt (since deceased) who decided that Israel wasn't a good idea, after all. Then it was Tony Kushner and the City College Board of Trustees. Now it's Anthony (Tony) Weiner and . . . well, you know.

There's a basic underlying problem, I think. Tony is not a Jewish name. It's a beautiful name, to be sure: San Antonio, Anthony Perkins, Tony (Anton) in West Side Story. It's so beautiful there's even a female version. But it isn't very Jewish, is it?

People have a right to choose their religion, their politics, perhaps even their gender. But they don't have a right to pretend to be something they're not. Light beer, safe sex, Jews named Tony; it just doesn't fit, and sooner or later it catches up with you. You don't see a lot of Avram Bocellis walking around, do you?

"a state for all its citizens"

2011-06-03T16:41:00.004-04:00

Images from a brief trip to Israel--three days there, two days in transit--to give a paper on law and religion at Bar Ilan University:

A coffee shop, across from the university, where most of the patrons are observant Jews (it is after all a religious university) but the people who make the coffee are named Mahmud, Ahmed, and Mustafa. You can tell, because it says so on their shirts--in Hebrew.

An evening trip to Jerusalem, where the bus driver tries to save time by going on the side road that passes through a maze of Arab villages on the other side of the Green Line. Security walls and barbed wire fences on both sides of the road, and checkpoints--kind of like tollbooths without any tolls--at either end of the road. The soldiers nervously clutch their machine guns and then wave us through.

Jerusalem Day, the anniversary of the city's unification in 1967, an endless see of mostly religious Jews surging toward the Wall and other holy places. Shopkeepers sell Israeli army T-shirts next to Palestine souvenirs. Someone asks me for a pen to leave a note in the Wall.

Ha'aretz, the upscale newspaper, reports the next day that there is good news and bad news about Jerusalem. The good news is more business starts and population growth. The bad news is poverty, "ultra-religiousization" (התחרדות), and the flight of secular Jews. And why exactly is it bad news that the acknowledged center of the Jewish religion is filling up with religious Jews?

Back at Bar Ilan, a discussion of the conflict faced by observant soldiers whose officers tell them to dismantle settlements but whose rabbis--or some of them--forbid them to do so. It develops that some of the rabbis doing so are, well, not necessarily the best scholars, and the texts they rely on are not necessarily on point. Should I raise my hand and ask whether the mixing of religion and politics might not be the best thing for either?

What strikes me about all this is how far the political conversation lags the reality of the country. Everyone is talking about the need to preserve Israel as a Jewish State and return it to its proper boundaries. But the boundaries are porous and even within the Green Line a large and growing percentage of the population--Arabs, Haredim, Russian immigrants--is either non-Zionist or non-Jewish, altogether. The contempt for, and sense of isolation among, many observant Jews is arguably as great or greater than that of the Arab minority. The idea of a "state for all its citizens" is often ridiculed as a stalking horse for those who want to get rid of Israel, altogether. But unless the country learns to deal better with its cultural diversity it may accomplish the task itself.

obama and netanyahu

2011-05-20T13:42:00.002-04:00

Readers of this blog know I am not one of those who thinks Israel--especially the Israeli Government--are always right. But they aren't always wrong, either. This week is one of the times they aren't.

There are two interpretations of President Obama's Middle East speech, in which he suggested that peace should be based on the 1967 borders with adjustments or "swaps" agreed to by the two parties. One is that Obama is fed up with Israel and intentionally leaning in a more pro-Arab direction. This interpretation is disconcerting to Israel, but would at least suggest a coherent policy, which would probably be supported by a lot of Americans although not by Israel's core supporters.

The more frightening--and I think accurate--interpretation is that, as a "senior Israeli official" (probably Netanyahu himself) has suggested, Obama is simply in over his head, trying to say a little bit to please all sides but making none of them happy. It is noteworthy, on this point, that Arab reaction to the speech has been only marginally more positive than that of Israel. Even Israelis, I suspect, are more puzzled than genuinely angry.

Everyone knows that peace, if it comes, will be based on something approaching the 1967 borders with additional clauses for Jerusalem, refugees, and other issues. What is hard to understand is what is gained by saying so at this point. A possible explanation is that Obama wanted to forestall a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood by throwing a bone to the Arab side at this juncture. The problem is that, by awarding something before negotiations, he has actually reduced the incentive to negotiate and suggested that unilateral actions, by one or perhaps both sides, will be rewarded. From an Israeli perspective, there is a fear that it will result in a no war/no peace situation, where the country will be left with problematic borders and no real commitment to peace by the other side.

The only good news is that the speech will probably shake Israel, and some its more blinkered American supporters, out of their complacency. It has been obvious for some time that Israel is losing support among Americans generally and American Jews specifically, partly for reasons beyond its control, but partly because of its own actions. The traditional arguments--Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East (it isn't anymore), any compromise will lead to another Holocaust (no longer convincing if it ever was)--have plainly run their course. For better or worse, Israel has to compete in a marketplace of ideas and policies where it no longer has a monopoly of virtue and where increasing numbers of people see the region through neutral, if not actively Arab, eyes. If the Obama speech causes Jerusalem to wake up to these realities, it will have accomplished some good, after all.

strauss-kahn, schwarzenegger, and the state of gender relations

2011-05-17T12:21:00.004-04:00

I don't know what happened with Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the hotel maid at the New York Sofitel the other day, although I would have to say it doesn't look good for him from here. (When you head to the airport and hire a famous criminal lawyer, it's not a very good sign). But a couple of points should be made that, I think, have been overlooked in the reporting:

1. It's often said that French, Italians, and other Europeans have a more "liberated" view of sex than Americans. I think what they actually have is a more "feudal" view. There's nothing particularly erotic about a 60+ executive emerging from the shower to tackle a chambermaid, or an aging prime minister (Berlusconi) attending parties with confused, teenage Moroccan girls. While such behavior is sometimes dismissed on the basis of real or imagined cultural differences, it has a real cost in the countries involved, which tend to have lower labor force participation and lower birth rates precisely because of the treatment of women (France has actually been a little bit better than Italy, or Israel, on this score). In any event, the event in took place in New York, not Rome or Paris: as Buzz says to Woody in Toy Story, we're not on my planet, are we?

2. Ditto for the French complaints about the "brutality" of American criminal law. Sure, the civil and common law have different criminal procedures. Americans couldn't understand why Amanda Knox didn't get a jury; Europeans can't understand why Strauss-Kahn had to do a "perp walk" and isn't free on bail. But his treatment seems pretty consistent with what others facing similar charges would endure: if he were treated better the political uproar would I think be quite forceful.

3. I still wonder about the anonymity of accusers in cases of sexual violence. The woman in question appears to be a hard-working family person who behaved quite courageously (or so it would seem) in reporting the event immediately to her colleagues. Is it really helping or hurting her to keep her identity secret while the sympathy flows to her alleged assailant?

On a broader level, the Strauss-Kahn and Schwarzenegger stories--which coincidentally broke at about the same time--make one wonder just how much has changed in gender relations. We seem to have a formal world in which everyone is equal and all sex takes place in loving, egalitarian relationships covering a substantive one in which powerful men regularly use their positions for sexual advantage, and perhaps pursue these positions in large part for that very advantage. (Together with allegedly assaulting a French writer, Strauss-Kahn apparently had a "consensual" affair with an IMF employee which she perceived very differently than he did.) I don't think the answer here is to give up on feminism or to assume that "boys will be boys" and that's the end of it. But I do think we need a more honest conversation about what is acceptable and what isn't, rather than the obvious double or sliding standard that seems to apply right now.

Addendum: As if things weren't bad enough, it appears Strauss-Kahn is 3/4 Jewish and his alleged victim is . . . a Muslim. Oh dear.

1948, 1973, 2011: whither the middle east?

2011-05-15T10:43:00.002-04:00

Following my brief experience with Israeli literature (see previous post), I've been doing a lot of reading in the country's history, or more precisely its wars which unfortunately constitute a fair if not necessarily the better part of its history. I started with 1973, which was most closely related to the Grossman book, and went back through 1967 to 1948 with various stops in between. And, of course, approximately half my incoming e-mail and Facebook posts concern the contemporary Middle East--Richard Goldstone, Tony Kushner, whatever else is new--so the issue is never far from my mind.

It's hard to say anything about the Middle East that hasn't been said before, even after a stack of reading like this. But herewith a couple of things that stood out, and several of which even surprised me:

The Problem of Perspective.--One of the things that struck me most forcefully was the radically different way in which Israelis and Arabs perceive the conflict (the books were each written by Israeli authors (Rabinovitch, Oren, Morris) but made a serious effort to include Arabic sources and outlooks). Much of Arab behavior--the attempt to blame the U.S. and Britain for the defeat in 1967, the claim of military victory in 1973 when the Israelis defeated or surrounded both Egyptian and Syrian armies, the insistence on a "right of return" in 2001--often seems irrational or self-defeating from a Western perspective. It becomes less so when one understands that the Arabs perceive Israel, not as a return to its homeland by a small Middle Eastern people, but as a continuation of colonial humiliations that precede and encompass the Palestine problem. The sense of virtue that Israelis feel as a small outpost surrounded by enemies, and the corresponding sense of their enemies' evil nature, is likewise more than reciprocated by their Arab foes. For example, many of the Egyptian casualties in 1967--and to a lesser degree in the remaining wars--took place while their army was retreating, which appears like legitimate pursuit to Israelis but is likely to appear more like a massacre from the Arab perspective, a difference that no amount of logic is likely to overcome.

There's nothing new under the sun.--Another thing that strikes you in reading backwards is how few really new ideas there are in the Middle East. The one-state solution? This was the basic Arab position going back to the 1930s. Two states? The 1947 partition proposal. A partial, symbolic right of return for (say) 100,000 Palestinian refugees? Benny Morris reports that Israel proposed it in the 1950s (although rejecting suggestions of a larger number). None of this means, of course, that any of these ideas are necessarily right or wrong: only that it's awfully hard to come up with proposals in a place where just about everything has been tried, and failed, already. Ask George Mitchell.

Nobody's really a good guy.--It's obvious, from the above, that I don't think much of Israelis who assume that all virtue is on their side and all evil comes from their enemies. But the opposite idea is no more, and perhaps even less, convincing. Both sides committed atrocities; both sides launched surprise attacks; both sides have a strong and recurring tendency to think in extremist terms and deny the existence of the other. This point is important, I think, because there is a tendency among intellectuals (and especially Jewish intellectuals) to engage in "intellectual flips:" the Israelis are not perfect and the Arabs are not all evil the way that I learned in Hebrew School, therefore the Arabs must be all victims and the Israelis aggressors. (See Tony Kushner, above; see also neoconservative movement.) Demonizing your own side, or parts of it, is no better than demonizing the opposition: in some respects it is worse, because one loses credibility with both sides and becomes part of the problem rather than the solution.

All of which bring us back, somewhat dejectedly, to the current "peace process." It seemed obvious to me, even before my reading, that Israelis and Palestinians have been talking about different things for the past decade: the Israelis about undoing 1967 (by returning all or most of the "territories" and calling it a day), the Palestinians about reversing 1948 (by permitting a return of refugees and creating, at once or in several stages, a majority Arab state). This recognition, of course, does not solve the problem (and may even make it more difficult): but it still seems preferable to a process that papers over the obvious differences in perspective and sets the stage for further conflict. My belief continues to be that a lasting peace must involve creation of a Palestinian entity, probably linked closely to Jordan; a lengthy transition period in which the Palestinians much more closely approach the Israeli standard of living; and serious constitutional changes within both countries, so that the Arabs content themselves with a limited or symbolic return to Israel proper and Israel becomes a מדינת כל אזרחיה (state of all its citizens) in a way that its Arab as well as non-Zionist Jewish minorities feel like full citizens rather than tolerated guests. This too is not particularly original: it's more or less what liberal Israelis, and some Arabs, have been saying for some time now. But does anyone have a better idea?

coffee, community, and the meaning of progress

2011-05-11T18:27:00.000-04:00

Since the Inquirer published a list of Indie coffee houses in Philadelphia, I've slowly but surely been making the rounds. How much I've learned about Philadelphia, I don't know, but I've learned a lot about generational change, in this and (presumably) other cities. To wit:

1. The biggest improvements in America over the last generation are (i) the increased acceptance of interracial relationships and (ii) the improved quality of espresso, not necessarily in that order. What is significant about these developments is that--unlike, say, gentrification of neighborhoods or the overthrow of Arab dictatorships--it's hard to think of a downside to either trend. Presumably, there's some same-race couple or some second-tier coffeehouse that was displaced to make way for progress: but this seems a small price to pay for the overall improvement in question. Indeed, since many interracial couples appear to meet and hang out at Indie coffee houses, the two developments may even be related, which suggests the possibility of beneficial interactions that may yield still further improvements.

2. The most significant negative development, by contrast, is plainly the rise of laptops and other portable devices. On recent excursions, I have regularly witnessed rooms full of intelligent, attractive, and serious-looking coffee drinkers, all of them buried in their laptops and none of them paying even the slightest attention to the person or persons next to them. Every once in a while, as if in some kind of B movie, two people will look up from their computers and smile or caress one another--I actually witnessed a shoulder rub at one daring location--but then just as quickly return to their screens. It is possible, of course, that these people are engaged in social networking on their computers, perhaps even initiating the very interracial or other relationships (or else planning the new coffeehouses) that are referred to in item 1., above. But what is the point of going to a coffeehouse, the very symbol of modern community, if you are going to ignore the other people there; and what does "community" even mean in this context?

I suggested, half jokingly, that the barista break in to the wifi link once an hour and require the patrons to change locations in the hope of making new friends and breaking out of lethargy: something like the radio stations that used to warn beachgoers to rotate their bodies each hour and avoid sunburn. But by then, my coffee was finished; besides, I had to check my Blackberry.

sons and lovers, the hebrew version (2009)

2011-02-27T17:57:00.007-05:00

I read slowly, especially when I'm trying to do it in two languages, so it took me a couple of months to get through David Grossman's "To the End of the Land" (אשה בורחת מבשורה), which is 576 pages in English and even longer in the original. OK, I read it in English and only skimmed it for important passages in Hebrew: it's still long, and not an easy read on any number of levels. But it's worth the effort, because it tells more about Israel--and human beings generally--than anything else I've read in a long time, and leaves the reader with the profoundly disturbed sense that all serious literature leaves in its wake.

Like A.B. Yehoshua's "The Lover," which preceded it by 30 years, "To the End of the Land" is the story of a love triangle, in which an Israeli woman (Ora) is suspended between her husband (Ilan), a more or less stereotypical Israeli, and another man (Avram) who--while technically Israeli--is emotionally and psychologically closer to the Galut (Diaspora) Jews from whom most Israelis spring. Indeed the parallels are even spookier: both Avram and Gabriel, the title character in Yehoshua's book, have undergone serious and apparently irreversible transformations as a result of their experiences in the Sinai Desert during and after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Avram was taken prisoner and tortured in ways that leave him scarred on numerous levels. (Gabriel was luckier and merely returned as a somewhat half-hearted Orthodox Jew.)

While "The Lover" book takes place during and immediately after the 1973 war,"To the End of the Land" takes place thirty years later, when the children of the 70s generation have grown up and have themselves gone off to war. The bulk of the book involves a seemingly endless hike that Ora takes with Avram after Ilan has left her and while their son, Ofer, is on a mission in the Occupied Territories: a walk Ora takes for the express purpose of avoiding any news about her son's fate (the Hebrew title means "a woman flees from [bad] news") and, it becomes clear, to re-humanize Avram with the story of Ofer's birth, upbringing, and transformation into a strong but also somewhat frightening young man. The power of the book lies not so much in the story as in the way it is told, with Grossman using the allegory as a way to investigate the meaning of Israeli identity and the relationship of men, women, and children on a more universal level.

Much of the press coverage of the book stems from the bitter reality that Grossman's own son, Uri, was killed in the Second Lebanon War as the book was being finished. In the book itself, however, it is unclear which Ora is more afraid of: that her son will be killed or that he will survive, in which case she will have to face the hard, violent edge her once frail and playful child has taken on. While this point is obviously exaggerated by the militarization of contemporary Israeli society--in one memorable scene Ora notes how her son's voice and vocabulary change when he calls from an Army base--there is also a wider theme of women, men, and motherhood, of the pain caused when boys inevitably distance themselves from their parents and assert their independence at their mothers' (and to some degree all women's) expense. (In another scene, Ofer mocks his mother's fear that he will be blown up at a checkpoint for suicide bombers: "That's my job," he dismisses her coldly.) Grossman's ability, as a man, to portray a woman's reality is especially impressive here: at one point Ora laments that she has spent her life as a "sponge" for the blood, tears, semen et al. of the men in her family, a lament that has surely been heard from many women a long way from Jerusalem.

Notwithstanding this universal appeal, at least two things stamp the book as profoundly Israeli in content. The first is language, much of which comes across in Jessica Cohen's brilliant translation, but some of which inevitably doesn't. Grossman loves word games, and there are games aplenty in the text. At one point, Ora gouges Avram's face and remarks that the act was מעשה ידיה להצטער (her handwork which she regrets), a clear play on מעשה ידי להתפאר (my handwork which pleases me), a Talmudic description of God's attitude toward human beings. A rather racier example is the author's creation of the word כיוס (literally to "vaginasize") as a sort of female equivalent of זיון (to screw but literally to "penisize") in colloquial Hebrew. Puns like this remind us that, no matter how secular Israeli writers are, they inevitably are part of a much broader tradition that--like Dante in Italy or Whitman in the United States--affects them even if they struggle to break away from it.

A further Israeli stamp is provided by the role of the Yom Kippur War, now almost 40 years old but still playing the same central literary role that it did in the 1970s. A question of subject arises here. Israel has fought a lot of different wars, and it tends to win most of them. So why are the early stages of the 1973 conflict, which is pretty much the only thing Israel lost, still so hotly debated, and why do two of the most famous Israelis novels--written more than three decades apart--both turn on it?

I think the answer relates to the Jewish/Israeli dichotomy with which I began this comment. Until 1973, Israelis believed that they had transcended Jewishness: that they had constructed a peculiarly "Israeli" identity that did not need the Disapora and that, in its extreme version, did not really need God or religion, either. The Egyptian crossing of the canal and the near collapse of the Syrian front, although reversed by later Israeli victories, shattered that sense of invincibility and in a sense reconnected Israel with the mainstream of Jewish history. That the Sinai was in a sense the birthplace of the Jewish people--Gabriel in The Lover has a powerful vision that the people arose from the Sinai and are now sinking back into it--and that the modern Egyptians (unlike their Biblical forebears) made it across the water unscathed, gives the Egyptian front a particular historic resonance.

The problem, of course, is that the shattering of one illusion inevitably leads to others. For Grossman and other secular intellectuals, the lesson of 1973 was the price of arrogance, and the need to make peace with Israel's Arab neighbors before it was too late. (Matti Ashkenazi, the moral forerunner of Peace Now, was the commander of the one stronghold (מעוז) on the canal that didn't fall to the Egyptians.) For those of a more religious/nationalist bent, the lesson was that Israel had gotten too far from God and tradition and needed to return to both. In a sense all subsequent Israeli politics is about the difference between these interpretations. The war was over in a few weeks, but forty years later we are still fighting about its meaning.

israel, egypt, america

2011-02-12T15:20:00.002-05:00

Everyone seems to be happy about Egypt's mini-revolution, except maybe Mubarak himself . . . and a lot of Israelis. The fear is that the smiles in Tahrir Square will eventually give rise to an Islamic-oriented Government that is even less fond of Israel than its predecessor, and potentially more willing to act on its dislike. The outgoing Chief of Staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, said what many Israelis were thinking: in the Middle East stability is better than democracy--at the very least, it's better for our interests.

There's something to this, of course, but I think it's more of a mixed bag than many people think. For one thing, the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty was never based on love, but on self-interest. Having from its perspective won the last Egypt-Israel War, in 1973, Egypt has a lot to lose and not terribly much to gain from renewing it.

It's also not clear that democracy always works out badly for Israel. The most commonly cited example is Turkey, whose Islamic parties are less comfortable with Israel than its secular elite, and of course Iran, which turned sharply against Israel after the overthrow of the Shah in 1979. But Iran isn't a democracy and--while Turkey often talks like an enemy--nobody really expects to see Turkish soldiers on Israel's border anytime soon. If it succeeds in creating an Islamic-influenced democracy, a la Turkey, and still maintaining a stable if less than friendly peace with Israel, Egypt might offer an alternative example for the entire Middle East, one ultimately not all bad from Israel's perspective.

If I were the Israeli prime minister, I would be less worried about the strategic threat than the political one. Thirty years ago most Americans saw the Middle East through Israeli eyes. Now Egypt is a fledgling democracy; Emirates is one of the world's largest airlines; and hundreds of thousands of Americans have served time in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, or Afghanistan. In this situation many Americans--including some Jews--are already beginning to see the Middle East through Arab- rather than Israeli-colored glasses. TV and movies regularly picture Israelis as exotic, attractive, but not especially likable. Sooner or later, this kinds of stuff affects people's attitudes toward political questions, as well. Better to be feared the liked, one might respond; but are those the only two choices?

the king's speech

2011-01-26T19:45:00.003-05:00

From today's NY Times and Phila Inquirer you would think Barack Obama had reinvented himself as the "competitiveness" President, the Republicans were angry and divided, and the election was all but forgotten. Nice try, no cigar.

The speech was part of the emerging Democratic strategy for negating the elections and hoping to continue on essentially the same path with minor modifications. The strategy has two parts: (i) cast the Republicans as extremists who are unfit to govern despite their victory, and (ii) recast large-scale deficit spending as an "investment" in the future that only naysayers would oppose. Neither of these has much substance--extremism is a matter of perception and (as tax lawyers know well) almost any expenditure can be recast as an investment--but it has a nice sound to it and offers some hope for recasting the terms, if not the substance, of the debate.

Will it work? In the short term it might: people seem to recoil from dominance by either party (that's probably why Obama's numbers are up) and the demise of Pelosi et al. gives the President more room for maneuver. But in the long run it seems less promising.

Obama's basic problem is not so much the election as that his entire program runs counter to what other Governments (including both states and foreign countries) are doing and what most Americans seem to want. As Rep. Paul Ryan noted in the Republican response, Obama has taken a Government plagued by entitlement-created deficits and created . . . a new entitlement and larger deficits. This simply doesn't make sense to most people, and it's doubtful even the most clever repackaging can change that. He could still get reelected, and even be popular, as a counterweight in a conservative age (see Dwight Eisenhower, Bill Clinton, et al.) But the basic ideological direction of his Administration has been discredited, and that's a hard thing for any speech, however well delivered, to correct for.

Addendum: Time Magazine added to the Obama-hype this week by pairing him on the cover with Ronald Reagan, with whom it said he shared many things, like that they both lived in LA for a couple of years (I'm not making this up). Maybe next week they'll have an article comparing Mubarak with Nasser or Sadat. At least he met them.

of tiger mothers and not-so-tiger law schools

2011-01-22T16:38:00.004-05:00

I'm probably the only blogger who hasn't commented on Amy Chua's book, "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother." Since the book appears to be aimed at a pop rather than academic audience, perhaps it's better that way. But as a lawprof I can't resist a couple of observations. Here goes:

1. What exactly is Amy Chua doing on the Yale faculty? Her online CV shows three books, all with nonacademic publishers, and a handful of articles. One book before Tiger Mother, Worlds on Fire, argued that market capitalism was responsible for spreading racial tension in the world, an argument I would have thought was dead and buried in the 1940s. Could it be that a bit of jealousy for her, well, more substantial colleagues is part of the motive for this latest project?

2. Why would a mixed Chinese-Jewish family want their kids to be raised, culturally speaking, as Chinese? Jews have a fraction of one percent of the world's population and have produced a vastly disproportionate percentage of the world's leading intellectuals. China has one quarter and has produced a dictatorship that fires on its own people. They've also produced an exquisite 3,000-year old culture, of course; but Chua's dictatorial approach represents precisely the worst of their national traditions.

3. Back to Yale--every month seems to bring a new departing faculty member, and the school is slowly but surely squandering its number one rating. Maybe the fact that a substantial portion of its faculty is writing novels, parenting books, etc. instead of serious scholarship has something to do with that?

I don't doubt that many American parents are overly permissive, and Chua's book may prove a needed antidote. And, like other ethnic groups before them, Asian parents have a right to produce neurotic kids who will then overcompensate by spoiling their grandchildren. But they shouldn't mistake immigrant insecurity for national culture, nor claim academic standing for what is essentially popular nonsense.

rome, arizona, and the spectre of decline

2011-01-11T11:04:00.002-05:00

I have never been a declinist, i.e., one who thinks the U.S. is going to pot and we will soon be involuntarily speaking Chinese, Hindi, or whatever the flavor of the decade happens to be. I have seen the country's doom prophesied too many times to take it entirely seriously. Still, a couple of recent events have me thinking, and not necessarily in an optimistic way.

The first is the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, which somehow didn't kill her (this is why people believe in miracles) but did kill several others and left her within an inch of her life. When the event happened, I honestly thought people would take stock for a moment and think about where the country was headed. Instead, after perhaps 72 hours of silence, everyone seems to be using it to reinforce whatever they believed before. I'm not sure which is worse here: the left's rather crude attempt to use it for political purposes (there's not very much evidence the gunman knew or cared about politics) or the right's effort to deny that the tone of, ahem, discourse in the country might not be setting the best example for people who are violent or deranged in the first place. The point is that everyone, or almost everyone, seems to be responding with preconceived notions rather than pausing to reflect: not an encouraging sign.

The second, albeit rather more trivial event--also taking place in Arizona--was last night's BCS Football "Championship" game between Auburn and Oregon (Auburn won 22-19). While the game was exciting at times, it was also sloppily played (reflecting the month or so layoff between the regular season and the overhyped contest); characterized by repeated examples of poor sportsmanship (one Auburn defender made a habit of late hits, which even the announcers couldn't avoid noticing, and a key play involved an Auburn runner continuing to run when the Oregon defenders and everyone else in the stadium assumed the play was over); and interrupted by so many commercials that only with the greatest of difficulty was I able to avoid falling asleep. The game itself was intentionally made available to ten million or more fewer households than in the past, because the shameless plugging and other tie-ins available on ESPN meant more money for the BCS (and ESPN itself) than a traditional network. All this, of course, is subsidized by the taxpayers through the tax exemption for the participating universities and the bowls themselves, although a public interest group is currently challenging the exemption.

I recently got back from Italy, a place where a well-known empire declined, in part, because its sports deteriorated into spectacles [ital. spettacoli] and its politics into violent extremism (there's another Italian word, polemica, which captures the entertaining but largely insubstantial discourse that Italian politics has long been and American politics is becoming). There are a lot of things the United States could learn from Italy: good food, good wine, a slower and more enjoyable pace of life. Unfortunately, it seems to be learning all the wrong lessons.

peace, tolerance, and a waterfront view

2010-11-30T02:38:00.005-05:00

There are many ways to observe Shabbat (Sabbath) in Israel, each of them satisfying in their own way. Orthodox people go to synagogue--much earlier than in the U.S.--and return again in the late afternoon after eating, studying, or visiting friends. Secular people, in Tel Aviv especially, tend to hang out in cafes or go the beach: a less traditional form of observance, but still different from what they do on weekdays, which is sort of the point. I decided to take a lengthy walk down the seashore and attend the Day of Tolerance (Yom Ha-Sovlanut) organized by the Israeli-Arab Center in Jaffa, the older and more Arab part of the city, with what appeared to be help or at least encouragement from French and other European interests. What I saw was encouraging in its way, but also reminded me how far the two sides had to go.

The good part is easiest to describe. On a stage in front of a reasonable (several hundred) audience, speakers, musicians and dancers alternated Hebrew and Arabic performances devoted to tolerance, peace, and understanding. Tents and tables represented a range of groups from interreligious youth programs to more overt antiwar organizations. Some of it was a bit on the naive side--songs saying I'm a child who wants to grow up in a world of peace and the like--and if the same event were held in the U.S. I would probably have run in the opposite direction. Still, the overall spirit was a good one: just the audience, Jews in T-shirts mingling with Arab women in traditional dress chasing their children, was novel enough to justify the effort.

The problems were less what was than what wasn't there. One thing that wasn't there was any Israelis flags: a compromise, I suspect, since Palestinian flags are either illegal or dangerous to display in Israel, so the organizers appear to have avoided both of them. Instead, the Tel Aviv city flag, which from a distance looks similar, alternated somewhat incongruously with the flag of the European Union, which gave an earnest but oddly tentative feeling to the event.

Likewise absent were any visibly religious Israelis--although to be fair, the event was held on the Sabbath--or many who appeared to be of Middle Eastern or North African origin. Indeed, many of the mostly secular, European crowd seemed to know each other, giving a sense of the "usual suspects" rather than the mainstream of Israeli society which the organizers presumably wanted to reach. Throughout the event, a large number of Israeli cars passed by on the nearby coast road, headed for restaurants or (perhaps) for one of the real estate open houses in the beachfront area (the Jaffa waterfront is increasingly Jewish and affluent while the inner areas remain Arab and noticeably poorer). A speaker lectured what appeared to be a tour group on the history of Jaffa--Crusaders, Arabs, Europeans--without seeming to notice the event right across the street. While there was little if any hostility--a group of policemen at the celebration had little to do--the indifference, and the distance, were palpable.

Motzei Shabbat (Saturday night) I went to a movie in Tel Aviv based on David Grossman's "The Book of Intimate Grammar," the story of a small boy in 1960s Jerusalem who finds refuge from a dysfunctional family in the study of English tenses. Most of my effort was expended trying to follow the Hebrew which I'm not sure I ever quite mastered. Still I was struck by the number of cultural references that were common to Israelis but would have been meaningless to anyone outside the country. At one point the protagonist's older sister says, "Ani mitgayeset mukdam big'lal ha-matsav" [I'm signing up early because of the situation."] No one in the theater needed any explanation that "signing up" meant the army or that "the situation" meant the runup to the Six Day War. For all the country's sophistication, the political and cultural references of most Israelis remain so different from those of most American Jews--let alone Palestinian Arabs--that it sometimes seems hopeless to bridge the gap. Events like the one in Jaffa are worth the effort, but it will take much more effort, aimed not only at a few activists but at the mainstream of both populations, in order to make a real difference.

israel at one week

2010-11-26T10:43:00.004-05:00

The difference between Israel's three largest cities used to be described by a syllogism: Israelis prayed in Jerusalem to make enough money in Haifa that they could enjoy it in Tel Aviv. Now it might be replaced by a description of Jewish-Arab relations. In Haifa, it seems, Jews and Arabs actually notice each other and try to cooperate to the best of their ability. In Jerusalem, they live side by side but--when they're not fighting--try their best to pretend the other doesn't exist. In Tel Aviv, outside of Jaffa, the Arabs are hardly present at all.

Actually, the situation is somewhat more asymmetrical than that. While often indifferent to invididual Arabs, Israeli Jews make a determined effort to copy them in food, culture, and even architecture, although like white musicians playing black music they often have mixed success. By contrast, the Arabs seem less to dislike the Jews than to regard them as interlopers who will with enough luck eventually disappear, like the Star Trek episodes where Kirk and Spock go back to the spaceship and the others who are beamed down inevitably die. One goes through the effort to speak a few words of Arabic--kahwa, shukran, adeesh hadda?--but the merchants seem more tired than impressed, as if they have forgotten exactly which year it is and which particular breed of conquerors is now present.

Tel Aviv, of course, likes to think of itself as superior to Jerusalem, and in the hipper quarters goes out of its way to poke fun at Zionist nostrums. (One of my favorites, a play on Herzl's "If you will it, it is not a dream," depicts the old man saying, "If you don't want it, that's no problem, either.") The problem is that--like the Jewish socialists of old--they have simply replaced the older religions with a commitment to environmentalism, pacifism, and la dolce vita that is if anything more messianic than the traditional faiths. At the Tel Aviv port, a young man assures me that he is selling only the finest tapuzei washington--Washington-style oranges--made with entirely natural ingredients. Why, in a country synonymous with oranges, would anyone want to buy a variety named for an American president? And don't they grow apples, not oranges, in Washington State anyway? But the man's fervor [did I say kavanah?] impress me, and I walk off with one in each hand.

Whatever else you can say about Israelis, they haven't lost their penchant for informal dress--a hint of one's backside, particularly for middle-aged men, earns an extra bonus--or their habit of blunt informality. Does my electrical converter work, or do I need a new one, I ask the guy in the home supply shop on Sheinkin Street, the Greenwich Village of Israel. A new one, he says, because the one you have "lo oseh klum"--it doesn't do a damn thing. "Please get your backpack out of my way so I can do my job," implores the man at Assaf's Humus as I wait for my (useless) receipt. A city of people who eat like Parisians and dress and talk like kibbutzniks: maybe not such a bad combination, after all.

And who are not lacking in courage, either. Thursday's papers told the story of A, a woman who make a harassment or some said a rape claim against a high-ranking police official (he claimed it was a voluntary threesome). Later the same day she appeared at a women's event, gave her name (Dr. Orly Ains), age (46), and number of children (four), and said simply "I'm not ashamed, I didn't do anything wrong, and I'm not afraid." When's the last time you saw that happen on Law and Order? The accused continues to maintain his innocence.

letter from israel day one

2010-11-23T10:03:00.004-05:00

The first thing you notice when you fly to Israel is the diversity of people coming here. Half of them appear to be not Jewish, and none of the two Jews looks quite the same. OK, that's a lie, there were two little girls with a traditional-looking mother and matching mini-backpacks--Shira and Malka, I think, or something equivalent--who looked almost identical. But for a country that's supposedly in trouble, an awful lot of people seem to come here .

That last part bears a little more thought. Part of the reason some Jews have mixed feelings about Israel may be less that it is failing than that it is succeeding in a way that they don't like. Each time I come here it seems a little bit more Middle Eastern and a little less, well, American. For one thing the percentage of religious people, to judge from superficial signs like kippot and long dresses, seems to inch up each time I visit. (I'm cheating a little, by teaching at a nominally religious university (Bar Ilan), but the feeling starts right at the airport.)

Counteracting, or perhaps contributing, to the religious revival is the crude or at least earthy nature of a healthy--probably not the right word--portion of Israeli society. Tabloid newspapers carry a steady stream of corruption and harassment allegations against high-ranking officials, which are distinguished from the American variety only by their outrageous character. (American men annoy women with unwanted emails and phone calls; Israelis simply tackle them). Then why not buy the upscale daily (Ha'aretz), you ask, which is relatively free of such stories? Because Ha'aretz is sold practically nowhere outside of central Tel Aviv and seems to exist primarily as a website for foreigners--another sign of the distance between different types of Israelis, not to mention Israelis and foreigners, that is a pervasive feature of the country's life.

Not that there isn't much good here, or that the country doesn't remain, for all it's faults, an infinitely more healthy environment for Jews than North America or anyplace else. There is something reassuring about a country where you can buy Hannukah candles at a newsstand, where notices for Sabbath retreats share space with ads for sports facilites and laser tonail removal. What is striking is how easily, seemlessly the Jewish and even the military aspects blends with the normal rhythms of everyday life. On a bus into Tel Aviv a male soldier flirts with a female one describing his training exercises. She turns around to reveal two green bars on her shoulder: an officer. So they're not intimidated by rank, whatever else their problems.

And the bumper stickers, like nowhere else in the world. "Whoever Believes Will Not Be Afraid" (Mi she-maamin lo yefahed.) "Don't forget Ron Arad" (an airman lost years ago and almost certainly dead). And of course the endless paens to the Lubavitcher Rebbe and Rabbi Nachman of Breslav, both deceased, but seemingly more alive with each passing year.

A crowd outside the Hen Cinema near Dizengoff Circle, Tel Aviv. Cameras and paparazzi. Leonardo DiCaprio and Bar Refaeli are supposedly on their way. A bearded Israeli artist, who I recognize vaguely from some or another TV program, garners a few photographs. So the secular side still lives, but of course--in true Jewish fashion--they have merely turned celebrity into an alternate religion. No one here is really secular, in the way other people understand it.

A bookstore five blocks away. David Grossman's book To the End of the Land, which of course has a completely different title in Hebrew, is on sale for 98 shekels. But everything in Israel is a mivtsa (a special deal, or literally, an operation). For 100 shekels--50 cents more--I can have three Grossman books and a book of poetry, as well. So we spend a half hour searching the store for the additional books which would take me at least five years to read and which won't fit in may already overstuffed bags, anyway. The absurdity seems somehow fitting, You want normal, go to London, the saleslady seems to be saying.

women in love with fascists

2010-11-13T12:35:00.004-05:00

As part of my general effort to improve myself I've been reading some of the classics that I missed in my, well, liberal arts education in the 1970s. I began with Joyce and Kafka and I'm sort of working my way down. My most recent victim--er, author--is D.H. Lawrence.

I started out with Sons and Lovers, a more or less autobiographical story of a family in the midlands coal country of England around the turn of the last century. While I wondered a little bit about Lawrence's view of the world--he has a tendency to impart global significance to what sounds to me more like a fear of physical intimacy--the sheer power of his story-telling made me an immediate fan. Two parts stood out especially: the internal dynamics of the family, in which the mother withdraws affection from her alcoholic husband and directs it toward her male children, and the protagonist's relationships with two women, one of whom (Miriam) is a friend but never really a lover, and the other of whom (Clara) is a lover but never really a friend. These stories, while highly situated in time and place, obviously touch on universal themes, and Lawrence's treatment of them is as good as any I've seen.

With this in mind I progressed to the much longer and rather more structured Women in Love, the movie for which I had seen as a teenager but which I had never read. Women in Love tells the story of two sisters in 1920s-ish England, Gudrun and Ursula, who couple up with (respectively) a ruthless industrialist (Gerald Crich) and a sort of faux bohemian (Rupert Birkin) said to be a stand-in for Lawrence himself. The book's strong point is its unmatched description of the ambivalence of the male-female relationship--the way love and "hate," or anger, can so easily co-exist-- summarized in Gudrun's request that Gerald "try to love me a little more and want me a little less"(she dumps him, figuratively and in a sense literally, shortly thereafter). No less significant is homoerotic aspect of many male friendships, most famously captured in the nude wrestling seen which is the part of the movie everyone seems to remember. Wrestling and, perhaps, something more: Gerald is said to "withdraw" his hand from Rupert, a rather odd choice of terms for a wrestling match, but less so if a more intimate encounter was hinted.

That's the good news. The bad news is that the book is suffused with a combination of nihilism, pseudo-sophistication, and celebration of Nordic male power--Gudrun becomes attracted to Gerald after (inter alia) watching him terrorize a rabbit and nearly choke a horse--that is perhaps understandable in its historical context but quite disturbing knowing what followed it. That the climactic scenes take place in Austria, and that Gerald eventually loses Gudrun to a Dresden-based artist (Loerke) who Rupert describes as a "gnawing little negation . . . I expect he is a Jew--or part-Jewish" and whom Gerald later attempts (albeit unsuccessfully) to kill--doesn't make thing much better. It must be conceded that this sort of casual antisemitism was pervasive after the First World War: it shows up in Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and T.S. Eliot in frequently more grotesque forms. Still, it is disturbing, especially from someone like Lawrence who believed himself a victim of intolerance and a defier of convention, but appears to have been all too predictable in his cultural prejudices.

It is said that to a hammer everything looks like a nail. Perhaps, since I began to study the Holocaust, I have come to see everything through its prism. But I found it very difficult to get past this aspect of Women in Love, which was not peripheral but central to the book's theme; and I'm not sure at this point I want to.

election ii: the coming gop civil war

2010-11-06T14:10:00.002-04:00

Many people are wondering if the new Republican majority will hang together or break up in internal squabbling. It looks like they won't have to wait long to find out. The challenge for a leadership position by Michelle Bachmann, a Tea Party-type congressman from Minnesota, may be only the first battle in a long and drawn-out war.

The problem is a simple one. Tea Party activists, many women and a some not even Republicans, played a disproportionate role in the GOP's recent success. Not surprisingly, they would like a seat at the table. By contrast, Messrs. Boehner Cantor et al., along with traditional operatives like Karl Rove, seem to have in mind something like a third Bush Administration, with business interests in the driver's seat and the Tea Party relegated to the sidelines, if that. This is partly a matter of symbolism and social class, but also a question of policy: as wild-eyed as they may sometimes seem to the Establishment, the Tea Party types actually have a fairly coherent set of concerns, including jobs, the deficit, and a smattering of social issues, and want them to be taken seriously.

As part of its strategy of shutting out the Tea Party, the GOP Establishment is attempting to put a particular spin on the election, under which mainstream candidates did well and those who had Tea Party baggage--Christine O'Donnell in Delaware and Sharron Angle in Nevada are the most frequently cited examples--were defeated. The only problem with this story is that it isn't really true. For one thing, several Tea Party favorites, notably Marco Rubio in Florida and Rand Paul in Kentucky, were quite successful, while many more Establishment types (think Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman) weren't. For another, several of the Tea Party types appear to have lost, at least in part, because of indifference or worse on the part of GOP leaders. I spent several days as a volunteer for O'Donnell, and the only people I ever saw making calls wore jeans and T-shirts and seemed to be on a first-name basis with the candidate: most Party regulars appeared to be either indifferent or actively hostile. For their part the campaign activists appeared to have as little regard for the Republican leadership as for the Democrats, and in some cases even less.

There is a tendency to look at politics as linear in nature, with "extremists" on both sides and "moderates" occupying the center ground. I think it is somewhat more complicated than that. What I see, rather, are two complacent political establishments trying to turn mass movements to their advantage but so far failing to do so. First the Obama supporters ousted the Clintonite mainstream of their party and thought they had something different. They found out otherwise and abandoned the party in droves. If the Republican leadership takes a similar tack, they are likely to achieve a similar result. That doesn't mean that everything the Tea Party wants to do is correct, or even that all its members want the same thing. But there's no question that we are dealing with a serious mass movement--one largely responsible for the GOP comeback--and the Party ignores them at its peril.

the election results

2010-11-04T10:09:00.002-04:00

I won't gloat over the results but a couple of quick observations:

1. The efforts to call it a mixed result because the Democrats held the Senate are unconvincing. Not only did Republicans win 60+ House seats, but they won all or nearly all Senate seats not within fifty miles of a coastline. Essentially the Democrats are limited to the northeast, a narrow strip of the Pacific coast line, scattered parts of the industrial midwest, and a handful of mostly African-American or Hispanic districts in the south and southwest. As we say in my family, the GOP took everything that wasn't nailed down.

2. While for the moment it favors the GOP, the geographic polarization above is rather frightening for the country at large. The areas remaining under Democratic control are small in area, but disproportionately large in population, and (not entirely coincidentally) just happen to be the places where the mainstream media and opinion-makers are concentrated. The already roiling political/cultural war--elite vs. mass, center vs. periphery--is likely to get even worse.

3. It will be interesting to see how the critics of the Senate (Balkin, Levinson, etc.) respond to the current situation. Sure, the Senate is bizarre, outmoded, and run by a group of aging white plutocrats. But it is also fulfilling its precise historical function: to provide continuity and even out the partisan ebb and flow of the more frequent House elections. If we had a unicameral legislature, we'd be that much closer to civil war.

One final thought concerns the turnout problem. People are often surprised that results are so different in "on" and "off" year elections. But a lot of this results from turnout, which is never much more than half in off-elections, but can get quite a bit higher in Presidential years. This year's wave was strong enough that it probably wouldn't have mattered, at least at a national as opposed to statewide (read Pennsylvania) level. But a relatively small partisan shift, and the return of the missing voters, could make things look a lot different in two years. It certainly made a difference this time.

"the republicans are stealing the election"

2010-10-12T17:31:00.002-04:00

With the Democrats unsuccessful in making a case on the merits, a new trope has arisen: the Republicans aren't playing fair. Specifically, the allegation is that tax-exempt 501(c)(4) and similar organizations, not to mention the US Chamber of Commerce, are helping the GOP with large amounts of funds from unidentified, presumably wealthy sources. There is alleged to be something not quite kosher about this, either in terms of the money itself or else the sneaky (some say illegal) way it is being raised and distributed.

There's no question the Republicans are much better funded this year than two years ago. But is there really anything wrong with that? A couple of points:

1. Obama had a huge financial advantage in 2008 as the first candidate to abjure federal financing of his campaign (he earlier promised to use it). In many swing states the advantage was on the order of 4:1 or 5:1. Numerous people came out of the voting booth repeating the precise words of Obama campaign commercials.

2. Even in this election, most Republican challengers have less funding than the competing Democratic incumbents. The additional funds, at best, serve to reduce this disadvantage. The Republicans with big financial advantages, like Meg Whitman, are mostly self-financing.

3. Even if there was something wrong with the money, which there most likely isn't, it's unlikely that voters would care. People are concerned about their own jobs and futures, not political inside baseball. The whole thing has the air of people making excuses for losing rather than getting out on the field and competing.

I continue to believe the Democrats--and Obama specifically--should step up and defend their policies rather than launching personal attacks (witch, whore, whatever) and complaining about financing issues. Right now they are behind something like 3 percent on the issues and another 3 to 5 percent, depending upon the polls, because their own voters don't plan to show up. If they stand their ground, they may still lose, but they're more likely to have something left to build on for the future.

report from delaware: not crazy, but not elected yet, either

2010-10-01T15:21:00.002-04:00

It was only forty minutes--well, an hour, with traffic--from my home in suburban Philadelphia to the heart of the Tea Party revolution in Delaware. And I only spent an hour or so at the GOP Unity Lunch in Wilmington: really, a Christine O'Donnell rally, with the other candidates along for the ride. But it was enough to reach a tentative verdict. O'Donnell, and her supporters, are far from crazy: a little downscale perhaps (the supporters), and little bit less eloquent than I might have hoped (the candidate), but committed, on-message, and very much in the mainstream of the American conservative movement. The question is whether that movement is broad enough to win in Delaware and other moderate states, and if so broad enough to sustain a stable governing coalition.

First the candidate: she's a young looking 41 (I saw here pretty close up), and--while most people would call her pretty--not nearly beautiful enough for that to be the sole basis of her success. Rather, what she seems to possess is the steely determination of someone who has been hearing all her life that she or her ideas were outrageous and learned not to take the critics, or perhaps the whole process, too seriously. Her speech, which mixed Reaganite nostrums with jibes at her opponent, the county executive of the Wilmington region, was predictable in content but unusually well-delivered: and she was enough of a politician to work everyone, from the other candidates to a boy who happened to be in the front row, into the argument. Far from a wild-eyed fanatic, she seemed if anything a little bit predictable: like a mortgage banker or someone you met at a singles party, and realized they were just a little bit out of your league, even if you probably did go to a fancier college than she did.

Now for the audience, which numbered in the couple of hundreds: not bad for a small state and an event announced only the day before. Notwithstanding a few hard-right bumper stickers, they were for the most part good natured and mainstream, with little seeming anger and a lot of good-natured enthusiasm: like the crowd at a country music concert, which I suspect many have previously been. But, like the country music crowd, they were almost entirely white, and overwhelmingly traditional in their cultural affect. (It was the only lunch I can remember which had no diet soda, although there were a few small bottled waters). There was also an interesting gap between the guests, who were mostly downscale and informally dressed, and the campaign staff, who (like the candidate) seemed highly professional albeit with a distinctly Christian conservative air. (The invocation referred specifically to the Trinity, and one staffer asked me to pray for Christine, which I happily agreed to do.)

All in all I left with little or no fear of the candidacy and even a bit charmed by the candidate. But I did wonder about the base of the movement. The key to success for the Republican Party is to appeal to outsiders like those at the Wilmington rally and insiders like those who voted for Eisenhower, Nixon, or (at the outset) both George Bushes: country club and country music together, so to speak. Reagan appealed to both of them; McCain appealed strongly to neither. Can a candidate like O'Donnell, whose rhetoric is Tea Party but whose personal style is more that of a Christian businesswoman, pull it off? I don't know, but I wouldn't count her out.

"the republicans are crazy"

2010-09-16T20:47:00.002-04:00

With polls pretty uniformly pointing to a Republican sweep this November, and substantive issues mostly against them, the Democrats have tried a new tack. Basically, the argument is: we may well be incompetent, but they're crazy, and accordingly unfit for office. The argument gets stronger each time a Tea Party-backed candidate, most recently Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, gets nominated. The argument is strongest for Senate candidates, the Democrats having seemingly adjusted to, if not conceded, the possibility of losing real or effective control of the House.

A nice try, and it may work in some cases. But how likely is it to affect the overall result? Consider a few factors:

1. To paraphrase the 2004 Bush campaign, elections are not referenda, but choices. There is virtually no candidate who is "unelectable" depending upon their opponent. Rand Paul (Kentucky) and Sharron Angle (Nevada) were both unelectable at one point; so was Ronald Reagan. All ran or are running well. Will the new wave be any different?

2. A lot of the alleged "craziness" depends on marginal or even irrelevant issues. For example, O'Donnell is said to be outlandish because she defaulted on loans and has suggested that people (meaning men) masturbate too much. Neither one of these is likely to hurt her at the polls or in fund-raising: and the second is almost certainly true. She raised over $1 million today.

3. Mud tends to stick to the party who throws it as much as to the receiver. If the Democrats have ideas to turn around the economy, people may ask, why are they talking about 5- year old speeches to abstinence groups?

Again, it's possible or even probable that the Tea Party will cost the Republicans a seat or two in some cases. But it's a bit clever to suggest a conservative wave will result in a liberal victory at a systemic level. If it did, Jimmy Carter wouldn't be spending so much time in North Korea.

the "ground zero mosque"

2010-08-16T17:45:00.002-04:00

The proposed mosque--actually, it's more of a cultural center--at or near the World Trade Center site presents a complicated issue. If I had been the lawyer for The Cordoba Project, I might well have advised them to seek a different site, or at least to explain themselves better to the public than they have done. And it may be that some sort of compromise is still possible.

Still, there is a certain kind of issue that--even if one would have preferred it never be posed--requires a clear-cut answer once it actually is. Whatever the political wisdom of the project, it is simply inadmissible to bar something on the grounds of religion, no matter how strongly felt the opposition may be. That the project is pretty clearly intended as a refutation of the mentality of the 9/11 bombers--Cordoba was a city in Spain noted for at least temporarily good relations between Jews, Christians, and Muslims--makes the case that much clearer. That doesn't mean opponents don't have a right to be heard, or that they should be called racists, or bigots, and so on; but only that their arguments should not trump religious freedom in this particular case.

The role of the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) in opposing the project strikes me as especially unfortunate. Does is not occur to Jewish groups that arguments made against Muslims--they are alien, they are violent, they pray to a god of fear rather than a god of love--are exactly those made against Jews in times past? All this kind of position will do is convince your average secular American that, as the expression goes, "they're all crazy"--Jews, Muslims, anyone in that part of the world; not a long-term winning hand.

a woman's world?

2010-08-12T21:12:00.003-04:00

There has been a spate of articles in the last year or so to the effect that women are taking over, men are yesterday's news, and so forth. Hanna Rosin's piece in the Atlantic, "The End of Men," pretty much sums up the genre. The theme extends to popular culture as well: a new hit movie, "Eat Pray Love," celebrates a woman who leaves her husband for travels to various countries whose name begins with "I," although in a subsequent book she remarries.

All of this is fine as entertainment, and it probably has some substance too. As a professor I find increasingly that my best students, together with many of the best faculty candidates, are women: this before even reaching the advantages that women have in personal relationships. Still, I think the "men are history" argument suffers from numerous logical lapses and inconsistencies, so that things are not nearly as bad--or good--as Rosin and others put it.

To wit:

1. The argument tends to be very selective in its use of statistics. Sure, more women than men attend college, and they tend to get better grades. But of the Fortune 500 companies, 485 or so have male CEOs, and the number is changing very slowly. It's possible that this is a time lag, and we will eventually see half or more big companies run by women: but at this rate it would take 200 or 300 years.

2. The argument tends to focus on aggregate figures, like the number of students or employees, rather than investigating who really holds power in an institution. In law schools, for example, half or more of the students, and probably half or more the new faculty--much more, if you count adjuncts and clinical faculty--are female. But on a recent list of the 50 most heavily "downloaded" scholars, nearly all 50 were men. Of course, there are other things that matter besides downloads, and it's possible that this too merely reflects a time lag rather than a permanent impairment. But it's hard to say that women run the law schools in any real way, and I suspect this pattern repeats itself in other areas.

3. The argument ignores the powerful reaction against feminism both within and (more importantly) outside the U.S. and other advanced countries. Part of this involves natural cycles of change and reaction; but it is also fueled by demographics. People and countries with more traditional allocations of gender responsibilities have, on the average, tended to produce more children than those who emphasize modern ideas of quality. (Elena Kagan has no children,while Sarah Palin--who is at least a very different kind of feminist--has five.) This pattern, repeated over several generations, is a problematic one for women's equality, or at very least casts doubt on the end-of-patriarchy theme.

One of the hardest things about predicting the future is distinguishing between short-term and long-term trends. It is possible, indeed probable, that at least some of the stumbling blocks above will prove temporary, and women will indeed proceed to full equality with--or superiority over--men. But it is surely a lot more complicated than popular culture would lead one to think. Which, I suppose, is why they call it popular culture.

the future of the law schools (2010 version)

2010-08-09T19:24:00.002-04:00

Any time there is an economic crisis, you can be sure there will be a series of new efforts to reform the law schools. Some of them, like efforts to control tuition, involve the faculty in job placement, and orient the law schools toward skills training may actually be good ideas. Others, like the endless attempts to define one's self as an "elite" law school (and thereby exempt from the advice one offers to others) smack of rank opportunism. Consistent with human nature, most suggestions tend to be pretty much the same thing that the suggester would have said had there been no economic crisis, at all.

One of the less constructive suggestions is to eliminate or phase out tenure: something that is happening in stages, anyway, but that some (usually administrators) would like to hurry along. The tenure issue is typically argued in terms of free speech, which I think is its weakest defense. As any tenured professor knows, a school can make you pretty miserable if you express outlandish views, even with tenured status: and most people who open their mouths after getting tenure will probably have done so before it, anyway.

The bigger issue is one of time frames. I got tenure writing about statutory interpretation in the tax field, but eventually realized that most of what I had to say had been said before, and better, by others. So I expanded my interests, to cover international tax and (eventually) nontax comparative law: an effort in which I have invested many years but the payoff on which, when and if I ever succeed, is likely to be much higher than had I continued churning out more or less the same stuff I was doing before. I might have done this even if there were no tenure, but I would have been much less likely to try.

Aha, you say, that's the point: professors should strive to be productive and not waste years pursuing new areas that may or may not be fruitful. My counter is that it is precisely by taking risks that academics make new discoveries. Books and articles that incrementally advance preexisting ideas are, in the long run, more or less useless. By freeing proven scholars to take a longer time frame, the tenure system provides at least some chance to reverse the inevitable tendency toward repetition and mediocrity, and produce something of lasting value.

There is a particular irony in the pressure coming from administrators and other "moneyball" advocates to cut back on tenure. American business got in trouble precisely because of its short time-frame, which distinguishedit even from capitalism in other countries (Europe, Asia, etc.) Now the business types are trying to extend the very "grab what you can, eat what you kill" philosophy that nearly ruined the economy to the one area that they haven't reached yet. Somebody once said that "politics ain't beanbag." Academics isn't baseball either, and it would do us well to remember it.

lovely wedding, wrong day

2010-08-01T11:08:00.003-04:00

It was very nice to read about the Chelsea Clinton-Marc Mezvinsky wedding, especially since the groom was the son of my former congresswoman and the rabbi a friend-of-my-friends. Indeed, my wife and I have even stayed at the Beekman Arms, which appears to have figured somewhere in the wedding although I don't think it was held there. That Mezvinsky is proved of his Jewishness--he wore a tallit at the ceremony and has apparently been seen with Ms. Clinton at one or more Jewish services--is a nice bonus.

A bonus, but a rather mixed blessing. While it's nice that they took symbolic steps to reaffirm the Jewish (or half-Jewish) character of the event, unless she converts, any children born to the couple will not be Jewish under Jewish law. And while Rabbi Ponet, who is Reform, is legally permitted to participate in "mixed marriages," permitting a khuppa [wedding canopy] to commence during the Jewish Sabbath pretty much makes a mockery of the entire event, or at very least its Jewish character. That he did so with much of the country watching--if you Google the word "rabbi" today the first thing that comes up is "Rabbi James Ponet"--is especially galling.

The affair is interesting in terms of the current debate about Israeli conversion law, as well. Reform and Conservative rabbis have, understandably, been unhappy about proposals to increase Orthodox control over the conversion process. But if the nonorthodox rabbinate cannot follow basic Jewish law--if indeed they flout traditional religious principles in front of a national or international audience--why exactly should the Israelis, or anyone else, take them seriously?

Addendum: a number of people have informally commented that "it's none of our business" how other people get married. I think that arguably applies to the couple, but less so to the rabbi. The rabbi at Yale is a representative of the Jewish community whether or not he wants to be. Because of his actions tens of thousands of people now think that (i) it's perfectly acceptable for Jews to intermarry, (ii) it's equally acceptable to pick and choose whatever parts of Judaism happen to please you and the heck with the rest. That's everyone's business, I would think.

the world cup: wait 'til 2014

2010-06-26T19:41:00.004-04:00

Well both of my teams (Italy and USA) are now out, which means it's a bit less exciting for me, but probably more enjoyable. For one thing, since other teams are less in the habit of giving up goals in (say) the first 90 seconds, I can worry a little bit less about showing up on time. And, perhaps, take bathroom breaks without fear of a disaster.

The two teams' fates, while different, had some themes in common. Italy, of course, won the World Cup in 2006, which makes their first-round elimination a bit harder to take. It is less commonly remembered that they suffered early-round debacles in various other tournaments (2002 World Cup, 2004 and 2008 European championships) and were widely considered in decline before the 06 team--on the strength of superhuman goaltending by Gigi Buffon and one well-timed insult to Zinadine Zidane--managed to pull it off. This year's collapse appears to have resulted in equal parts from an aging squad, ill-timed injuries (including one to Buffon), and a general lack of impegno (urgency) on the part of the team and its players. At least Italy avoided the nasty intramural squabbling, not to say racism, which shook the French squad (also first-round losers): ironic in my view, since the immigrants always seemed more French to me than the nominal French people, or were at least the only ones who didn't talk to me in English.

The U.S. is a more complex problem. They played well but seemed constantly to be behind and, perhaps, to be just a bit too earnest, as if they appreciated the words of soccer but perhaps not all of its music. For example, the Americans almost never feigned nonexistent injuries, which are in theory despicable but in practice a rather distinguished art form. (Italy beat Australia in 2006 on the strength of a penalty call that was, well, embellished by the Italian player.) On the other hand, they never gave up on themselves and left with their heads held rather higher than many of their European counterparts: a sort of microcosm of what the world likes and dislikes about Americans, and will probably continue to do so.

Every World Cup brings the question of whether soccer will now break into the top tier of American sports (the Winter Olympics bring the same question for hockey, which is in theory near the top but never quite sure of its status). As much as I love soccer, I remain skeptical. Popular tastes are, as economics say, sticky: Coke and Pepsi have sold roughly the same percentages for fifty years, and the top sports are more or less what they were a generation ago. My instinct is that soccer--like hockey--would be better off expanding incrementally in its natural markets (the northeast, the west coast, all places with lots of yuppies and large immigrant populations) than trying to displace football in the world of Friday Night Lights. Better a small stadium filled with enthusiasts than a large one filled with corporate boxes: even if Bill Clinton and Mick Jagger are in them.

what israel can do now

2010-06-19T15:35:00.002-04:00

The Mavi Marmara affair has, as someone put it, been a sort of Rorshach test for outside observers everyone sees what they want to see. For people who don't like Israel, it seems to confirm their worst fears of an insecure, militarist state. For Israel's defenders, it is another sign that everyone is against us, and unfairly so at that. What can people who care about Israel, but don't necessarily agree with its policies, learn?

One problem here is that many possible suggestions are either too early or too late. For example, Israel has already tried making territorial and other concessions to the Palestinians, only to find that these have whetted the appetite for further concessions. Additional compromises, involving (say) Jerusalem or other issues, seem premature without a real negotiating structure.

Still, there are a number of things Israel could do now to improve its international standing without seriously endangering its security:

1. The Israeli Arabs.--It is often forgotten that, within pre-1967 Israel, about 15-20 percent of the population (over 1 million people) are Palestinian Arabs. Yet the country remains largely segregated and there is virtually no Arab representation in decision-making structures. Would it really be so hard to change this, and wouldn't it have a huge effect on the country's international image if it did change? What about symbolic measures: would allowing an alternate national anthem or an alternate/additional flag, as in Quebec, really cause irreparable damage to the country's status as a "Jewish" state, and might it not make it more stable in the long run?

2. The Role of the Military.--In the early years of the country key political leaders (Ben Gurion, Meir, Begin) rarely had military backgrounds. Now it seems every second political figure is a former general. The phenomenon is a public relations disaster and has serious impact on substantive decisions: everything from the Mavi Marmara to the Oslo Peace Process seems to be decided in secret and involve an inordinate ratio of daring to reasoned consensus. How about a rule that bars active soldiers over the rank of colonel from elected office for a 10-year period, and from the office of Defense Minister on a permanent basis?

3. The "right of return".--No Israeli Government is going to agree to unlimited return of Palestinian refugees which would be pretty much the end of the country. But does this mean that no return whatsoever is possible? What about a "tradeoff" of (say) 100,000 returnees for an equal number of Israelis and whatever remains as Arab territory after a peace agreement? Or the payment of monetary reparations, which would at least acknowledge the existence of the problem and provide a start for resettlement?

One additional note: if Israel is going to make peace with the Arabs, it is going to have first to make peace with itself. The past week saw large and sometimes violent demonstrations by haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews against an effort to integrate religious schools in a West Bank town. Sure, the haredim were wrong on the merits, and the rule of law has to be maintained. But the things that were said by many secular Israelis--that the haredim are lazy, that they are violent, that they are outside the normative Israeli community--sound an awful lot like things that were said about Jews, all Jews, in prewar Europe. How can one expect the Palestinians to make meaningful concessions, when Israelis themselves can't treat each other with respect?

same place, same time, different worlds

2010-06-11T14:19:00.006-04:00

It's rare that one spends two consecutive evenings riveted to the same sports arena, especially when the first night features forty twenty-something athletes and the second two sixty-something pop singers. By sheer coincidence, I had precisely that experience this week, and it says a lot about my own life and the generation I am a part of.

On Wednesday night, as many readers will know, the Philadelphia Flyers were eliminated from the Stanley Cup hockey playoffs in a 4-3 overtime loss at the Wachovia Center in South Philly. (I didn't attend, although I attended two previous playoff games, at my kids' behest and my own expense, and followed this one closely on TV.) The loss was anticlimactic as well as disappointing: Chicago's winning goal slipped almost unnoticed through the goalkeeper's pads, and most in the stadium did not appear to realize at first that it was scored. Still, when they did find out, most of the fans responded in chivalrous fashion, politely applauding the victors as the Cup was presented and thinking ahead to next year. The overall feeling was sad, proud, and very old-fashioned: not terribly different, except for the high-tech arena, than similar scenes thirty or forty years ago.

Same place, same time, Thursday night found me back at the Wachovia Center--this time in person--for the "Troubador Reunion" concert featuring Carole King and James Taylor, who will require no introduction if you were in circulationin the early 1970s. As fate would have it, I sat in almost precisely the same (cheap) seats we normally have at Flyers' games, albeit this time with my wife and no kids (more on this later).

The time and place were the same; but everything else was different. Instead of a hockey rink there were chairs and a rotating stage for the performers to appear on. The boards that surround the rink, and which there hadn't been sufficient time to remove, provided the only continuity. Instead of a youngish crowd in orange Flyers shirts there was a parade of aging hippies in T-shirts and bermuda shorts, sipping beers and munching popcorn, many of whom looked like they had come straight from the beach (the weather had turned significantly warmer in the intervening 24 hours). Instead of the tension of a playoff game there was an intense desire to turn the clock back and avoid the cares of the everyday world: an almost palpable passion to relax.

And of course there was the music: Taylor even gaunter than he was as a kid, King with her pixieish smile and seemingly unchanged hair (she's 68), plucking the guitar and banging away on the keyboard as if nothing had changed since their original concert in LA forty years ago. Of course everything has changed: for one thing, you can actually hear concerts now, owing to the vast improvement in technology over the past four decades; encores are requested by holding up cellphones rather than matches; and many in the crowd probably have grandchildren close to the age the performers were at the original. Yet when the lights went out it was possible to ignore these differences and pretend it was 1970 all over again. The overall feeling was relaxed, happy, and just a bit raffish: like the hockey game, a bit of a throwback, but less to a real world than to the idealism of a generation that hadn't quite achieved its goals but had never quite surrendered them either.

On the simplest level, the two evenings provided a glaring cultural contrast: the competitive, supermale and almost entirely white world of hockey versus the sixties and seventies dream of a nirvana in which race, gender, and power all but disappeared. (One of King and Taylor's proudest boasts is that they didn't sleep together, which probably makes them one of the few such couples who didn't.) What is interesting is that the old-fashioned, conservative world of professional sports seems to hold more fascination for today's kids than the forward-looking, idealistic world represented by the would-be revolutionaries. My kids begged me to spend whatever it costs to go to more playoff games; when they heard about the concert, they noted politely that other parents were going, too.

Does this mean that the Sixties failed? I think it's more a matter of the difference between ideals and reality. Things like sports are timeless: they're pretty much the same in each generation. By contrast hopes and dreams, like that represented by the Sixties, are almost entirely a product of their own time and place. Without the emotions that they generated and fed off, the songs of Carole King and James Taylor become more or less meaningless. Like us our kids will get beyond sports and schoolboy crushes, dreaming their own dreams and living out their own hopes and disappointments. They'll just be different from ours: and that's what makes it at once so happy and so sad.

the plot on (or by) philip roth

2010-06-05T15:54:00.003-04:00

I rarely read novels, so when I do, they have to be good. On someone or other's recommendation I decided to read "The Plot On America by Philip Roth," who I don't remember reading since Goodbye Columbus about a hundred years ago. I wasn't disappointed.

The basic idea of the book is simple enough. For whatever reason, Americans have gotten tired of Roosevelt and, in 1940, vote in Charles Lindbergh--yes, that Charles Lindbergh--as their new, Republican President. As in real life, Lindbergh is a well-meaning but somewhat vapid person, and also a pretty rabid antisemite, although his inclinations in this department are somewhat reined in by his wife (Anne Morrow Lindbergh) and by American political traditions, which aren't yet ready to extend to white minorities the kind of treatment historically meted out to others. What follows is unpleasant enough: an Office of American Absorption designed to transfers Jews "voluntarily" to southern and midwestern states, where many are later dismissed from their jobs; propaganda assaults against "Jewish warmongers" coupled with a shameless cozying up to Nazi Germany, which (together with its allies) is allowed to run rampant through the Old World; and increasingly open acts of private humiliation culminating in anti-Jewish riots in cities throughout the country which leave several hundred dead and many others packing for Canada. While there is an inevitable plot twist, in which things correct themselves and the world returns to some kind of order, one has the sense that the protagonists' psychological world, together with the physical lives of many of their loved ones, have been irrevocably shaken.

On a certain level, the book might be taken as simply another "what if the south had won the civil war?" piece of historical fiction. What makes it so striking is that Roth tells the story through the eyes of his own family: his seven-year old self in 1940, recounted years later, together with his real family and the actual Newark Jewish community much as it really existed in that period. (One of the biggest surprises to me was that Newark had 50,000 Jews in 1940, constituting the sixth largest community in the nation and probably one of couple of dozen biggest in the world.) By interspersing real and imaginary details, and by describing the descent into hell one step at a time--private insults, the first public measures, and finally actual physical fear--he makes the story compelling in a way that a wholly fictional account probably could not achieve. Nor does he idealize the Jewish community, with the possible exception of his own parents: several Jews, notably an opportunistic and unfortunately all-too-believable rabbi, cooperate in the antisemitic program, while a barely literate Italian and a Kentucky tobacco farmer render indispensable services.

Some readers of the book saw a roman-a-clef about the Bush Administration and its response to the 9-11 crisis. I think this is probably overstated: the story is heavily dependent on its early 1940s milieu, and some of the heroes (see above) are the kind of people who probably would have voted for Bush a couple of generations later. Others disliked the book for taking liberties with Lindbergh or for simply lacking credibility, which I think is arguable but beside the point.

I saw the book as less a political commentary than a story about ordinary people and how they respond to extraordinary events. The real protagonists are not Roosevelt and Lindbergh but the members of Roth's own family, who struggle to respond as their world collapses and as the people they would ordinarily look to as leaders either accommodate themselves to evil or actively promote it. If there is a message, it is that simple courage and honesty are frequently more important than education and culture: another arguable proposition, but probably true more often than not.

I found the book especially provocative as someone who has studied the response of foreign Jewish communities (especially Italy) to antisemitic persecutions. Americans, who never really had to face these challenges, are frequently quick to criticize these communities for being weak, opportunistic, or cowardly. By imagining the infinitely larger and more powerful American community in an equivalent situations, and assessing its decidedly mixed response, Roth has clarified just how facile these opinions are. In one memorable scene his family is at Mount Vernon, Virginia, when Lindbergh--who still enjoys flying--soars by in his personal aircraft. "Hooray for Lindy!" the onlookers shout while Roth's parents stand in stunned silence. Was this how German and Italian Jews felt when Hitler or Mussolini made public appearances? Roth's fictional but all too real account makes the question that much more vivid for us.

the israeli raid: no one looks good

2010-06-02T16:03:00.005-04:00

While both sides point fingers and assess blame for the tragedy on the Mavi Marmara this week, the reality is there is more than enough blame to go around. Each side behaved all too predictably, resulting in a tragedy that captures in microcosm all that is wrong with the Middle East and how much work remains to fix it.

The Israeli side is easiest to criticize. Faced with a cynical but subtle political challenge, Israel--as the historian Paul Johnson said of the 1980 Iran rescue mission--responded with acrobatics: a derring-do commando operation that would have been a political disaster even if it succeeded and is that much more so now that it didn't. Rather than looking brutal but determined as it did in the Sharon years, Israel now merely looks foolish, a country (or at least a Government) that invariably seeks a military solution to any political problem. It is noteworthy, in this context, that support for the operation has tended to come from outside the country: Israeli opinion has been critical, although left and right have found different reasons for their criticism.

Yet the members of the "peace flotilla" have hardly covered themselves with glory, either. Once upon a time, as part of some movement or other, I took a few hours of training in nonviolent resistance. I don't recall what it involved, but I'm pretty sure it didn't include hitting people on the head with metal bars or throwing them from one level of a ship to another, something that could easily prove fatal in different circumstance. If people specifically chosen for a nonviolent mission behaved this way, what does it say for their overall movement?

And, of course, they didn't succeed in getting a smidgeon of food or medicine to Gaza.

The whole thing convinces me, if indeed I needed convincing, of the need for a more forceful intervention by the international community in the region. People like to make fun of the French and Italian armies, but there hasn't been any shooting on the Lebanese border for the last three years. Even conservative Israelis are beginning to see that the current situation is not indefinitely sustainable. A bit of creative diplomacy--more substance and less procedure, as the lawyers say--could go a very long way. Where's Menachem Begin when you need him?

Addendum: Israeli newspapers reported Friday that there was a stark division among the passengers of the Mavi Marmara, with some peace activists apparently protecting and perhaps even saving the lives of one or more Israeli sailors. It's obviously difficult to confirm this report. But it goes to show what my dean used to say: it's never that simple.

israel and american jews: what future?

2010-05-18T16:51:00.004-04:00

There has been an interesting debate in the NY Times and other publications on the increasingly frayed relationship between American Jews and the State of Israel. On the one side are those, mostly liberals, who suggest that the issue is Israel's own behavior, which is thought to be inconsistent with "Jewish values" in one way or another. On the other side are those, more often than not conservatives, who think that the demographic decline and naive political liberalism of American Jewry is to blame. Who is right, and is there a third, more enlightening view?

To understand what is happening, one has to know a little bit about the American Jewish community. In many respects this resembles the Protestant community but with smaller numbers and different proportions. The largest groups, Reform and Conservative, are something like the liberal Protestant denominations: a generally low level of observance/attendance and an emphasis on social action, which in practice means charitable activity and vaguely liberal causes. The smallest but most rapidly growing group, the Orthodox, is more like the evangelical Protestants, with a higher level of belief and participation, a large missionary contingent (albeit exclusively to other Jews), and increasingly conservative politics. One important difference--a difference many non-Jews seem to miss--is that the proportions are different: whereas evangelicals and Main Line Protestants have achieved a rough balance, the Orthodox remain a clear minority among American Jews, although demographic patterns suggest that this will change dramatically in the next generation. Indeed, it is increasingly difficult to say who is Jewish at all, with a large number of half- and quarter- and three-quarter Jews living in a bewildering variety of mixed families.

Israel has also changed. From a country dominated by a Western-oriented, socialist elite, it has become at once more multicultural and more traditional, with large religious and nationalist contingents (not necessarily the same thing) and a variety of subcultures, including Mizrachi (what used to be called Sephardic) Jews, Russians, and Arabs and other who are not part of the Jewish majority, at all. There is irony aplenty in these changes: the country, which used to be somewhat superior and rather closed-minded, has actually become much more diverse, with an optimistic, growth-oriented outlook that contrasts with the persistent feeling of decline that characterizes much of the American Jewish community. Still, it is an Israel very different from the "little country that could" of American folklore, and particularly jarring for those raised on the Jews-as-underdogs, liberalism-as-gospel approach prevalent among North American Jews. Accusations of Israeli human rights violations, and the coarseness of Israeli politics generally, are especially difficult for the latter to stomach.

So an American Jewish community, in demographic decline and wedded to what is essentially a social gospel religion, meets an Israel that is demographically growing but more and more politically conservative, and primed by education to think of galut (Diaspora) Jews as weak and somewhat feckless. While a core remains as attached to Israel as ever, a larger number either disengage completely or attach themselves to the small but vocal minority of Israelis--the left, the internationalists, the Tel Aviv elite--who tend to share their dim view of the Israeli majority and encourage them in more radical opinions. (It is not unusual to see pro-Palestinian or even pro-boycott manifestos adorned with Jewish names.) Conservatives, in turn, circle the wagons and begin to see any criticism of Israel as disloyal, even though the same or worse things are regularly said in Israel.

What is to be done about this situation? I don't have an easy answer, but I'll tell you two things I recently witnessed, one of which seems to me the wrong approach and one to contain seeds of the right one.

The wrong approach, I think, is to become overly defensive and politicize the issue more than is already the case. This is admittedly a difficult temptation to resist, since much of the left/liberal critique of Israel is very hard to swallow--especially coming from other Jews--and the temptation to punch back well-nigh overwhelming. Nevertheless, it seems to me a mistake, especially if one wants to involve young people who are likely to be turned off by this approach. Several community groups that I have been involved with have taken this approach, and proceeded to turn out large numbers of the faithful without really reaching anyone new.

A better approach was suggested by a recent visit to the Hillel House at a large university. In addition to a vareity of religious services [it was a very big campus], the center displayed literature from a wide range of Israel- or Jewish-related groups. Those who were traditional could participate in more religious activities; those of a liberal/human rights orientation could get in touch with like-minded Israeli groups; environmentalists could take biking trips to Israel, and so on down the line. The approach, in other words, was inclusive and optimistic: be left, be right, be outright weird if you wanted to be, but do it in an Israeli context and be part of the larger Jewish community. And, of course, go to Israel, with a subsidized trip from the Taglit (birthright) program if you qualified, otherwise on your own. And learn some Hebrew before (or once) you got there.

It may seem wimpy to talk about biking trips when Israel faces the range of political and strategic threats that it does today. But one has to think also about the long-term. An idealized vision of Israel as a "righteous victim" or an outpost of American democracy, however psychologically pleasing to American Jews, is both inconsistent with reality and unappealing to the younger generation. The real country--diverse, contentious, but with something to appeal to all ranges of political and cultural outlooks--is likely to be a better advertisement for itself. American Jews, in short, need less Israel advocacy and more Israel: and people with the vision and long-range outlook to provide it.

antisemitism, illicit attitudes, and the supreme court

2010-05-18T16:48:00.004-04:00

Pat Buchanan's recent comments, to the effect that there are too many Jews (what else?) on the Supreme Court, are laughable if not worse in content. But are they antisemitic, and do they merit exclusion from the debate? This strikes me as a harder question.

I think things are most likely to be antisemitic (or racist, sexist, etc.) when they (i) ascribe to a group disproportionate power over people or events, and (ii) are broadly consistent with traditional stereotypes about the group. For example, the statement that "there are too many Jews on the Supreme Court, the next thing you know they'll be doing oral arguments in Hebrew" would not sit well with me--no more than a statement that the women justices are likely to be too emotional, the Catholics too loyal to the Pope, etc. Assumptions that Jews are all communists (or capitalists), or that they put Jewish concerns over American ones, would fall in a similar category.

But is any discussion of the religious makeup of the court necessarily illicit? If Kagan is confirmed, the Court will have four justices from New York City and none from large sections of the country, not to mention no Protestants in a country with a lot of, well, Protestants. Although I haven't done the necessary calculations--I'm not sure which part of the Bronx and Brooklyn Sotomayor and Ginsburg hail from respectively--it's possible there would be three from the same subway line, not to mention nine from the Yale and Harvard law schools. Is any mention of this imbalance per se unacceptable? People make the diversity argument in favor of female, minority, or other presences on the Court all the time: why is it suddenly impermissible to do so when the shoe is (so to speak) on the other foot?

Of course, Pat Buchanan is a poor choice to make this argument. He seems to be obsessed by the Jewish question, and understandably raises suspicions when he discusses anything connected with them. Still, I am hesitant to try to rule out discussion of any issue, and less than completely trustful of the people doing the ruling. I think the "too many Jews on the Court" argument is a dumb one, not least of all because there's no evidence they take this into account in making decisions. But I don't think it's inherently antisemitic, at least not in the sense that the term is usually understood.

more on kagan . . .

2010-05-13T21:56:00.002-04:00

I continue to have less problem with Elena Kagan than with a lot of the arguments being made on her behalf. Many of these strike me as unconvincing and carry the seeds of potentially potent opposing arguments. To wit:

1. I'm suspicious of anyone who has too many friends. Sanford Levinson, E.J. Dionne, everyone with any kind of influence seems to count her among their close personal friends. In my experience to be friendly with everyone is to be friendly with no one. Enough said.

2. I continue to be amazed by the wimpiness of conservatives in approaching this nomination. She comes from a left-wing background, wrote her thesis on socialism, and has been a loyal soldier in two liberal administrations. Yet somehow having polite conversations with conservatives, or a couple of lateral hires at Harvard, make her a moderate. Charles Fried actually said that she was a "genius" because she gave professors free lunches. Would the left support Robert Bork if he hired a few liberal law clerks?

3. I think the "stealth candidate" thing is being taken a bit far (see David Brooks in NY Times on this issue). No one seems to know her views on anything. Even her friends (see above) aren't sure about her private life. Is this the basis on which to get on a lifetime seat on the Court?

I continue to believe this is going to be a livelier confirmation process than many people think. While some Republicans will want to go along, I think their grassroots will be heavily against yet another liberal justice from New York when much of the country--including the 200 million or so who are Protestants--are effectively disenfranchised. They may not have the votes to stop it, but (unlike Sotomayor) it is a no-lose political issue for them, and I think the great majority will ultimately oppose it.

But only if they don't get free lunches.

elena kagan (updated version)

2010-05-09T17:54:00.007-04:00

I think it's a competent pick but not an especially inspired one. I don't doubt she'll get through although most Republicans will probably vote against her. There'll be some grumbling from the left as well but not enough to matter.

My reservations related not to Kagan personally--I've met her and she seems nice and certainly smart enough--but to my view of the Court. I think that liberals' problem is less one of numbers than of ideological momentum, which has been largely on the conservatives' side for a while. With due respect to Kagan, I don't see her changing that. She seems to be being picked because she's liberal enough, relatively young, and can probably get through unscathed--good reasons but I don't think the best ones. What liberals need is an intellectual counterweight to Scalia and so far I don't see that here, although you never know: at her age we could be talking about the Kagan Era someday.

An interesting angle, relatively unexplored in the mainstream press, is the emerging dominance of the University of Chicago Law School. One way to measure the importance of an institution is its presence on both sides of major debates, the way (e.g.) that Yale and Harvard provide leaders for both parties, or the New York Times has published leading liberal and conservative writers. The President, Barack Obama, is a liberal who taught for many years as a Chicago lecturer. The leader of the conservatives on the Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia, also taught there as did many major conservative scholars. Cass Sunstein, arguably the most important liberal legal scholar of his generation, taught there as well and now occupies a key administration position. Now the next member of the Supreme Court, although thought of as primarily a Harvard product, will be someone who's teaching career started at Chicago, too. That's an awful lot of clout for a relatively small institution, not to mention one with a prevailing conservative bias, and whose liberals had to hone their skills in an essentially conservative environment. Then again, maybe that's why they've been so successful

Addendum: A number of conservative bloggers have been supportive of Kagan on the theory that she's "open-minded," hired a lot of conservatives at Harvard, and is generally less bad than the other likely picks. To the extent that this has based on a serious reading of the kind of justice she'd be, that seems fair and logical. To the extent that conservatives are supporting a known liberal candidate because she hired them or their friends, it sounds more like . . . collaboration. The point is not an idle one, because conservatives frequently complain that they are discriminated against or not taken seriously in the legal academy. But if they can be bought off this easily, why should they be? I'll be back with more on this issue in a couple of days.

race, free speech, and the harvard spat

2010-05-06T17:33:00.002-04:00

By now everyone has heard of the Harvard 3L who e-mailed a friend that she would "absolutely not rule out" the possibility that African-Americans were less academically competent than the rest of the population, or something like that (she since apologized). I don't have much to add on the event itself, and so I won't. What concerned me more were the comments, especially those that defended her.

This defense took two tacks. The first of these was look, this was a personal e-mail, she's only a student, and anyway people have a right to say dumb things if they want to. This struck me as a reasonable defense--I wouldn't want my personal e-mails all over the blogosphere--and I don't have any particular problem with it.

A second line of comments made a "political correctness" argument. Instead of a person saying silly things these portrayed the student as some kind of conservative hero. raising issues that needed to be discussed but that the PC crowd didn't want to. The assertion that race might be linked to intelligence was thus implicitly or explicitly linked to resistance to feminism, criticism of Israel, or other areas in which a supposedly dominant group had intimated debate on important public issues, especially in an academic environment.

I don't know quite what to make of this. Sure, people should be free to express opinions without fear of censure. But the idea that one race is better or worse than another has almost nothing to recommend it. Neither "race" nor "intelligence" is subject to scientific definition, and nearly all the so-called "studies" in this area come out (surprise) with the person conducting the study in the superior group. Besides, we had a debate on this issue in the 1940s (in Europe) and 1960s (in America) and it seems to have been pretty much resolved. If there's any issue we don't need more discussion of, this is probably it.

For liberals, of course, this is easy: another chance to embarrass conservatives with their narrowmindedness and intellectual sloppiness. For conservatives, it is a bit more complicated. Yes, we should resist political correctness and demand debate on issues including, or perhaps even especially, when they make people angry. But they have to "issues" in the first place for this to apply. Like Holocaust denial or the search for Obama's birth certificate, this one isn't: and pretending that it is doesn't do us or our cause any credit.

obama derangement syndrome

2010-03-31T12:55:00.002-04:00

A lot of the commentary on the health care bill has suggested that Republicans suffered from being too conservative and need to compromise more in the future. A second line of comments suggests Republicans have been too angry or hostile and need to be more positive. I think that the first line of comments is mistaken, but the second has something to it.

The moderates vs. conservatives trope sounds appealing but doesn't stand up to analysis. McCain ran an essentially moderate campaign (notwithstanding Palin) and got killed. Since the GOP has followed a more conservative line, its polls are up and it has generally been on the offensive ideologically speaking. The health care defeat--a narrow win for the Democrats in a house where they have an overhelming majority--doesn't really change this.

But being conservative does not have to mean being strident or angry. Much of the response to the health care bill, including cries of socialism from the Tea Party types and solemn threats to repeal the bill before it takes effect, have unfortunately been of this variety. There's much to dislike about the bill: and I still think that a measure with dubious political support, potentially awful revenue consequences, and at least some constitutional problems--not to mention a four-year delay in several key provisions--is eminently subject to change. But calling it the end of life as we know it is unconvincing, and allows Obama and the Democrats to claim the high ground on an issue where they don't deserve it. Anger always sells poorly, especially amoung younger and female voters that the GOP needs to win back, or prevent losing further.

The Middle East issue has a similar dynamic. It's pretty clear now that Obama is not reliably pro-Israel, and that the Israelis will have to take action themselves (as I still think they will) to prevent and Iranian nuclear bomb. Principled opposition is both correct and inevitable. But there is little point in personalizing such opposition: suggestions that Obama is an antisemite, which he plainly isn't, or complaints about the White House Passover Seder contribute little to the debate. The reality is that American (including some Jewish) opinion on Israel is evolving, for reasons including domestic politics, the Iraqi and Afghan wars, and (not least) the presence of an unusually right-wing Israeli Government; that doesn't mean Obama shouldn't be challenged, but it's a mistake to think that changing Presidents would correct all of these problems, and a pressing need to think in longer terms.

It was fashionable a few years ago to speak of "Bush Derangement Syndrome": a though pattern in which otherwise rational people went bonkers at any mention of the 43rd president. I wonder if we're not seeing its reflection now. There's plenty to dislike Obama about, but he's going to be President for at least two, and maybe six, more years; yelling and screaming won't change that a whole lot. Besides look where the Bush Syndrome got us. To exactly the place, more or less, that the new angry people complain about.

cornell falls short

2010-03-26T10:10:00.002-04:00

Well the Cornell basketball team didn't quite make it, losing to Kentucky 62-45 and failing to make it to the "Elite Eight" of college basketball. Notwithstanding a brilliant start and a brief second-half rally, the Big Red were simply overwhelmed by Kentucky's size, speed, and aggressiveness, at one point suffering a 30-6 run that brought to mind Penn's experience against Magic Johnson's Michigan State team in the Final Four thirty years ago. Perhaps sensing the inevitable, ESPN switched to the Kansas State-Xavier game shortly after halftime and stayed there.

One interesting aspect of the coverage was the assumption that Kentucky had the physical talent but Cornell was "smarter" and/or more disciplined, presumably because of its Ivy League status. I wonder. I went to Cornell in the 70s, and there were plenty of people who hung out in the gym or at fraternity parties: they had many virtues but intellectual prowess was not necessarily among them. Moreover the virtues of the Kentucky team--persistence, determination, the ability to change strategies when confronted with a different opponent--struck me as more or less the things that I would identify with, well, intelligence in the real-world if not the test-taking sense. DeMarcus Cousins, a Kentucky freshman, was quoted as saying that the game would not be a "spelling bee." The way he and his teammates played, if it had been, they probably would have won.

the health care bill (again)

2010-03-22T10:25:00.002-04:00

Well the bill is close to being law, which is a surprise compared to where we stood a few months ago, although less so when the large Democratic majorities--and the fact that they are almost certain to disappear this fall--are taken into account. I must confess to having mixed feelings about this development. I have always thought that the harsh Republican response to health care was misplaced: there's a pretty good case for market failure here, and conservatives have learned to live with one form or another of national health care in other developed countries. But I think the contrary sense--that this is some kind of defining moment that marks the high point of the anti-Obama conservative reaction--is equally misplaced. Here's why:

1. The attention span factor.--Democrats are trying to play this as a 21st century version of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security all rolled into one. This is an odd parallel, since the Democrats got creamed in 1966 and lost the Presidency in 1968, after the first two were passed. But I think it's exaggerated, anyway. Most people saw this for what it was: a liberal President, forced on the defensive, trying to salvage something of his agenda by pressuring his own party into supporting a bill many were plainly unenthusiastic about. He deserves some credit for political courage--he is certainly ahead of Bill Clinton on this score (although that isn't hard). But more people were talking about the Cornell basketball team today than the health care bill: I just don't think most people are nearly as focused on it as the Washington elite, and the gap is likely to grow rather than shrink in the coming months.

2. The need for further legislation.--Many in the media have played this as a yes or no issue: either there would be reform now or the issue would go away for another generation. In fact, the rapid growth of health care spending would have sooner or later required legislation anyway, and the current bill will likely need a series of amendments to meet revenue and other targets. Health care, in other words, is an ongoing issue: and Republicans may be better positioned attacking the budgetary and other excesses of this than attempting to defend a status quo that most knew deep down was indefensible.

3. The "the more they see it, the more they'll like it" fallacy.--Faced with largely negative polling data, Democrats have resorted to a transparency argument: the more people see of the actual legislation, the more they'll grow to like it. This almost never happens. The essential newspaper headline today was, "Congress passes bill that extends health care, saves money, and doesn't take anything away from anyone." Whatever happens, that won't, and--as people learn the actual costs of the bill--they are much more likely to turn against it than in favor of it. This is especially true given the workings of entitlement theory, which suggests that people become more angry at losing something they already have than grateful for getting something new: an unfair result, perhaps, but usually pretty dependable.

The biggest problem with health care, I think, is not so much the bill itself but that it has taken up a year of time that might have been spent addressing issues--jobs, economic growth, the war on terrorism--that most people seem to think are more important. In this sense, its closest parallel may be the Camp David peace accords, with President Jimmy Carter (like Obama with health care) became more or less obsessed with in the second year of his Presidency. Carter got an accord, and thirty years later it remains a signature achievement. But most Americans simply shrugged and wondered why he was spending so much time on the issue while the economy fell apart. The rest is history.

yale leads the nation (again)

2010-03-11T18:04:00.003-05:00

Yale University has banned faculty from sexual relationships with undergraduate students. The previous policy was to ban such relationships only for students under direct supervision of the faculty member. Parents don't send their children to Yale to sleep with faculty, one official helpfully explained, adding that the change had been coming (no pun intended) for some time.

Having attended Cornell in the 1970s, where dating students was something of a varsity sport--two of my five first professors got in trouble for it and even some women faculty were rumored to participate--I cannot say the proposal is unmerited. Still, like all legislation, the change leaves several important questions unanswered.

One question is the matter of negative implication. By banning relationships with undergraduates, Yale presumably does not mean to say that relationships with law or other graduate students are advisable or even acceptable. And yet it's hard to avoid this inference. (This is not a hypothetical either: one professor dated at least three students during the time I was at Yale Law, and several of my current colleagues were or are married to former students.)

A further question relates to effective dates: what if someone was in a relationship with a student at the time the bill (so to speak) became law? Are they expected immediately to end it? What of other relationships, even marriages, that initiated with such illicit contacts? Are they free from scrutiny, or--under the "fruit of the poison tree" doctrine--are they also suspect?

The only answer, I think, is to hold a conference on the legislation, where the leading lights of statutory interpretation can hold forth on these and other key issues. To be held in New Haven, of course. With separate seating for students and faculty.

reconciliation and the health care bill

2010-03-10T18:59:00.002-05:00

It is now clear that there will be an attempt, however successful, to pass health care reform via the "reconciliation" route. My guess is that it won't or will only partially succeed, since moderate Democrats, whose support Obama needs, will not want to endanger their political futures on an increasingly unpopular measure. Still, the effort will be made, and it has to be given a serious chance of succeeding.

Supporters of the reconciliation route often argue that Republicans did the same thing when they were in power, so why shouldn't we? I think this is actually a bit of a stretch, since health care reform--a huge regulatory program with some tax and spending aspects--is rather more removed from the purposes of reconciliation than most tax and spending bills. (Imagine, for example, a change in Middle East policy being rammed through on the theory that it would save money by cutting aid to Israel.) But even if the comparison does hold, it is still not convincing.

For almost a year, everyone has understood that the "game" in health care involved the necessity of reaching 60 votes. The proposals were designed and argued, the issues debated, and the entire process shaped by this assumption. Scott Brown was elected in Massachusetts on a promise to deny the 60th vote , and opposed by Democrats on grounds he would do so. To say now that we didn't need sixty votes--heads we win, tails you lose, so to speak--will appear to most people like changing the rules in the middle of the gam. It's a little bit like the Phillies moving the right field fence out in anticipation of playing the Yankees, who have a lot of power hitters, in another World Series: it may be legal, but it doesn't look kosher, and it's unlikely to convince anyone who wasn't on your side to begin with.

I think that maneuvers of this type also feed a growing cynicism about the electoral process and, inadvertently, strengthen the Tea Party Movement and its adherents. The Tea Party types argue, in effect, that the Obama Administration is illegitimate: that it somehow manipulated the political system, the campaign finance rules, and perhaps even Obama's citizenship in order to win an election it didn't observe. The response to this ought to be a patient (or if you prefer, impatient) explanation that this was not the case. Instead the Administration actually does change a rule which everyone had understood to be fair in the middle of the process, with support from clever "scholars"--most of whom do not even bother to hide their partisan affiliation anymore--in doing so. How in the world will this do anything but strengthen the most extreme elements, or convince them that there is any alternative to the wholesale replacement of this Government?

image, reality, and the gender issue

2010-03-05T15:12:00.003-05:00

A couple of events this week got me thinking about our society and its rather contradictory attitudes toward gender. Last night I attended a dinner and presentation in New York as part of the NYU tax policy colloquium. The presenter and all of the dinner guests under 50 were women, all bright, confident, and in at least superficially high spirits. Students and faculty participated in the seminar without visible gender distinction. Other than a lame joke about water breaking (one of the participants was visibly pregnant), the gender issue, so to speak, was by and large invisible.

I then took my customary brisk walk to Penn Station [I lived until age 8 in lower Manhattan and there are memories everywhere] where the TV news was blaring as usual. It seems that the current Governor of New York, a liberal State, employed a substantial number of state officials in a (successful) effort to intimidate a woman from seeking a protective order against one of the Governor's key aides. I don't remember all the details, but there was something a woman being smashed into a mirror, her clothes stripped off, the kind of stuff you usually see only on CSI. To make matters worse a secondary scandal, involving the failure to report free baseball tickets, was being treated as on a par with this episode. The previous Governor resigned in a prostitution scandal.

What exactly is going on then? Call me cynical, but it seems to me women are now pretty much the equal of men . . . if they went to Ivy League schools, worked at fancy law firms, and teach at reasonably good universities. Beyond that I'm much less sure. Or perhaps we are all, at each income level, living in two worlds: an official one of equality and mutual respect and a real one, not far below the surface, in which everything continue more or less as before. I think of my 14-year old son, who can name all the female body parts but seems to have only a vague idea that they are connected to real people. Perhaps equality between the genders is a bit like the Exodus from Egypt in the Passover Haggadah: a lesson that has to be continually relearned because there is an inevitable tendency toward backsliding. Or perhaps we are in an intermediate zone, like Jews a hundred years ago, where we have the illusion of having made it and the real struggles have yet to begin.

war with iran?

2010-02-16T20:27:00.002-05:00

While attention remains focused elsewhere, there are increasing signs that the US and/or Israel are prepared for military action against Iran. Some of these are obvious: the placement of allegedly defensive missiles in the Gulf States, an increased pace of Israeli-American meetings, vague warnings about "even tougher" sanctions which may be a euphemism for military force. Some are a bit more opaque. The other day Secretary Clinton--not known for careless talk--suggested that Iran was becoming a military dictatorship rather than an Islamic democracy. A political science lesson, or a calculated effort to delegitimize the Iranian regime?

I have maintained for some time that military action against Iran would be morally justified. The harder question is whether it would make sense. I am less concerned here with our supposed inability to destroy the Iranian nuclear sites, which I think is exaggerated, than with the absence of an obvious "exit" strategy. Put simply, there is no obvious midpoint between a measured attack and an all-out war with the Iranians, which would essentially mean an arch of uninterrupted war from the Mediterranean to Pakistan. This is especially true if Israel uses tactical nuclear weapons as is now suggested. Is Obama willing to countenance this, or will he prefer to live with a nuclear Iran? It's not clear the Iranians will give him a choice.

t-shirt watch

2010-02-16T20:24:00.002-05:00

Seen on the street in Phila.: "Support Safe Sex: Go Fuck Yourself!" With a condom, I suppose.

the state of the union

2010-01-27T22:00:00.002-05:00

I'm not quite sure what to think. He seems to be moving back to the middle, talking about things like tax cuts and competition and so forth, and that's a good thing. But he's very, very diffuse and seems weirdly detached from the political environment, a little bit like he was still a candidate rather than a second-year president. I still think he needs to reshuffle his staff so as to offload the job of prime minister and focus on what he does best: providing a general theme and direction to the country that many, though not all, people remain enthusiastic about. But at least he seemed less ideological which is a step in the right direction.

a bad week for the liberal consensus

2010-01-24T12:50:00.003-05:00

When I went to law school in the late 70s-early 80s we learned a pretty coherent view of the world. Religion, and values generally, were private matters. The economy was capitalist, but that was OK, because the long-term trend was toward more Government intervention on behalf of the poor and defenseless and likely to stay that way. Individual rights--the right to birth control, abortion, sexual preference, and a virtually unlimited right of free speech--would continue to grow, with the First Amendment, which some of us suspected was the real religion in New Haven, casting its protective light over every person and every idea. Some of us suspected that this worldview was a little thin and (perhaps) hypocritical: for example, the supposedly liberal faculty contained one woman and no minorities, while the vast majority of the supposedly enlightened students seemed to wind up at corporate law firms. The election of Ronald Reagan, which seemed to contradict nearly all of the existing tendencies, was likewise a discordant note. But (with apologies to Harry Chapin) there were planes to catch and bills to pay, along with high-paying jobs awaiting: other than leaving a few petitions lying on the Dean's chair I don't remember complaining much.

This week's events showed just how far that comfortable worldview has deteriorated. It's not just that a populist conservative won Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts and put a temporary if not permanent end to the health care legislation. (Kennedy was so respected in law school that I remember a serious debate over whether we would take the blame if he, or a member of his family, got yet another woman into trouble.) As if to add insult to injury, the Supreme Court--displaying the very interventionist attitude that liberals used to love--put another nail in the coffin of campaign finance reform in the Citizens United case. That a then Yale professor and later Federal judge (Ralph Winter) was the brains behind the original challenge to campaign finance laws, in Buckley v. Valeo, made the irony all the more poignant.

It was strange, and not a little bit pathetic, to watch liberals try to "spin" the Massachusetts election into an argument for more aggressive pursuit of health care reform, followed quickly by an attempt to discredit the Supreme Court for (in their view) an overly expansive interpretation of First Amendment rights. It may be that they are right on a technical level. Citizens United is indeed a somewhat reckless (if also predictable) decision; and there is something odd about a State Senator who supported the Massachusetts health reform getting elected by opposing its Federal equivalent.

And yet it is the liberals' own hypocrisy that is largely responsible for these setbacks. Having tolerated, or even profited from, an economic system that rewards a few people (largely their own graduates) while leaving little for everyone else, they are now surprised to see the public rise up in a fit of entirely understandable, if at times misdirected, anger. Having created and sustained an absurd political system, in which wealthy or famous individuals and families could effectively buy political power but others were restricted by incomprehensible campaign laws, they are now shocked and surprised to see that system collapsed. Having taught their students that what mattered was not the substance of their values, but the freedom to express them, they are now surprised that the society is all freedom and no or very little substance.

The professors that we most respected in law school were the few who either retained their own personal values, like Arthur Leff or Bob Cover, or those (I am thinking of Marvin Chirelstein in particular) with an ability to retain their sense of humor and not take anything too seriously. For some unknown reason the first two of these died much too young. Here's hoping there are others like them out there . . . or at least someone who knows how to keep people laughing.

china, google, and tom friedman

2010-01-13T14:54:00.003-05:00

In the "same newspaper, same day" category: Tom Friedman has a column today on how effectively China's leaders are managing their economy, while page A1 of the Times has a story on how Google--not known for political courage--may leave China in response to censorship by the Chinese Government. It seems that someone, presumably with Government approval, launched a sophisticated barrage of cyberattacks aimed at shutting down the gmail [Google] accounts of political dissidents. The Times and other news outlets reported the story . . . and were themselves censored by the Chinese authorities.

One has to wonder, if China is doing so well, what are the authorities so afraid of? One possibility is that they are smarter than their western admirers, and recognize that the latest crop of positive statistics (China passes Japan, Chinese buy more cars than Americans) may be less significant than sometimes thought: or, to borrow the language of financial prospectuses, past performance is no guarantee of future results. It may be that there are simply too many censors in China with too little work to do. Whatever the case, it would seem that the time for wide-eyed, 1960s-style fawning over Chinese achievements should be long past: and the time for realistic assessment, which recognizes the magnitude of Chinese accomplishments but also how far the country still has to go, long overdue.

plus ca change plus ca change

2010-01-08T11:49:00.003-05:00

As we get older it sometimes seems, as the French say, "plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose:" the more things change, the more they stay the same. But sometimes we are reminded that things change faster than we care to admit. Two recent experiences highlighted this for me.

First, I decided to watch "The Candidate," a 1974 or so Robert Redford movie, together with my politically addicted son. He noticed the politics and campaign strategy. I noticed the large American cars, the cigarettes, and the fact that everyone--including or perhaps especially the "liberal" politicians--completely ignored anything that women said on any subject. Was this only 35 years ago, and did this really seem normative to us so recently?

The second occurred when I spellchecked a short article I was writing on electoral reform. The spellchecker, which can't be more than ten years old, rejected the words "Barack," "Obama," and "Palin" outright; rendered "cellphone" as "cellophane"; and insisted that "youtube" consisted of two separate words. Did we really do without this things, and how then did we survive?

Maybe things just seem to stay the same because we read back the present into the past. My kids have this delightful way of beginning sentences with phrases like "in the old days, you know, around 2005." Perhaps they know more than we think they do.

the supreme court and the health care bill

2010-01-04T20:17:00.002-05:00

The blogosphere, including but not limited to our friends at Balkinization, has lately been alive with talk about a hypothetical constitutional challenge to the now all-but-inevitable health care bill. Would the Supreme Court have the temerity to strike the law down, and (if so) how would or should "progressives" (that is, Democrats) react?

So far as I can tell there are two principal constitutional dangers. The first is that the whole bill might be held unconstitutional because it requires people to buy health insurance they don't want from private vendors. The second is that the so-called "Nebraska compromise," by forcing other states to (effectively) pay Nebraska's medicaid costs, might be unconstitutional and (assuming the bill was not severable) take the rest of it down too. Neither of these arguments is likely to convince liberal professors, but the Supreme Court isn't particularly liberal. Should it decide to overturn the bill, various bloggers (notably Sanford Levinson) are suggesting various forms of defiance, which they support with allusions ranging from Bush v. Gore to Dred Scott, Plessy, and other low points of constitutional adjudication.

I'm not a constitutional lawyer, and I'm not especially liberal, so to some degree is simply entertainment for me (so far). But I would make a couple of points:

1. I'm not convinced that the constitutional argument against the law is so weak, or at least, that it is necessarily inconsistent with existing precedents in the Scalia (sorry, Roberts) Court. Certainly the Court--or a portion of it--has been aggressive in its approach to federalism and limitations on Government power. Unlike Bush v. Gore, then, there seems to be a genuine issue of principal rather than politics at stake.

2. Nor would a holding against the bill necessarily be counter-majoritarian, to use a favorite academic term. Most of the country doesn't seem to like the bill very much, as expressed in numerous opinion polls. Indeed, one of the principal reasons Democrats are rushing it is to finish before they're voted out (maybe) next year.

3. It's entertaining, but also a bit scary, to see prestigious professors argue that everything in the way of the health bill--the Senate rules, the Supreme Court, public opinion itself--be treated as an obstacle to overcome rather than a precedent to be respected. Advocates are paid to take whatever position is in their clients' interest. Scholars are expected to do better, and their repeated willingness to adopt an "ends over means" jurisprudence is chilling and dangerous. If the Democratic Congress and President are voted out of office, will they find a reason to ignore that result too?

Not especially relevant, but I'm especially entertained by the role of Yale professors (not including Levinson) in arguments of this type. I attended Yale in the late 70s-early 80s, where professors celebrated exactly the kind of Supreme Court activism that they now condemn. These "progressives" also presented us with a faculty that had no minorities and one woman among thirty or more tenured members (the Dean explained helpfully that the school would not compromise its standards in order to hire such people). There is a book out there that says schools like Yale are neither liberal nor conservative but merely trendy, taking whatever positions they believe will appeal to elite applicants and potential future donors. If the shoe fits, wear it.

obama at one year

2009-12-27T14:48:00.004-05:00

I would give him at best about a B. The good news is he seems competent, has a reasonably clear and coherent agenda, and has kept most of his base intact. The bad news is he seems slowly but surely to be losing everyone else. There is also a sense of diminished stature: too much celebrity and too little accomplishment, and personal energy wasted on efforts (the would-be Chicago Olympics, Copenhagen, the Nobel Prize) that bring little or few real results. Current developments, like the health care bill, carry the potential to strengthen but also to hurt him: the long delay between likely enactment and actual provision of benefits is especially dicey here.

A problem in evaluating Obama, like all Presidents, is what standard to judge him by. The reality is that it is extremely difficult for any President to be successful under current conditions, and probably that much more so for a left-of-center politician. This results in part from economic and budgetary constraints, but also from underlying political realities.

In the period marked by roughly the 1930s to the 1970s, politics was conditioned by the threat of the extreme left, which was taken seriously abroad (the Soviet Union and Communist China) and at some points (notably the 1960s) at home. Because of this threat, traditionally conservative interest groups--business, the professions, the political and economic elite--perceived it as in their interest to pursue a moderate reform agenda, if only to avoid more radical change. The liberal Republicans and establishment Democrats in America--like the Social or Christian Democrats in Europe--were typical of this way of thinking.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, and the collapse of the extreme left in the West, this incentive largely disappeared. Conservatives now feel comfortable directing unwavering fire at any and all liberal proposals, and are strengthened by the addition to their ranks of many ordinary people who cannot stomach the left on religious or cultural grounds. That the left itself is divided along economic and cultural lines--and becomes more so as it tries to expand--doesn't help, either. The most conspicuously successful liberals in this period, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, succeeded largely by accommodating these trends and governing as moderate conservatives, something Obama has so far refused to do.

So Obama has been disappointing in some ways, but it is not clear that anyone else--at least, any other liberal Democrat--could have done much better. For all his unique characteristics, his trajectory is not really that different from other liberals in an essentially conservative age, with the difference that he has (so far) proved less willing to abandon his liberalism for political gain. As the pressures on him build--and the conservative resurgence continues--it will be interesting to see if this pattern continues.

"constitutional moments" and the health care bill

2009-12-20T16:29:00.009-05:00

With the Senate health bill having received 60 votes the danger of strong-arm tactics, designed to pass the bill with fewer than 60 supporters, has subsided for the moment. But talk of such tactics--and the likelihood that similar situations will recur in the future--makes the issue worth discussing nonetheless. The issue is important, I think, less for the sanctity of the 60-vote requirement than for what the tactics say about constitutional theory and its application in the current political environment.

Writing at Balkinization last week, Jack Balkin, the creator of the blog, argued that Barack Obama faced a "constitutional moment" of the type identified by his colleague Bruce Ackerman's theory and, if he failed to act appropriately, might see his entire agenda unravel. Balkin called for aggressive action, including the use of reconciliation procedures or other similar members, so as to force the Senate's hand. A few days later Paul Krugman, writing in the NY Times, called the existing political system "dysfunctional" and called for changes in the Senate rules, albeit in a somewhat less confrontational manner.

It must be conceded, at the outset, that the 60 vote requirement is a matter of Senate rules rather than a constitutional provision; the term "quasi-constitutional" is probably best applied to it. And it can hardly be denied that both Democrats and Republicans have misused the rule: the filibuster concept, to which it is tied, was always intended as a way to slow down legislation rather than permanently defeat it. A combination of excessive partisanship and rule changes, which allow an effective filibuster without even the need to keep talking, appear to be responsible for the deterioration.

That said, the attempt to end-run or simply overpower the 60 vote rule leaves cause for alarm. While the rule has questionable origins, it has been understood to be the rule for some time, and both sides have played with that understanding. If the rule can simply be avoided when the results are displeasing, what is to stop other rules--constitutional or otherwise--from suffering a similar fate? It must be remembered here that health care is not the only Democratic priority: cap and trade, financial reform, and perhaps a second stimulus bill are similarly "vital" measures in the liberal worldview, and if means are subjected to ends one time they will likely be again.

The theory of "constitutional moments" is especially troubling here. The theory was originally intended as a descriptive matter, explaining how important constitutional changes (the post-Civil War amendments, the New Deal, etc.) often came about as a result of procedurally dubious, extra-constitutional developments. I doubt that even Bruce Ackerman intended it to be used as a prescriptive tool, justifying the intentional strong-arming of existing rules and procedures so as to achieve a desired result. Suppose, in this context, that the Democrats lose the next election and Obama himself is voted out in 2012. Will it be time for a Republican constitutional moment, in which a GOP majority rides roughshod over Democratic dissent, or tries (again) to remove a Democratic President on legally dubious but politically attractive grounds?

I also wonder about the effect on "civility," which everyone claims to favor, if these proposals go forward. It is said that Glenn Beck and the "tea party" types are paranoids for thinking that the constitution and the republic are in danger as a result of Obama's agenda. Won't direct assaults on established rules give them more credence, and won't the long-term damage outweigh any short-term gains?

a day at the museum: arshile gorky

2009-12-13T16:06:00.003-05:00

As often happens around the Holidays, the various members of my family are starting to get on each others' nerves, so I took a couple of hours off to visit the Phila. Art Museum. Having seen most of the permanent collection maybe thirty times or so, I decided to take in a special exhibit on Arshile Gorky, the Armenian-American painter who produced an astonishing range of work before his self-inflicted death in 1948. As a good exhibit should, the visit inspired me to think not only about Gorky's own accomplishments, but the broader question of artistic greatness and the relationship between different fields.

One of the interesting things about Gorky is that, rather than attempting to seem "original" for its own sake, he consciously borrowed from the styles and techniques of others, always expanding and modifying these techniques for his own artistic ends. Thus one set of paintings looks a lot like Joan Miro: but not really, because human subjects, reflecting Gorky's preoccupations and perhaps his demons (more on this later), keep intruding on the otherwise abstract forms. Another series departs from a painting by Giorgio De Chirico, wisely included in the exhibit, but by the end bears little resemblance to the De Chirico original. One can thus observe in Gorky's work much of the history of Twentieth Century art, but also the tension between the general and the particular, between the artist and his or her surroundings, that make art at once so rewarding and unpredictable.

The exhibit also offered a chance to meditate on the relationship between great art and suffering, a cliche perhaps but rarely on such vivid display. Plainly Gorky was troubled: by the Armenian Genocide which took his mother's and countless others' lives; by his own depression; by physical ailments (notably cancer) and family problems. Yet many of the things that troubled him--his cancer, a fire in his studio, his wife's affair and ultimate departure--and things that happen to ordinary people, as well. Some of his work, notably his American landscapes and his murals for the old Newark Airport, were cheerful or downright whimsical in nature. Did Gorky really suffer more than other people, or did he simply respond with more intensity: and is there really a difference between the two?

I am reminded here of the debate regarding Primo Levi, who (like Gorky) lost numerous friends and relatives in a twentieth century genocide and took his own life, decades later, after countless intervening events. Levi's biographer, Carole Angier, is convinced that Levi's psychological problems (especially with women) predated the Holocaust and that the latter cannot be blamed for his suicide. Undoubtedly there are Gorky biographers who have debated the same question. All that can be said for certain is that there is a certain something that leads artists and writers to perceive the world a bit more intensely, a bit more sardonically, than the rest of us: which does not appear to make them any happier, but which leaves the rest of us incomparably richer.

still more on college football . . .

2009-12-08T16:57:00.003-05:00

Having attended Cornell, and with a son at the University of Pittsburgh, I get to see the full range of college football possibilities. Cornell lost its final game, 34-0, to Penn in a contest that I had the bad fortune to witness with my second child. Pitt was in its way more unfortunate, losing to Cincinnati (the #3 team in the country) by one point in a game that it led, 31-10, in the first half. The Panthers now get to play in a bowl named for an auto repair company while Cincinnati plays Florida in the Sugar Bowl; with a little less voter bias they'd be playing for the national championship.

One of the reasons football is so interesting is that, sooner or later, it raises almost every conceivable intellectual and philosophical issue. For example, why is Cornell football so bad? It's the largest or second largest (after Penn) school in the Ivy League, probably the easiest to get into, and (except for Dartmouth) easily the most rural. So why does it always lose? I've heard all the explanations: fear of success and consequent labeling as not-really-Ivy; emphasis on other sports; a run of unfathomable bad luck. (One successful coach, a previous NFL star, left after an affair with an assistant coach's wife.) Still, it doesn't quite compute, and no amount of Ivy League brainpower seems capable of addressing it.

Ditto for the BCS Bowl System, the holy grail of big-time college football. Pitt lost by one point to the number three team in the country, having pushed them all over the field for thirty minutes or more. So how is Pitt number 17, and Cincinnati number 3? For that matter, how could all the principal polls--people, computers, composites--have ranked Florida ahead of Alabama when the latter absolutely demolished the former in a head-to-head contest? What is especially unnerving about all this is that computer polls, which one would think correct for voter biases, have consistently been more irrational than the human ones, which seem capable of correcting for subjective factors, like the greater importance of late season than early season results, better than their digital cousins. There is a lot of interesting theoretical work on the difference between human and computerized ways of thinking: surely the fear of computers taking over is exaggerated when they can't predict a football game correctly.

Whatever the results, there is always the pleasure of attending a big-time college game, as I did at Pitt in October. Even television doesn't capture the full spectacle of college football, in all its homoerotic splendor. In the Pitt student section an hour before game time, four male Pitt fans, undressed to the waste, lovingly painted each other blue with the letters P-I-T-T stenciled somewhere on their chests. Front, back, sides, they didn't leave a spot uncovered. Not fifteen feet away sat a half dozen attractive females, wearing T-shirts and apparently not much else, whom the body painters completely, totally, and willfully ignored. Pitt won, 41-14.

amanda knox

2009-12-06T12:41:00.002-05:00

I have no idea if Amanda Knox, convicted of murder by an Italian court in the death of her college roommate, is guilty or not, although I suspect we have not heard the end of the case. (The Italian courts allow for much broader review of criminal cases than their American counterparts, and there are frequent pardons and amnesties, so I wouldn't bet on her serving a full term.) I do know that many comments from American observers have been less than edifying, reflecting numerous misconceptions about Italian law and a generally imperial bias.

My personal favorite is the accusation that the Italian system is "inquisitorial" in nature and provides inadequate protection to defendants. But of course the civil law system is designed to be inquisitorial, in the sense of empowering the judge (magistrate) to seek the truth rather than allow an adversarial process of prosecutors vs. defense attorneys--often severely mismatched in ability and resources--to arrive at a solution or more often a plea bargain arrangement. There are many criticisms of this system, and indeed Italian law in particular has leavened it with several common law-inspired modifications, including limited use of juries and protections for witnesses and defendants unheard of in the traditional civil law (such a jury was indeed used in the Knox case). But I have never heard the criticism that the civil law reaches false conclusions more often than common law courts, much less that Italian courts are harsher than the American version in criminal cases: Knox herself might well be looking at a death sentence in many American states.

A second criticism, made by Alan Dershowitz in a NY Times exchange yesterday, is that Italy lacks a "real" jury system and is inferior to American courts on this basis. (When Dershowitz became an expert on Italian law, I don't know.) But of course, Italy never claimed to have an American-style system: its limited use of juries--actually, judicial panels with a measure of citizen participation--is specifically intended as a hybrid which combines the essence of civil law with the better features, or supposed better features, of the American system. Since another frequent accusation is that people in Perugia are biased against the American students--probably true, on balance--it's hard to see how greater reliance on a jury system would help the defendants, anyway.

A final criticism is that the Italian courts tend to look at a lot of evidence about the defendant's values, behavior, etc. that would not be admissible in an American court. This is mostly true--it reflects a combination of civil law procedure and a sort of Catholic morality that seem alien to American observers--but doesn't necessarily mean the system functions less efficiently. It's flip side is a much greater emphasis on forgiveness and reconciliation as reflected in the absence of the death penalty and other features mentioned above.

There are plenty of things wrong with the Italian judicial system, as even a cursory reading of the newspapers will tell you; and I don't doubt that anti-American prejudice has played a role in the proceedings. (A number of my Italian correspondents have refer to Knox as "Foxy Knoxy" which reflects a somewhat less than open mind to the case.) But I don't think there is reason for a wholesale condemnation of Italian justice or the civil law system, in general. Italy, by the way, repealed its racial (antisemitic) laws in the 1940s. The United States took twenty years longer, and some would say we've never really finished the job.

the republican loyalty test

2009-11-29T17:46:00.002-05:00

I don't have many Republican readers--actually, I don't have that many readers at all--so I'm not sure how many have followed the new "loyalty test" (my term, not theirs) being proposed for Republican candidates. The test poses ten questions on various policy issues--taxes, abortion, the stimulus package, etc.--and evaluates the candidates' responses. Eight out of ten and you are a kosher (again my term) candidate who qualifies for funding, endorsement, etc. ; seven or less and you are toast. The test is objective in nature, i.e., consists exclusively of yes and no questions, and is accordingly self-graded. The eight of ten concept is apparently traceable to a quotation from Ronald Reagan, although some of suggested that he himself would have flunked, as would several contemporary Republican officials.

I myself took it and failed, getting only seven out of ten correct answers. As I recall, I missed out on abortion [don't like it but don't think it's the Government's problem], global warming [don't know if the world is burning up but unwilling to take the chance], and one other question I can't quite remember. Fortunately, the test is as yet merely a proposal, and it's not clear that it will make it to local committeeperson, a post no one else wants to run for, even if it is approved.

As my comments suggest, I don't think much of the test, although I'm not sure what standing the Democrats have to critique it. (You could design a similar test for liberals and nearly all of them would pass.) My criticism is based partly on a dislike of loyalty oaths and partly on an educator's suspicion of any test that is this easy to cheat on. For example, it doesn't take terribly much insight to figure out that higher taxes and more regulation are incorrect answers. Now, if they would lock the candidates in a room for three hours and have them answer multiple choice questions on passages from conservative philosophers, the answers to be graded on a scale of 200 to 800: wait, isn't that how the other party chooses its candidates?

. . . and more on football

2009-11-26T14:38:00.002-05:00

A couple of weeks ago the New England Patriots' head coach, Bill Belichick, decided to "go for it" (i.e., attempt to get a first down) rather than punting on fourth and two at his own 26 yard line. He didn't make it, and lost the game. Last Saturday Yale, which is presumably a smart if not terribly talented football team, tried the same thing against Harvard. They failed, and also lost.

The Patriots and (to a lesser extent) Yale losses spawned a small cottage industry of statistical analyses, many or most of which concluded that the decision to go rather than kick was logical. Yet most football people will tel you the decisions were stupid . . . and the fact remains both teams lost. What's going on?

I think this is a good example of the limits of statistical analysis and the benefits, often derided, of plain old common sense. One problem, I suspect, is that it's harder than you might think to make a statistical analysis. For example, do you look at all cases in which previous teams went for it on fourth and two, or only those where they did so in the fourth quarter? Do you look at all possible contests, or only those involving the same two (or comparable) teams? These kinds of questions come up all the time in statistics, but rarely with so much on the line.

Another interesting question is what the decision to "go for it" communicates and how the decision itself affects the psychology of both sides. Both the Patriots and the Elis (Yale) had long losing streaks against the relevant opponents: in the Patriots' case, at least, the decision reflected a lack of confidence in the team's defense as much as confidence in its offense. Did the recklessness of the choices subtly or not so subtly convey a sense of desperation, which inspired their opponents to thwart the coaches' plans?

I am reminded here of William F. Buckley's famous assertion that he would rather be governed by people chosen at random from the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. Buckley, of course, went to Yale.

more on the middle east

2009-11-24T18:06:00.002-05:00

I have recently gotten involved in a number of groups that are trying to regenerate enthusiasm for Israel among American Jews. There is a sense that the two communities are growing apart, and many of us would like very much to reverse that. Unfortunately, some people contribute more than others to this effort.

Last night one of our groups hosted Barry Rubin, whose Wikipedia entry describes him as a professor at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya and senior fellow at the center's Institute for Counter-Terrorism as well as a prolific author and editor. The lecture was entitled "Looking under the Goldstone: How the new campaign against Israel is destroying the Arab World." It was unusually well attended, owing to aggressive publicity efforts in which I played a minor role.

In practice, the lecture had little to do with Goldstone or current events at all, being devoted instead to Rubin's apparently well-rehearsed theory of the Arab-Israeli conflict. So far as I can make out, the theory is as follows:

1. Arabs have no interest in peace with Israel and simply pretend to, primarily in English-language statements, in order to undercut support for the Jewish State and hasten its ultimate destruction. They regularly lie and exaggerate in their official declarations, often admitting privately, to Rubin and others, that they are in fact doing so. (Rubin, who it must be admitted is quite witty and urbane, appears to speak Arabic and to have met various Palestinian leaders.)

2. Westerners, including liberal Israelis and American Jews, are often taken in by the above because they persist in thinking in Western terms, under which one says what one means and tries to take an honest or even self-deprecatory view of one's own position. By contrast Arab culture rewards strength and interprets the above tendencies as weaknesses to be exploited.

3. The Goldstone Report was effectively written by Hamas propagandists who intentionally lied and exaggerated to Goldstone as predicted above. Goldstone himself is an "opportunist" who collaborated with the South African apartheid regime despite claims to the contrary.

4. Given 1-3 above, there is little or no chance for a meaningful peace agreement in the foreseeable future.

My problem with all this is less that is false, although I think points 1-3 mostly are (I'm less sure about #4), than that it is almost wholly devoid of original, intellectual thought. If one adjusts the names and dates slightly, there is quite simply nothing here that I couldn't and didn't hear from hard-line Israelis when I was fourteen years old, and probably intuited to be emotional rather than intellectual in origin even at that tender age. Essentially we are asked to believe that the entire Middle East is impermeable to rational analysis because one side is inherently dishonest, violent, and cowardly, the prejudice thinly veiled under a patina of "cultural" analysis of exactly the type Rubin purports to disdain: an almost exact reflection, as it happens, of the other side's extremist views. If this is what is being offered by Israeli intellectuals--and I must note that Rubin has an appointment from the IDC, a sort of fledgling institution, rather than a full-fledged Israeli university--it is no wonder there is a credibility gap.

I find this sort of analysis particularly dispiriting given my own work on antisemitism and the Holocaust (actually, pre-Holocaust) era. Imagine that an American intellectual in the 1930s had asked a European antisemite, what are you getting so excited about? Aren't the Jews relatively small in number, and lacking in political power? Ah, the antisemite would have responded, you are thinking in liberal Western terms. The Jews don't tell the truth like other people: they claim to be loyal citizens and in fact cooperate with foreign powers. They think in long terms: even a tiny number of them will some day control our political system. The antisemite would likely have responded, in other words, with an essentialist, "cultural" argument not entirely different from that advanced by Rubin and his ilk. I am not saying that the Israeli (or American) right are like the Nazis: there is no real threat of violence and their analysis of contemporary issues is frequently accurate. I am simply suggesting that theories which substitute emotion for reason, which lump together entire groups of people on the basis of supposed cultural traits, do not have a very good track record, and Jewish people should be particularly reticent about using them. To fire up a crowd of believers, such arguments (if they be called that) may be successful. To win over the unconverted--let alone make foreign policy--they are likely to be much less so.

health care 60, republicans 2010?

2009-11-22T18:16:00.002-05:00

Celebrations were muted for the vote to allow the health care debate to proceed, and rightly so. It isn't a terribly big accomplishment for a party with 60 seats to control the legislative agenda, even on an issue as controversial as health care reform. Nor does it guarantee that a bill will pass, or (if it does) what it will contain: InTrade, the online predictions market, is citing odds of about 25:1 against a public option being approved by December 31, although this might change if a later date were chosen.

The InTrade odds suggest a key point about the health care debate: the question is not so much if a bill will pass as what the bill that eventually does pass will consist of. The question of whether the Democrats can "get to 50" on the bill is in this sense as meaningless as whether they can "get to 60" on cloture: legislation being a changing rather than a fixed quantity (especially in the Senate), it is nearly always possible to draft some bill that will get the required number of votes. The issue, properly conceived, is whether the legislation so drafted will be worth having, and whether it will help or hurt the Democrats--not to mention the country--in the long run.

A big sleeper, I think, is the issue of revenue estimates. The budget police have, amazingly, scored health care reform as a revenue gainer, but only because it (i) is intentionally set up to move many of the costs into the "out years," and (ii) assumes substantial reductions in existing health care spending, the precise terms of which have yet to be agreed on. Both of these tricks are well known to tax experts, as is the fact that--as legislation progresses--it tends to add more spending rather than more revenues, which must then be offset by further trickery. The bottom line with health care remains this: it is simply not credible that tens of millions of people can receive quality health care with no meaningful cost to anyone else, nor that it makes sense to enact a huge tax and regulatory framework at a time when the nations's overwhelming concern remains unemployment and slow or nonexistent economic growth. Sooner or later these issues will catch up with the Democrats: for many of them, probably sooner.

berlusconi, bloomberg, and the rise of the demomonarchy

2009-11-09T15:21:00.004-05:00

I'm talked out on the subject of last week's elections, and I'm not sure I have very much different to say than anyone else, anyway. In a nutshell, the Republicans did well: if the Democrats learn the right lessons, they'll correct, and if not they'll lose still more ground. Those who want to hear more can follow my blog at www.pa2010.com

I want to talk here about an election that didn't get much coverage: the coronation, uh, reelection of Mike (never Michael) Bloomberg as Mayor of New York City. For those who didn't follow, Bloomberg spent close to $100 million--more than presidential elections cost until recently--and put together an enormous campaign organization to ensure his third term, not to mention getting the city charter changed to permit it. His opponent, William Thompson, was almost totally unheard of. Most people predicted a walkover; many didn't bother to vote. Instead Bloomberg won by about four percentage points: had Barack Obama accepted an invitation to campaign for his opponent, he probably would have lost.

I think the Bloomberg story is in many ways the sleeper of this election season. For one thing, it helps to put the Tea Party and similar movements into proper perspective. These have often been portrayed as conservative or right-wing as opposed to the "moderate" Republicans who would provide the party with a brighter future. The problem is that many of these "moderates" are more accurately described as elitists: business-oriented candidates who win with money and organization but whose roots in the community are, well, not particularly deep. Some of them, like Bloomberg and Arlen Specter, have ceased being Republicans, altogether. A challenge to their leadership is no more inherently quixotic than was that of Obama to Hillary Clinton or Thompson to Bloomberg: and no more certain of failure, either.

The Bloomberg situation also provides an interesting example of a new global phenomenon, what might be called demomonarchy: the rise of elected officials so wealthy and powerful as to be virtually unremovable except by their own accord. Several mornings a week I stop by my local cafe to watch the Italian 1:00 pm news. Since Italy is a nominal democracy they cannot avoid reporting bad news. But since both the public and private TV stations are effectively controlled by one man, Silvio Berlusconi, they tend to report it in a less than enthusiastic way. Thus, on one recent morning, a story that the Constitutional Court had rejected a law providing immunity from criminal prosecution for Berlusconi and other top officials--roughly equivalent to the Supreme Court's decision on the Nixon tapes in 1974--received five minutes of blase coverage while a mudslide in Sicily went on for a quarter hour. When a Catholic journalist suggested that Berlusconi, who has been hanging around with underage women, was perhaps not a good choice for Catholic support, a cabal of Government hacks quickly dug up dirt on the reporter; he resigned shortly thereafter.

Bloomberg is not Berlusconi, and he seems to be doing a pretty reasonable job. But Italy is not the country you want to be emulating in political matters. The more we see power (as in Italy) concentrated in a few hands--and the further the boundary between public and private power erodes--the more angry people will become and the more dysfunctional our system will be. Sometimes the revolt will come from the left, and sometimes from the right; many of these will be distasteful in many respects. But it is the sclerosis of the system that is the real problem rather than people's response to it: the longer the fix is delayed, the nastier things will get.

the ugly israeli

2009-11-08T15:30:00.002-05:00

My son and I watch "Numbers" on Friday night together. (Actually, I watch it while he plays computer games and checks the plot periodically, but that's another story.) For those who don't follow the show, it revolves around a hard-bitten FBI agent whose brother, a math genius, improbably comes up with solutions for each week's episode. Both characters and their father (Judd Hirsch) are identifiably Jewish, although they equally improbably date a series of very beautiful women, all of whom appear to be either Indian or African-American, and none of whom they seem to marry, although the math genius was recently engaged.

The bad guys are frequently foreign, and this week's was as an Israeli, supposedly a renegade Mossad agent who was involved in some kind of identity theft scheme. Israeli, but not Jewish, at least not the way it is usually perceived: by which I mean, he hand none of the negative characteristics--cleverness, obsession with money, etc.--associated with antisemitic stereotypes. Instead he was violent, maniacal, and thoroughly ruthless, albeit not sufficiently so to avoid being outsmarted in the end. The Ugly Israeli, that is; but by no means the Dirty Jew.

I suppose one should be happy to see the image change in this way. Given a choice between the Enemy of Humanity and a garden-variety thug, it's probably better to be the latter. But one can't help wondering: is this the best we can do? Has the Jewish future really come to a choice between intermarriage, on the one hand, and mindless, self-destructive violence on the other? Maybe one of the characters will meet an Israeli girl.

the right wins (for the moment) in new york 23

2009-11-01T17:28:00.003-05:00

The conservative wing, or torso, of the Republican Party seems to have won out as moderate Dede Scozzafava--an Italian name which appears to mean "shuffle the beans"--has dropped out of the congressional race in NY23 in favor of conservative Doug Hoffman. For anyone who's not a political junkie, Scozzafava is (or was) the party-endorsed candidate until a huge national campaign was launched on Hoffman's behalf by conservative activists, talk show hosts, and (of late) Republican politicians, notably Sarah Palin, causing her to suspend campaigning this weekend. The election now seems to be between Hoffman and Democrat Bill Owens, although the whole thing will probably be replayed next year.

As a moderate Republican myself, I probably should feel bad about Scozzafava dropping out, and indeed--as Newt Gingrich and others have pointed out--second-guessing local party officials is not usually the best way to win elections. That said I find entertaining, to say the least, the laments of liberals like Frank Rich complaining that Republican "Stalinists" (there's a thought) are committing political suicide by helping candidates who share their political views rather than those who don't. There is, for the record, nothing wrong with people outside a district supporting candidates of their choice: Democrats do it all the time, most notably in Connecticut, and indeed entire websites exist for the purpose of helping "progressive" candidates with external funds. Nor was Scozzafava merely a libertarian: she appears to have supported the stimulus package and (according to some reports) "card check" legislation as well as abortion, gay rights, and so forth.

What is particularly interesting is that Democrats should be so solicitous of Republican fortunes. The real fear, of course, is not that conservative Republicans will lose, but that they will win, denying Democrats the ability to claim "bipartisan" support for what are pretty clearly partisan, liberal policies. Indeed, while Scozzafava looked a sure loser, Hoffman has lately been surging in the district: what will Democrats say if he wins?

Note: Scozzafava endorsed the Democrat (Owens) today, which should make everyone believe whatever they previously believed even more strongly.

phils and yanks: on to game four

2009-11-01T17:21:00.005-05:00

Well the Phillies either win tonight or they're--should I say we're--in big trouble. I think they will, but they will have to up the level of their game, and intensity, considerably in order to do so. Oddly enough the Yankees, they of the $300 million payroll, are playing like they want it more than our home-town, working class heroes. Throughout the last few seasons the Phillies have played best when their backs were to the wall. They're not quite there, but they're close, let's hope they don't wait until it's too late.

On the subject of intensity: I don't have anything against Cliff Lee needing four days rest, but I can't help noting how things have changed. When I was a kid, Sandy Koufax pitched Game Seven on TWO days rest, and won. On the other hand, the Orioles beat him twice in one World Series, so no one--not Sabathia, not Burnett-- no one is unbeatable. A lesson the Phillies should remember in the big game tonight . . . and tomorrow.

Addendum: a friend points out that Koufax lost only once to the Orioles and Don Drysdale twice; also that three errors in one inning by Willie Davis were largely at fault. I think both Koufax and Drysdale pitched on two days rest on various occasions. Too late for the Phillies, anyway.

top 40 here we come

2009-10-28T17:05:00.003-04:00

A new survey, by the Princeton Review, puts my home law school (Rutgers-Camden) in the top 40 nationwide. The survey is admittedly less than scientific--I think it placed Cardozo over Yale--and it requires an amalgamation of individual categories to reach an overall score. On the other hand, unlike the prevailing US News Survey, it appears to have emphasized results rather than money spent chasing them. For example, the survey asked reasonable questions like "how often do you see your professors" and "what do you learn from them;" when students at ranking law schools predictably answered "never" and "not much," the rankings fell accordingly. As readers know, I don't think much of the whole survey business: but it's nice to have at least one on your side.

phillies head back to world series

2009-10-26T20:35:00.002-04:00

It's Fall and the Phillies are back in the World Series, against the New York Yankees no less, the first game (barring a snowstorm) this Wednesday evening. The Phils and Yankees haven't played in a World Series since 1950, when the stadiums were different, the players were all (or nearly all) white, and the Yankees won in four straight but difficult games, which probably won't happen again. Then again, they didn't play in November back then, either.

Ben Shpigel of the NY Times put it best, when he said that the Phillies have changed the paradigm. A city which is used to losing has become so confident of winning that facing two good closers (Huston Street and Jonathan Braxton) in the ninth inning seemed merely a speed bump. Whether this will be enough to overcome the freespending Yankees--or whether the Yankees will buy the Phillies team, or city, should they lose--remains to be seen. For now, it is simply something to look forward to, a moment when the historic rival cities get ready to clash on what, for once, looks to be a more or less equal playing field.

facetime on facebook

2009-10-05T19:45:00.003-04:00

I'm usually about ten years behind technologically--we got our first color TV around 1975, our first CD player around 1990, and I don't have the coordination to text and drive even where it is legal. So it was some trepidation that I opened a Facebook page a couple of months ago. So far, as the expression goes, so good.

I have to be honest about the limits of Facebook. You don't suddenly have any more friends just because you "friend" them at the site. (My sons have 526 and 318 "friends" respectively; I have 40, including two who have never responded.) Nor do people who were annoying, or that you annoyed, in real life suddenly become less so. If you track down your old girl friends, you'll quickly remember why they became that way.

Still, there is a value to the site, potentially a big one. Most of us have a few very good friends and a universe of people we are basically indifferent to. In between there is a middle category: colleagues at other law schools, people we went to college or on overseas trips with, friends whom we teetered on the edge of romance with but never quite went over. (This is different from old girl friends, although it is obviously a fuzzy line.) They are the kind of people, in short, who enriched our lives at one point but with whom we gradually lost touch over the years.

Facebook helps one to keep in touch with just this sort of person, and to rediscover something that is often missing in modern life: the art of light conversation, a sort of banter that is less than intellectual exchange but more than mere indifference. The presence of photographs, and the fact that most postings are open to third party viewers, enforces a sort of cheerfulness that is sometimes cloying but also vaguely reassuring in our polarized, put-down world. On blogs or e-mail, I think nothing of trashing the previous post, although my wife has taught me the value of the "send later" key. On Facebook, I find myself saying "How ya doin' Nancy" to an old friend who had been ill, or "Great photos!" to someone who posted the nth montage of their children and dogs. It's the kind of conversation people used to have with their neighbors, until TV and air conditioning drove everyone inside and your saw your neighbors only on Election Day.

There's something reassuring about all this, even if it frequently tends toward the trivial. We are told that technology has made us lonely and atomized: we connect only with people who are just like us, or only to attack those that we disagree with. Facebook represents a good faith if limited effort to correct the balance. Technology taketh away, but technology also giveth; even the socially challenged can feel part of a larger community once a day. In the 21st century, that isn't so bad.

international law and the law school curriculum

2009-09-26T14:32:00.002-04:00

The customary talk about law schools being more "practical" having subsided a bit, a related topic has surfaced concerning international and/or comparative law in the first year, or its requirement later in law school. Eric Posner, who apparently teaches international law, has taken a negative view on the subject. Others have been more positive, although the general tone remains skeptical.

I think it depends a lot on what we are talking about. Traditional international law courses, with their emphasis on sovereign immunity, law of the sea, and other esoteric topics, make very good electives but perhaps not a required course. Many comparative law casebooks, which get overly focused on theoretical matters, are probably in the same category. (Try keeping students awake through a discussion of the differences between French and German code-writing and you'll see what I mean.)

But what if one tried a different approach, which integrated comparative law into the regular first-year curriculum? Instead of simply learning American approaches to tax or torts or contracts, what if one included in each course a brief unit on foreign approaches, with a small (say, one or two credit) umbrella course or seminar to make sure students had the basic comparative law vocabulary to do this successfully? Something like this already happens at McGill, which teaches both common and civil law in the first year; indeed, it is already happening in American law schools, all but a very few of which teach Model Acts or Restatements rather than the law of the state in which they happen to be located. We don't call this comparative law, because it's part of our larger Federal system, but in essence that's what it is.

A little historical research might be of interest here. The trend toward teaching national law, or comparing results in different (American) jurisdictions, is relatively recent; all but a few national law schools traditionally taught their own local law. I am willing to bet that, when the switch was being made, many traditionalists bemoaned the changes, arguing--like Posner today--that only a few elitists would be interested in the law outside their state borders. I think this was an understandable but ultimately a losing argument then, and I think the same thing now.

israel, the UN, and the gaza war

2009-09-19T16:00:00.004-04:00

Richard Goldstone, the chief UN investigator, has predictably found that Israel (as well as Hamas) was guilty of significant atrocities in the last Gaza War. Predictably, not because Goldstone is biased or incompetent, as some have claimed, but rather because of institutional realities. Special prosecutors (investigators) nearly always find wrongdoing, if only to justify their existence: that Goldstone was working for the UN, and spoke primarily to Palestinian sources, pretty much guaranteed the rest. Israel is equally predictably attacking the report, with some Israelis and American supporters making the dubious claim that Goldstone is anti-Israel or a "self-hating Jew," whatever that might mean.

Having watched Israeli news coverage of the war, I have long believed that there was a disproportionate use of force by at least some Israeli commanders, and said so at the time. Still, it is hard to avoid a certain sympathy for the Israeli forces. Hamas having placed its launchers almost uniformly in populated areas--and having repeatedly attempted to lure the Israelis into booby-trapped civilian buildings--it would have taken a superhuman discipline for the Israelis not to have leveled the relevant targets, with whatever resulting casualties, instead. The report, which is written with the wisdom of hindsight, suggests that the commanders should have made a different tradeoff, presumably accepting (say) 10 of their own dead and wounded in order to avoid 50 or 100 dead Palestinians, depending on how the term "proportionate" is interpreted in this context. But any commander who did this would have been quickly relieved; American and British commanders in Iraq or Afghanistan have been considerably more trigger happy.

Still, these are factual points, which the Israelis would be able and willing to make if they conduct their own investigation, or (failing that) if they prepare a serious, point-by-point refutation of the Goldstone report. Instead, having failed to conduct a full-blown investigation, they are now compounding the propaganda defeat by making rather silly claims that Goldstone, who appears to be a Zionist and whose daughter speaks Hebrew, is somehow out to get them. A better strategy would be to present the situation that the Israeli commanders were up against and ask: would any other country, given the available options, have done differently?

Addendum: Israeli responses to the Goldstone report have been posted at the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs www.mfa.gov.il

is opposition to obama racist?

2009-09-16T16:30:00.004-04:00

Former President Jimmy Carter, who sometimes seems more lively now than he did as President, has opened a loud shouting match with his suggestion that right-wing opposition to Obama is tinged with racism. Maureen Dowd in the Times took a similar position, suggesting that an implicit comma came at the end of Joe Wilson's "You lie,"followed by the word "boy." Republicans have expressed outrage and called it a diversion from real issues. Is it?

It's hard to deny that there's some racism on the American right . . . and everywhere else on the political spectrum. Signs like "stay away from our children," which greeted Obama's speech to public school students, seem hard to explain on other grounds. And it may not be a coincidence that Wilson comes from South Carolina, a center of Southern resistance since before 1860.

Yet a few facts suggest that the charge may be overstated. Consider:

1. In the last election about 43 percent of whites voted for Obama, including over 40 percent of white males, the first time that had happened since 1976. (By way of contrast, under 5 percent of black voters voted for John McCain). It's possible that there are two groups of white voters, one more tolerant and the other less so; or that an even larger number of whites would have voted for (say) Hillary Clinton if she were running. And Obama's white numbers, while higher than previous Democrats at a national level, appear to have been somewhat lower in southern and border states. Still, it seems odd that a country plagued by racism would give record votes to an African-American or mixed-race candidates, or that racial attitudes--which tend to change very slowly--would shift in a matter of a few months.

2. The arguments made against Obama--that he is socialist, European in orientation, outside the cultural mainstream--are nasty and sometimes childish. But they are not appreciably different from those made against George McGovern, Michael Dukakis, or Bill and Hillary Clinton, and (if polls are accurate) have if anything been less successful against him than his predecessors. Even the caricatures of Obama--signs depicting him as Hitler, The Joker, etc.--don't really have much to do with racial stereotypes, but are consistent with previous efforts to depict liberals as weird, foreign, or dictatorial going back to the 1950s. They're also not that different from caricatures of Bush, Nixon, and other Republicans, but that's another story.

3. It's true that the effort to demonize Obama has been faster, cruder, and better organized than those against Clinton and other liberals. But this is part of a general decline in civility and an increase in the number of partisan outlets rather than being attributable to his race. The effort to demonize Bush was similarly more extreme than similar efforts against Reagan and other Republicans (Nixon was disliked by so many people, for so many reasons, that he merits his own category).

I must add a personal note. I spend a lot of my time doing research on antisemitism, especially the fascist kind, which was not merely verbal but direct, physical, and ultimately lethal in millions of cases. One of the saddest things to me is the way cavalier charges of antisemitism or "self-hatred" (the equivalent charge against Jews) have taken much of the sting out of antisemitism as a concept, so that people who really do hate Jews often escape our attention. I would hate to see the same thing happen to racism in America--and yet I fear that it has. If someone isn't a racist, they shouldn't be accused. Even if they are, the accusation of racism is more likely to lock them in to existing behavior patterns than change them for the better. There has to be a better way.

Addendum: Obama himself has given an interview in which he expresses doubt that all or most opposition to him is based on race. That won't necessarily stop others from claiming it, though. Stay tuned.

"you lie"

2009-09-10T20:18:00.002-04:00

Well a new low in civility at Obama's speech last night. It never looks good to call the President a liar, even worse when your neighbors are Blackberry-ing (personal? professional? video games?) during the same speech. Putting it in the present ("you lie") rather than the present progressive ("you're lying") tense, which might at least imply that he sometimes told the truth, makes it all the rawer.

Lost in the understandable condemnation of this outburst is the fact that the President, if not intentionally lying, said a lot of things that, well, strained credbility in his speech. Leading in this category is the repeated assertion that we will allow everyone to keep or improve their existing health benefits, extend the same benefits to numerous others, and it's won't cost us anything; or at least not so much as to add a single nickel to the Federal deficit over the next few decades. It's hard to believe that anyone believes this, especially since Obama has been continually vague about funding sources, and most of the ones he has supported have gone nowhere in Congress.

There was also some, um, very clever phrasing in the President's speech. For example, he said (in rough paraphrase) that "no Federal money" would fund abortions under his reform plan. But of course, most of the plan consists of incentives and/or requirements for private plans to cover additional people: even the so-called public option could be set up in such a way that, technically speaking, it was spending "private" rather than "public" funds. Much of this additional insurance likely would cover abortions, of which Obama is the staunchest defender ever to occupy the White House: hardly a great comfort to abortion opponents.

And Cong. Wilson wasn't the only person to call someone a liar, either. Obama effectively called all the Republicans the same thing, for raising "death panels" and other issues in the debate. But the death panels argument, as I've noted before, is simply an inelegant way of dramatizing the threat that health care reform will be paid for by reductions in senior coverage--hardly an aberrant idea, especially since Administration spokesman have been hinting at exactly that for as long as anyone can remember. That Obama wants to reduce only "wasteful" spending is hardly a comfort if you are part of the waste.

Perhaps Wilson should take some time to watch the House of Commons on C-Span during the next off-season. When Obama makes dubious claims, he can try disparaging hand motions or wait for question time, at which he can state that the President "lives in a fantasy world in which this member prefers not to enter," or words to that effect. Or if he is really peeved he can say what Prime Minister Begin once said, in English, in the Israeli Knesset: "The gentleman is a liar; the gentleman is a liar." As the British know, it's all in how you say it.

what obama should do

2009-09-06T20:28:00.005-04:00

A lot of Republicans are having fun watching President Obama's slide in the polls, and especially his problems with health care. But the slide is not especially good news for the country, or even for the Republicans, who are still a good way from being ready to share power again. So, as a sort of public service, I am offering my advice to the President on what is going wrong and what he should do differently.

1. I think Obama needs to draw a line in the sand with respect to the health care proposal. It would be better for him to lose than to compromise what is obviously an important principle to him, i.e., universal or near-universal health care coverage including--if not a public option--something that accomplishes much the same thing. The issue is no longer the substance of his proposal but his own credibility. If his opponents can make him back down on his biggest domestic proposal, they will own him for the rest of his term.

2. Assuming that he gets at least some version of health care, I think he needs to slow down the flow of legislation considerably and focus on a few attainable goals, preferably things that are more bipartisan and less expensive in nature. He needs, in other words, to tack to the center rather aggressively. Legislation that appeared attuned to the ongoing economic crisis, like further reform of the housing or financial markets, would make a decent start. Cap and trade would be quixotic in this atmosphere.

3. (Most important) He needs to bring a senior counselor into the White House, like Clinton did with David Gergen or Reagan with Howard Baker, who will have credibility on Capitol Hill and free him to do the things--develop big initiatives and sell them to the broader public--that he does best. The current combination of an above-the-fray President and an aggressive but relatively narrow core of Chicago-based advisors is not sustainable in the long run. George Mitchell, who is not going to get a Middle East peace deal anyway, is one choice; Leon Panetta, who is probably sorry he took the CIA job, is another. Hillary Clinton is a desperation choice.

The good news for Obama is that his travails have come early; he has far too long to go to be considered a failure yet. But the next few weeks may determine whether he turns out more like Jimmy Carter (ineffective) or Bill Clinton (maddening but gets the job done). One of the most important tests of leadership is to recognize one's own limitations and compensate for them. We'll see if he does.

ted kennedy 1932-2009

2009-08-29T09:43:00.006-04:00

I have a very particular take on the death of Ted Kennedy, who was the last Democratic presidential candidate that I worked for as a student (in 1980) and the second to last (the other being Bill Clinton) that I worked for, at all. I concur in the encomia being given Sen. Kennedy as a legislator, leader, and ideological symbol, particularly in his last decades when age and a fortuitous second marriage appear to have turned his life around. But he and his family also caused enormous and to some degree irreparable damage to progressive causes in this country, and I think that story needs to be told, as well.

To understand what I mean, it is necessary to think back to what liberalism meant 40 years ago. Last year our faculty hosted Peter Edelman, one of the "best and brightest" of the original Kennedy era [although associated with RFK more than his brothers] and currently a law professor in DC. He is also famous as the husband of Marian Wright Edelman, and for leaving the Clinton Administration rather than support an essentially conservative welfare bill.

What struck me about Edelman was two things. First--while plainly very liberal--he was both earnest and open-minded in his presentation, taking seriously questions from liberal, radical, and conservative faculty members with equal aplomb. Second, and perhaps more memorably, he was something of a square, even a stuffed shirt, looking like he stepped out of Mad Men except for a few additional lines on his forehead. It is difficult to remember that this was once the universal face of liberalism: earnest, committed, but not in the least culturally threatening, making one feel that liberal policies were nothing but the logical extension of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and other leaders of the past. Had I listened to him long enough, I would have been ready to sign up.

The Kennedys changed all that, and Ted Kennedy most of all. It is not just his personal behavior which, it must be noted, did not change after Chappaquiddick but only his early 60s when he married a much younger woman. It was the cult of personality that attached itself to him, to the Kennedy family, and (if to a lesser extent) to Clinton and Obama after him, so that progressive or liberal politics became defined less by clear ideological guideposts than by personal loyalty to one or more charismatic leaders.

This combination of self-indulgent personal behavior and cult-of-personality politics--which are of course closely related--convinced a sizable portion of the American population that the Democratic Party was simply outside the cultural mainstream, a party of spoiled children (and adults) that was unworthy of their support under virtually any circumstances. I still remember campaigning for Kennedy in New Hampshire in the winter of 1980 against Jimmy Carter. Some people would welcome you to their homes and tell you their memories of JFK and RFK which at that point were only a decade or two old. But others would slam the door in your face, as if to say, he is so counter to my understanding of myself and my family that there is nothing even to talk about.

I think that we see the good and the bad parts of this legacy in today's politics. There is plainly a great deal of idealism in the Obama Administration . . . together with a leader who, unlike Kennedy or Clinton, appears to have grown up in his first rather than second half-century. But there is also a powerful distrust of government and political leaders, and the sense of an unbridgeable gap between sides, with a substantial portion of the country--a third, 40 percent, the precise number varies with time--that has more or less permanently identified liberalism with the undermining of traditional values and a threat to the moral order. There are obviously many causes for this, but the lack of personal integrity on the part of Kennedy and his heirs--and the sneaking suspicion among many that there was a link between their personal and political indulgences--were an important part of the glue that held it together. That too is Ted Kennedy's legacy, and worth remembering as the country moves on.

still more on civility and the health care debate

2009-08-24T08:13:00.003-04:00

I have a pretty small blog, so when I get seven comments in a few days, you know that I've touched a nerve. I was moved particularly by the comments from Dan Shaviro, who noted his efforts to engage conservative intellectual arguments on health care, and Frank Pasquale, who described the role of his Catholic faith in the formulation of his positions on health care and other social justice issues. It is possible that I was unduly harsh or dismissive of their positions.

The problem is that it is not only them. In Saturday's New York Times Charles Blow had a column "Masters and Slaves of Deception"--a title plainly chosen to inject racial tension into an essentially nonracial issue--in which he describes conservative opponents of health care reform as "crazies" and suggesting that there was no point negotiating with their "cabal." Joe Klein chimed in in Time magazine, calling Republican positions "obscene" and "heinous" and saying that it was difficult to maintain a two-party system when one of the two major parties "has been overrun by nihilists." This sort of stuff is being written by liberal academics, journalists, bloggers, and so on ever day.

I don't think health care is an easy issue, and I think it is likely that we will have some sort of national health care program sooner of later. Nor do I think liberals are the only, or even the primary, ones to debase the discussion. (A Google search for "right-wing crazies health care" generates 1 million hits, while "Obama extraterrestrial" generates three times than number, albeit some of them in parody mode.) But the people who think Obama is from outer space are not, by and large, law professors or respected journalists, while the people who call conservatives names frequently are. Aside from their rampant illogic--if we are dealing with a tiny cabal why is the bill so difficult to pass--this sort of talk it is wholly destructive of debate and discussion on any level, and not only with respect to health care. Its primary damage is not to the right, which largely ignores it, but to the left itself, which rather than fight for things it believes in (note the inexplicable cave on the "public option") appears to prefer blaming others for its failings. Here's hoping the debate will be more constructive in the fall.

more on civility and the health care debate

2009-08-20T16:46:00.006-04:00

Even for someone who grew up in New York, the health care debate--and the more general political discussion--is getting nastier and nastier. As I've noted both here and at my political blog [www.pa2010.com], much of this is indisputably coming from the right. But a matching and in many respects more insidious kind of escalation has lately been coming from the left, including many academics, as well.

Last week Frank Pasquale, a professor at Seton Hall Law School, posted "Of Rodeo Clowns and Health Care Despair" at the Balkinization blog. In it he referred to several arguments being made by health care opponents as "completely unhinged" and quoted another writer (Steven Pearlstein) saying that "Republican leaders and their ideological fellow-travelers" have become "political terrorists, willing to say or do anything to prevent the country from reaching a consensus" on health care. Dan Shaviro, in "Start Making Sense," refers to the "Republicans' hateful lying about death panels" adding that his arguments are aimed at those who are "sane and believe in civil society" but that "[t]he rest, apparently a large majority of their number, do not bear discussing." (In fairness, Shaviro also devotes substantial energy to discussing more substantive objections, including adverse selection and moral hazard, which he distinguishes from more emotional positions.) Writing not about health care but economic policy, Neil Buchanan at Dorf on Law describes Newt Gingrich, a senior Republican figure, as "peddling . . . outright lies and distortions" adding "there is precious little evidence that he has ever had an innovative idea in his life." In other posts he has referred to Gingrich as suffering from "partisan Tourette's" syndrome and suggested that he (Buchanan) would uncover the "excuses" of those who opposed his views on progressive taxation.

Language of this kind obviously won't convince anyone who doesn't agree with the authors: it is probably best understood as a metaphorical letting off steam in the midst of a heated debate that is not going particularly well for one's side. But it is enormously damaging, in a much more longstanding way--especially given the sources--than anything being said by opponents of the health care package. To see this, let's consider a few basic points:

1. There is nothing fundamentally irrational, insane, or otherwise illogical about opposition to the President's health care plan.--At a time of record unemployment and large and growing budget deficits, President Obama has called for dramatic expansion of the Federal Government's role in health care, while at the same time rejecting the funding mechanism (taxation of all or a portion of employer-provided health benefits) most often proposed as a way to pay for it. In the absence of any other obvious way to finance it, senior citizens and others have not unreasonably concluded that much of it will ultimately be paid for by reducing benefits that they now receive, a suspicion that has been further encouraged by repeated comments from Administration figures about the need to rein in, control, or prevent waste and abuse in Medicare and other existing health care programs. Their fears on this score may not reflect great generosity of spirit--one can make a pretty good case that more should be spent on younger and poorer people and less on older and wealthier ones--but they are hardly irrational and, indeed, no more selfish or mean-spirited than the behavior of any other group threatened with similar consequences. The allegation that these people are somehow being used by doctors, insurance companies, or other "special" interests is especially bizarre since most special interests in fact support the bill.

2. The attempt to divert attention from the underlying reasons for opposition to the bill, and focus it on a handful of rowdy demonstrators, is both empirically unconvincing and has distasteful historical precedents.--Every major poll shows large and growing opposition to the health care proposal and President Obama's overall performance, a skepticism which (at least on the first count) crosses party and regional lines. To attempt to discredit literally tens of millions of opponents based on the rowdy behavior of a few hundred demonstrators is--in addition to being bad politics--logically incoherent and morally untenable. It is also, to say the least, historically ironic: as several authors have pointed out, this is precisely the argument that was made against Vietnam War protesters and (earlier) civil rights demonstrators, who likewise had their share of rowdies but also had winning arguments and (eventually) majority support.

3. Even the most bizarre and extreme arguments being made by protesters, if exaggerated, contain important kernels of truth that should not be dismissed by policy-makers.--The two arguments most commonly cited as irrational are (i) the "death panels" suggestion and (ii) the distinction between Medicare and socialism (as in, no socialized medicine but don't touch my Medicare benefits). Obviously, these are not arguments that would be made by law professors. But neither are they wholly incoherent. The death panels argument reflects, if crudely, the fear that the new legislation will set spending priorities in a way that puts older and weaker people at the bottom of the barrel: hardly an idle fear given the rules in other national health care systems and the indifference that liberals have shown toward religious values on matters ranging from abortion to end-of-life issues. The socialism vs. Medicare argument--which I doubt anyone except President Obama has actually made--reflects a not unreasonable distinction between elderly people, who are uniquely vulnerable and may not have the ability otherwise to provide for their own health care, and younger, healthier people whose tradeoff between security and independence may be quite different. For similar reasons society provides financial protection for the elderly (social security) that is not extended, and which no one seriously proposes extending, to the remaining population. Again, this may or may not be a convincing argument--one could argue that children are more vulnerable than old people, and certainly a better investment--but neither is it irrational, incoherent, or reflective of a false consciousness.

Why do liberal commentators persist in a smear campaign that is both logically unconvincing and unlikely to gain them much political traction? It may help to reflect upon the life experiences of today's liberals and their view of recent history.

I think that most contemporary liberals--especially in academics--have never been exposed to serious conservative opinion, other than the law-and-economics version which is (in my view) more a bastard version of marxism than real conservatism, anyway. In particular, few of them have any grasp of the worldview identified with the evangelical and Catholic churches and their very real sense of Government as a dictatorial, anti-religious force in contemporary life. Unable to comprehend the underlying moral bases for opposition to abortion, gay marriage, or an overbearing Federal Government, they tend to place the opposition into categories they are more comfortable with--race, gender, economic self-interest--and attack it on that basis. Indeed, many younger liberals are not even comfortable with economic issues, seeing all opposition as based on "racism" or "bigotry" and the evil effects of television advertising.

One most also consider the liberal interpretation of recent political history. Eight years of the Bush Administration were rendered tolerable only by the sense of its supposed illegitimacy and the hope of something better after. The notion that Obama is less than a savior--that he is following a trajectory not essentially different from that of Carter or Clinton before him--is simply too much to handle. Unable to face the increasingly obvious fact that most Americans don't share their agenda, they turn to conspiracy theories.

What is most chilling about this kind of rhetoric--what I think makes it ultimately worse than anything the Republicans are doing--is its effect on young people. At the end of the day, nobody thinks that the town hall meetings are a model of political behavior. But today's students see their own teachers--the people they look to as role models--using words like crazy, unhinged, or liars to describe people that they disagree with on domestic policy issues. They see careers advanced, and reputations made, using terms that a fourteen year-old would be punished for using at the dining room table. What is going to be their future, and what will the effect of all this name-calling be when today's politics have long since been forgotten?

still grating after all these years

2009-08-17T17:15:00.004-04:00

We're on the market for a new car--my '98 minivan has 170,000+ miles and doesn't qualify as a clunker, I'm sure, only because of the same plot designed to destroy Medicare and substitute Arabic for English in our schools. We're leaning toward a Prius or another Subaru, but being a fair-minded person I thought I would take a look at the comparable GM offerings as well. What I saw was, well, not exactly encouraging.

The good news is that the car in question (the Malibu) doesn't seem far off the mark of other Japanese or American companies. It looks nice, has decent ratings, and offers a hybrid version that's behind the Prius but ahead of most other brands. The price is the same or a little bit lower than the competition.

The problem is how they try to sell it. One would think that a company that was close to going, or had actually gone, out of business would think about changing its way of doing business. Instead, the moment I walked in, I remembered why I had stopped buying American cars more than a decade ago. Whereas a Toyota dealer can't wait to show you the product (if indeed there are any left), here they seemed anxious to talk about anything but. I was asked my name, address, "time frame," and price range and regaled with incentives and option packages before I was allowed to approach the car. When I asked how it compared to other models--the answer to which, as I said, is not too badly--the dealer shifted the conversation to how expensive the others were, as if only someone who couldn't afford a Japanese car would even be there.

It's easy to be critical. I would get testy too if I worked in a showroom where no one came in all day long (only two other people showed up, both for service, the whole time I was there). But if this is how they are doing business it's hard to see how they will turn things around. It is an overused term, but there really is such a thing as culture: national, regional, and corporate. It's a very hard thing to change: and first, you have to try.

reelin' in the decades

2009-08-12T22:11:00.002-04:00

There are perhaps six groups that I would take the train to New York on a 90 degree day to see, but Steely Dan is certainly one of them, so when the invitation came--free tickets, at that--I was on my way. It's hard to explain why I like Steely Dan so much, although perhaps easier if you lived through the 70s. The 70s were a contrary decade, and Steely Dan were the ultimate contrarians. Everyone else did rock, so they toyed with jazz. Everyone else sang about love and fulfillment, so they sang about prostitutes, ne'er-do-wells, and aging men (thirty was old then) who tried to hit on college-age women, usually without success. Everyone else gave concerts, so they quit touring and became a studio band. Indeed, from the early 80s to the mid 90s they ceased to exist, altogether, finally coming together again to do new albums, give concerts, and otherwise amuse their many fans only in the last 15 years.

I saw Steely Dan on my fortieth birthday, in 1996, when they were pushing 50; now I'm 50-plus and they're 60 or so. In the 90s they were mixing their old classics with new materials, some of it actually quite good. This time they stuck mostly to the classics, doing a whole album ("The Royal Scam") together with hits from their other 70s albums. Whether because of the new, elaborate arrangements--there must have been 15 people on the stage for most of the show--or because sound systems have improved in the past 30 years, the songs actually sounded better than they had in the originals. When they launched into a double encore of "My Old School" and "Reelin' in the Years," two particularly sardonic, college-y ballads, the crowd of aging hipsters was on its literal and metaphorical feet.

On the way home I turned on my Blackberry and noted a strange coincidence. On the very night that police had to restrain protesters at several "town hall" meetings on health care, two aging, contrarian rockers had given a concert, in the heart of the radically chic West Side, with nary a security man in sight. What is the country coming to, I wondered, when rock concerts are safe and tidy and political meetings are dangerous? Perhaps people simply have a certain quotient of contrariness to express and they do so in different ways. Or perhaps the people at the town halls should listen to more Steely Dan.

race, class, and the health care proposal

2009-08-07T09:15:00.002-04:00

Lately there have been a spate of charges and counter-charges regarding race in politics and, especially, criticisms of the Obama Administration. First came Gates-Gate where the race issue was admittedly hard to avoid. Then came posters showing Obama as Heath Ledger as the Joker with the word "socialism" in the background--a stretch, I think, but perhaps with some hidden racial overtones. Now Paul Krugman, in the NY Times, has written that the angry behavior of opponents of Obama's health plan is driven by "the same cultural and racial anxiety that’s behind the “birther” movement," part of the "angry white voter" strategy that dates back to Richard Nixon. (Comments on Krugman's column were closed by 9:15 this morning, suggesting that the angry people may have included some Times readers.)

I may be missing something, but I find it awfully hard to see racial overtones in the health care debate. What I see, instead, is incipient class warfare: the 70 or 80 percent of people who are more-or-less-satisfied with their health care are not particularly anxious to share it with the 10 or 20 or 30 additional percent (depending on the proposal) who would benefit from the Administration's proposals. This isn't particularly admirable, but it was surely foreseeable, particularly as the entrenched groups are concentrated and organized and the challengers are diffuse and demoralized. (Where is Mancur Olson when you need him?) That Obama has been unwilling to take on the largest entrenched interest (unions) by calling for taxes on excessive health benefits, choosing instead to pretend that we could have expanded coverage without any significant sacrifice, has not helped things either.

The surprising thing to me is not the behavior of the health care opponents but that the Administration's supporters have not been better prepared for it. Part of it, I think, has to do with the education and sensibility of what passes for today's political left. People have been doing identity politics for so long that they seem honestly unable to confront what is essentially an economic or class issue. The marxist nostrum that everything is about class has been turned on its head: everything is ultimately about race, gender, or personal identity, even when at first it seems otherwise. So liberals talk about Skip Gates or Heath Ledger while conservatives rally people toward their basic economic interests. In elite circles the former may triumph. But as a long term political strategy, it's nothing short of bizarre.

the empire state strikes back

2009-08-02T16:07:00.002-04:00

I went to Cornell in the '70s, and taught there for a semester in the '90s, so upstate New York is not entirely unfamiliar to me. Still, it's different to vacation somewhere than to work there. For one thing, you have a car and free time, the latter of which I mostly lacked as a teacher (and both as a student). For another thing, it's warm, which happens maybe a week or two during the academic year. A trip back thus brings memories, but also prompts one to notice things which either have changed in the interim or which--being there all the time--you simply didn't notice the first time around.

One of the first things you notice is cultural. People, which is to say strangers, actually say hello in upstate New York, something which would probably cause you to seek police assistance in Philadelphia or New York City. There is also a certain live-and-let-live attitude which seems almost quaint by big city standards. At the Smart Monkey cafe in Ithaca, a vegan menu and environmentally-oriented magazines predominate, but one can also order a hamburger (on a natural roll, to be sure) if one desires. Not very consistent, ideologically speaking, but it does win points on the tolerance scale: perhaps the greater physical space provides opportunity for more cultural flexibility, as well.

A second, related point relates to political diversity and the limitations of the red state/blue state theory. Upstate colleges, and Cornell in particular, have always been more green than red: environmental consciousness runs strong but it's hard to find a copy of the New York Times, let alone serious left-wing publications. With the passage of time, and the settling of more alumni (or pseudo-alumni) in the college towns, this has morphed into a culture that at once liberal in its social attitudes but almost quaintly small town in its attachment to family, outdoor activity, and such quintessentially American pursuits as country (or pseudo-country) music. While eating breakfast at the Ithaca Bakery, I tried my hand at dividing the grown-up hippies from the beer-drinking and pickup truck crowd, until I realized that many of the hippies were the beer-drinking and pickup truck crowd: the urban distinctions simply didn't work in a small-city, postradical environment. Presumably Obama did well in Ithaca, but Bush might well enjoy the music better.

Which is not to say that cleavages don't remain. Across the football line in Canandaigua, where people shop at Wegman's and root for the Buffalo Bills, miles of strip development (and a beautiful beach) sat alongside a largely forlorn downtown and what was obviously a great deal of economic stagnation. We snacked at an all-crepes cafe with wonderful espresso and breakfasted at a greasy spoon with a one-page menu: but the middle seemed difficult to find. While cultural distinctions have blurred in twenty-first century America, it seems that economic distinctions have if anything gotten wider: or perhaps that cultural tolerance requires one first have a job. A point which seems obvious, on reflection, but which it sometimes takes a vacation to notice.

the future of law schools

2009-07-25T20:35:00.002-04:00

Rahm Emanuel has said that one should never waste a crisis, and the powers that be in American law schools appear to be taking this to heart. Every day or two, there is a new comment to the effect that the "gravy train" is over for law professors, who will hereon out have to earn their keep like everyone else in an increasingly harsh society. Paul Caron, the author of TaxProf blog, talks about the need to apply "MoneyBall" principles to law professors. JoAnne Epps, dean at Temple, says they need to reduce theory and focus on practical training. Students, understandably frustrated by an awful job market, are if anything more hostile.

Since I teach at a middle- (OK, upper middle-) range law school, and make less money than anyone I went to law school with, I'm not quite sure what gravy train people are talking about. But I have a strong feeling of deja vu, together with a sneaking suspicion that--as Mr. Emanuel's remark suggests--a lot of people are using the economic crisis to push policies that they would have supported in any event. More specifically:

1. I simply don't buy, and have never bought, the "practical lawyering" argument. At least 90 percent of law school is devoted to teaching practical subjects, with pure theory relegated to a few advanced seminars. The difference is that the better law schools, like the better schools in any profession, try to emphasize difficult, cutting edge issues rather than easy or safe ones, and to hire professors who are cutting-edge thinkers rather than local practitioners looking for an easier life. This is why the more "theoretical" law schools almost invariably do a better job placing their students than the ones who supposedly specialized in the "real world" of law, and why many or most of the "practical" teachers use teaching materials prepared by people at these supposedly out-of-touch schools. The idea that law schools should be more practical is thus something like the statement that pitching is 75 percent of baseball: people say it, but on one acts like they really believe it.

2. The American university, for all its faults, remains unquestionably the world leader, precisely because of its intellectual creativity and willingness to invest resources in long-term projects. By contrast, American law firms (and much of American business) have adopted a short-term, "eat what you kill" philosophy that has come close to bankrupting the country on a financial and a moral level. For the law firms to tell the universities "Be more like us" is at best unconvincing and at work incredible chutzpah.

3. The actual policies that result from the hard-nosed, "moneyball" approach to law school--i.e., more centralized management, the increasing reliance on adjuncts and other nontenured faculty (why pay someone $150,000 a year when you can cover their classes with part-timers at one third the cost?), and eventually a full-blown assault on the tenure system and the concept of faculty independence/faculty governance altogether--are, conveniently, precisely what university managers have been trying to implement for several years before the crisis, anyway. At my own law school, we do less and less tenure-track hiring, and the university (citing the state's economic crisis) has refused to pay previously negotiated raises to faculty members. But it had money to pay $300,000 to a new dean at a sister campus, who was politically connected and had no significant scholarly background; the salary for the new "chancellor" of our campus, who is also politically connected, is sufficiently high that no one is even willing to talk about it. It goes without saying that the schools applying these tactics--witness the University of California system and several of the midwestern state universities--almost invariably decline in quality, having been overtaken by other schools who hire their best "theoretical" talent away from them.

What I think is really happening is that the crisis is re-dividing American law schools--not to say the entire country--into "have" and "have not" categories, with the "haves" continuing to operate on the research-driven, independent-faculty concept and the "have nots" facing increasing pressure to adopt a low-wage, centrally managed, essentially trade school model. The none-too-thinly-disguised message to students at these latter schools is to give up on asking difficult questions and accept their role as cogs in a soulless money-making, or at this point money-losing, machine. The economic crisis will eventually pass, but that damage resulting from this conformist and mediocre view of legal education may be more difficult to clean up.

last british world war one veteran dies

2009-07-25T20:24:00.003-04:00

Harry Patch, the last living British soldier from World War I, has died at age 111. There is apparently one living US soldier, Frank Buckles, who is 108 and lives in West Virginia. I am not sure about other countries. People like this are extreme cases, but it does serve to bring home the extraordinary losses of war. Patch participated in several major battles, so it is likely that several of his comrades died over 90 years ago. No Churchill, no Beatles, no Princess Diana; nothing. This is not to say that the cause wasn't worth it, only that there are not many human activities which are paid for by people who haven't really started living yet: this one is.

On a rather more trivial note, it makes me feel older, too. When I was a child anyone over 40 seemed to be a World War II veteran, and World War I veterans were younger, sometimes quite a bit younger, than veterans of the second war are now. My grandfather was actually too old, or in any event too infirm, to serve in it. We found a letter that he wrote to his brother, who did serve, urging him in the polite language of the era to be careful what women he hung out with. That was my grandfather: always offering advice, some solicited, some not. Now I write a blog and offer opinions that some people want, and some don't. Some things never change.

dreams from obama

2009-07-21T21:30:00.004-04:00

I took advantage of visiting day at camp to finish reading Barack Obama's autobiographical book, Dreams From My Father, which he wrote in the mid-1990s. (Obama's second, more overtly political book, The Audacity of Hope, is better known but considerably less interesting).

The book is surprisingly good, if not as literature, then as an insight into the President's values, mindset, and character. The story is divided into three parts: "Origins," which describes Obama's youth in Hawaii, Indonesia, and other locations; "Chicago," which describes his work as a community organizer; and Kenya, which describes his trip to his father's homeland in the late 1980s (before law school) and what he discovered there. The first part is by the far the most entertaining, describing the contradictions in Obama's family and upbringing with wit and humor; surely it is the only book in which a presidential candidate admits that he tried every drug he could get his hands on and avoided others out of fear rather than morality. By contrast the second and third parts drag a bit--I found myself putting it down at times to read newspapers and other fare. But it is worth the wait, for in the last thirty pages or so Obama comes to terms with his father's limitations, learning lessons that are vital to understanding his approach to politics and his presidency.

What Obama learns is that his father, although extremely intelligent, failed to accomplish his dreams because he lacked the political and human skills to match his intellect; more precisely, because he clung to inflexible, outmoded values rather than attaching himself to a larger community that could mediate the tensions between old and new in a constructive manner. Obama himself puts it this way, describing his thought upon viewing his father's grave:

"Oh, Father, I cried. There was no shame in your confusion. . . . There was only shame in the silence fear had produced. . . . It was the silence that betrayed us. . . . [Western technology] could be absorbed only alongside a faith born out of hardship, a faith that wasn't new, that wasn't black or white or Christian or Muslim but that pulsed in the heart of the first African village and the first Kansas homestead--a faith in other people."

I think this passage is extremely important because it reveals a number of repeating patterns in Obama's thought. The first, reflecting his experience in Africa, Hawaii, and Indonesia, is that human connections are more important than abstract beliefs: that there is an essential core of human values which is common across religions and cultures and can be appealed to notwithstanding these differences. This is an extremely noble sentiment, and accurately reflects the direction of progressive thought in our era, but can be dangerous in dealing with places (the Middle East, the Republican Party) that have not necessarily signed on.

The second is that flexibility, compromise, and adjustment--dare I say feminine values--are ultimately the key to human happiness rather than stubborn adherence to principles however deeply held. This is, interestingly, almost precisely the opposite lesson that George W. Bush learned from his father, whose presidency was believed to have failed because he did not adhere to principle on taxes and other matters. Once again, Obama's view is closer to that of progressive, postmodern thinking on politics and other matters: but it may result in an exaggerated willingness, even desire to compromise on principles (in health care, Iran, etc.) where they would better be held to.

I don't want to overstate the parallels between Bush and Obama: the latter obviously has far more self-awareness, and his substantive values are almost precisely opposite in nature. But it is interesting that each of them--both raised primarily by their mothers--is so obsessed, in his own way, with righting his father's perceived mistakes. In Bush's case many observers believe that he wound up less successful than his progenitor. Will Obama do better?

how i spent my summer vacation

2009-07-16T09:29:00.003-04:00

Owing to the summer season and multiple deaths in our extended family, I've been involved in more small talk than usual lately. One of the questions that often comes up at my age is what are your kids doing for the summer, or (if they're out of college) what are they doing altogether? The answers are often ideologically inspiring and yet vaguely predictable. My daughter is in Central America building housing for the poor. My son works for an environmental group in New York. My daughter did volunteer work for Obama and is now doing Teach for America.

There's nothing bad about any of this, and a lot of it is downright admirable. But it's hard to avoid a few difficult questions.

First, who is supporting all of these people? While some live modestly, it's hard to believe that all of these middle class kids have suddenly given up restaurants, decent clothing, and health care. Either parents (directly or indirectly), or charitable donors (supported by tax deductions) are likely helping out: hardly a great evil, but difficult to sustain indefinitely.

Second, how much good can be accomplished by people armed at most with liberal arts degrees? When I did volunteer work--and talked to people who did more--the pressing need was always for specialists (doctors, engineers, speech therapists) who could help with the technical and (yes) boring problems that real people have in the real world. The fantasy of an idealistic Yale student teaching Third World women about health and birth control is an appealing one: but it usually remains a fantasy.

Third is a more philosophical problem: what happened to growing up? When I was in college I worked at Burger King, as a camp counselor, and as a clerk/typist at the Public Health Service. I wasn't very good at any of these jobs, and they did little or nothing for my resume. But I learned an awful lot about the real world: what is was like to have a job with low pay and few if any real legal rights; what sexual harassment was, although no one yet used the term; most important, that people who looked and sounded different from me, and had little or no formal education, could be much smarter and more effective than I was in real-world situations. I also learned the simple joy of earning part of one's own support and spending it, wisely or not, on the things that kids spend money on. It's possible, even likely, that people learn similar lessons on more idealistic jobs. But people who do homeless volunteer work don't actually become homeless, don't share the experience of the "other" in the informal, totally un-self conscious way I shared the experience of others at Burger King or the PHS. Instead they are there to "help" people: an honorable goal but one fraught with danger on so many levels.

I worry also where these kids will be in 10 or 15 years. I remember a lot of my own colleagues who said they would never work for law firms and devoted their 20s to various kinds of public interest work. After a few years--seeing the world more or less the same as it was when they started out--they decided they would "change the world from the inside" and started down the corporate path. So here are I am, thirty years later, teaching law school and with a spouse who works for a charitable foundation while they pile up money on Wall Street or what's left of it. I'm not saying this will happen to all of them or even that I will take much satisfaction if it does. But I think we are setting a lot of people up for a lot of disappointment that a dollop of realism, and a chance to be kids, might go a long way toward correcting.

sotomayor's testimony

2009-07-15T09:19:00.005-04:00

I lean against the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, who I think is a decent but not especially outstanding judge who has been in the right place at the right time for most of her career. Since her nomination seems assured, however, I think her testimony is most interesting for what it says about the confirmation process and the likely future of the Supreme Court. For the liberals who support her, I don't think it is particularly encouraging on either count.

Sotomayor is most famous for saying that a "wise Latina woman" could use her experience to reach better or at least more balanced decisions than her white male counterparts, adding (I'm not sure if this is a direct quotation) that empathy as well as intellect was important to effective adjudication. Whatever one thinks of these statements, they are a succinct and accurate summary of the philosophy that inspired her selection and, indeed, of the liberal approach to the judicial process as it developed over the past half century. By backing away, slowly but surely, from these assertions, Sotomayor is implicitly conceding the moral high ground in this dispute and emboldening those who oppose these concepts altogether.

The defensive posture above also bodes poorly for the future of the Supreme Court. Perhaps this is all a matter of strategy and Justice Sotomayor will turn out to be a feisty defender of various liberal positions. But it seems at least as likely she will trim her sails in an effort to avoid characterization as a "diversity" justice, or at a minimum that she will lack the conviction (not to say votes) to slow down the court's increasingly assertive march to the right. Barring the untimely death or illness of one of the conservative justices, that march seems only likely to accelerate, and an opportunity to have provided a serious ideological challenge to it will have been lost.

israel three, palestinians invisible

2009-07-14T17:46:00.002-04:00

Controversy over a TV ad by Cellcom, an Israeli communications company, which seems to make light of the "separation fence" built by Israel on the West Bank. The ad shows a group of Israeli solders on patrol when an object flies over the fence in their direction. At first the soldiers are suspicious but relax when it bounces and turns out to be a soccer ball. Unsure what to do, they decide to kick it back over the fence . . . upon which it returns a second time, they relax further, and an impromptu high-altitude soccer game begins with the (unseen) Palestinians on the other side of the fence. "What do we all want?" asks the voiceover. "Some fun [keif], that's all," adding what appears to be an Arabic expression for emphasis. Israeli Arabs have complained that the ad makes light of the separation fence, while one blogger said it "breaks records in bad taste, even by Israeli standards."

I would have to agree that the ad is in questionable taste and should probably be withdrawn. But I see it as more sad than provocative. The ad seems to me not so much dismissive or hostile as hopelessly naive, expressing a belief that the humanity on both sides will break through despite the seeming hopelessness, and asymmetry, of the current situation. It is significant in that it captures perfectly the attitude of a certain sort of liberal Israeli who, while emotionally sympathetic to the Arabs, doesn't make any particular effort to learn about them or their actual situation and attitudes. It's a little bit like those old Coca Cola commercials bearing the tag line "I'd like to teach the world to sing": except by that point American racial attitudes were already in the process of softening. In the Middle East, they just seem to get harder.

exams, "merit," and the ricci case

2009-07-11T09:34:00.004-04:00

Interesting op-ed by Lani Guinier and Susan Sturm in today's NY Times, arguing that the promotion exam was flawed and the "merit" argument accordingly unconvincing in the case. I have always thought this the weakest part of the plaintiffs' argument: it seems odd to me that firefighters, especially veterans, should be evaluated by a written test, and the winners seem to have been better crammers rather than better performers. This, although I am principle opposed to affirmative action, and the case was appealing to me on ideological grounds.

The biggest problem with Guinier and Sturm's argument is one of consistency. Sure, it's foolish to evaluate firefighters by written exams: but isn't it equally foolish to evaluate college applicants in the same way? Didn't Guinier and Sturm get to teach at Harvard and Columbia, in part, because they did well on law school exams, which (like those in New Haven) reward memorization and are eminently crammable? The problem here is that we are sending a message that written exams are fine for determining entrance into the elite, but are irrelevant to working class people, especially if others (themselves drawn primarily from an elite pool) don't like the outcomes. Presumably Guinier and Sturm would agree with this, and prefer to reduce the reliance on exams at all levels: but until this happens it's going to be difficult to convince the Ricci plaintiffs that they don't have the right to cram their way to success like everyone else.

obama and iran

2009-07-10T16:49:00.002-04:00

With the repression in Iran at least temporarily successful and Russia effectively blocking meaningful sanctions the military option is returning slowly but surely to the table. At this point no one seriously believes that sanctions will work or that the Iranian Government, which is using alleged foreign interference as a justification for its internal crackdown, has any serious interest in negotiations. The real problem is that no one is quite sure which is worse: an attack that may or may not succeed or a nuclear Iran which may or may not fatally destabilize the Middle East. The difference in perspectives between the United States (which can afford to take some chances on this score) and Israel (which can't) is also significant here. My bet is still that Israel will take some kind of action, but it isn't clear when or how: as one wag put it, Iran has been five years from the bomb for twenty years now, and it's unclear when the game is actually up.

One interesting theory is that Iran may actually want Israel or the US (and preferably both) to attack it, as the only way to salvage a discredited regime. Thus, it could be argued, Obama is actually being rather shrewd keeping them guessing. In this respect, the alleged "misstatement" by Vice President Biden, who suggested the US might not hold Israel back only to be corrected later by Obama, may have been part of a deliberate misinformation campaign. (The mistake, if it was such, came in a taped interview, and presumably could have been corrected before the show was broadcast.) Time will tell; but time, from the Israeli perspective, is running out.

happy birthday america

2009-07-04T08:59:00.002-04:00

Snapshots of another July 4 weekend . . . a day early celebrating my mother's birthday (yes it's on the Fourth), first time in 50+ years without my Dad, everything else weirdly the same . . . killing time in an upscale Long Island shopping mall, which is filled with Italian stores but hasn't quite figured out the amenities, like offering shoppers a place to walk, sit down, or relieve themselves . . . today the joy of juggling two parades with the Jewish Sabbath, a convenient reminder that Jews will never be and perhaps shouldn't be perfectly integrated (although they fight about these things in Israel too) . . . the papers say the fireworks this year will be more environmentally constructive, or maybe just less destructive, than in previous years . . . the neighbors complain about street traffic on a street that gets, perhaps, three cars in an hour . . . the two of us alone in a house pleasant but almost too quiet with the kids at camp and everything shut down for a day

How is it that every country seems to have won its independence in the summer? A quick count shows the US (July 4), Canada (July 1), France (July 14), and India (August 15) among places that I've visited. Italy has two national holidays (June 2 and April 25) but late April is almost the summer there especially when one figures in the "bridge" to May 1 (May Day) which many take off altogether. Israel goes by the Jewish calendar so it's usually in May, sometimes very late April, but always hot. The only institution I can think of that has its biggest holiday in the winter is Christianity, but they're a religion not a country and Christmas falls in the summer in the southern hemisphere where, if current trends continue, most Christians will probably live eventually anyway. Maybe countries just pick the warmest of the available days, or maybe rebellions and revolutions, in the days before air conditioning, tended to happen when the weather was hot. Either way, enjoy it while it lasts.

are republicans more prone to extramarital affairs?

2009-06-28T12:43:00.003-04:00

The story of Gov. Mark Sanford's extramarital affair, coming shortly on the heels (so to speak) of similar disclosures by Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, has many observers buzzing about the alleged hypocrisy of conservative Republicans and (more playfully) asking what exactly was in the water at last year's GOP convention. The issue is hardly limited to Republicans--witness Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, and almost anybody named Kennedy--but there do seem to be an awful lot of "family values" types falling by the wayside lately. Is it coincidence or is there a pattern here?

I can think of three possible reasons why Republican males might be more prone to such affairs than their Democratic counterparts, along with some reasons they might be less so. On the positive (or should I say negative) side:

1. More repressed, misogynistic, or simply unpopular men might choose to become Republicans; their early difficulties with women would then give rise to hostile, or at least childish, behavior later in life. The problem is that there is not much empirical evidence to support this: people tend to choose parties on the basis of ideology, inheritance, or simply convenience rather than personality types. It does seem likely that politicians in general are more repressed, childish, and narcissistic than the overall population, but that is a different question.

2. Even if they don't start out that way, Republicans--especially social conservatives--tend to exaggerate the virtues of marriage, family, and so forth: having set a standard that they cannot possibly live up to, they fall farther and deeper once the contradictions catch up to them. As I noted in a previous post, the Virgin Mary is a powerful symbol, but somewhat less fun to be married to, and men who idealize their wives and children are arguably more susceptible to the wily, "darker side" women of whom there no shortage in political life. The problem here is that Democrats play the family game no less than Republicans, and seem to be not much less prudish, at least in their official personae. The problem of human frailty is moreover hardly unheard of in religious circles, and one would expect certain support mechanisms to kick in and prevent the nearly universal fantasies about younger/wilier women from becoming reality. I think this is somewhat more persuasive than #1, but not very much so.

3. The percentage of liars, cheats, and adulterers is pretty evenly spread among Republicans, Democrats, and the Socialist Workers Party: it is simply more fun to catch a conservative, "family values" type in bed with another woman (or man) and therefore attracts significantly more media attention. I must confess that I have never quite understood the logic here: religions universally concede that people are sinful (that's why we have religions), and making "hypocrisy" rather than conduct the issue would allow any politician to inoculate themselves against criticism by simply announcing that they were a liar, cad, or degenerate in advance. (Something like this make actually have happened with Bill Clinton, although not early enough to prevent his impeachment.) But people are only human, and it's simply more fun to find out that (say) the latest Pope or Ayatollah has a girlfriend than yet another revelation about Clinton, Edwards, and so forth. The "man bites dog" aspect of the story thus proves irresistible to all but the most forgiving among us.

So I think there is not much to #1, a little bit to #2, but most of the story is #3: not a Republican but a political (or male) problem that is simply more fun to talk about it when people try to deny its existence. One could argue that this is a good reason to keep politics about things like budgets and foreign policy that politicians can actually change rather than about personal virtue which they are unlikely to. But neither party seem likely to do this anytime soon, so we are probably stuck with the pontificating and hypocrisy--from both sides of the aisle--for the foreseeable future.

tax scholarship: critical and meta-critical approaches

2009-06-26T15:52:00.004-04:00

I recently received a free copy of Critical Tax Theory: An Introduction, a collection edited by Profs. Anthony C. Infanti (Pittsburgh) and Bridget Crawford (Pace). The book, at 397 pages, is easily the most comprehensive work on the subject, even including a brief essay that I wrote a few years ago on Women, Poverty, and the Tax Code [perhaps that's why I got the free copy.] Ten, or is it twenty or thirty, years into the critical tax movement it provides an opportunity to take stock of what has and hasn't been accomplished.

The first thing that strikes a reader is the sheer volume and (for the most part) quality of what has been written. Along with race, gender, and sexual orientation, there are chapters on family tax, international tax, tax history, and even a chapter on the moderate/conservative response to the critical tax movement, appealingly labeled "critical perspectives on critical tax theory" (more on this later). All told, there were more than 50 articles, ranging from Grace Blumberg's now classic treatment of the taxation of working women (1971) to work completed in the past decade.

One is also struck by the diversity of approaches, which run the gamut from the application of traditional scholarly tools (fairness, simplicity, economic efficiency) in new topic areas--I am thinking here of work like Patricia Cain's on gay couples or Beverly Moran and William Whitford on taxation of African-Americans--to more offbeat approaches like that of Lisa Philipps on "discursive deficits" or Infanti himself on waging "guerilla warfare" within the tax system. But on the hold, the pieces are remarkably tame, perhaps confirming the suspicion that what is radical to tax lawyers is pretty much mainstream to everyone else. For example the Blumberg article, which leads off the collection, makes the pretty nonradical point that the combination of joint returns, nondeductibility of child care expenses, and other provisions tends to discourage wives and mothers from entering the labor force, a proposition that would seem hard to deny except that nobody had quite addressed it before. The articles on race, sexual orientation, and other hot button issues tend likewise to be rather more adventurous in their subject matter than in their methodology.

I suspect that this squares-masquerading-as-radicals feeling--a little bit like a rap group playing a college fraternity--results from the training of tax lawyers rather than any inherent aversion to more creative approaches. Tax professors are, put simply, more comfortable with economics than with culture, and even then with a very particular type of economics that has become traditional in the field. When noneconomic arguments are made about (say) the tax treatment of marriage or the need to encourage home ownership, there is a tendency to dismiss these as "rhetoric"--a neutral but essentially condescending term--and then return to the economic, or pseudo-economic, analysis that one was previously engaged in. This has always been true of old-fashioned tax professors, but it is interesting to see more critical or left-leaning scholars falling into largely the same pattern.

In this context the final chapter, which discusses the criticisms (so to speak) of critical tax work, is especially interesting. Particularly provocative is the final piece in the collection, by Amy Wax, which suggests that the pretax world may discourage women from becoming homemakers and that additional subsidies for "working" women may thus exacerbate rather than counteract preexisting inequities. Or, to put the matter differently, tax provisions that encourage women (or men) to stay home with their children may reflect an economically dubious, but culturally sophisticated, intuition that traditional family structures are in need of protection, a protection which economically "rational" reforms may strip away.

In the context of Infanti and Crawford's book, this insight appears almost as an afterthought: but what if it is actually the real point? What if the seemingly irrational tax subsidies for marriage, home ownership, domestic oil and gas production, and so on are not so irrational after all, but reflect nonquantifiable but nonetheless powerful intuitions that certain forms of behavior are more beneficial to civilized society than others? (Try to find a study that doesn't conclude that children born to married couples do better than those living in single-parent households.) What, that is, if the real critical scholars are the ones who make the intellectually difficult but vital case in favor of these culturally based provisions, and the self-styled crits--nearly all of whom are trained in traditional tax methodologies and remain highly suspicious of cultural arguments--are the real reactionaries? Something to think about.

the iranian election part iii

2009-06-25T18:25:00.002-04:00

As all the world knows, nonlethal has turned to lethal violence in Iran and a stolen "election" looks increasingly like an incipient coup d'etat by the right wing (Ahmadi-Nejad/Khameini) forces. Whatever one thinks of the US response--I think it's generally been a day late and a dollar short--things look grim for the Good Guys in the short run. But it pays to take a somewhat longer view.

There are always at least two stages in a regime's collapse. The first is when its ideology is discredited in the eyes of everyone except (or sometimes even including) the regime itself. This is also the stage at which the regime ceases to be a model for thinking people located outside the country. That is, more or less, where Iran is today.

The second is the actual physical collapse of the regime. How long this takes depends on the internal cohesion and ruthlessness of the regime, and to some degree on outside forces. In the Soviet Union this took less than a decade, although rather longer if measured against the entire Soviet Bloc, where the failures of the system were visible much earlier. In South Africa it took several decades. China has gone twenty years since Tian An Men with communism effectively dead as an ideology but the system clinging to life based on a combination of repression, economic growth, and a claim (however improbable) to have inherited the authority of the former Chinese emperors.

The bottom line is that a system which loses its underlying legitimacy may take a long time to collapse, but it always will, and it is generally speaking better to be ahead of the curve than behind it. That doesn't mean that one should ignore the country completely in the interim, or that outside intervention will necessarily make a positive (or any) difference. But one should be clear which side one is on, as the people of Iran have done this past week, and as the rest of the world--with infinitely less at stake--has an obligation to do, as well.

u.s. soccer team beats spain

2009-06-24T17:34:00.002-04:00

I missed the second half because I decided to try penalty kicks against my 14-year old and broke his retainer (he's leaving for camp tomorrow). But that didn't do much to diminish the U.S. team's accomplishment in beating Spain, the world's top-ranked team, in the Confederations Cup held in South Africa this week. The Confederations Cup isn't the World Cup, and soccer doesn't get the attention here that it does everywhere else in the world, and of course we haven't had a war against Spain since 1898: all reasons this will probably get less attention than (say) the hockey win over the Soviet Union in 1980, or Shakira's newest outfit. On the scale of improbability, though, it probably ranks even higher: a moment of justified pride for a team, and a sport, that have taken their collective lumps.

I've written before about soccer, and the difficulties it has in attracting a North American audience. Perhaps this victory, and a strong performance in the 2010 World Cup, will help to turn it around. The U.S. plays the winner of tomorrow's Brazil-South Africa match in Sunday's final.

the iranian election part ii

2009-06-20T15:41:00.002-04:00

The increasingly obvious fraud in the Iranian election, and the incipient use of force (albeit mostly nonlethal) against protesters, mark a point of no return in the situation. As Fareed Zakaria wrote in a fine post today, the regime may well survive, but its ideology--the notion of divine sanction combined with broad popular support dating from the 1979 revolution--is pretty much dead. In this sense, although not in the level of violence, the crisis resembles Tiananmen Square 1989, when the Government retained political authority but Chinese communism as an ideology disintegrated.

The implications for US policy will take time to sort out. Commentators like Roger Cohen of the NY Times, who admits he understated the evils of the Iranian regime (but asks others to admit they underrated the Iranian people), deserve great credit. The Obama Administration, I think, deserves somewhat less. While keeping a judicious silence is perhaps a wise strategy, at times the Administration seemed almost to want the who affair to go away, as if its policy of "engagement" with Iran was more important than any particular change in that country.

In reality, as Cohen and Zakaria's comments suggest, events have already passed Obama by. The issue now, as in 1979, is not engagement vs. confrontation but how to adjust to a new reality in Iran, in which the old alternatives are fast becoming irrelevant. In remaining a step or two behind the action and appearing indifferent to a popular uprising--one which he may have helped to inspire--the President has made a slow start. Here's hoping that he will prove wiser in the long run, and put U.S. policy on the side of history rather than on the sidelines.

the iranian election

2009-06-14T12:12:00.004-04:00

There are two interpretations of Ahmadi-Nejad's "surprising" landslide victory: (1) he cheated, (2) Western reporters have, a la Tien An Men Square, been talking too much to urban liberals and not enough to rural conservatives to know what's actually happening. Early indications suggest an element of both. Either way, it is a major setback for Obama's process of engagement with Teheran, which looks increasingly like a one way street, and not in our direction.