Ramping up for the Fall

I've taken a bit of a break from blogging recently, due mostly to extensive end-of-summer travels, and the need for a bit of respite before returning to the academic wheel. In addition to visiting my good college friends Nick and Joe (immortalized from an earlier visit above) on the West Coast last week, I've just returned from a short, but very worthwhile foray into Austin. In other personal interest fronts, I've found out that I will likely be (finally!) teaching my own class in the spring, in addition to having been granted the plum of the TAing assignments in the fall--assisting Paul Woodruff for the first half of his Plan II seminar. Things facultative are well in hand, now about that dissertation....

Krugman Making Sense

Paul Krugman, over at the Times, delivers another doosey today in attempting to explain how anyone might plausibly think Joe Lieberman a "sensible" fellow:

So what’s really behind claims that Mr. Lieberman is sensible — and that those who voted against him aren’t? It’s the fact that many Washington insiders suffer from the same character flaw that caused Mr. Lieberman to lose Tuesday’s primary: an inability to admit mistakes.

Imagine yourself as a politician or pundit who was gung-ho about invading Iraq, and who ridiculed those who warned that the case for war was weak and that the invasion’s aftermath could easily turn ugly. Worse yet, imagine yourself as someone who remained in denial long after it all went wrong, disparaging critics as defeatists. Now denial is no longer an option; the neocon fantasy has turned into a nightmare of fire and blood. What do you do?

You could admit your error and move on — and some have. But all too many Iraq hawks have chosen, instead, to cover their tracks by trashing the war’s critics.

They say: Pay no attention to the fact that I was wrong and the critics have been completely vindicated by events — I’m “sensible,” while those people are crazy extremists. And besides, criticizing any aspect of the war encourages the terrorists.

That’s what Joe Lieberman said, and it’s what his defenders are saying now.

As Krugman points out, it takes a sort of warped sense of reality, and a rather, well, thrifty sub-conscious to buy into this sort of defense.

Frank on Culture War

Thomas Frank, the author, most recently, of What's the Matter with Kansas? is doing a stint at the editorial page of the NYT. He's just posted a doozy of a piece (subscription required). A snippet:

The culture war will remain with us, both in Kansas and in the nation, because it is larger than any of its leaders, larger than its legions of citizen activists, larger even than the particular causes in which these forces are enlisted. Seen from the streets of Wichita, the rightist rebellion of Kansas seems to fulfill that most romantic of American political traditions: the uprising of the little guy.

To the faithful, theirs is a war against “elites,” and, with striking regularity, that means a war against the professions. The anti-abortion movement, for example, dwells obsessively on the villainy of the medical establishment. The uproar over the liberal media, a popular delusion going on 40, is a veiled reaction to the professionalization of journalism. The war on judges, now enjoying a new vogue, is a response to an imagined “grab for legislative power” (as one current Kansas campaign mailing puts it) by unelected representatives of the legal profession. And the attack on evolution, the most ill-conceived thrust of them all, is a direct shot at the authority of science and, by extension, at the education system, the very foundation of professional expertise.

Sometimes this is right out in the open. At one point in Kansas’ endless slugfest over curriculum, the conservative-dominated school board appointed a state schools chief with virtually no experience in education. Moderates erupted in fury. Returning their fire, one member of the Kansas Senate declared that the mere fact that “the elitists in Kansas today” — meaning, apparently, “education insiders” and prominent suburban lawyers — opposed this fellow made him “the perfect man for this job.”

Frank continues with an observation about the mildness of the moderate opposition to this attack on expertise. It's difficult, though, to see what the alternative might be. To be stridently against those who think they are an oppressed minority is to reinforce their impression. Of course, ignoring them has the same effect. This poses a deep problem about the very nature of democracy that is no less bearing on the issues I've previously raised about exceptionalism (see here and here). In a future post, I'll outline some connections.

The End of Conservatism?

Over at the Post, E.J. Dionne poses the unspeakable question: Is conservatism finished? As nice as that idea sounds, it's not really plausible. To start with, Dionne seems to still be clinging to that old canard about modern conservatism being rooted, ultimately, in the thought of Edmund Burke. He does follow up this demostrably false thesis with some thoughts on modern conservatism's roots in the Goldwater race and Cold War America, but he seems to still be blind to the right's slow but steady drift toward fascism, an issue taken up ably by Dave Niewert at Orcinus, a cite full of useful thoughts.

Krugman on Partisanship

Over at the Times, Paul Krugman's got a good piece on partisanship (subscription required). The gist of the argument is that in our era of exceptionally divisive politics, party affiliation simply matters more than individual principles when it comes to making decisions about whom to support. And, what's more pressing, the Democrats, as well as liberal interest groups, don't seem to be getting the message. Too bad.