I know this blog is supposed to be about America, but I'm feeling a little homesick at the moment. I have been reading the English newspapers to cheer myself up. There isn't much to praise about English newspapers. They are all hackish, scabrous and dreadfully written. But you're guaranteed storms, rows and shockas. Gossip is their only redeeming feature.
The latest furore is about the Queen and the BBC. In an attempt to appear modern, hip and fresh, the monarchy has asked the BBC to film "A Year with the Queen", a documentary to show behind-the-scenes, Queen-on-Philip action. Then, the BBC put together a trailer which implied the Queen stormed out of a photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz, when she in fact stormed in.
As you might expect, the press has got its knickers in a twist. The wet Times calls it "television treason". The more Thatcherite Telegraph thinks it is "profoundly shocking". Everyone with a jowl or a moustache is calling for the director-general of the BBC to resign.
It's only in the UK - actually, in England - that this kind of bowing and scraping continues. The culprit is apparently RDF Media, which was commissioned by the Beeb to make the film. RDF's previous programming includes "Wife Swap" and "Faking It", reality shows that pit the poor and feckless against the posh, snobbish and cultured. They make people look even more hapless than they really are, by the type of editing evident in police interview tapes of black men. The Queen wanted a reality show, and she got it. She was merely the victim of the same technique. But, of course, she is not subject to the same rules as everyone else. Having packs of lawyers at her disposal, she certainly wasn't duped into signing a waver, giving the BBC full editorial control.
It's such a silly country, with all its classes and royals and public schoolboys. America is also rigidly ordered by class, but at least you pretend classes don't exist. I hope the monarchy withers and dies as it becomes decreasingly necessary. But Marx thought that would happen to the state, didn't he?
Friday, July 13, 2007
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Ron Paul, constitutionalist and patriot
My survey of presidential candidates' websites continues with Ron Paul. I had never heard of this individual until asked to investigate his website. Sorry. Please don't surf off somewhere else. I might be a newcomer to American politics, dear reader, but you're seeing the political pubescence of a foreign ingenue. Imagine you're watching your daughter bloom into sexual maturity.Because your political discourse, far from being broken, reaches heights of wheedling, corruption, manipulation and spin that renders Europeans awestruck. It is a well-oiled machine. It is the discourse of the businessman-lothario, whispering sweet nothings in your ear, and presenting himself all intellectual and artistic-like so he can bed you.
However, Dr. Paul's political discourse isn't slick. (Unlike Mitt and Hillary, Ron prefers "Dr.") It's really embarassing: he tries to spin his campaign to pretend that it is picking up armies of supporters on the internet, bypassing advertising and TV news. This isn't working.
Ron Paul TV goes on the campaign trail in Iowa. The film focusses on the drummed-up hoo-hah for his arrival. Tens of people
are there, jumping up and down, screaming, and waving placards. Some dude narrates over a shot of a helicopter that "the energy started early in the day" because some local news station, desperate for a story other than Cat Up Tree or Fire In House, flew overhead. Dr. Paul focusses on "the buzz" that his campaign is creating. He blogs that "a local TV station called "to tell him "'your campaign's really picking up steam!'" "Darn right," he agrees. But then he makes a plea for more people to sign up to his campaign because "the biased media" want to see "his campaign lose steam." Like an undergraduate essay, he doesn't follow through on his introductory claims for himself, empty rhetoric revealed by lack of evidence. He also favours the repeated-metaphor technique.Clearly, he's finding it difficult to get much attention.
Like Romney, Paul tries to appeal to a broad conservative and small-state coalition. The three images above come from his biography, which tells you that he was a farmer, then a navy surgeon in the 1960's, then an obstetrician/gynaecologist, then a congressman. Farmer Paul learned all about midwestern values. Dr. Paul (OB/GYN) learned that abortion was wrong and always unnecessary. No pregnant woman's life is ever in danger. Congressman Paul fought for a "constitutionalist" ideology. All bases covered."Wait," I thought, when reading his "constitutionalist" musings. "I have never heard of that particular political ideology before. I wonder what it means?"
After a bit more perusing, I realised that Dr. Paul is like every single medical student you have ever met, who has done PolSci 101 and drones endlessly on about his banal ideology. He wants to return America to the 18th-century golden age, where the federal government knew its place and gentleman-farmers frolicked in arcadian evenings after a good day's dispensing justice down at the state house. One of his congressional cronies in the federal government says “Ron Paul personifies the Founding Fathers’ ideal of the citizen-statesman." He thinks returning powers to the states will end the Hanoverian tyranny of Washington, D.C. Government is too big, too top-heavy, and too engaged in international affairs. I think he might have been reading him some Thomas Jefferson.
Perhaps you can explain this philosophy to me. I don't understand why transferring power to states will mean less authority in government and more liberty? It's not as if states are little ex-colonies anymore, where the gentlemen naturally rose to the top and did their citizenly duty, defending their own liberty by active government. (Remember, Africans, natives, and women don't have liberty to defend.) They're populous, modern states, with large electorates and heavy law codes. Massachusetts, for example, tyrannises red-staters by making them buy health insurance and undermining the foundation of their marriages. South Dakota tyrannises women by staging a womb takeover. And doesn't federal government protect liberals and conservatives from each other, enforcing a small degree of fractious compromise, and preventing red and blue states from spiralling off into ideological purity?
Having said that, Joolya had an excellent plan to create a "United States of Happiness," in which the nice bits of the U.S. all got together and kicked out their errant cousins, leaving red states to get on with it. Perhaps Paul's scheme might bring this about, destroying the last vestiges of U.S. coherence.
He'd have my vote, if I had one.
9/10
[Thanks, Twisty.]
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Bush: good, or not?
In today's New York Times, Adam Liptak offers a way to judge Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence. He reviews Bush's record of pardons and commutations when he was governor of Texas. And guess what? It was "at odds with his decision in the Libby case."
After doing his research, Liptak outlines Bush's thinking when he refused clemency for children and people with learning difficulties who were on Death Row. He only commuted one death sentence, and let 152 executions continue. Liptak interviews a law professor, who scrabbles about, searching for some legal principle that might describe Bush's reasoning. “As governor, Bush essentially viewed the clemency power as limited to cases of demonstrable actual innocence." Therefore, we are encouraged to conclude, Bush commuted Libby for dubious reasons.
This article reminds me of oddball social science research you occasionally hear about, where people work out whether the French eat cheese, or whether men are more violent than women. Common-sense conclusions, bolstered by academese. The article takes a blindingly-obvious hypothesis and tests it by laborious counting. In conclusion, Liptak tentatively suggests that Bush's decision might not have had much philosophic legitimacy.
But it's obvious that Bush is incapable of and resolutely opposed to acting on principle. He operates on the level of posture, executing the weak and damaged to be "tough on crime," and pardoning Libby to reward a picciotto who didn't rat him out.
The New York Times finds Tony Snow's Goebbelsite refrain - that Bush spent "weeks and weeks" deliberating over the case, and came to a decision derived from objective and abstracted reasoning from legal principles - wanting. Of course! And by testing Snow's claims - that Bush might be a competent and decent person - Liptak infers that they have enough legitimacy in them to test. We all know this isn't true.
After doing his research, Liptak outlines Bush's thinking when he refused clemency for children and people with learning difficulties who were on Death Row. He only commuted one death sentence, and let 152 executions continue. Liptak interviews a law professor, who scrabbles about, searching for some legal principle that might describe Bush's reasoning. “As governor, Bush essentially viewed the clemency power as limited to cases of demonstrable actual innocence." Therefore, we are encouraged to conclude, Bush commuted Libby for dubious reasons.
This article reminds me of oddball social science research you occasionally hear about, where people work out whether the French eat cheese, or whether men are more violent than women. Common-sense conclusions, bolstered by academese. The article takes a blindingly-obvious hypothesis and tests it by laborious counting. In conclusion, Liptak tentatively suggests that Bush's decision might not have had much philosophic legitimacy.
But it's obvious that Bush is incapable of and resolutely opposed to acting on principle. He operates on the level of posture, executing the weak and damaged to be "tough on crime," and pardoning Libby to reward a picciotto who didn't rat him out.
The New York Times finds Tony Snow's Goebbelsite refrain - that Bush spent "weeks and weeks" deliberating over the case, and came to a decision derived from objective and abstracted reasoning from legal principles - wanting. Of course! And by testing Snow's claims - that Bush might be a competent and decent person - Liptak infers that they have enough legitimacy in them to test. We all know this isn't true.
Friday, July 6, 2007
Candidates' websites
I always enjoy reading political candidates' websites. They're always so irredeemably cringeworthy. I will therefore be running a little series of reviews of them, which will have fair and balanced scores at the end.
Mitt Romney's site has a rolling banner of headlines related to Mitt. One headline reads, "In case you missed it: Governor Romney gets first newspaper endorsement in Florida." I don't understand this. Is this an ironic acknowledgement that no one cares whether some newspaper read by perma-tanned retirees in Florida endorsed Romney? Or, perhaps, that not every American rushes to their local news-stand to buy the New Smyrna Beach Observer? Either way, this is daft.
Ham-fisted attempts at spin are in evidence elsewhere on the site. Mitt sez the universal health plan for Massachusetts was "a private, market-based reform that ensures every Massachusetts citizen will have health insurance, without a government takeover and without raising taxes." Why pretend this was a conservative policy? Health coverage for everyone is a no-brainer, and without government intervention you aren't going to get it in your crazy insurance system. Legally-mandated insurance is essentially a tax, because if you don't buy it you get a tax penalty.
It's quite hi-tech, though. There is a Mitttube, upon which you can watch the great man respond to the pressing questions of the day. This, it transpires, is problematic. In keeping with the tenor of his website, Mitt looks like a car salesman. I keep thinking he'll ask me to sit in him and take him out for a test drive. His hair is extraordinary. It is clearly possessed with supernatural powers. Perhaps it is the seat of his brain? His face is all tanned and lantern-jawed. He stands in front of an American flag and hay bales, but the down-home effect is ruined by garish FoxNews lighting.
In response to the inevitable fundamentalist fidgety obsessiveness about abortion, Mitt says he changed his mind because of the debate about cloning. If this is true, he is an idiot. Why would Dolly the sheep make him worry about abortion? Ah, I see, it is because his mousey small-town audience is terrified that mad scientists at MIT (hmm!) are trying to farm babies! "Cloning for the purposes of finding new stem cells, or something known as embryo farming" means that we had "so cheapened the value of life" that people would do anything. Abortion, Mitt suggests, is the root cause of our modern Dr-Mengele bloodlust.
On gay marriage, Romney says "John Adams wrote our constitution" and that he "would be surprised" by it. Like everything with Romney, this is poorly thought through. I think John Adams would be surprised by a lot of things, like the abolition of slavery, women having the vote, Senator Brownback, aeroplanes, Internet porn, and Ricky Martin. That's not to say he wouldn't like these things. But as historians dismissively protest, this is all counterfactual. Romney wants a constitutional amendment to stop men from having a state-sanctioned relationship, moving in together, bickering more, and having less sex with each other. This is the wrong policy. If he hates gay sex, marriage is the best way to stop it.
Right, I'm off to play football. My baby niece can serve as a goalpost.
4/10
Mitt Romney's site has a rolling banner of headlines related to Mitt. One headline reads, "In case you missed it: Governor Romney gets first newspaper endorsement in Florida." I don't understand this. Is this an ironic acknowledgement that no one cares whether some newspaper read by perma-tanned retirees in Florida endorsed Romney? Or, perhaps, that not every American rushes to their local news-stand to buy the New Smyrna Beach Observer? Either way, this is daft.
Ham-fisted attempts at spin are in evidence elsewhere on the site. Mitt sez the universal health plan for Massachusetts was "a private, market-based reform that ensures every Massachusetts citizen will have health insurance, without a government takeover and without raising taxes." Why pretend this was a conservative policy? Health coverage for everyone is a no-brainer, and without government intervention you aren't going to get it in your crazy insurance system. Legally-mandated insurance is essentially a tax, because if you don't buy it you get a tax penalty.
It's quite hi-tech, though. There is a Mitttube, upon which you can watch the great man respond to the pressing questions of the day. This, it transpires, is problematic. In keeping with the tenor of his website, Mitt looks like a car salesman. I keep thinking he'll ask me to sit in him and take him out for a test drive. His hair is extraordinary. It is clearly possessed with supernatural powers. Perhaps it is the seat of his brain? His face is all tanned and lantern-jawed. He stands in front of an American flag and hay bales, but the down-home effect is ruined by garish FoxNews lighting.
In response to the inevitable fundamentalist fidgety obsessiveness about abortion, Mitt says he changed his mind because of the debate about cloning. If this is true, he is an idiot. Why would Dolly the sheep make him worry about abortion? Ah, I see, it is because his mousey small-town audience is terrified that mad scientists at MIT (hmm!) are trying to farm babies! "Cloning for the purposes of finding new stem cells, or something known as embryo farming" means that we had "so cheapened the value of life" that people would do anything. Abortion, Mitt suggests, is the root cause of our modern Dr-Mengele bloodlust.
On gay marriage, Romney says "John Adams wrote our constitution" and that he "would be surprised" by it. Like everything with Romney, this is poorly thought through. I think John Adams would be surprised by a lot of things, like the abolition of slavery, women having the vote, Senator Brownback, aeroplanes, Internet porn, and Ricky Martin. That's not to say he wouldn't like these things. But as historians dismissively protest, this is all counterfactual. Romney wants a constitutional amendment to stop men from having a state-sanctioned relationship, moving in together, bickering more, and having less sex with each other. This is the wrong policy. If he hates gay sex, marriage is the best way to stop it.
Right, I'm off to play football. My baby niece can serve as a goalpost.
4/10
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Bush Decides '07 v 2.0
One of the problems of having a constitution is that it's so bloody difficult to change things. Gordon Brown is considering a constitutional overhaul that will give shed-loads of power back to parliament. One of the irritating things about the Westminster political system is that the prime minister, particularly if she has a big majority in parliament, has unfettered power. But one of the irritating things about constitutional system is that reform of the system is almost impossible.
So:
1. Judges are appointed according to their politics.
2. Judges are fired according to their politics.
3. Judges are over-ruled by politicians.
Perhaps it is time to stop the president from appointing and firing judges? Or commuting and pardoning?
It's so bloody difficult to get rid of presidents. Apparently Bush is unimpeachable because corruption of the justice system is entirely legal. Am I the only one who is confused?
So:
1. Judges are appointed according to their politics.
2. Judges are fired according to their politics.
3. Judges are over-ruled by politicians.
Perhaps it is time to stop the president from appointing and firing judges? Or commuting and pardoning?
It's so bloody difficult to get rid of presidents. Apparently Bush is unimpeachable because corruption of the justice system is entirely legal. Am I the only one who is confused?
Bush Decides '07
Now, look here. You can't let your president do this kind of thing. It's bananas. I will spare you an extended explanation of the obvious point that your president serves to flip you the bird at every opportunity. Or that he appears to be turning Washington, D.C. into a crazed, post-modern Versailles, dispensing mercy and patronage to a little court of sycophants, medievals and jesters. Or that "the separation of powers" is defunct now that two ideologies - Democratic and Republican, "liberal" and conservative, pro-society and pro-God, female and male - have splurged everywhere and dissolved those powers into a nothingness.
In his statement explaining why, Bush lets us know that "critics" of the investigation of the outing of Valerie Plame "have argued" that investigators shouldn't have bothered to appoint a special counsel, and should have gone down the pub when they found out Who Told Novak. These "critics" also "point out" that Libby didn't do anything wrong other than perjury. And "finally" these "critics" argue that perjury should not be punishable by prison.
"Others", he tells us, argue that perjury is actually bad, and people shouldn't get away with it.
So, the inevitable tide of Bush's logic led him to the only possible conclusion. Holmes-like, having "carefully weighed" the facts of the case, he lets Libby off.
Now, don't get me wrong. I know Democrats and other sensible people abuse power once they've got it. Bush got his buddy off the hook. The fall-guy fell, but didn't hurt himself. What a brilliant manoeuvre.
It's the shameless, endless, and straight-faced lying that gets me. How can you give responsibility to someone who lies with such apparent ease? Doesn't it turn your stomach that your leader says that he commuted Libby's sentence after a careful and reasoned deliberation of the merits of the case? And that it had nothing to do with cronyism or the seismic rumblings of the Republican Party?
In his statement explaining why, Bush lets us know that "critics" of the investigation of the outing of Valerie Plame "have argued" that investigators shouldn't have bothered to appoint a special counsel, and should have gone down the pub when they found out Who Told Novak. These "critics" also "point out" that Libby didn't do anything wrong other than perjury. And "finally" these "critics" argue that perjury should not be punishable by prison.
"Others", he tells us, argue that perjury is actually bad, and people shouldn't get away with it.
So, the inevitable tide of Bush's logic led him to the only possible conclusion. Holmes-like, having "carefully weighed" the facts of the case, he lets Libby off.
Now, don't get me wrong. I know Democrats and other sensible people abuse power once they've got it. Bush got his buddy off the hook. The fall-guy fell, but didn't hurt himself. What a brilliant manoeuvre.
It's the shameless, endless, and straight-faced lying that gets me. How can you give responsibility to someone who lies with such apparent ease? Doesn't it turn your stomach that your leader says that he commuted Libby's sentence after a careful and reasoned deliberation of the merits of the case? And that it had nothing to do with cronyism or the seismic rumblings of the Republican Party?
What ho
Welcome to the first post of American Parliament. Cards on table - I am another whiny effete social-democrat blogger. I don't like George W. Bush. I wear man-bags. I drink caffe latte. I enjoy reading books.
Ho hum. I hear you. "I can listen to you down at the local independent cafe."
But - fol de rol - I am English! This gives me a unique perspective on American affairs. As you may know, England is tiny. How many English people write blogs about American politics? I'll tell you the answer: none.
As an Englishman, I scale inordinate heights of effemininity. I enjoy ironic little indie songs with clanging guitars. I drive a tiny car. I have no colonies. My jeans are not baggy, I wear no hat, my neck is pencil-thin. Whatever red-staters tell you, being a "fag," - homosexual or heterosexual - does not disable your comment module. People who wear tight trousers maintain their critical faculties. Saidian lefties may dismiss my account of America as "ethnocentric." They are right. But I live in America, and read the papers, and this gives me the right (possibly inalienable) to my two pence.
Right. Let's begin with some rules.
1. I do not "hate America." That would be stupid, like hating an encyclopedia.
2. When I criticize some aspect of American political or cultural life, I am not saying "the UK/Europe is better." I might be saying that, but not necessarily.
3. I am not a liberal, but a social democrat. Liberalism is the principle of small government. Read some 19th-century political philosophers. Most Americans appear to be liberals until they become president, when they start to appreciate the merits of large governments.
4. A related point: "government" is not antithetical to "liberty." Laws are: but government and laws are different things. Governments do lots of other things than make laws. They build roads. Some of them organize schools and hospitals. They defend you from crazy Islamists or your violent husband. Or not. These aspects of government give you opportunities you didn't previously have. Freedoms, if you will.
5. "Liberty" can sometimes be a pain in the arse. Look up William James's comments about booze on Google.
6. If you do not appreciate the grotesque ironies of FoxNews, begone!
Ho hum. I hear you. "I can listen to you down at the local independent cafe."
But - fol de rol - I am English! This gives me a unique perspective on American affairs. As you may know, England is tiny. How many English people write blogs about American politics? I'll tell you the answer: none.
As an Englishman, I scale inordinate heights of effemininity. I enjoy ironic little indie songs with clanging guitars. I drive a tiny car. I have no colonies. My jeans are not baggy, I wear no hat, my neck is pencil-thin. Whatever red-staters tell you, being a "fag," - homosexual or heterosexual - does not disable your comment module. People who wear tight trousers maintain their critical faculties. Saidian lefties may dismiss my account of America as "ethnocentric." They are right. But I live in America, and read the papers, and this gives me the right (possibly inalienable) to my two pence.
Right. Let's begin with some rules.
1. I do not "hate America." That would be stupid, like hating an encyclopedia.
2. When I criticize some aspect of American political or cultural life, I am not saying "the UK/Europe is better." I might be saying that, but not necessarily.
3. I am not a liberal, but a social democrat. Liberalism is the principle of small government. Read some 19th-century political philosophers. Most Americans appear to be liberals until they become president, when they start to appreciate the merits of large governments.
4. A related point: "government" is not antithetical to "liberty." Laws are: but government and laws are different things. Governments do lots of other things than make laws. They build roads. Some of them organize schools and hospitals. They defend you from crazy Islamists or your violent husband. Or not. These aspects of government give you opportunities you didn't previously have. Freedoms, if you will.
5. "Liberty" can sometimes be a pain in the arse. Look up William James's comments about booze on Google.
6. If you do not appreciate the grotesque ironies of FoxNews, begone!
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