Category Archives: Talk amongst yourselves

How about that Obama speech?

Obamaspeech

On the Sarah Palin post, Wally said he wanted to know what I thought about Barack Obama’s speech last night. Well, here’s PART of what I have to say about it in my column coming up Sunday:

Barack Obama was the Democrat who made it abundantly, eloquently clear that he was not running in order to “fight” against his fellow Americans. So all week, I looked forward to his acceptance speech, and when it came I was… disappointed.
Maybe I had built it up too much in my mind, depended too much on it to wash away the bad taste of all those boilerplate party speeches I had heard. He said many of the right things. He said “Democrats as well as Republicans will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past,” but as for most of it — well, read David Broder’s speech on the facing page.
When he said “part of what has been lost these past eight years… is our sense of common purpose,” I thought, yes, but it’s been happening a lot more than eight years, and you know that. But he said it that because of his audience. That’s what made the speech flat, by Obama standards. He had to avoid offending the kind of people who love the bitter politics that he had been running against.

Don’t just go by me; be sure to read the Broder column I mention above (it’s embargoed until Sunday). Frankly, I was a little worried that I was the only one (other than David Brooks) left flat by the speech, until I saw what Broder had written.

But don’t just go by him, either. What did y’all think?

Robert’s ‘sexist’ cartoon

Robert’s in trouble now! He mentioned to me a few minutes ago the negative attention his cartoon from yesterday about Hillary and Barack has garnered, particularly on a blog called "Feminist Law Professors."

That blog took time out from considering "Which Wine Should I Bring To A Party At My Dean’s House?," a post that demonstrates at least a sense of humor of a sort, to bristle over "Political ‘Humor’ in the South Carolina MSM," which features Robert’s cartoon. It was filed under the category, "Sexism in the Media."

Key commentary from that blog:

That’s the same cartoonist that produced this and this and this and this.

Now I invite your commentary…

Thumbs up for curfew

Any thoughts on the curfew being announced today for Sandhills, to wit:

Teens 16 and younger soon will not be allowed at Village at Sandhill after 9 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights unless they have parents or guardians with them.
The new policy, drafted by shopping center management with help from Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott, is being announced today and is scheduled to take effect Sept. 5, Richland County Councilwoman Val Hutchinson said Thursday…

My thoughts? Well, they’re pretty straightforward. Unless I hear something I haven’t heard yet that makes this case a special exception, I’m for it. I’ve got this thing, you know, about grownups being in charge.

New category: ‘Spin Cycle’ (today’s nontopic: John Edwards)

Frequently, readers get frustrated because they come here all ready to rant about the latest pointless Topic of the Day on the partisan, 24/7 TV "news" spin cycle, and I’m just not into that stuff. People accuse me of being too much into trivia, but to me, there’s nothing more trivial than the latest attack by one side or the other in the endless wars among the Republicrats.

But I do like to make folks feel at home. So I’m going to try a new category, "Spin Cycle," and at least provide a landing place for those of you who want to discuss these things. I’m torn about doing this, because it sort of makes me an enabler — seen in the worst possible light, it makes me like those idiot parents who have beer parties for their teens so they’ll do their drinking at home (never mind all the drunken teenage guests they unleash on the highways). But perhaps I can have a good effect, tossing in the occasional comment as to why the latest spin topic is so mind-numbingly insignificant. Or maybe someone else can do that.

Anyway, let’s kick it off with all the ranting going on out there about John Edwards these days. I’ll start it with an excerpt from a blogger out there who’s trying to bait the MSM into treating this as a serious topic:

I can think now of five separate angles the mainstream news outlets are missing with the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter scandal story. In other words, by not writing about the charges originally—airing them out and letting their audience assess their validity—the media is now in the position of stamping down not one story, but five. What tangled webs we are weaving!
Once the story hits the front pages, as it inevitably will, we’re going to hear all the excuses as to why reputable news outlets couldn’t find their way to telling their readers patently interesting news about a major political figure that was widely available on the web. This arrogance will help reinforce the perceptions in the audience that the media is not always looking out for their best interests and continue the move to alternative outlets. I’m as devoted a follower of the traditional media as can be, but this willful non-disclosure makes me want to scream…

Well, I almost screamed myself when I read the bizarre assertion that John Edwards is "a major political figure." Oh, yeah? Maybe you should leave the blogosphere and pick up a few newspapers. The last time I bothered to write about the guy, it was to dismiss him (and boy did the spinmeisters have fun with that), and Democratic primary voters quickly agreed with me, once they actually got to vote.

As relevant news goes, talking about this also-ran’s personal life is like gossiping about, oh, I don’t know, Gary Hart or somebody.

Make a case to the contrary if you think you can, but don’t expect me to stay awake for it…

What did you think of Al Gore’s speech?

On tomorrow’s page we’ll be running a Tom Friedman piece that holds up Al Gore’s speech as the kind that the actual current president of the United States ought to be making — and the kind that an Energy Party president would certainly make. Here’s how Friedman described it:

… If you want to know what an alternative strategy might look like, read the speech that Al Gore delivered on Thursday to the bipartisan Alliance for Climate Protection. Gore, the alliance’s chairman, called for a 10-year plan — the same amount of time John F. Kennedy set for getting us to the moon — to shift the entire country to “renewable energy and truly clean, carbon-free sources” to power our homes, factories and even transportation.
Mr. Gore proposed dramatically improving our national electricity grid and energy efficiency, while investing massively in clean solar, wind, geothermal and carbon-sequestered coal technologies that we know can work but just need to scale. To make the shift, he called for taxing carbon and offsetting that by reducing payroll taxes: Let’s “tax what we burn, not what we earn,” he said.
Whether you agree or not with Gore’s plan, at least he has a plan for dealing with the real problem we face — a multifaceted, multigenerational energy/environment/geopolitical problem…

Me, I’m really busy trying to get pages out without Mike, which is not easy, let me tell you. But maybe y’all can go read Al’s speech and tell me what you think. All I know is that what I’ve heard about it — from Friedman and others who have filtered and condensed its points — sounds good. But maybe the devil’s in the details.

What do y’all think?

What is ‘our community?’

From time to time, a comment by one of y’all causes me to comment at some length, and I decide to make it a separate post. This is one of those times.

A modest Everyman who calls himself "john" had this to say back on this post:

Well bud, I think the votes are in. Like I keep telling you, your views do not fit in our community…

First, let me clarify that I think he meant me, not bud. I’m less clear on what he meant by "our community." I think it’s an interesting question to pose to all: What, in the context of these discussions, does "our community" mean?

It’s like with editorials: WE can mean a number of things when we say
WE — it can be the editorial board, or rather the consensus thereof.
It can mean WE South Carolinians, or WE Americans, or WE who hold a
certain truth to be self-evident. When the meaning seems vague, I work with the writer to try to sharpen up what WE mean by the word.

So what does "our community" mean? South Carolinians? Americans? People
living in Zip Code 29201? Is it "our thing" in the Sicilian sense? Are you presuming to speak for the readers of
MY blog? If so, you have to deal with the fact that the READERS of the
blog and the people who regularly comment — perhaps I should have
emphasized REGULARLY there — are almost certainly different groups, in
terms of prevailing views on this and other issues. Of course, there’s no way to
establish whether that’s the case or not (beyond the anecdotal evidence
of all the nice people who say they read my blog but don’t want to
comment because they don’t want to mix it up with you ruffians — the
wimps); it’s just that my experience causes me to doubt that those who push themselves to the fore are representative.

To give you a stark example… back in the fall of 2001, when the
consensus in this country was strongly in favor of toppling the
Taliban, a majority (or a very large percentage, anyway; we didn’t keep
count) of the letters we received for awhile there were AGAINST
military action in Afghanistan. People who were FOR the action — the
overwhelming majority — saw no need to write letters, because there
was no argument to be made. That is, until they saw some of the
anti-war letters we were running. Then they weighed in in response.

Never for one moment was I fooled into thinking the antiwar letters represented a majority of Americans, or South Carolinians, or readers of The State.

A blog, which its more or less instantaneous interactivity and
reinforcement (positive and negative), has a tendency to run off in one
direction or another very quickly, with moderate views quickly
intimidated into silence (people of moderate temperament generally have
better things to do with their time, or so they quickly decide — again, the wimps). There are a few brave moderates who hang in there with us, until they
can’t stand it, and go away for awhile. Certain other types are with us
always.

Anyway, I’m getting far afield: Within the context of these discussions, what does "our community" mean?

NCAA on the warpath

You know, all week I’ve thought about posting something about the Newberry College ex-Indians and the NCAA, and that appallingly lockstep faculty vote in favor of this absurd dictate, but it’s just TOO ripe.

The whole situation puts me in mind of something Tom Wolfe once wrote — I forget where — about the "Fool-Killer" walking away in bewilderment, dragging his club, overwhelmed by the enormity of his opportunity…

Basically, I hate Kulturkampf topics such as this one, and I generally just turn away. That’s because on the one hand, I don’t care what Newberry College calls its sports teams, and on the other hand, I’m flabbergasted that someone would try to TELL Newberry it has to change that name, and offer no rational reason for said ultimatum — or at least, none that I’ve read so far. Then, on the third hand (see how irrational this is?) — if I were Newberry, I would simply ignore the NCAA and do what I wanted. But then, I don’t care anything for what any sports organization has to offer, since I have the unconventional point of view of seeing sports as games. In other words, if you care enough about the NCAA to let it boss you around, your priorities are sufficiently out of whack to make me have little sympathy for you.

Now that I’ve offended everyone involved, I’ll turn this topic over to you, the reader:

Did Obama get the job done in denouncing Wright?

There was no question, as this day dawned, that Barack Obama was going to have to denounce his ex-pastor in unequivocal terms — no more of that, Well, you just have to understand about the black church stuff.

Right now, I’m trying to decide rather urgently — did he go far enough in what he said today? I don’t mean "far enough" to satisfy me, or even you, necessarily. I just mean, did he do what he had to to save his candidacy? Because there’s no question in my mind that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s statements of the last two days put the Obama campaign below water.

After failing with white middle-class voters in Pennsylvania — and not least of all because of what we’d already heard from the Wright pulpit — this latest stuff could not be allowed to stand.

Normally, I’d allow myself a little time to decide whether what Sen. Obama said today was enough. But at the moment, I’ve trying to decide whether it makes the Bob Herbert column I just put on tomorrow’s op-ed page too outdated.

We have this problem with The New York Times. While The Washington Post, for instance, gives us its opinion columnists in plenty of time for us to run them the same day that the Post does, The Times takes a far more self-centered approach, not moving its copy until it’s damned well good and ready — which is generally hours after our next day’s pages are done. Consequently, when we run columns by Herbert, Dowd, Brooks, et al., it’s generally a day later. Which is not usually a problem. A good opinion is a good opinion a day later.

Anyway, Bob Herbert had a strong column on the Wright situation this morning, and I picked it for tomorrow over — well, over a lot of things, but in the end, it was down to that or a Samuelson piece that’s embargoed until Wednesday. I chose the Herbert. But his column says, in part:

For Senator Obama, the re-emergence of Rev. Wright has been devastating. The senator has been trying desperately to bolster his standing with skeptical and even hostile white working-class voters. When the story line of the campaign shifts almost entirely to the race-in-your-face antics of someone like Mr. Wright, Mr. Obama’s chances can only suffer.
Beyond that, the apparent helplessness of the Obama campaign in the face of the Wright onslaught contributes to the growing perception of the candidate as weak, as someone who is unwilling or unable to fight aggressively on his own behalf.
Hillary Clinton is taunting Mr. Obama about his unwillingness to participate in another debate. Rev. Wright is roaming the country with the press corps in tow, happily promoting the one issue Mr. Obama had tried to avoid: race.
Mr. Obama seems more and more like someone buffeted by events, rather than in charge of them. Very little has changed in the superdelegate count, but a number of those delegates have expressed concern in private over Mr. Obama’s inability to do better among white working-class voters and Catholics.

Then today, Obama comes out swinging on the issue…

So right this moment, I’m trying to decide whether to run Herbert because he still makes good points, or ditch him because Obama has at least tried to do something Herbert says he needed to do.

Right now, I’m at the coin-toss stage…

The latest COLA outrage

Recalling that many readers were understandably appalled at the recent move by lawmakers to sweeten their own pension deal, which was already sweeter than Aunt Joy’s Cakes, I thought you might want to discuss today’s editorial.

It’s about something that is, if anything, even more outrageous than what Cindi brought to your attention several weeks back. Last week, after the embarrassing glare of publicity had caused them to drop their own pension cost-of-living increase, they killed the underlying legislation to give a COLA to state retirees just because it didn’t have their sweetener in it anymore.

Or, as we described it in today’s editorial:

IT WAS NO BIG surprise when legislative leaders tried to sneak through a generous perk for themselves on the back of an important bill to stabilize the State Retirement System and protect tens of thousands of state retirees. Sweetening up their own pension system is something lawmakers try to do periodically, and they always do it quietly.
But what happened last week, after the House had reversed course and rejected the new legislative perk, reached a new low, at least in terms of what lawmakers have done out in the open: The Ways and Means Committee voted 13-11 to kill the underlying proposal, which guarantees 2 percent annual cost of living adjustments for state retirees. Representatives didn’t kill the bill because they thought it was a bad idea. They killed it because they weren’t going to get their perk.

Anyway, I thought I’d provide this space for y’all to discuss this…

To endorse or not to endorse

Here’s a good "talk amongst yourselves" topic.

As regular readers know, I’ve written a lot over the last few years on the topic of the newspaper’s endorsements — from the high-altitude stuff like why we do them and how we do them, to the nitty-gritty of how we came to decide on a particular endorsement, and the party affiliations and won-lost record of candidates we’ve backed, and plenty of other stuff that’s probably way more than you ever wanted to know.

But there is a significant anti-endorsement faction in the news trade that simply doesn’t want us to do them at all. That’s a tempting proposition when I’ve just been through something like these presidential primaries, and when starting next week I’ll be resuming the gantlet with city elections, then county and state primaries, and then the general elections themselves, with scarcely a moment to breathe. Nevertheless, I find the arguments of the "don’t do ’em" crowd unmoving. I’ve run across two such arguments in the past week.

The first was in TIME magazine, which basically doesn’t have a dog in the fight, not even being a newspaper. A longtime thoughtful reader brought the piece to Cindi’s attention, and she brought it to mine. It’s called "Should Newspapers Still Be Taking Sides?" An excerpt:

I confess that I’ve never quite understood why newspapers endorse
presidential candidates. Sure, I know the history and the tradition,
the fact that newspapers in the 18th and 19th centuries were often
affiliated with political parties, but why do they do it now? Why do it
at a time when the credibility and viability of the press are at
all-time lows? More important, why do it at a time when readers,
especially young readers, question the objectivity of newspapers in
particular and the media in general?

This guy’s argument reminds me of one that Tony Ridder, the top dog of the now-defunct Knight Ridder, made to a roomful of KR editorial page editors in the waning days of the empire (early 2005). Never mind why there was such a gathering of EPEs when corporate had zero say in the running or content of our editorial pages, but they use to hold such meetings about once every five years whether I wanted them to or not. Anyway, Tony’s argument didn’t go as far as this guy’s, he just didn’t want us endorsing in presidential elections any more. His spiel sort of amounted to, "Golly, folks, why do this when it just makes a lot of folks mad at us?" In fairness, he saw it as a distraction to our main missions, which is writing about our respective local communities. We mostly just stared at him blankly. If anyone in the room took his advice to heart, I don’t know about it — and in any case, by the time of the next presidential election (this one), there was no more Knight Ridder.

Then, there was this piece in The New York Observer about the NYT‘s policy against its op-ed columnists endorsing candidates. An excerpt:

Unlike the board that puts together The Times’ endorsements, they can say whatever they want. They can even court an R rating. They cannot, however, endorse a candidate.

“I came here in 1995 and Howell Raines told me
about it,” said Gail Collins, the former editorial director, who is now
herself a columnist. “His thought, as I understood it, was that it
would confuse people. Columnists could hint, and could make it clear,
but we couldn’t explicitly say it.” The logic goes like this: If Gail
Collins endorses Barack Obama, then a reader might confuse it for the New York Times newspaper endorsing Barack Obama.

This makes no sense to me, but then I’ve never been in the position of having staff op-ed columnists who were not members of the editorial board, so it’s hard for me to imagine. Personally, I wish they’d go ahead an overtly state the preferences that some of them so obviously have, instead of hiding behind this absurdly small, thin fig leaf of impartiality. I mean, come on — do you really doubt whom Paul Krugman preferred in the last two presidential elections?

As David Brook was quoted as saying in the piece, such obfuscation is a great challenge to a writer: "It’s like a two-year process of deliberation without reading the verdict."

Of course, we write personal columns on the editorial page of The State (not op-ed), and those columns are intentionally separate from editorials, which express consensus opinions. And no, we never write "I endorse so-and-so" in columns, but for slightly different reasons. One, there’s the word itself — endorsement is reserved for the newspaper itself, not for individual writers. Also, however many good things we might say about one candidate or bad things about another, there’s always a little bit of hanging back from a final, total commitment because we know we can get embarrassed by having the real endorsement go against us when we get around to it as a board.

Of course, readers of my work will note that as time goes by, I worry less and less about that. I’m more interested in being completely candid with readers as to what I think here and now, and less concerned with the potential embarrassment of losing the endorsement debate. My mania for disclosure even extends to publicly wallowing in my humiliation and mortification at losing the argument so spectacularly in 2000. But not everyone is that weird; others prefer to keep their dignity, and I respect that.

Anyway, I thought I’d share these pieces with you. You decide what you think. And I know you will. That’s one of the reasons why I’m so dismissive of one of the lamest arguments mounted against endorsements — which the TIME guy dusts off and trots out yet again: That we shouldn’t tell people how to vote.

As if we could.

Wm. F. Buckley dead at 82

William F. Buckley has died, in case you haven’t heard. The guy I first remember from impersonations of him in the 60s (David Frye, I believe), founder of a modern conservative movement brought into being on the pages of the National Review, a man with close S.C. ties…

What to say about him? I can’t stop and say anything right now, as I’m in the middle of editing copy for tomorrow’s pages. Robert and I just had a discussion for a cartoon about Buckley (Robert’s big on elegiacal cartoons), but I haven’t liked any of the ideas. He was too complex to sum up simply, which cartoons tend to do.

Anyway, I thought I’d let y’all know.

New ‘reality show:’ Beat on Obama

Have y’all been watching this debate out of Myrtle Beach? I don’t believe I’ve seen the like of it before, without a certain key supporter of Mike Huckabee being involved. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards have a tag-team thing going on the guy in the middle.

Personally, I don’t think Barack Obama’s health care plan goes far enough — but I don’t think theirs are anything to write home about, either.

As for that snarl-a-thon on the economy, I’m not sure I got anything out of it.

Now they’re competing to see who can sound least responsible on Iraq, but Edwards always wins that contest — it’s hard to top a guy who wouldn’t even leave anybody to keep training Iraqis. The sad thing is that if you get them off the stage, either of the other two can make a certain amount of sense on the issue. But all this I-was-against-the-war-first-oh-no-you-weren’t stuff isn’t exactly moving us closer to a political solution in Baghdad. And I have to wonder, do even the antiwar folks they’re trying to appeal to with that like this nyah-nyah stuff?

Anyway, I’ll keep paying the best attention to this I can under the circumstances. My two-week old twin granddaughters are visiting, and they’re more entertaining, and more in touch with basic, everyday economic issues — they keep competing to be the one to nurse first.

Anyway, I invite y’all to weigh in on this slapfest from the Grand Strand.

Edwards_hits_obama

Why don’t you read the blog on weekends?

Yes, I know that it’s conventional wisdom that people don’t go online until they arrive at work on Monday, but conventional "wisdom" is so often a crock, I thought I’d go straight to the source and ask y’all: How come you flock to the blog in droves Monday through Friday, but disappear on Saturday and Sunday?

Allow me to put some numbers to this:

Over the last six months, page views have numbered an average of 1,665 a weekday, ranging from a high of just under 9,485 to only 365 on Thanksgiving.
The daily average on Saturdays and Sundays during the same period has been around 700 (the way I have the speadsheet set up, the weekends are harder to calculate, so I’m just eyeballing it). The weekend daily traffic has only exceeded 1,000 three times during that 26-week period.
Oddly, though, daily traffic has only dropped below 500 on three occasions on Saturday or Sunday. So there is a weekend core audience, even when I don’t post on the weekend.

So what gives? I’m curious about this. I tend to think of blogging — for y’all, if not for me — as a leisure-time activity. But y’all are most tuned in when working stiffs like me are busy. So what’s the story? Are you all self-employed, or retired? Or (and this is one of those rare cases in which I would understand why someone would comment anonymously), is it a matter of using the boss’ computer, on the boss’ time?

Conventional "wisdom" says it’s the latter — but I’m curious as to what the facts are, as you know them.

Alive, alive… IT IS ALIVE!

One of my interlocutors wants to discuss the resurrected Green Diamond plan. Have at it. This thing is coming from so far out of left field, and without any warning whatsoever, to the point that I can’t even start thinking about it on a Friday (especially when my Sunday column’s already due, and I haven’t picked a topic). Right now, my only reaction to the news is, "Say what?" But here’s the story, and here’s an excerpt:

Developers who for a decade have pushed to build a $1 billion community south of the capital city have launched a third attempt — this time by leapfrogging a river and trying to be annexed into the city of Cayce.
Columbia Venture petitioned Cayce within the last week to annex 3,000 acres in Richland County.
Cayce Mayor Avery Wilkerson said Thursday the city is poised to do just that.

So have at it. I’ll wait until I’ve been "taken up in the spaceship," and have the opportunity to ask some questions about it. You know, like "Before, we were worried about it flooding Cayce across the river. Whom might it flood now?" Things like that.

The spaceship thing is an old Green Diamond joke on the editorial board. Remember when this thing was first brought up, and it was something like a year or so before we saw any diagrams or heard any details? Well, for months during that period, former S.C. Agriculture Commissioner Les Tindal was going around saying he had seen the plans, that they had been spread out before him on a table, and he examined them. We kept saying Mr. Tindal had been "taken up in the spaceship," and we thought it pretty weird that if there were detailed plans, why was Mr. Tindal the only one who had seen them?

Which is worse: cronyism or bad judgment?

Read today’s editorial about last week’s explanation of the Bar exam mess, and then consider the following, about which we had a debate in yesterday morning’s editorial meeting:

Which is worse — the favoritism that many believed had been extended to the children of the connected, or just plain bad judgment, which in the end appears to have been the case? (And yes, I know many of you still believe there was favoritism, but for the sake of my question, pretend that you agree with me on this point of fact, so that we can hash out the dilemma I’m posing.)

I disagreed with my colleagues. They thought the court’s explanation, if one believed it (and we did), described a bad situation, but not as bad as if results had been overturned in response to phone calls by the powerful. I said it was worse. I said adjusting the results in response to calls from a lawmaker (the House Judiciary chairman, no less) and a judge was not inherently bad in and of itself, if those calls did indeed lead to finding some flaw with the system. In other words, if the action itself was not corrupt, it did not matter whether the impetus for the reconsideration gave the appearance of favoritism.

Yes, I know, most folks seem to assume that if the reconsideration was prodded by someone whose name we know, the adjustment has to be corrupt. But that isn’t true. And remember — there had been no substantive disclosure as to whether there was anything wrong with that section of the test or not. In the end, there apparently was nothing wrong with the testing, only the recording of the score in one instance. But most of the talk during the couple of weeks this issue ran was about who said what to whom, not the quality of the test.

But what the court says it actually did is to me worse than taking another look at the test because of some phone calls (which is what most of the hullabaloo was about). It discovered an error — one person who had been recorded as passing had actually failed that section, and therefore the overall exam. To me, there are only two options under such circumstances — let the result stand, and allow that one person to become a lawyer (in keeping with the rule that judgments are final), or give that one person the cruel news (and as one whose child became a lawyer in recent years, I realize how cruel a disappointment that would be) that the celebration had been premature, that he or she had failed.

What the court actually did was so nonsensical that I couldn’t quite take it in from our news account. I assumed I had read something wrong, so that my first question when we had our first post-holiday editorial meeting Monday morning was, "Tell me again what the court did." As it turned out, it had done exactly what I had thought I’d read: It decided to give that one candidate a free pass on that section of the test, and then gave everybody a free pass on that section, boosting 20 demonstrably unqualified people to the status of attorney at law.

When I had read it, I kept thinking that can’t be right. There’s no way that the court would turn 20 "fails" to "passes" because of a mistake on one. And yes, I can see how some would think it logical, and fair — to the test-takers. But the court has a higher responsibility to the 4 million people of South Carolina.

This was a serious error in judgment, and to me, worse than any inherent harm based on who made a call to whom.

Do you agree or disagree?

Liberté, égalité, fraternité: What’s your preference, mon ami?

Now that we’ve dissected "democracy," let’s take it another step.

Something else we say we’re fighting for, wherever we may happen to send troops in this world, is "freedom." And I guess in almost any situation, we can argue that someone’s freedom is been furthered by what’s going on, but it’s not always the best word. In the Revolution and in some ways the Civil War, yes. To some extent in World War II — although it was a lot more complicated than that — and Korea and Vietnam, in the sense that we were fighting totalitarian systems in all those cases. Sometimes, we send troops so that people can eat (Somalia), sometimes just to keep them from killing each other (Bosnia), sometimes to keep our treaty commitments and keep the oil flowing (the 1991 Gulf War).

But we always send them in the name of some value or interest we hold dear, or combination of such. We can argue all day about whether the value or interest is truly being served, but the stated reason is generally based in some cherished value or pragmatic interest. (Even when it’s a matter of national survival, we speak of surviving in order to maintain our bastion of freedom.)

The truth is that American values and interests are a lot broader than that word, "freedom," as cherished as that ideal may be. I always thought the French were onto something with their liberté, égalité, fraternité — at least it acknowledges that there is more than one concept at stake in what you want your republic to stand for.

Something that we don’t discuss overtly, although it is implicit in many of our political discussions, is the fact that these three things do not naturally coexist — or perhaps I should say, they don’t naturally flow from each other, and sometimes one militates against the others. I’ve thought about this a lot over the years, but never really set it out in writing. I was reminded of it over the weekend when I was watching a documentary series about Napoleon on DVD. Napoleon had a thing about upholding égalité, at least in principle (of course, the emperor was more equal than others), because of his own rise from humble beginnings. But he put no stock in liberté. And yet he presumed to stand for the revolution (how he got away with that pose as long as he did still surprises me).

In this country, we talk about freedom, but only some of us — the libertarians — would always put it above the other two. Others would elevate equality to the point that it overrides other concerns — from Jim Clyburn trying to use government resources to lift up his impoverished district, to the Bush administration insisting that "no child be left behind" even to the point that a school is seen as "failing" when special ed students or kids whose first language isn’t English don’t pass the same test as everyone else.

Me, I’m a fraternité man, if forced to state a preference. Being a communitarian, I’m concerned with the brotherhood of the full community. I realize that living in civilization requires marginal curtailment of some liberties (such as the liberty to swing one’s fist), and that equality of results (as opposed to inputs) are probably a bridge too far for most societies. We should balance those concerns in a way that the community as a whole is served, and bound together in a common interest, emphasizing common values. In other words, I tend to think that liberty and equality are best served when we can find a way to do so that underlines our commonalities — our brotherhood. Brotherhood, of course (as libertarians will tell you) can’t be legislated. But if we construct our policies and legislation (on the limited range of things that can be legislated, that is) in a way that emphasizes our common American values and interests, we’re most likely to achieve something that respects and furthers freedom and equality as well. In other words, fraternité is less something one creates than something one builds upon.

That’s my model, anyway, and it occurs to me that this is the basis for an interesting discussion. I propose that we agree that all three republican values — freedom, equality and brotherhood — are essential, and that we’d love to see all three enshrined to the maximum degree possible. But recognizing that almost any specific policy will emphasize one of these more than the others, which do you lean toward? If there has to be an imbalance, which would you consider best — or perhaps I should say, the least bad?

Shealy says District 5 stepped out of line. Did it?

Not only did District 5 lose another bond referendum this week, but now it’s fending off a charge from referendum opponent Rod Shealy Jr. that it made inappropriate use of public resources in the failed effort.

Here’s what Mr. Shealy — a political consultant who had been retained by Chapin-area opponents of the referendum — had to say in an e-mail that was copied to me yesterday:

Bill, as I understand it, the press release below was sent during school hours from a district computer and was also posted on the district Web site. My question is this: IN WHAT ALTERNATE UNIVERSE IS THIS EVEN THE SLIGHTEST BIT APPROPRIATE? Does this serve any purpose other than a purely political one? It’s campaigning on the taxpayers’ dime, and it is what they’ve been urged repeatedly not to do… part of the reason many people lose their faith in the district’s leadership.
I opted not to send this to you before the campaign so my intent would not be misconstrued… just wanted you to know where I was coming from.
(Maybe your editorial board, in its alacrity for criticizing those who do not agree with them on political issues, should focus on this type of stuff. think i’ll copy them on this email)

Thanks,
Rod Jr.

Here’s the e-mail to which he referred:

Newspapers endorse bond referendum

IRMO—This week, editorial boards of two local newspapers endorsed the Lexington-Richland Five bond referendum, which will be held on Tuesday.

Rod Shealy, Sr., publisher of The New Irmo News, wrote in a front-page editorial of the November 1 edition of his newspaper, “I have generally opposed bond issues….This time, however, I will be voting ‘YES.’”

In addition, an editorial in The State on November 2 endorsed the referendum.

The State’s editorial incorrectly stated, “the owner of a home with an assessed value of $100,000 would pay an estimated $235.60 annually over 20 years to pay back [the] loan.”

In actuality, if the referendum is successful, the owner of a $100,000 home will pay an additional $39.60 per year, or a total of $792 over the course of 20 years.

Totally apart from the intergenerational drama going on here between the Shealys, we have the question of whether the side that Rod pere was on stepped out of line.

Mind you, Rod fils isn’t claiming the law was broken, although he clearly believes it wasn’t kosher. As he said to me in a follow-up:

… to be clear, my contention was not that it is illegal — although I do believe it is, or at least should be…
whether or not it is technically legal, it is inappropriate…
a majority of the voters in this district opposed this bond plan, which means the taxpayers of this district had resources for which they pay used in a political campaign against them…
Brad, this has been an issue between the school district and me going back several years… I’m the good guy on this one…

Rod Jr.

The district’s response came before I had even read Rod’s first missive. Michelle Foster, the district’s "Community Services Specialist," sent me copies of an e-mail exchange between her and Cathy Hazelwood of the State Ethics Commission. Here’s the inquiry:

Ms. Hazelwood,

Buddy Price asked me to forward you the attached press release for review. We would like to clarify some misinformation that was printed in The State this morning by posting this press release on our district home page. If possible, we would also like to send it to our listserv, consisting of parents and community members.

Please let me know your opinion.

Many thanks,
Michelle Foster

Here’s the file Ms. Foster attached to her query. And here’s the terse response:

The news release is fine, so you can distribute it to whomever. Cathy

Folks, this hits me in a bit of a null space. Unlike most of my colleagues, I’ve always been sort of fuzzy and undecided about stuff like this, so I leave others to write about it. I’m more for doing the right thing, and so many ethics considerations seem to be about the appearance of morality, rather than the real thing. I can sympathize with the folks at the district, who saw the newspaper endorse their proposal while at the same time misrepresenting an important factual consideration. (The one thing I know for sure in all this shoulda woulda coulda is that we shoulda gotten the numbers straight the first time.)

At the same time, having our live-and-let-live State Ethics Commission say something is OK is almost, but not quite, enough to persuade me that it’s not OK at all.

So what do you think? Which is the greater sin — sending out an e-mail to set the record straight, or primly sitting on one’s hands and leaving voters in the dark?

Waterboarding: Torture or not?

Judge Michael Mukasey seems uncertain on the point of whether "waterboarding" is torture. Others who have tried it seem a bit more decisive. (Both of the following links were brought to my attention by Samuel Tenenbaum, who in real life
thinks about lots of things besides his 55-mph proposal.)

Here’s a video of a guy undergoing the treatment. He gets through it OK — but remember, he knew the guys doing this to him were friendlies, and would eventually stop.

Here’s a written account from another who experienced it. An excerpt:

Waterboarding is slow-motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of blackout and expiration. Usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch. If it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia — meaning, the loss of all oxygen to the cells.
The lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threatened with its use again and again. Call it "Chinese water torture," "the barrel," or "the waterfall." It is all the same.

After reading that, and watching the video, I believe I’d agree with John McCain that this constitutes torture. (Of course, I would be loathe to argue the point in any case with the one presidential candidate who truly knows exactly what he’s talking about when it comes to torture.)

But here’s another question: If you were actually racing against the clock to prevent a terrorist attack that could kill hundreds or thousands, would you do it anyway? Or would you allow others to do it in your behalf? Or would you simply look the other way if they did?

I’ll tell you what got me thinking along those lines. It was the interview with Alan Dershowitz on the above-linked video. He didn’t seem to mind the use of the technique to stop terrorism, as long as there is "accountability." He would want the president of the United States to specifically permit it, in writing. That’s a lawyer for you. Strain at a gnat, miss the camel — or the beam, or whatever.

Personally, I wouldn’t want anybody I’d ever vote for to give permission for such a thing. Nor would I want him to give a nod and a wink, either. If some Jack Bauer-like subordinate did such a thing, without authorization, and did indeed save many lives doing so, I’d be inclined to thank him on behalf of a grateful nation, then prosecute him to the full extent of the law. Unlike Mr. Dershowitz, I think under the circumstances I could live with the inherent contradiction.

But that’s just off the top of my head.

Thompson got staff! Blogger got job!

Buried in a wire story of only passing interest was this nugget:

But there was a bit of news today. Sadosky said the campaign has hired Joshua Gross as its spokesman. Gross stepped down last week as state executive director of the Club for Growth.

Now we know why "The Body Politic" went off the air. For weeks, it displayed a post from Sept. 11 as its most recent. Now, you get an error message.

So, does this constitute going straight, or does a blogger quitting to work for a campaign qualify as moving on to harder drugs?

Anyway, it will be nice to have a contact with the Thompson campaign for a change.

A good day to spend time reading the comments

Rather than posting more new stuff today, I’ve been busy this morning with some discussion threads on this post and, to a lesser extent, on this one. I urge you to go join in; they’re interesting. On this one, we have, in addition to the usual suspects, a thoughtful response to Chad Walldorf, a major player in the topic under discussion.

bradwarthen.com

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