The Slows

Posting is excruciating from my dial-up here at home, so this will probably be it through the New Year, unless something very interesting comes up, or unless I get very bored.

God bless us, every one.

The man of the hour, sure, but the year?

President Bush is Time's Person of the Year for 2004. I won't go down the route of whether he's "deserving" of the honor since the intention of the award is to recognize who's had the biggest effect on the news, for better or worse; previous honorees include Hitler, Stalin, and Ayatollah Khomeini.

Rather, I think that the choice of President Bush, along with some other recent choices, shows that Time may be losing its way. My understanding of Person of the Year is that it is meant to recognize an individual's extraordinary role in the shaping of the news, which would mean a person who initiates some kind of action or change.

Instead, recent awards simply take the biggest news story of the year and attach a person or group to it, disregarding Person of the Year's intention to recognize an individual and/or someone who initiates the news.

2001 was of course dominated by 9/11, so Person of the Year went to Rudy Giuliani, who reacted admirably but initiated nothing.

2002 was dominated by scandals in the corporate and intelligence communities, so the respective whistleblowers from Enron, WorldCom, and the FBI shared the award. Of course they should be recognized for their courage and I suppose those stories would not have existed without them, but the whistleblower could have just as easily been the person in the next cubicle, so perhaps Person of the Year should have gone to the people who actually perpetrated the scandals?

2003 was dominated by the Iraq war, so Person of the Year went to the "the American soldier," (insert "I support the troops" disclaimer here) which was touching but a massive cop-out. They could have gone with Rumsfeld, Hussein, Chalabi, Blix, Bremer, somebody, anybody, but (insert second, more strenuous "I support the troops" disclaimer here) instead Time gave "Person" of the Year to 2 million people who did nothing to initiate or even shape the news.

2000 and 2004 were dominated by close Presidential elections, so Time gave Person of the Year to the winner of those elections. Blah. One can argue that this year's award was for President Bush's leadership style, etc. but the actual Time article pretty much just talks electoral strategy. If they want to say the 2004 election was pivotal in terms of the way campaigns are ran and politics are thought of, there is certainly an argument to make there. But if that's the case, pick Rove.

The one aspect that runs through these choices is that a potentially disagreeable choice is passed over in favor of an agreeable one, i.e. Giuliani instead of bin Laden, "whistleblowers" instead of Ken Lay, etc. , but I can't say exactly why Time has lost its nerve. Fear of "liberal media" labeling? Caution against being "unpatriotic"? General fear of controversy, blandness being the sales key to general interest magazines? Regardless of what the explanation is, one thing is for sure: "Person of the Year" has become more akin to a "Year in Review" piece, and we know how exciting those are.

Catching up

Now to address an issue that was played out in the blogosphere about a week ago, but due to my academic sequestration, was unable to take part in: Peter Beinart's call for a explicitly and uniquely anti-terrorist Democratic party: A Fighting Faith. (sorry, subscription only...ask me and I'll email it to you, it's worth it) Michael Phillips, tough on terrorism in his own way, responded with a three part essay (1 2 3) which contains good points, but he himself does not endorse it. In his response to Beinart, Jon Cipriani (Dec. 3 and 8 posts) revels in Beinart's evocation of a 50 year-old example of a model Democratic party, and himself offers a counterterrorist view that involves growing Muslim populations in Western Europe.

I wish I wasn't so behind on this, but I just now got to read the Beinart piece. Anyway, here's my take.

First of all, I wholeheartedly agree with Beinart's central thesis that a liberal vision for counterterrorism is long overdue. Throughout the article, he's really singing my song, so I don't feel a need to take issue with any of his main suggestions. The need for an anti-terrorist approach that employs economic development and foreign aid, as well as setting a domestic example for the democratic values we wish to spread, are things that I've written about myself in the past, here and here.

However, the way Beinart evokes the Cold War example is a little off. The nature of the Cold War conflict is similar to the conflict against Islamic fundamentalist terror, but the difference in content precludes some of what Beinart calls for. He declares Michael Moore and the leadership of MoveOn to be akin to the communist-sympathizing labor and civil rights organizations of the late 40's, but he exaggerates their passivity towards terrorism, as well as their role in the party. As a whole, the Democratic Party does not need to be told to be anti-terrorism in the same way it needed to be told to be anti-communist. No one sympathizes with terrorism today, while those people did genuinely see communism as an ally in the pursuit of civil rights and economic equality.

Therefore, the intra-party purging and coercion of communist sympathizers in the late 40's, cited by Beinart, does not apply today since we do not have terrorist sympathizers. Rather, the problem today is that the Democratic party takes anti-terrorism as a given, so puts it behind more contentious domestic issues. The solution is to make anti-terrorism primary, and not only by having a well-coifed Boston Brahmin mutter "find and kill all the terrorists," but by having an anti-terror policy that embraces our own values and works hand-in-hand with our domestic agenda.

Also, the need for a liberal alternate to President Bush's approach to the War on Terror is cited by Beinart as something needed for political purposes, and he's right. However, I think he could have spent more time discussing how it is simply a better policy. President Bush's counterterrorism policy, despite it's rhetoric, is ineffective in both means and scope. It is sloppy and purely militaristic, garnering more enemies than it kills, and is applied according to domestic political needs. Meanwhile, his democracy-promoting "Greater Middle East Initiative" is merely a hodgepodge of programs that existed before 9-11 and are continuously underfunded. In general, the Republican view of terrorism does not take account of the roots of anti-Americanism. "They hate us because we love freedom" doesn't quite cut it.

A distinctly liberal anti-terrorist policy will arise, but it will not be a political ploy. It will come about as the War on Terror reaches a degree of maturity wherein people begin to realize that it is not simply a matter of killing the terrorists that are already out there, but making sure they are not replaced. This will involve a far-thinking approach that builds societies up rather than tearing them down, promoting rights rather than suspending them, and ensuring security and justice not only for ourselves but for the world. Beinart is right when he says that liberalism can defeat terrorism, but what he failed to say is that only liberalism can defeat terrorism.

Humbug

A different perspective for the holiday season.

Some people never learn, some do

Why does this administration have to be publicly (read: politically) embarassed before it comes to terms with reality?

Meanwhile, Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) has a better memory, discussing why the internet rumor of an impending draft gained the traction it did. Link via Jill, whose boredom at work benefits us all.

So the truth comes out...

A letter to the editor yesterday lumped me in with what he perceives to be an over-represented conservative cohort in the WSN. Don't worry, I'm not taking this too seriously, but this is not the first time my writing has blurred perceptions of my politics among those who don't know me better, so I'm curious as to why readers might think this way. A few theories:

1.) Selective reading. There are columns like this one , this one. and this one where my siding with the Democrats couldn't be more clear. On the other hand there are columns like this one, this one, and this one that either give Republicans credit or advance positions on issues that could be said to be conservative. Perhaps if one by chance tends to read the latter pieces only, confusion can be understandable.

2.) My own topic selection. When I choose what I want to write about, it tends to be on matters where I break with liberal orthodoxy. I avoid issues that would just have me repeating DNC talking points, since that would be uninteresting both for me and the reader.

3.) George Will-itis. I think it is valuable for columnists to critique their own side as much as it is to build its case. So therefore, while I did my damndest to practice restraint on criticizing Kerry and the Dems, I have written columns like this one and this one, intended to be constructive criticism but I suppose could be mistaken for a conservative attack on the campaign.

4.) NYU. In a place as liberal as NYU, labels take on a whole new subjectivity, wherein anyone to the right of Jason Rowe , or at least anyone who doesn't use "Republican" like a dirty word, can be called conservative. (By the way, Jason's latest column is terrific.)

So those are my theories. Opinions as to which one it is, or alternate explanations, are welcome. In the meantime, Omar Tungekar has reprised his invitation for me to join the College Republicans, and once again I am flattered by the offer but will decline.

Mail Bag

I hardly ever get letters in response to my columns, either because my writing is dispassionate, or because I'm always right: I'll leave it to you to decide. But anyway, I have been getting letters in the past few weeks, which is exciting because I like the idea of a discussion with readers, but I feel as though the challenges have been pretty shoddy, and I should take some time to respond.

First, there is this letter, written in response to my column describing the NYU College Dems' trip to Pittsburgh (which obviously swung PA in Kerry's favor). A few problems with this one:
1.) In paragraph 3, it's clear that he doesn't know what "status quo" means. "Status quo" is not tantamount to any current or future Bush policy.
2.) In paragraph 4, he states, "The Democrats are trying to get support from voters who oppose the war, and want the billions wasted on it spent on improving our lives here at home. Kerry doesn't have anything to offer those people, so the whole idea of change is narrowed down to exchanging Bush for Kerry." This just confuses me. Is his first sentence not a description of what it was Kerry was offering people?
3.) He concludes by writing that Nader was "polling best" among Arab-Americans and those making less than $15,000. Does "polling best" mean he got 2% instead of 0.5?

Second, there is this letter, written in response to my column about the success of the youth turnout, and how the facts differ from the media myth saying it never materialized. I won't go into specifics, but I'll just say that by his logic, any increase in youth turnout short of full parity with the electorate at large is nothing to be happy about. In short, a 10% increase in turnout meant nothing to him, because it wasn't 20%.

Third, there is this letter, written in response to my column about the way language is twisted in discussions of the Middle East conflict. Again, a few problems:
1.) He claims that I "would be surprised" if I knew many Israelis themselves, including prominent leaders, called the presence in the West Bank an "occupation." I'm not surprised: I did indeed know that, that's why in no part of my column did I say it was only used only by Israel's opponents. In fact, I note the term is common, and a theme that runs throughout the column is that these terms have come into use by those who are neutral, or even well-meaning.
2.) He says he suspects Prof. Mitchell's use of "occupation" was intentional. I agree and I thought so at the time I wrote it, but I didn't care to make the column about Prof. Mitchell, the idea was bigger than a refutation of him: more sensible letter-writers took care of that.
3.) He refutes my characterization of the term "intifada" with the infallible authority of a Google search. I hope he doesn't do all of his translation with Google, or else he must have a hell of a time with his Spanish homework. Anyway, he says he found a direct translation of intifada as "shaking off," and this is why in my column I said the term intifada implies peaceful civilian overthrow of an oppressor, an implication formed through a combination of that direct translation, along with the way the term intifada is used in Palestinian discourse.
He goes on to say the term was popularized in 1987, which is an attempt to refute my claim that it has been twisted to meet the ends of the post-2000 terrorist attacks. But lo and behold, the most recent attacks are the second intifada. Care to guess when the first one started?...If you said anything other than 1987, we're not friends anymore. Much like the infamous refutations of Jan Messerschmidt, this is a critique that only serves to prove my point.