Responsibility trickles down even faster than wealth.
On the other hand, he favors abolition of the federal income tax
Two things:
1)If you're getting this from the same ObWi thread I read, he says something along the lines of favoring repeal of the 16th Amendment if and only if there was an alternative funding scheme for the government in place. That's slightly less insane.
2)I mentioned something like this in that thread with regard to the 17th Amendment because I'm more sure of my arguments there, but I also think that a federal income tax may have been constitutional before the 16th Amendment.
Yeah, he's great, isn't he? However, he has no 'a' in his last name.
re: 1
Actually, I've noticed that, increasingly, those in positions of power are more and more reluctant to accept responsibility. And, in concert with that, noticed how much the system relies on them accepting it as there's little that can be done to force them to own up.
The government in the UK have been riven by scandals over the past 5 years which, in the past, would have led to someone's resignation. These days they just brazen it out. Deny responsibility.
Billmon: "David [Frum] should be proud of the role he played in making this foreign policy triumph possible. He should give himself a manly pat on the back. And then I think he ought to take a 45 caliber pistol, lock himself in his office, and 'do the right thing.' "
This is becoming very, very broadly applicable.
those in positions of power are more and more reluctant to accept responsibility.
I think this slightly misstates the way it works. There are going to be a certain number of clusterfucks on anyone's watch. People rise to positions of power because they're good at convincingly denying responsibility. Once they're at the top, they continue the behavior that got them there.
The only problem with meeting people from the Internets is that I am running out of blogcrushes. I don't feel that someone can count as a blogcrush after you've actually met them.
8: You haven't abandoned us! Yea!
re: 7
No, I think there's been a real sea-change in the public role of shame in our culture. I'm speaking here of the UK. The US may be different.
Do you think the increasing refusal of higher-ups to accept responsibility is linked to a decline in the aristocratic value of honor? I'm not in favor of noblesse oblige or anything, but it might have had some good points, such as a willingness to be embarassed by utter, catastrophic failure.
As for 10, I think that the North-Eastern elite who used to control the levers of US Governmental power was more vulnerable to shame. I think.
re: 11
Yes, possibly. I'm not sure if it's entirely an aristocratic value of honour. But the basic idea that people in a position of responsibility had a duty to behave in ways that met with certain basic standards of competence, yes. I think that's died.
Of course, I'm sure it was never universal and there have always been sneaky venal fucks around.
What do they have to ashamed about? It's an administration of oil executives, right? Check the past year's profits of the oil companies. Mission accomplished, bitches.
I would go for repeal of the 17th Amendment before repeal of the 16th Amendment, I think.
W/d, when you say you think a federal income tax was constitutional before the 16th Amdt., do you mean even considering Pollock, or that you think Pollock was wrongly decided?
re: 15
Yes, and in the UK -- donning my class-warrior hat -- we are ruled by bourgeois 'meritocrats'.
I expect it's only in the UK that people remember that meritocracy was originally, according to its coiner, thought to be a bad idea.
re: 18
Actually, I've just been reading 'The Rise of the Meritocrats' for the first time. His scorn -- which I share -- is blistering.
I keep reading lines in his first couple of chapters and hearing them in the voice of Tony Blair.
14--I've been somewhat in hiding--from the Hating on Charles Bird project, at least, which is scheduled to be released on Beta just as I've lost most interest. Also: very busy.
When the shame model no longer works, what you're left with is law, and enforcement of that law. And the rich seem to have better lawyers, when they don't have control over the enforcers.
20 -- I haven't read HoCB in a while -- what is "released in beta"? You mean a new lineup of front page posters? A new mission statement? Should I just go read the damn thing?
When the shame model no longer works, what you're left with is law, and enforcement of that law.
Yes. The whole peasant mob, pitchforks, burning torches thing is passé.
We've been talking in email about a whole new setup--new url, new layout, new software, less emphasis on Bird. It's almost ready to roll out (there's nothing announced, as it's been taking a while), and it just doesn't seem like much of a priority for me right now. The damned place can get some real traffic--basically, put in a little effort and it demands a lot of effort. Also: it can get very personal and heated, and my role is, basically, to be the rational adjucator. Tiring.
10: I think #12 is closer to the truth. The problem isn't shame, it's that the long established models of...well, the Establishment...in understanding how to make sense of the world appear to have been thrown out. There's no way to demand an accounting of mistakes, because we no longer have models we can use to make judgments.
If you take GHWB as a model Northeastern Republican, you see that he's way to the "left" of his son in foreign policy--against the Iraq war, more likely to lean on Israel, etc. On domestic policy, there's less evidence--he doesn't seem to have cared very much about it--but, hey, tax hikes to get the deficit down that match up well with Clinton's policy. I think you could say the same thing about Clinton's policies, and I think Clinton's great strength was his ability to connect (penis joke) both with his Southern roots and the Northeastern tradition in which he'd been educated.
It's striking to me how different the public discussion over these last five year has been from previous years. Anti-Iraq war folk have very often made their case on explicitly the same realist grounds as GHWB, and for this, they are considered leftists. Meanwhile, for most of the past five years, the dominant voices on both the right and the left (at least in the media) have been voices that are, in foreign policy, strikingly radical as compared to older models, and, in domestic policy, pretty reactionary. In the absense of some sort of institutional memory about how we used to think just five years ago ("but 9/11 changed everything!"--blow me), there's just no way to judge anyone. The models are too new and too sucky to be of any use.
I expect it's only in the UK that people remember that meritocracy...
Yes, partly because the book came from there, and partly because the provenance of ideas still seems better understood there.
It occurred to me w/r/t the "Gifted and Talented" exchanges that we are almost entirely the class most calculated to benefit from this social system, yet are blessedly ambivalent and free from Esprit de Corps.
But Matt may feel differently about us North Americans, as a class.
The only problem with meeting people from the Internets is that I am running out of blogcrushes. I don't feel that someone can count as a blogcrush after you've actually met them.
Uh-oh.
I have no desire to see U.S. personnel prosecuted for actions they took that they were told were legal. I would like to believe that, had I been told to apply interrogations techniques like waterboarding, I would have the courage to stand up and say no, although the Milgram experiments suggest that humanity has a sad tendency to go with the flow in such cases and I have no reason to believe I'm markedly superior to the rest of humanity. I'm sure that a number of the interrogators did what they did because they were assured (as Katherine noted several days ago) that it was all nice and legal.
I could be wrong. But I'm pretty sure that this is a thin excuse. Mr. B.'s experience in the military included quite a bit of training about interrogation techniques, what was allowed and what wasn't, and so forth. I don't know if all military guys get that, but I'm pretty sure a lot of them do, specifically so that they know their rights if they're taken as a POW.
Now, guys like the Abu Ghraib team, who were mostly reserves, might not get the same training (which might be precisely why that particular team was reservists--not that the reservists are worse people, but they might be easier to lie to about the Geneva Conventions). But I don't think that we can assume that the military/CIA guys doing the actual torturing didn't know that what they were doing was against the rules.
In fact, I think we can pretty much assume that a lot of them did, given that some of the stories came to light because they were reported by peers.
But I'm pretty sure that this is a thin excuse.
I would accept it as a stronger excuse to the extent that they were being told 'It's all nice and legal now'. Not strong enough to avoid punishment, but it's incredible on its face that a soldier could think that beating prisoners was legal under pre-2001 law; less incredible to think that they could think that the law now allowed it.
If I'm a soldier, and someone above me tells me to do something, I think I do it. Particularly if, as LB suggests, there's every evidence that what I previously believed to be the operating rules were no longer the operating rules. Depending on the circs., I'm not even sure they should be punished.
If I'm a soldier, and someone above me tells me to do something, I think I do it.
Nazi.
Depending on the circs., I'm not even sure they should be punished.
Depending on the circs, this gets you all the way to the gas chambers. In civilian criminal law, "I didn't know it was illegal" isn't normally a defense, and I think it's even more dangerous to let it be so for soldiers. (There is absolutely some room for discretion, and triple-absolutely more guilt, and should be harsher punishment, for those who gave orders than those who followed them.)
28 - They can be something else, Teo, just not a blogcrush. Blogcrushes are all about the invented person you have created based on someone's words, in absence of knowing the actual person.
And the rest of you suck for ignoring my attempt at a drive-by threadjacking.
Blogcrushes are all about the invented person you have created based on someone's words, in absence of knowing the actual person.
I know, but I like those invented people. You all better be pretty damn impressive in person.
Teofilo's been picturing us all naked.
I had assumed that when we spoke of blogcrushes simpliciter that non-creepiness was understood, because it's a pain to type "non-creepy" all the time.
Sorry about that that.
34: Very impressive 47 year old balding men, of course.
30: Not unless they were told that the Geneva Conventions had been suspended.
I think that Andrew used to have his own blog. If it is the same guy, he is a Tank Commander in the Army. Anyway, my training as a Marine officer (granted, over twenty years ago) did go into the Geneva Conventions, but no actual info on interrogation techniques, etc. If you were told it was legal, I believe that would be good enough for most. There was and is an active "sign off" sheet for different techniques, signed by a progressively senior officer. As to the reserve unit at Abu Grahaib, I personally think that what happened was because those guys and gals were prison guards in the US for their day jobs. They treated the Abu Grahaib prisoners who had been segregated into their wing because they were "trouble makers" the way they would have treated troublemakers at a US maximum security prison. Nice.
They treated the Abu Grahaib prisoners who had been segregated into their wing because they were "trouble makers" the way they would have treated troublemakers at a US maximum security prison.
This explanation says horrible things about what we tolerate on U.S. soil, to U.S. citizens.
40: Not unless they were told that the Geneva Conventions had been suspended.
I imagine they were told that the Geneva Conventions don't apply to the forces of non-state-signatory entities like Al Qaeda -- which is a sufficiently legally plausible position that the DC Circuit bought it.
(To be clear, I think the argument that the Conventions don't apply to groups like Al Qaeda is a shit argument, and more importantly I can't think why any decent person would want to read the Geneva Conventions that way even if it did make legal sense, but on the other hand who cares what I think?)
Yeah, I suppose. I guess all I'm saying is, it surprises me. I find it hard to imagine most of the military guys I've known just accepting something like that without asking questions.
But then, most of them were Air Force officers.
Nice golf courses, though, if you're into that sort of thing.
Yeah, yeah. I hate golf. What a bourgie "sport."
The best line in Primary Colors is when the Cuomo character says, "My father always said golf was the most capitalist sport; it uses more land for less purpose than any other."
This place is dead tonight. I hate Fridays.
I've only seen a few golf courses in the American West I could feel okay about. They were in fault-cracks.
Hey JM, have you seen my new comment on your personal blog?
It just says I have a new post on a topic you've expressed interest in before.
Lest anyone think I'm trolling for sympathy
When I say I'm going to check, that means I'm departing here to go and check and follow up and comment and stuff! (Sincere responses are at yours.)
I know. I wasn't sure if you'd left yet.
Hasty departures = price of guilt.
48: Hallelujah, the Air Force association had me worried. I prefer the ocean, myself. Played golf once, but it was silly. Pool on a really big, expensive table, with misshapen cues. Not that I can play pool, either.
60: I married into it. Not my fault.
I used to be able to play pool when I was in college. Same Brit who taught me to like soccer taught me to play pool. He never would sleep with me, though.