And Yet Somehow It's Nobody's Fault

Michael Gerson recites,

Recently -- almost seven years after Sept. 11, five years after the Iraq war began -- Gates noted that portions of the military are still not on a "war footing."

And yet, for once, he can't find a place to point his finger. What do you think the chances are he would be similarly confounded in the "blame game" if a Democrat were in the White House?

Are Kids Smarter Than Their Parents?

The Washington Post lectures parents that yogurt, although a potentially healthy snack for kids, can be loaded up with fat and sugar. I suspect kids know this, if from nothing else then from the marketing and packaging. When my three-and-a-half year old, who had never tried the stuff before, first saw "Danimals drinkable yogurt" on the shelf at a grocery store, her reaction was, "I want the candy milk."

(Near-Indefinite) Copyrights And Orphan Works

Congress created a problem with it's succession of bills extending copyright protection - something that it will likely continue to do such that certain works never come out of copyright. Now it proposes making it easy for the same monied interests that profit from those copyright extensions to ignore the copyrights of may of the less famous and less monied. Lawrence Lessig explains:

Congress is considering a major reform of copyright law intended to solve the problem of “orphan works” — those works whose owner cannot be found. This “reform” would be an amazingly onerous and inefficient change, which would unfairly and unnecessarily burden copyright holders with little return to the public.
* * *
The bill would excuse copyright infringers from significant damages if they can prove that they made a “diligent effort” to find the copyright owner. A “diligent effort” is defined as one that is “reasonable and appropriate,” as determined by a set of “best practices” maintained by the government.

You know, a better solution might be to return to historic practice, and shorten the duration of copyright protection. Were orphan works a serious problem before Congress decided that copyright protections should be, if the legislative trend continues, one day short of indefinite?

Lessig's alternative, which is far more politically realistic:

Congress could easily address the problem of orphan works in a manner that is efficient and not unfair to current or foreign copyright owners. Following the model of patent law, Congress should require a copyright owner to register a work after an initial and generous term of automatic and full protection.

That's perfectly reasonable, but it might necessitate the monied interests to pay for works that they might get for free under the proposed legislation. So....

And Guess Who Didn't Vote

David Brooks tries to attack Barack Obama in relation to a farm bill that passed by a vote of 81:15. But if you look at the actual vote:

• Clinton (D-NY), Not Voting
• McCain (R-AZ), Not Voting
• Obama (D-IL), Not Voting

As in, all three candidates were off running for the Presidency.

So when Brooks says,

Obama’s vote may help him win Iowa....

What vote does he think he's talking about?

John McCain opposed the farm bill. In an impassioned speech on Monday, he declared: “It would be hard to find any single bill that better sums up why so many Americans in both parties are so disappointed in the conduct of their government, and at times so disgusted by it.”

And yet McCain didn't think it necessary to show up at work to vote against it, and was unable to demonstrate his supposed ability to reach across the aisle to convince Democrats to join him (and the mere eleven Republicans who voted against the bill) to defeat the bill?

Brooks devotes the rest of the column to a fantasy sequence in which McCain proposes putting the issue of "reforming America’s decrepit governing institutions at the center of his presidential race". There's a strong case to be made that this bill should have been defeated in its present form, and that the pork it includes represents a lot of what's wrong with the political system, but when push came to shove McCain skipped the vote. Was that because he just didn't think the issue important enough, or was it because he fears losing Iowa?

Perhaps Brooks should take a harder look at McCain, as if he weren't a partisan hack he could easily have written this column about McCain and entitled it, All Words And No Action.

Interventionist Foreign Policy As Imagined By Jackson Diehl

Jackson Diehl thinks that McCain's notion of a "League of Democracies" is a fantastic idea, because the UN is a poor tool to legitimize military intervention pretty much anywhere, any time.

Whether Obama or McCain, the next president will take office knowing that he inherits the messes in Darfur, Burma and Iran and also that new crises will erupt during his term. If he is unable to respond - if he, like Bush, ends up watching as tens or hundreds of thousands of people die in a weak or failed state while China and Russia block U.N. action - he will be harshly judged. That's why McCain has smartly begun to talk about his League of Democracies and promised early action to create it.

Because the militaries of the world's democracies are the equivalent of the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, and we can magically zoom in and out of hot spots around the world, defeating the bad guys and establishing freedom within the space of a half-hour (kid's TV show) episode.

What is Diehl actually proposing? A new organization through which the U.S. can legitimize what would otherwise be unilateral military action? A means to coerce other democracies into participating in future "coalitions of the willing", so we can carry out large-scale interventions and invasions in the future without regard to cost or manpower issues - because that worked so well in Iraq? Diehl apparently has a "wish list" for U.S. military interventions over the next few years - and it apparently includes but is not limited to "Darfur, Burma and Iran". Perhaps he would do us the favor of sharing the full list, so we can get a good idea of just how magical his thinking is.

[The] Community of Democracies, founded in 2000, still exists but has been hamstrung by its initial decision to include numerous countries that are not, in fact, democracies -- such as Egypt, Jordan and Azerbaijan.

You mean, instead of relying upon democratic states like, say, Venezuela? This criticism brings to mind a legitimate question: What's so magical about democracy? Would Diehl truly prefer that Egypt hold free elections tomorrow, likely resulting in victory by a conservative Islamic party? Only then would he want Egypt to participate in this "League of Democracies"? He objects to Russia as blocking U.S. military action, so is he stating that Russia is not democratic enough to participate in this new group? What measure of "democracy" does he propose?

The Continuing Relevance Of College

In trying to find out if there's more meat on the bones of Charles Murray's arguments about education than is apparent from this, I found this Wall Street Journal piece:

Even if forgoing college becomes economically attractive, the social cachet of a college degree remains. That will erode only when large numbers of high-status, high-income people do not have a college degree and don't care. The information technology industry is in the process of creating that class, with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as exemplars. It will expand for the most natural of reasons: A college education need be no more important for many high-tech occupations than it is for NBA basketball players or cabinetmakers. Walk into Microsoft or Google with evidence that you are a brilliant hacker, and the job interviewer is not going to fret if you lack a college transcript.

Oh, right... The fact that a company is founded by somebody who didn't complete a college degree means they're open to hiring anybody, even people without college degrees. Microsoft aside, could Murray be less informed about Google's hiring practices?

A reality about the job market must eventually begin to affect the valuation of a college education: The spread of wealth at the top of American society has created an explosive increase in the demand for craftsmen. Finding a good lawyer or physician is easy. Finding a good carpenter, painter, electrician, plumber, glazier, mason - the list goes on and on - is difficult, and it is a seller's market. Journeymen craftsmen routinely make incomes in the top half of the income distribution while master craftsmen can make six figures. They have work even in a soft economy. Their jobs cannot be outsourced to India. And the craftsman's job provides wonderful intrinsic rewards that come from mastery of a challenging skill that produces tangible results. How many white-collar jobs provide nearly as much satisfaction?

Here, Murray reinforces my prior opinion that he has very low regard for the manual trades, and knows next to nothing about... well, we're reaching the point where I could say "pretty much anything he writes about". Murray seems to believe that intellectual skills are something you must be born with, but any other skill can be learned equally well by anyone. As difficult as it may be to find a master craftsman, it is not difficult to find a run-of-the-mill craftsman. (And if you're truly talking the high end, it's no more difficult to find a master craftsman than it is to find a good lawyer, assuming you can afford their services. It's not like they're in hiding.) As for outsourcing, I can contact artisans in Asia with specifics for custom woodwork, stonework or metalwork, and have it shipped to my house. The local contractor only has to have enough skills to assemble or install the parts. That's not outsourcing?

Incidentally, I agree with Murray's argument that the college degree is an artificial qualification for many jobs, and that the act of making college accessible to everyone means lowering standards for obtaining a college degree (as compared to what they could be if you restricted enrollment to the very bright, but let's not pretend that our nation's elite schools have historically focused on enrolling only the brightest students). Unlike Murray, I don't think that's going to change. If you have 40 applications for a job, and 12 have college diplomas, it's an easy criterion to use to narrow the pile. And no, even if the job arguably could be done by somebody without a degree, it's not entirely arbitrary. A college education can provide people with knowledge, thinking skills, and perspectives on the world that they would not otherwise have attained.

Educational Romanticism

Charles Murray recently wrote an essay describing "the age of educational romanticism":

Educational romanticism consists of the belief that just about all children who are not doing well in school have the potential to do much better. Correlatively, educational romantics believe that the academic achievement of children is determined mainly by the opportunities they receive; that innate intellectual limits (if they exist at all) play a minor role; and that the current K-12 schools have huge room for improvement.

It's a simplistic definition, particularly in relation to the last point - what does it mean to have "huge room for improvement"? But fair enough, there are people who adhere to this type of thinking. Of course its far easier to find people who do not. For generations, allusions to gender roles aside, people have been nodding their heads to Atticus Finch's argument,

We know that all men are not created equal in the sense that some people would have us believe - some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they are born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies bake better cakes than others - some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men.

So I'm not going to give Charles Murray any great credit for coming to a similar conclusion almost fifty years later.

Murray then explains how and why, in his view, "Educational romanticism characterizes reformers of both Left and Right", commenting first,

Educational romantics of the Left focus on race, class, and gender. It is children of color, children of poor parents, and girls whose performance is artificially depressed, and their academic achievement will blossom as soon as they are liberated from the racism, classism, and sexism embedded in American education.

I'll present my usual challenge: Name one. Oh, he might be able to do so after some thinking, but it's sheer fiction to present this as representative of education reformers on the political left. But I've met a lot of teachers in my life, and I can't think of one who held this view. Instead, I typically hear about the impact of a child's home environment and parental attitudes toward education and classroom discipline.

Those of the Right see public education as an ineffectual monopoly, and think that educational achievement will blossom when school choice liberates children from politically correct curricula and obdurate teachers’ unions.

Is this fair, either? I mean, truly? The advocates of vouchers and privatization claim to be concerned about school quality and choice, but they have no interest in extending onto private schools the supposedly "objective measures" they impose on public schools (such as "No Child Left Behind") even when allowing those schools to accept public money. When they talk about education the conversation usually seems to focus on cost, not quality. Breaking the unions seems to be much more a priority than quality. And here I include many of the proponents of "No Child Left Behind", despite Murray's seeing it as the "apotheosis of educational romanticism".

We probably could find a small number of "purists" on both sides of the ideological divide, who truly fit Murray's definition, but it seems Murray defines his terms more to suit his argument than to reflect reality. I will grant Murray this much: If we take G.W. Bush's words at face value, he fits the definition.

Murray speaks of the "common experience of parents", in seeing their children display various cognitive strengths and weaknesses even in their early years, as part of his "case that educational romanticism is in fact out of touch with reality". Are we to assume, then, that proponents of educational romanticism aren't parents? That their experience is uncommon? Or is this yet another false construct - "Look how obvious this is, and why don't the group of people who I am ridiculing not see how obvious it is?" The question is not so much, "Isn't it obvious that children achieve at different levels, and have differing levels of aptitude", as it is, "Who really believes otherwise". Murray has a remarkable ability to introduce and defeat straw men. And moving along to his next one:

That brings us to an indispensable tenet of educational romanticism: The public schools are so bad that large gains in student performance are possible even within the constraints of intellectual ability. A large and unrefuted body of evidence says that this indispensable tenet is incorrect.

Again, who says this? What you might actually hear is that improved schools can improve school performance, and in specific cases an individual child may show significant gains in educational performance. A good argument can be made that improved schools could be of particular benefit to gifted students. But, save for the worst of the worst schools, I can't recall ever hearing it suggested that improving schools may result in large improvements in performance for most or all students.

Moving back to the importance of the home, Murray writes about the findings of sociologist James Coleman following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Before Coleman’s team set to work, everybody expected that the study would document a relationship between the quality of schools and the academic achievement of the students in those schools. To everyone’s shock, the Coleman Report instead found that the quality of schools explains almost nothing about differences in academic achievement. Family background was by far the most important factor in determining student achievement.

I'm not going to try to dig up the history of the report, or of reaction to the report, but I suspect Murray's claim of what "everybody expected" is just so much hot air. And now Murray gets to the definition of what constitutes a "bad school".

In thinking about the explanation for this counter-intuitive result, it is important not to confuse your idea of a bad public school with the worst-of-the-worst inner-city schools that are the subject of horror stories. When schools are as bad as they are in the inner-city neighborhoods of Detroit, Washington, and a few other large cities, they certainly have a depressing effect on student achievement. Getting students out of those schools should be a top policy priority. But only a few percent of the nation’s students attend such schools. In what might be called a “normally bad” public school, a lot of the slack has been taken out of the room for improvement. The normally bad school maintains a reasonably orderly learning environment and offers a standard range of courses taught with standard textbooks. Most of the teachers aren’t terrible; they’re just mediocre.

We're apparently grading on a harsh curve: by this standard, a mediocre school is a "bad school". Murray agrees that student performance can be improved in the worst schools by fixing their shortcomings. And I tend to agree with him that when we're talking about schools at various levels of mediocrity, ratcheting a school up a notch or two on the quality scale won't have a profound affect on student performance.

To sum up, a massive body of evidence says that reading and mathematics achievement have strong ties to underlying intellectual ability, that we do not know how to change intellectual ability after children reach school, and that the quality of schooling within the normal range of schools does not have much effect on student achievement.

I suspect we weren't supposed to notice the sloppy construction of this conclusion, and how Murray has elided the problem of truly bad schools. He retreats to his recurring theory, that IQ is all-important and is predictive of intellectual ability "for large groups", that we don't know how to raise IQ's, so what's the point in improving schools?

Although the subjects merit some comment, I'm going to skip over Murray's discussion of educational fads and Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. I'll just say this much: Murray provides an interesting look at the origins of the "self-esteem" movement in school. He does not appear to be aware of the fact that high self-esteem in the sense he scorns ("having a favorable opinion of oneself, independently of objective justification for that favorable opinion") appears to be negatively correlated with academic performance, and lots of low-performing kids think very well of themselves.

Following that discussion, Murray gets back into the sort of analysis that created so much controversy (and probably a huge number of sales) for The Bell Curve.

The effects of the triumphant Civil Rights Movement gave a special reason for white elites in the 1960s to start ignoring the implications of intellectual limitations.

Whose limitations?

The Civil Rights Movement prior to 1964 created a change in the consciousness of white elites that was felt viscerally, and it included an embarrassing awareness of just how unremittingly whites had violated every American ideal when it came to blacks.

Murray's still tiptoeing around the issue, but can you really doubt that he's reiterating his belief that African Americans are intellectually inferior?

Elite white guilt explains much about all kinds of social policy from the last half of the 1960s onward, but especially about education. Until the 1960s, white educators and politicians could look at a class of white children in which a number of students were doing poorly and shrug. The schools try to teach everyone, but some kids can’t handle the material. That’s just the way the things are; it is not a problem that can be fixed. But when the class consisted of black students who were doing poorly, that reaction was not acceptable. These were children growing up in a society where all the odds had been stacked against them, and their failings couldn’t be passed off as “just the way things are.” Elite white guilt made it impossible to say that a lot of black children were going to continue to fail in school and there’s nothing anybody could do about it. Once it could not be said of black children, neither could it be said of white children. In that context, educational romanticism did not just become fashionable during the 1960s. It became emotionally mandatory.

Wait a minute. After the Civil Rights Act was passed, looking at the big picture, the African American story is a success story. By what measure is that the product of "white guilt" as opposed to the fruit of extending better social and educational opportunities to African Americans? And by what measure are African Americans disproportionately enrolled in the worst schools in the nation, something Murray admits impedes student performance?

But that's "little stuff". Murray betrays something here - the fact that he knows essentially nothing about education, and has paid virtually no attention to changes in society between the 1950's and 2008. In the 1950's it was much less of a concern if a student "only" got a high school diploma. The student could reasonably expect to get a job and support a middle class lifestyle on the basis of that diploma. That is no longer true. The reason people are much more concerned about academic performance across the board is that the threshold for entering into the workforce at a middle class wage is enormously higher. This isn't "white guilt" - it's self-interest. People want their kids to do well in school, because they know that education has become the best path to the middle class.

Murray presents a cutesy comparison of "No Child Left Behind" to Soviet economic policy, but actually what he's proposing is a lot closer to Soviet or communist-style educational policy than the worst of G.W.'s reforms: test kids, sort kids by the test results, channel them into vocations or college based upon test results, and pick their future careers for them.

Toward the end of the piece, Murray makes an interesting concession - that "hardly anybody really believes in educational romanticism even now". The "then", when people believed in Murray's construct would have been... when, again?

No one but the most starry-eyed denies in private the reality of differences in intellectual ability that we are powerless to change with K-12 education. People are unwilling to talk about those differences in public, but it is a classic emperor’s-clothes scenario waiting for someone to point out the obvious. Starting that process can be as simple as more articles like this one.

Does blogging count as "in public"? I don't have to look very far to find arguments about the need for, and neglect of, education for gifted students. I openly argue that public schools cater to the lowest common denominator, and that we owe smart kids a lot better than that.

Murray concludes,

For the good of our children, educational romanticism needs to collapse, and quickly. Its effects play out in the lives of young people in devastating ways. The fourth-grader who has trouble sounding out simple words and his classmate who is reading A Tale of Two Cities for fun sit in the same classroom day after miserable day, the one so frustrated by tasks he cannot do and the other so bored that both are near tears. The eighth-grader who cannot make sense of algebra but has an almost mystical knack with machines is told to stick with the college prep track, because to be a success in life he must go to college and get a B.A. The senior with terrific SAT scores gets away with turning in rubbish on his term papers because to make special demands on the gifted would be elitist. They are all products of an educational system that cannot make itself talk openly about the implications of diverse educational limits.

For that fourth grade class, the kid who can't read is probably getting substantial academic support, testing for learning disabilities, and perhaps even one-on-one assistance. The gifted kid? Gets to be bored. I don't know what that has to do with "educational romanticism" - I doubt that there's a person in the world who would see those two kids as having equal aptitude for reading. It has more to do with social promotion, and concern that the weak reader might become totally discouraged if he's kept in first or second grade until his reading skills reach grade level. Murray, of course, offers no solution. Take the poor reader out of the class and the gifted kid is still bored.

The eighth grader? Does Murray not recognize that a kid who has a "mystical knack with machines" might in fact benefit enormously from having a college degree? That in fact it might be a requirement for many jobs he would find enormously rewarding? Murray seems to again be taking us back to the 1950's, where the kid could take "auto shop" classes in high school, graduate, and get a middle class job as an auto mechanic or on an assembly line. Realistically, what job would the kid get now based upon a (presumed) high school diploma? A factory job at $10 - 15/hour? Where, to put it mildly, his abilities are neither challenged nor appreciated?

Here, Murray seems to be displaying the same sort of contemptuousness for manual labor that he projects onto others in relation to intellectual capacity. He seems to believe that the manual trades are something that "anybody can do" and "anybody can succeed in". He also seems to believe that math and computers aren't invading the manual trades, just as they are with every other workspace, such that more advanced skills are needed even for many entry level workers. He seems to believe that a manual trade is a good trade, for now and forever, and is apparently completely blind to the layoffs and downsizings that are leaving many people once able to support a middle class lifestyle struggling to find work at even half of their former wage.

The last example is just plain silly. It's also contrary to his entire thesis, that academic performance is tied to innate ability and cannot be significantly improved. If in fact schools are full of slouching seniors, it really shouldn't take much cracking of the whip to attain significant improvements in pretty much any school.

Demonstrating Bipartisanship The Wrong Way

David Ignatius has a silly idea for Barack Obama:

By reaching outside the Democratic Party for his vice presidential nominee -- tapping Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, say, or independent Mayor Michael Bloomberg from New York -- Obama would in an instant demonstrate that he truly means to change the divisive, lose-lose politics of Washington. It would offer a unity government for a country that seems to want one.

There are all sorts of practical arguments against such an unconventional choice -- not least that it would upset many of Obama's liberal Democratic supporters. But it would make a powerful statement that Obama really does want to govern in a different way. It would make "change we can believe in" more than a slogan.

No, the "not the least of which" argument is that when you vote for a President from a particular political party, you don't expect that in the event of his incapacity that the Presidency will shift to the rival party. If Ignatius brushes up on his history, he should learn that the purpose of joint tickets is to make sure that the President and Vice President are from the same party.

But it does make me wonder... what would the punditocracy say about an Obama/Powell ticket?

By choosing a veteran politician outside his own party, Obama would solve three problems at once: He would undercut the bipartisan appeal of his maverick GOP rival, Sen. John McCain; he would ease voters' fears about his own youth and inexperience...

This would work by sending the message, "I'm like G.W. Bush, and there aren't any Democrats who have sufficient national security credentials to even be as impressive as the mendacious, scheming, non-veteran Dick Cheney"? Great idea. You know what? The innuendo that Obama is "too young" or "too inexperienced" flows not from his actual age or experience, but from members of the punditocracy like Ignatius. So perhaps Obama is better served by scoffing at the suggestion, and challenging Ignatius types to back up their rhetoric with substance.

... and he would find a compelling alternative to Hillary Clinton, who for all her virtues as a vice president would come with heavy baggage - not least the role of her husband, who is even harder to imagine as Second Laddie than as First.

Okay, now that's just silly. If Hillary Clinton wants the VP spot, in all likelihood she'll get it. Nobody wants the fight, or party divisions likely to again erupt, if she lobbies for the job and is rejected. If she does not want the job, she won't be asked. Innuendo Bill Clinton? That's more suited to a Maureen Dowd column, David. Leave that stuff to others.

Moreover, Obama needs to counter the charge that he talks a better game about bipartisanship and change than he has actually delivered. His voting record in Illinois and Washington mostly has been that of a conventional liberal, and there are precious few examples of him taking political risks to work across party lines.

And we're back to, "If the pundits say it, it must be so."

McCain, by contrast, has actually fought the kind of bipartisan battles that Obama talks about - from campaign finance to climate change to rules against torture - and he has the political scars to prove it.

So Ignatius raises three issues to demonstrate McCain's "bipartisanship". First, campaign finance reform. McCain became the "maverick" behind campaign finance reform not by working toward bipartisanship, but by taking a stance against his own party. Look at the actual vote - 60 to 40, with 38 of the "nays" coming from Republicans. That was much less an example of bipartisanship than it was an example of McCain crossing the aisle. Does Ignatius understand the meaning of the word "maverick"? It's not a synonym for "consensus-builder".

The second example, "climate change". If bipartisanship means offering watered down proposals to try to bridge the gap between effective reforms and ineffective reforms, he gets some credit. But if we're actually looking for a President who will advocate the most effective solutions, that brand of bipartisanship falls short. What is Ignatius overlooking? The importance of leadership. That's what Obama is offering on this issue, as the Republican Party is full of climate change laggards. To use a word that G.W. likes to throw around, the type of compromise McCain is offering constitutes appeasement.

The third example, "rules against torture".... Ignatius has forgotten McCain's flip-flop? Or is he speaking of McCain's failed anti-torture amendment, supported in the Senate by a 90:9 vote, that failed due to threatened veto? Are we now defining a proposal that pretty much everybody already supports as representative of "bipartisanship"? If Obama floats a "Sense of the Senate" bill lauding the beauty of the American flag and gets a 100:0 vote of support, is proof that he can "work toward bipartisanship"?

The best thing I can say about this column is that virtually no one will take its suggestions seriously.

Multiculturalism

The Wall Street Journal has published an editorial on immigration by Jason L. Riley, arguing for immigration and against multiculturalism. Despite his ostensibly taking the opposite view, part of his piece reminded me of Robert Samuelson's "I wish candidates would tell everybody else what I want to hear" editorial. My parodic expansion of Samuelson's thoughts,

"Now you're of course asking me, 'How are you going to keep those 'south of the border types' out'? I'm not. Oh, I might promise stepped up border patrols, fencing the entire U.S.-Mexican border, or other expensive forms of window-dressing, but at the end of the day I'm simply not the type of politician who is going to ask the agriculture industry to pay the type of wages that will draw citizens to pick our nation's fruits and vegetables, the hospitality or retail industry to pay that type of wage for maids and janitors, or the construction industry to pay that type of wage for workers.

Riley's explicit thoughts:

The problem isn't the immigrants. The problem is the militant multiculturalists who want to turn America into some loose federation of ethnic and racial groups. The political right should continue to push back against bilingual education advocates, anti-American Chicano Studies professors, Spanish-language ballots, ethnically gerrymandered voting districts, La Raza's big-government agenda and all the rest. But these problems weren't created by the women burping our babies and changing linen at our hotels, or by the men picking lettuce in Yuma and building homes in Iowa City.

I guess some pro-immigration, pro-assimiliation right-wingers are willing to be explicit - they see immigration exclusively as an "us against them" with Mexico, but are content with the idea of allowing "them" to work as maids and nannies, or pick vegetables, as long as they don't (dare I say) cling to their cultural heritage.

Which brings us to the glory of assimilation. Riley confabulates a powerful special interest group that opposes assimilation:

If American culture is under assault today, it's not from immigrants who aren't assimilating but from liberal elites who reject the concept of assimilation. For multiculturalists, and particularly those in the academy, assimilation is a dirty word. A values-neutral belief system is embraced by some to avoid having to judge one culture as superior or inferior to another. Others reject the assimilationist paradigm outright on the grounds that the U.S. hasn't always lived up to its ideals. America slaughtered Indians and enslaved blacks, goes the argument, and this wicked history means we have no right to impose a value system on others.

The fact that you would be hard pressed to name even one such person? I guess that only shows how insidious they are. But you know as well as I do, when people go to the polls and are looking for opinion leaders on these issues, the first place they turn is to "multiculturalists, and particularly those in the academy". Whether its anti-immigrant sentiments, anti-gay marriage laws and ballot initiatives, "English language only" laws, whatever, those darn fictional ivory tower elitists get in the way of right wing populism at every turn.

The political right should continue to push back against bilingual education advocates, anti-American Chicano Studies professors, Spanish-language ballots, ethnically gerrymandered voting districts, La Raza's big-government agenda and all the rest.

Ah, so there we go... the evil leftists unmasked.

• Bilingual education advocates - these, presumably, are the people who respect studies demonstrating that bilingual education is effective at keeping immigrant children at grade level as they learn English. These programs can even take the form of rapid immersion, with bilingual elements phased out over a relatively short period of time. The horror.
• Anti-American Chicano Studies professors - these must be the "multiculturalists ... particularly those in the academy" previously mentioned. How many "Chicano Studies professors" exist, and what subset of them is anti-American? That's beside the point.
• Spanish-language ballots - Letting citizen immigrants read ballots in their native language, so they can fully appreciate what they're voting for? Can't you see, the sky is falling!
• Ethnically gerrymandered voting districts - Darn those liberal, multiculturalist Republican gerrymanderers. Darn them to heck! Wait... other motives may be involved? Well, go figure.
• La Raza's big-government agenda - Who? These guys? I guess I'm in the wrong part of the country, because I'm not seeing them wield any influence in these parts. Anyway, as we previously covered, when we say "you guys should assimilate" we mean by "burping our babies and changing linen at our hotels, or ... picking lettuce ... and building homes", not by petitioning the government for redress of grievances. Stop your anti-American antics!

It's also interesting to note that people like Riley have a very narrow view of what it means to assimilate. You won't hear them crying in their milk over our nation's having "too many churches", and how we really need to assimilate into a single [Christian] religion. You won't hear them whining about Scottish heritage festivals, and how the nation would be significantly improved if only we banned the caber toss. You won't hear them lament that we're still referencing the Scots-Irish heritage of residents of West Virginia. You won't hear them calling for the shuttering of ethnic restaurants. You may hear them whine about the "decline" of American culture, and in particular about the evils of popular culture. When you do hear that complaint, it will typically be uttered with the same degree of contemptuousness - because the problem is not the origin of the culture, it's that the culture is alien to them and they don't like it. (A response we might get? "It's different this time, and I'll tell you why shortly, but right now I'm taking the family to Taco Bell as soon as I get my kid to turn off Dora The Explorer.")

You see, there's "good multiculturalism" and then there's "bad multiculturalism". "Bad multiculturalism" necessitates railing against the latest major immigrant group and declaring that they're somehow going to ruin America. "Good multiculturalism" involves celebrating the heritage of the group you once despised, while completely overlooking the fact that multiculturalism and assimilation can and do coexist, and contribute to what we now see as "American" culture. There are many examples in our society of groups that are regarded as 100% American, but who hold on to elements of their historic culture.

I don't want to unfairly brand Riley as myopic, so I'm fully prepared for somebody to send me his editorial, which certainly must exist, lamenting our nation's St. Patrick's Day Parades, or decrying the continued presence of "Chinatown" or "Little Italy" districts in many of our nation's major cities.

Our Village Has Two Idiots

One... Two... Three if you count this guy. How did we get so lucky.
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Update: As by now you know, McCain endorsed talking to Hamas as recently as two years ago. For McCain it's not about honesty, honor or good foreign policy. It's about getting elected. That's no different from most other politicians, you say? Exactly.

... After The Next Election

Apparently John McCain is not as eager as some believe to distinguish himself from Bush. Speaking about the Iraq war,

“By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom,’’ Mr. McCain said at the Columbus Convention Center. “The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced.’’

So we'll see great progress... after the next election. Okay, and how will this be achieved?

“I don’t think it has anything to do with fantasy, I think it has everything to do with setting goals and achieving.’’

Yes, candidate McCain, but how will this be achieved? No answer? Okay, let's try another question....

If your "flowers and candy in 2013" scenario doesn't actually pan out, and things continue to be as bad as they are now, how long will you keep U.S. forces in Iraq? Oh... no answer to that question, either. Wait a minute - isn't your giving a timetable something that can be taken by the enemy as a sign of surrender and a date they need only await? This is different, you say? Because you'll stay in Iraq until the job is done, even if it takes more than four-and-a-half years? But you still won't tell us how long?

Well, if you can't give us specifics, can you at least share a few more of your pipe dreams? You can? Great.

In Afghanistan, he said, an increase in actionable intelligence will have led to the capture or death of Osama bin Laden.....

And you're basing this assertion on... oh yes, sorry, I forgot. Pipe dreams. Got more?

On domestic policy, Mr. McCain projected that the United States will have experienced several years of “robust economic growth;’’ a reduction in the corporate tax rate; and the beginning of a phase out of the alternative minimum tax.

Because moon fairies will come down to the Earth and sprinkle the economy with magic fairy dust, and...

Oh, sorry. As you said, this has nothing to do with fantasy. How could I have forgotten. We're to assume that you have a rock-solid plan to get us out of the war in Vietnam, er, Iraq, fix the economy, and all that. But it's a secret.

Robert Samuelson On Truth Serum

Oh boy.... Robert Samuelson imagines a world where we put politicians on "truth serum" and suddenly everything the have to say coincides 100% with (you probably guessed it) Samuelson's personal political agenda. Let's supplement some of these remarks, such that they're actually truthful.

"What we can do is preserve an economic climate that favors long-term growth. That means holding down the tax burden to maintain incentives for work and investments. We're already running a $400 billion or so deficit; some broad-based tax increases may be needed. This will disappoint conservatives, who think no one should pay taxes, and liberals, who think only the rich should pay them. But we must also cut spending, because, unless we do, the future tax increases will be crushing.

"Taxes may need to be raised, but only broad-based taxes. Should we need to raise taxes, we need not concern ourselves with progressive taxation or the impact of higher taxes on working families. We should caricature both conservatives (in a somewhat flattering way) and liberals (in a somewhat nonsensical way).

"To cut to the chase - while taxes may need to be raised that's something to be avoided. What we must do is cut spending. And by cutting spending, of course, I mean programs that help the poor and (primarily) the middle class. I have no interest in examining other major expenses, such as the cost of the Iraq War, so don't even go there.

"Of necessity, spending cuts should focus on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. These programs are projected to grow from about 45 percent of the present budget to 70 percent over a couple of decades. Paying for that exclusively with taxes would be devastating for the economy and our children. Paying exclusively by cutting other programs would gut vital government services. I admit that raising eligibility ages for baby boomers and cutting some benefits are unfair. People should have received more warning. But our politicians have so dawdled that there's no warning time left.

"Yes, I'm one of those politicians who happily advances the right-wing canard that because we "spent" the money we borrowed from Social Security, even though Social Security owns treasury notes that if repaid would carry it for decades, those taxes you paid to support your retirement are gone and now we need to cut your benefits. We won't pause to reflect on what this means for the oft-heard line, 'the poor and lower middle class don't pay income taxes,' as if we divert your Social Security taxes into the general fund what are they other than just another income tax.

"And no, don't ask me the financial specifics of the Social Security crisis, because the facts hurt my argument. I want you scared that if you don't give up some benefits now, even though we can afford them, the entire system will soon collapse. The truth about Social Security? Not so scary. We have some work to do, sure, but it's dishonest of me to suggest that the sky is falling.

"Now Medicare and Medicaid are a different story, and we do need to find a way to reign in costs. I'm going to start by ignoring how implementation of universal health care could affect this financial picture, because I'm busy pretending that nobody is addressing these issues. While universality of health insurance doesn't directly address the problems of Medicare and Medicaid, it could keep people off the Medicaid rolls who currently intentionally reduce their earnings and assets in order to qualify for benefits.

"My opponent sees a future where the working poor can hold jobs despite having chronic, costly illnesses and still have good health coverage. My vision involves keeping them poor and dependent - then cutting their Medicaid benefits. Let's face it - that's better for wealthy taxpayers like me. We can pay for our own health care - although our ability really isn't the issue, as most of us also have really good insurance and we don't need to worry about the consequences of Medicare and Medicaid cuts.

"Take for example candidate John McCain. His wife could open him his own private medical clinic, staffed with personal physicians and nurses to cater to his every need. She could afford this without even having to sell her private jet or mortgage one of her vacation homes - they have so much money, it wouldn't affect their lifestyle at all. But he and I still want to cut your medical benefits and your medical safety net, because let's face it. We're more important than you.

"And because we're more important to you, when I talk about cutting Social Security and the medical care safety net, I'm not talking about cutting retirement benefits for members of the Senate, or eliminating the generous health insurance packages available to Senators at taxpayer expense. You may notice that while I'm talking about surprising you with less income and more medical expenses in your retirement, I have no interest in sharing your pain. I would prefer it if you didn't notice that, but no matter how hard I wish it weren't the case, not all of you are stupid.

"We've also dawdled on energy. No one likes $125-a-barrel oil. Last year, we paid an average price of $64 a barrel for imports. Some blame the oil companies, but the truth is that we're all to blame. Americans like cheap gasoline and big vehicles. Nothing was done to dampen consumption. Meanwhile, Congress restricted new oil and gas exploration on environmental grounds. So, demand rose and supply fell. In 1985, we imported 4 million barrels of oil a day; now that's 12 million

"Now when I say 'nothing was done', I don't really mean that. I mean that once Ronald Reagan was elected President and energy self-sufficiency and conservation no longer seemed like pressing concerns, those quaint notions were quickly relegated to the status of exhibits at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. I'm also going to pretend that the only issue causing a rise in oil prices is our domestic inability to get more oil out of the ground right now. That it has nothing to do with increased demand for oil around the world, and perhaps especially in China and India.

"I'm also going to pretend that other oil-producing nations would not step down their production in response to any domestic increase, so as to maximize their own profits. I will happily ignore the fact that if we drained ANWR dry, odds are we will get at most a four year domestic supply of oil - then it's gone and we're back where we started. And I'll ignore the very concept of the word "reserves" - because I think it's better that we completely tap out domestic sources of oil sooner rather than later, so we can become even more dependent on foreign oil.

"As I said, I don't want you blaming the oil companies for any of this. It's not like they have intentionally limited refinery capacity so as to maximize gasoline prices in the summer. Well, actually it is like that, but I don't want you to remember that fact. Don't blame the auto industry either, because they made a lot of money off of selling SUV's, even as they ceded the technological advantage in fuel efficient technologies to the Japanese auto manufacturers. And I don't want you to bring up the environmental records of 'big oil' either, because, well, I don't think the environment is very important. And just so you know, if you disagree with me you're stupid.

" 'Energy independence' is a fraud. We simply use too much foreign oil. All we can do is limit our dependence by shifting to more-efficient vehicles and increasing domestic production. But these measures will take years and have only modest effects. The same is true of global warming. Without major technological breakthroughs, making big cuts in greenhouse gases will be impossible.

"And when I say 'Energy independence is a fraud', I mean I don't want to pay the political price of achieving it. I don't want to have to sell you on nuclear power, mass transportation, more energy-efficient living, and massive infrastructure investment - I don't even want to mention those things. I'm happy to pretend that if we get the average vehicle up to 30 or so MPG, everything will come up roses - and that we have no other ways to conserve energy. I'm going to pretend that only gasoline is made from a barrel of crude, and am not going to mention other gases or heating oil. I certainly don't want to ask businesses to ante up, and as you know I'm not going to raise taxes on the rich to pay for any of this.

"Similarly, when I say 'The same is true of global warming,' I'm again passing the buck. Obviously there are things we can do to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. I'm not willing to increase taxes to pay for those things, and again I'm not interested in asking industry to bear the expense, so forget it. It's just not a priority to me. As far as I'm concerned, the whole "global warming" thing is overblown.

"By the way, did you notice that I didn't mention nuclear energy? It would take a courageous politician to bring up nuclear energy as a possible solution to some of our energy needs. Did you see the way I avoided mentioning coal, the environmental impact of coal mining and coal-burning power plants, and the greenhouse gases and environmental damage resulting from coal-burning plants? Because it would take a courageous politician to tackle those issues, and if you noticed that you're probably also noticing that I'm anything but courageous. You did notice? Drat.

"Finally, let's discuss poverty. Everyone's against it, but hardly anyone admits that most of the increase in the past 15 years reflects immigration -- new immigrants or children of recent immigrants. Unless we stop poor people from coming across our Southern border, legally and illegally, we won't reduce poverty. Period. That doesn't mean we should try to expel the 12 million illegal immigrants already here -- an impossible and morally dubious task. Many families have been here for years; many have American children. We need a pragmatic accommodation: assimilate most people now here; shift future immigration to the highly skilled.

"And here you'll note that I'm painting a picture of immigration and poverty that is so misleading that anybody who is conversant with the issues will think I'm lying. But I'm telling the truth, in a relative sort of way, by describing the world in a way that reflects my politics and personal prejudices.

"Now you're of course asking me, 'How are you going to keep those 'south of the border types' out'? I'm not. Oh, I might promise stepped up border patrols, fencing the entire U.S.-Mexican border, or other expensive forms of window-dressing, but at the end of the day I'm simply not the type of politician who is going to ask the agriculture industry to pay the type of wages that will draw citizens to pick our nation's fruits and vegetables, the hospitality or retail industry to pay that type of wage for maids and janitors, or the construction industry to pay that type of wage for workers.

"Heck - since I'm being honest, I'm not willing to pay that type of wage for the guy who mows my lawn and cleans my pool, or the woman who clean my house. So at most I'm talking about trying to shift them into a 'guest worker'-type system that maintains them as a steady supply of cheap labor. If I were to be honest about my hope, it would be that they come here to work they leave their children at home, and by 'home' I mean 'south of the border'.

"By pretending the poverty problem is driven by immigration, I also get to avoid addressing the more difficult aspects of poverty. If I admitted that immigrant populations assimilate, their children mostly speak English and hold jobs, and that their poverty is relatively transitory, you might turn around and ask me, 'What about those populations where poverty isn't a transitional stage? Where people or families are in poverty for years, or even generations? What can we do for them?' You might even argue, 'Can't we learn something from the successful assimilation of immigrants, even those with little or no education, that might help us learn how to move other populations out of poverty?' Truth be told, I don't care about people in poverty. My only solution for them is to cut their entitlements.

"Vote for me. I'll tell the truth."

"That is, the truth as I see it. Which may not be the truth. But that technicality aside, it's the truth."

Samuelson adds,

Of course, our hapless candidate would be dismissed as misinformed, offensive, possibly racist and, of course, unelectable.

No. A fair assessment would be that the hapless candidate is ill-informed, intentionally or unintentionally oversimplifies serious issues, responds to serious problems at best with clichéd non-solutions, and mostly offers no solution whatsoever to anything else he defines as a "critical" issue for the nation.

That isn't a good way to differentiate himself from the rest of the field.

All He Has To Do To Win....

In a column by Maureen Dowd that you'll be shocked to know, isn't really worth reading, she shares this insight:

Charlie Peters, the legendary former editor of the liberal Washington Monthly who ran Jack Kennedy’s campaign in Kanawha County, W. Va., said Obama should study how J.F.K. managed to win there despite raging anti-Catholicism.

* * *

“The point of West Virginia in 1960 is that you can change attitudes,” Peters, an Obama supporter, said on Tuesday evening. “But if you don’t act to change them, he could lose West Virginia and I think he could lose the country.

“He has to change those perceptions of the people who think he could actually agree with the Rev. Wright.

* * *

Peters says Obama needs imagination and a “tremendous effort” to dispel bias in West Virginia, and quickly, “because once it’s set in concrete, you’ll have a hell of a time.”

This, to me, is barely above saying, "If he wants to win, all he has to do is convince more than half of the people in each state to vote for him." It's not quite that bad, because Peters ties things back to Rev. Wright. But the problem with Obama's distancing himself from Rev. Wright, or from the whisper campaign that he's actually a Muslim, is that nothing he can say or do will convince people who believe such things otherwise. They aren't interested in looking at his record, and they don't believe his denials.

In this regard, I think it will take the strong effort of people who already have credibility with the doubters to make a clear case that in fact Obama is telling the truth. That, of course, would have to overcome a simultaneous GOP smear campaign intending to convince people otherwise. That smear campaign is underway, as highlighted by this absurdity from Kent County, Michigan. Daniel Larison (who, as if it needs to be said about an amconmag.com contributor, does not support Obama) reacts,

I don’t know what I find more depressing–that the GOP is so absolutely, unspeakably intellectually bankrupt that this is all it has to offer, or that this sort of tactic might very well win them the presidential election.

It's much easier to engage in this type of "see what sticks" mudslinging than it is to refute each new smear.

There are two sources of "bias" that Obama arguably needs to "overcome". One, racism, already is "set in stone". He's not going to budge more than a tiny number of the people who will not vote for him because of his race. How much effort should he direct at those people? None. The likely return on investment of time and resources is vanishingly small.

That's not to say that he can't shift perceptions of himself, such that he's more of a "Colin Powell" black man than a "Rev. Wright" black man.

Susan Dzimian, a Clinton supporter who owns residential properties, said outside a polling location in Kokomo that race was a factor in how she viewed Obama. "I think if it was somebody other than him, I'd accept it," she said of a black candidate. "If Colin Powell had run, I would be willing to accept him."

That's the kind of voter who had Peggy Noonan tied up in knots, before the Rev. Wright story emerged and enabled the political right to start painting Obama as a "scary black man".

As for the skeptics of Obama who are less concerned about race, but are concerned about issues like Rev. Wright, the whispered smears that Obama's secretly a muslim or is hostile to Israel, or the overt Republican attacks on Obama's patriotism, as I previously indicated, Obama's teaming up with credible people who will refute those charges could help him gain votes. For those who think an Obama-Clinton "unity ticket" is the thing? So far, Clinton has chosen to benefit from those concerns rather than trying to shift voters toward more accurate views. I don't see how she can credibly commence with a defense of Obama, let alone be a credible running mate at the bottom of the ticket, given that history. As for McCain, it's pretty clear that he intends to run a dirty campaign if that's what it takes to win, and he has lots of proxies (for example, the Kent County GOP) willing to roll around in the gutter on his behalf.

To put it mildly, in terms of making solid inroads with voters who are hostile to him, Obama and his allies have a lot of work to do.
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Update: Giving credit where credit is due, Hillary Clinton is coming out against McCain's "Hamas" smear.

Some "GOP Operatives" Are... Stupid

The proposed smear:

Privately, some Republicans say they also hope to raise doubts about Obama's patriotism. McCain's TV ads stress his five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. One GOP operative, speaking on condition of anonymity, said strategists have proposed an ad picturing a series of Democratic politicians, all but one - Obama - wearing a U.S. flag pin.

"Here's the tagline: What's he got against the American flag?" the operative said.

Right.... Because there's no way that could possibly backfire on McCain.

One wonders... is this idea coming from the same moron who sent Jack Kingston out to whinge about the flag pin issue? Because there, also, we apparently weren't supposed to notice that Jack Kingston doesn't wear a flag pin?