A conservative alternative

Reasoned and moderate conservatives are coming out of the woodwork for John McCain. It's a wise course correction for the Republican party, right now, I think.

The case for John McCain

I disagree with McCain on much. I oppose campaign finance regulation, which I think is counterproductive and easily circumvented. I think a fuller discussion needs to occur around torture and exceptions to the rule that torture should never be used. I think McCain cowtows too much to religious conservatives and their Christian-centric worldview (and if I were to take him at his word that the American President should be Christian, I would be deeply offended for my Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, agnostic and atheist, and Americans of other faiths or lack thereof).

But McCain also represents an important departure from the swagger and threatening demeanor of the Giuliani campaign and leadership style, right now, which would like further alienate the international community and the Muslim world if he were to be elected. I also think that the Giuliani and Clinton campaigns represent the cynical politics of power and inevitability that corrupt and undermine more genuine democratic discussion and engagement on serious policy issues in America and internationally.

McCain is not a perfect option, in that respect. But I think he might be better. And anything would have to be better than the politics of inevitable, overwhelming, and arrogant power-mongering, right now.

For that reason, Clinton and Giuliani both need serious, credible, and effective challenges in their respective races. Obama and McCain offer those challenges.

It is a better opportunity for reasoned discourse and those who respect its central importance in democratic politics and policy-making to find its place in this election. Clinton and Guiliani could offer that opportunity, as well, as they demonstrate their commitment to that discourse and in lieu of its belligerent and less courageous alternatives and the hubris that power, rather than ideas, is the central value of democratic life.

And American and liberal democracy would be better for the commitment.

The comedy of errors that is nuclear proliferation 21st-century-style

As the Economist points out, it is pretty funny how American intelligence is so finnicky and clearly uncertain, even as various ideologues use it for all-too-certain-and-deadly purposes.

But the headline on this article is kind of funny given the failures of the least 4 years.

Pressure works ("high confidence")

Here's my question for the Economist editors:

Given the uncertainty of all intelligence claims, including what I believe to be a dubious claim that pressure rather than a whole host of alternate causalities is responsible for it's claim that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons (though it is clearly still trying to develop weapons-grade uranium and its ambitions and rhetoric were very likely accelerated, not halted, I believe, by American-led efforts to pressure them to give up their pursuit of the bomb; if you can't tell, I'm a little skeptical of the NIE findings, even as I welcome their efforts to turn down the heat)...

How many years would the advocates of pressure as the vehicle for denuclearization give the current strategy before they would be willing to give it up?

Meaning, if pressure failed for 10 years rather than 4 years, would you be willing to give it up?

If it failed for 15 years, would that be enough time? How about for 20 years? Or 50? Or 100?

It's important. Because it took 70 years for the Soviet Union to give up force as a governing philosophy before it gave it up. And much destruction was wreaked along the way.

No matter how many times the Washington Post, the Economist editors, Thomas Friedman, Joe Nye, Francis Fukuyama, or any other combination of folks who perpetually end up having to face yet another reality that challenges what I believe to be underdeveloped ideas about hard and soft power and a good cop/bad cop philosophy of doing business in international politics, they have this habit of adapting the evidence to fit their assumptions rather than questioning their assumptions to fit the evidence.

The latter is the basis for reason and more empirical assessments of evidence and policy questions. The former is an accomodation of reality rather than an embrace of empirical evidence as the basis for forming conclusions.

It also happens to be a rationalization of illiberalism and abuses of power and an example that the illiberal world has been following all-too-closely up to this point.

And the irony of this godforesaken rationalization is:

If it turns out that I am right, which I'm pretty sure I am, and that the democratic community who has been feeding this aggressive policy trend are wrong, will there be someone, anyone, who might step up and take responsibility for the mistake? In this era of responsibility, will anyone be willing to step up and take responsibility on this one? So far, responsibility has not been terrible forthcoming, certainly not enough to reassure me that the current strategy is the best means of eliciting greater responsibility.

And the larger problem is that we prolong and make more serious the already very serious problems of nuclear proliferation and a whole host of policy problems we face as long as we rationalize what I believe to be an aggressive abuse of democracy and power. There are better ways to deal with Iran, Iraq, Israeli/Palestinian peace, and a whole host of serious issues that we face that are more effective and consistent with our liberal values. But to get there, at some point, we would actually need to take those values seriously.

Perhaps this is our moment.

The slide into illiberalism

German seeks to ban Scientology

You know what they really need to crack down on. All this free thought circulating around the internet and in coffee shops and in universities and churches and living rooms. Too much damned freedom to think and worship and speak as you please. It's about damned time that someone ridded the world of these obstructions to safety and a more secure order.

Will someone now, finally, admit that safety and freedom are at odds and that security and the rule of law trump freedom and the interests of liberalism every time?

Thank Allah, the State, and the Central Party that we have rulers like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, Wen Jiabao, Fidel Castro, Bashar Assad, Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez and other such bellwethers of security and progress.

Maybe now we can finally turn this world around.