From The NY Times Video: ‘A Schoolgirl’s Odyssey’

Full post here.

The third post in a row on Afghanistan…:

I suspect some on the political right unequivocally support any plan, though many reasonable people support McChrystal’s thinking, which should be given a chance to succeed they argue, and is designed to correct 8 years of misallocated resources and misguided strategy.  Some on the left support the equality of opportunity for women (as in the video above, which is well done and reported)…perhaps even enough that some could be convinced to support the war.  

Here’s a quote by Samuel Huntington, which might shed some light:

“Although the professional soldier accepts the reality of never-ending and limited conflict, “the liberal tendency,” Huntington explained, is “to absolutize and dichotomize war and peace.” Liberals will most readily support a war if they can turn it into a crusade for advancing humanistic ideals. That is why, he wrote, liberals seek to reduce the defense budget even as they periodically demand an adventurous foreign policy.

So…why does the Taliban keep coming back?  What political, social, and economic conditions allow for this to happen?  Where is Afghan public support strong enough to prevent the kind of Islamic rule supported by the Taliban and set up their own governance, if a majority of Afghans, in fact, reject the Taliban (or at least their reactionary form of Islam)?

What common goals and mutual interests do Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United States share that justifies our military presence in the face of these odds?  

Addition:  What can we do to alter our strategy to address the threat of radical Islamic terrorism that finds a home in Afghanistan?

Also On This Site:  From The Washington Post: Andrew Bacevich ‘Let’s Beat the Extremists Like We Beat the Soviets’…From Foreign Policy: ‘Evaluating Progress In Afghanistan-Pakistan’…From The WSJ: Graham, Lieberman and McCain “Only Decisive Force Can Prevail In Afghanistan’…

Anthony Cordesman At CSIS: Resourcing For Defeat

Theodore Dalrymple At The New English Review Via A And L Daily: ‘The Cult Of Insincerity’

Full post here.

Dalrymple (pseudonym of a former British prison doctor) takes it personally when he sees that:

“…half the page of Le Monde was taken up with a plea for the greatest reform of prison of all: total abolition. It was written by a teacher of philosophy at a lycee, one of the elite state schools of the country; and if it were not for the fact that many young people tend to believe exactly the opposite of what their teacher teaches them, I would have said that he must be a corrupter of youth.”

He takes a shot at the French left, and those trying to stretch theory over all, perhaps not even believing it all themselves (perhaps they do).  After all, Dalrymple is British, and a fervent critic of the French and British left.  He points out where this theory meets more complex reality, and actual people.  Remember, the idea is to abolish prisons:

“There is no recognition whatsoever in the article that the purpose of the criminal law is to protect the population from criminals, not to make criminals better people. Of course, it would be nice if they became better people, as indeed they often do with the passage of time; but criminal justice is not group therapy.” 

I think it’s useful to point out that the moral aims of psychology, psychiatry, counseling, etc. will not solve all of our problems (they perhaps are not sciences, and they conflict with the law).  But in this case, these fields are being used for political reasons as well, and I think this is Dalrymple’s target:

“There is in the article a moral exhibitionism, which is generosity of spirit at other people’s expense. This, I think, is one of the sicknesses of our age, the desire to appear more-compassionate-than-thou.”

But hasn’t that always been a main goal of the European left; to extend moral concern to the poor, the have-nots, and the workers and non-aristocrats within the framework of certain abstract principles?  

So, are we in America importing the worst parts (born of what may be less democratic societies) into our politics right now…?

…any more than we have in the past?

Is modernization theory still going strong?

Addition:  Of course, Dalrymple is British, and he’s being discussed here…

Also On This Site:   Theodore Dalrymple Still Attacking Multi-Culturalism In Britain…From The WSJ Weekend Journal-Theodore Dalrymple: “Man Vs. Mutt”

And:  From Bloggingheads: Tamar Szabo Gendler On Philosophy and Cognitive Science…Repost: Is Psychology A Science? From Richard Feynman’s ‘Cargo Cult Science’…Charles Murray Lecture At AEI: The Happiness Of People

Only On the Left In This Photo

Anthony Cordesman At CSIS: Resourcing For Defeat

Full article here.

Afghanistan was not funded nor resourced properly, according to Cordesman, and for Obama:

“I[n] [sic] the case of Afghanistan, he must either make unpopular and costly decisions to compensate for seven crippling years of underresourcing the war, or risk losing it.”

See Also:  Clive Crook At The Financial Times: Clive Crook ‘Afghanistan Is Now Obama’s War’  From Commonweal: Andrew Bacevich “The War We Can’t Win: Afghanistan And The Limits Of American Power”…

From Will Wilkinson-A Response To Kay Hymowitz: ‘The “Menaissance” and Its Dickscontents’

Full post here. (Wilkinson responds to Hymowitz’s article).

Quite a title.  Men don’t know what to do that now with themselves now that women have more economic and social freedom, and it’s unfair, claims Hymowitz.  Wilkinson involves De Tocqeuville to make a good point:

“American-style democratic equality creates a pattern of unceasingly stressful striving for relative rank, and all this mobility up and down produces a confusion in manners that can lead to dangerous social frictions and resentments.”

Agreed.  Hymowitz’s article is pretty reactionary. 

However, to try and defend social conservatism for a moment:   There have been a lot of intolerant agents and impulses which have made the equality of women possible, and which seek equality in ways to which the social and fiscal conservative can reasonably object (as a prudent defender of institutions and their moral lights).   

So, if we are (and I’ve found few if any valid arguments denying women their freedoms) witnessing the messy, molten lava process of democracy maintaining, perhaps even reinvigorating, itself…how messy can it be and how far can you follow the logic?

I wouldn’t want to follow Hymowitz’s logic too far, incidentally, though I do give her credit for thinking against the tide.  

Wilkinson seems pragmatic in what may be his plans for libertarianism:  Will Wilkinson And Jonah Goldberg On Bloggingheads: Updating Libertarianism?

Updated:  Wilkinson and Hymowitz discuss matters at Bloggingheads.

See Also On This Site:  Kay Hymowitz In The The City Journal: Love In The Time Of Darwinism…Kay Hymowitz In The City Journal: Child-Man In The Promised Land?

Conservatives shouldn’t entirely fret the depth of Martha Nussbaum, as she is a feminist but perhaps classically liberal:  From The Harvard Educational Review-A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.’

From Wired Via A & L Daily: ‘Why Craigslist Is Such A Mess’

Full article here.

“By eliminating marketing, sales, and business development, craigslist’s programmers have cut out all the cushioning layers that separate them from the users they serve, and any right they have to teach lessons in public service comes from the odd situation of running a company that is directly subservient only to the public.”

and:

“Corporate isolation, user anonymity, refusal of excessive profit, glacial adoption of new features: These all signal Newmark and Buckmaster’s wariness about what humans, including themselves, might do if given the chance.”

Idealistic, perhaps with some anti-corporation leftism thrown in, but still having to deal with the self-interest, dishonesty and sometimes criminal nature of people.  

See Also:  From The Atlantic: “Information May Want To Be Free. But Not Journalism”…From The New Yorker: Malcolm Gladwell’s “Priced To Sell”

From The Information Philosopher: Another Take On Libertarianism

Full entry here.

“We must limit determinism …but not eliminate it as Libertarians mistakenly think necessary.”

Thanks to a reader for pointing this out, and I’d be interested in some reactions:

“Most libertarians have been mind/body dualists who, following René Descartes, explained human freedom by a separate mind substance that somehow manages to act in the physical world. Some, especially Immanuel Kant, believed that our freedom only existed in a transcendental or noumenal world, leaving the physical world to be completely deterministic.“

Exploring some intellectual foundations…examining other arguments…

See Also On This Site:  Kant is a major influence on libertarians, from Ayn Rand to Robert Nozick:  A Few Thoughts On Robert Nozick’s “Anarchy, State and Utopia”…Link To An Ayn Rand Paper: The Objectivist Attack On Kant

From Reason’s Hit And Run: What Kind Of Libertarian Are You?

Light Posting This Next Week

Posting will be lighter than usual from 05/28/09 to 06/03/09.

Thanks to everyone who has stopped by.

Andrew Leonard In Salon Via Andrew Sullivan: Let Geithner Fail?

Full post here.

Obama is a pretty cool customer.  Pragmatic liberalism above ideological liberalism?  

Does he lack leadership skills, as Peggy Noonan suggests in the Wall Street Journal…letting things unfold around him?

See Also: David Brooks At The NY Times: “A Moderate Manifesto”…From The Washington Post: Charles Krauthammer-The Fierce Urgency Of Pork…From Bloggingheads: Noam Scheiber And Matt Welch Discuss Obama’s Appeal To George Will And The Right…Barack Obama President Elect: A Few Hopes From An Independent

Light Posting This Week

I’ll be on vacation this next week (02/22/09-03/01/09) so posting will be light.

To those who have stopped by, thank you, and feel free to comment on something that you’ve read.

From The American Interest Online: Francis Fukuyama On Samuel Huntington

Full article here.

Fukuyama has some disagreement with Huntington’s later “The Clash Of Civilizations” argument as too narrow and confining, and I think in the long run, worries that it despite its prescience it could lead us into trouble:

“Sam, in my view, underrated the universalism of the appeal of living in modern, free societies with accountable governments.  His argument rests heavily on the view that modernization and Westernization are two completely separate processes, something which I rather doubt.”

and

“The gloomy picture he paints of a world riven by cultural conflict is one favored by the Islamists and Russian nationalists, but is less helpful in explaining contemporary China or India, or indeed in explaining the motives of people in the Muslim world or Russia who are not Islamists or nationalists.”

Fukuyama argues that Hungtington came of age when modernism was dominant.   He also seems to take issue with the epistemological foundations of this largely social-science driven and philosophical worldview that has drastically shaped the last century and a half: 

“Modernization theory had its origins in the works of late nineteenth century European social theorists like Henry Maine, Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Ferdinand Tönnies, and Max Weber.”

By the same token, some of the American right’s (and Fukuyama’s) response has been to look to such thinkers as Friedrich Hayek, Von Mises, Leo Strauss and perhaps Karl Popper.  Here’s a quote from Popper that may be illuminating:

“…and if there could be such a thing as socialism combined with individual liberty, I would be a socialist still. For nothing could be better than living a modest, simple, and free life in an egalitarian society. It took some time before I recognized this as no more than a beautiful dream; that freedom is more important that equality; that the attempt to realize equality endangers freedom; and that, if freedom is lost, there will not even be equality among the unfree.”

We’re still importing a lot of our ideas from the failures and triumphs of Europe…and not just the Anglo tradition.   Fukuyama thinks Huntington was quite at the center of those ideas.

See Also On This Site: From Bloggingheads: Eli Lake And Heather Hurlbert On Samuel Huntington…From The Atlantic: Samuel Huntington’s Death And Life’s Work

 

from The World Economic Forum’s photostream.