I’m in Boston, at the Beckman conference on the Internet and Politics.

We’re about halfway through it; we’ve just finished lunch on the 1st day, and I’ll comment on the form of the conference, which is extremely traditional before I’ll comment too much on the content. Little of the content will be news to folks who read the political blogs; Internet tools are both effective in making existing campaign structures more efficient (think the Bush campaign) and in making new political structures possible.

The nature of those new structures is as yet undefined, but Joe Trippi is questioning the future of political parties, and suggests that the Democratic Party may well be about the first to go…Trent, you there?

What’s the most interesting is that – just like any other convention – all the other people who are here who are interested in the topic are far and away the most interesting part of the event. I’m getting to meet a bunch of smart folks and working on building the network that will at some point help build the coalition of the sensible.

I’m taking notes, and will blog a bit about it on the flight home…

Have I mentioned how much I love living in L.A.?

TG and I were reading the paper last week when they mentioned a ‘concert performance’ of Wagner’s “Tristan & Isolde” at the Disney Hall, with video from Bill Viola.

I’ve been a fan of Viola’s video art for years, and last year we saw his show at the Getty – ‘The Passions.’ It seemed nicely in synch with Wagner.

And yes, I know that when I talk about and criticize the Romanticism that prefers death to mundane life, I’m definitely talking about Wagner. Sometime I have to do something on the politics of art…

But we saw the article, and grabbed two tickets to Friday’s performance of Act One.

We’re fond of Disney Hall for our own reasons (we got married there) and have been to a few concerts there this year.

But this was the doozy, the champeen, the winnah.

Damn.It was amazing; I don’t think I’ve heard an orchestra play Wagner better; the singers were amazing, and the video backdrop was interesting, until the very end when it became transcendental. In case you think it’s the rube in me saying this, here’s the review:

So the journey that began over the weekend had all the promise of a glorified workshop at premium prices. The singers were not the stars (Ben Heppner and Waltraud Meier) who will appear in Paris. There was little attempt at staging. Viola’s videos had to compete with the Disney Hall architecture, which does not make screens easily visible to all, and with bleeding illumination from orchestra stands and spotlighted singers. It was Salonen’s first time with the score, Viola’s entrance into the world of opera.

But “Tristan” — the once famously unsingable opera about a love so potent it can be realized only by the removal of all obstacles, those of the physical world, those of life itself — stretches to the breaking point everyone who confronts it. Any performance that doesn’t try too much fails before it starts.

The Philharmonic tried too much. Everything that should have worked, worked. Everything that shouldn’t have worked, worked. If the “Tristan Project” is not the greatest moment in the orchestra’s history, I can’t imagine what was.

After we stood to applaud, TG and I just sat in our seats in awe.

I know that High Art is a bit of a boondoggle in this society; that edifices like Disney Hall are in part responsible for the decline of our cities.

But somehow – there’s a part of me that thinks that when they’re done right – when the hall works and the music isn’t mediocre – they become boons instead.

The concerts will be held this weekend as well (I’ll be gone, TG threatens to go, and I hope she does).

The fully staged opera, directed by Peter Sellars, will premiere in April of next year in Paris.

I’m going to start saving my money now.

I’ll be in Boston this weekend, at the Berkman Center conference on politics at the Kennedy School.

Who else is going to be there?

I’ve never been to Israel, but pretty much every one I know who has gone there says it is a nation full of bad drivers.

In 1997, Israel had 530 motor vehicle fatalities. In 2002, Israel had 525 motor vehicle fatalities.

Assuming this rate as a baseline, in the 42 years between 1961 and 2003, there would have been as many as 21,000 road deaths in Israel. (I’ll stipulate that this number is doubtless pretty high)

Just as a comparison, according to the Department of State publication I cited earlier, there have been approximately 381 deaths in Israel caused by Palestinian terrorism form 1961 to 2003.

But…I doubt that a government in Israel (or the United States) would fall – would be voted out of power – because of traffic deaths. Even though each of those deaths is as wrenching to those close to the person who died.So what’s different enough about deaths from terrorism (as opposed, say, to deaths in traffic accidents) that they occupy such a central place in our political dialog? Why will we marshal the resources of a country to battle terrorism while we – largely – ignore other issues which may cause more deaths?

I honestly don’t know why they are (and they are, both in my reaction to them and in the polity’s), and acknowledge that I’d better start thinking about it trying to come up with an explanation.

I think that this explanation is going to be a key to unlocking my own difference of perception with many of those who see the issues of the war differently than I do.

I’ll suggest that the direction to look in is because deaths from terrorism – particularly organized terrorism – threaten the core legitimacy of the societies in which we live.

In my view, societies can function because they command the loyalty of their members. This explicit legitimacy is undermined severely when the basic social fabric collapses (as it has in failed states) or, I’ll suggest when the perception is created that the society can’t defend it’s members.

I’m careful here not to explicitly say ‘the government’ can’t defend it’s citizens.

But it may be that societies are very vulnerable to a ‘loss of faith’ by their members.

Some library time is in order.

[Update: I completely spaced and should have credited a comment by blogger Bill Roggio – who did how own post on “Why Terrorism and not Car Accidents?”:http://billroggio.com/archives/2004/08/why_terrorism_a.html back in August.]

Kevin Drum bases his challenge I discuss below on some basic history:

The basic post-9/11 position among conservatives is that the war on terror is the moral equivalent of the anti-fascist crusade of World War II and the anticommunist crusade of the Cold War. Since this is their core argument, let’s take a look at the historical comparisons.

First, World War II. Here’s a quickie timeline of what happened in the five years before the United States entered the war: In 1936 German troops occupied the Rhineland. In 1938 Austria fell in the Anschluss, Hitler bullied Neville Chamberlain into brokering the Munich agreement that turned over Czechoslovakia to Germany, and the Nazi holocaust against the Jews began in earnest with Kristallnacht. In 1939 Hitler invaded Poland, and a year later overran Scandinavia, Belgium, and France and began the Battle of Britain. In 1941 Rommel began operations in North Africa and in June Hitler ordered the invasion of the Soviet Union.

…

What’s the point of these historical highlights? Just this: in the five years before 1941, world events made the danger from fascism so clear that when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor even diehard Republican isolationists didn’t hesitate to declare war. The argument was over.

It’s not quite so simple, Kevin. The period leading up to World War II was not nearly one of such clear political unity and commonality of vision.

Churchill also kept himself from falling prey to the trend toward unnuanced pacifism in the twenties and thirties. In 1929, sixty-two countries, including the United States, signed the Kellog-Briand Pact, an instrument renouncing war as a means of international power. Over three different years – 1935, 1936, and 1937 – the United States passed Neutrality Acts that prevented the United States from engaging in conflicts overseas and from selling arms to belligerents. Those in the West who urged taking up arms against expansionist dictatorships like Germany (Hitler spoke of increasing Germany’s “living space” and announced a rearmament plan in 1935) or Italy (Benito Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in the same year) or Japan (which had invaded China in 1931) were seen as dangerous warmongers. The climate in the United States and Britain between Versailles and the German invasion of Poland was passionately antiwar. “Mr. Chamberlain can’t seem to understand that we live in a very wicked world,” Churchill said as Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s government tried time and time again to find a way to manage Germany without resorting to arms.

– Franklin and Winston, by Jon Meacham, p 36

[On Dec 7, 1941 after the attack on Pearl Harbor] Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, then en route to the Soviet Union, reached Churchill that night. “He was naturally in a high state of excitement,” Eden recalled. He found Churchill was already full of plans to go to Washington. Eden, however, “was not sure that the Americans would want him so soon.”

Eden was right. When Roosevelt dictated his speech to Grace Tully, it concerned on nation – Japan. He did not mention Germany. Eden seemed to understand this distinction; Churchill did not. “The United States and Britain were now allies,” Eden said, “in the war against Japan.”

Against Japan – not yet against Germany. Typically, Churchill had suppressed nuance in his delight over the events of the day. Thus began a fraught week as Roosevelt put off Churchill’s excited talk of a quick trip to Washington.

Would Hitler take America on?

– pp 132-133

The reality is that even given Roosevelt’s clear perception that fighting Germany was part of the larger battle, we did not declare war on Hitler’s Germany – Hitler declared war on us in a typical fit of overreaching. Had he not done so, the history of the next year or two would have been far more complex, politically, for Roosevelt and Churchill.

…to be continued…

Kevin Drum asks a serious question that we who support the war have to answer. He’s wrestling with the issue of why Democrats do so badly on issues of defense, and responding to Peter Bienert’s article that I praised so much.

Kevin says:

That’s the story I think Beinart needs to write. If he thinks too many liberals are squishy on terrorism, he needs to persuade us not just that Islamic totalitarianism is bad — of course it’s bad — but that it’s also an overwhelming danger to the security of the United States.

and follows up in a later post (in which he responds to attacks from his left that he’s a dupe for even considering this issue) saying this:

…and finally, when I suggested that I wanted Beinart to write an article spelling out the danger of Islamic totalitarianism, I wasn’t taking sides. All I meant was that I’d really like him to write the article. Why? Because I’d really like to read it.

For what it’s worth, I think any honest account needs to address at least the following four items:

* Nuclear terrorism. A terrorist group with a nuclear weapon poses an entirely different threat than one without, so this needs to be treated as a danger all its own. How likely is it that a terrorist group could really acquire a nuclear weapon? And deliver it? And what’s the best way to stop it? The fact that the Bush administration has been so lackadaisical on this score is going to make this a hard argument to deliver convincingly. If they don’t take it seriously, why should anyone else?

* Garden variety terrorism. Aside from the nuclear scenario, what’s the actual danger from terrorist groups like al-Qaeda? 9/11 was due to luck and poor foresight, but now that we know the danger how much military harm can they really do to us? How much economic harm? And how likely is it?

* Expansionism. Do Islamic extremists really have much interest in anyplace outside the Middle East? To the best of my knowledge, no Islamic country in the greater Middle East has ever invaded or shown the slightest interest in invading a country that wasn’t a neighbor. Is Islamic extremism fundamentally expansionist, like fascism and communism, or not?

* Oil. Nobody wants to talk honestly about this, but it’s obviously the reason we care about the Middle East in the first place and don’t care much about, say, sub-Saharan Africa — and therefore care about Islamic totalitarianism but not sub-Saharan totalitarianism. The problem here is shared by both liberals and conservatives.

On the left, “no blood for oil” is childishness. Economic interests are and always have been a legitimate concern of national governments, and a steady supply of oil is plainly vital to the industrialized world. If a Taliban-like regime deposed the House of Saud and took over Saudi Arabia, for example, they might decide to tighten the taps because they figure they only need half as much oil money as they currently receive — after all, most of it just went to those decadent westernized royal princes anyway. The resulting oil shock would almost certainly cause a global depression of enormous magnitude. This would be a disaster, and one that would hurt the poor far more than the rich.

On the right, conservatives hypocritically refuse to admit that oil has anything to do with anything. It’s all about democracy promotion, you see — despite the fact that our national policies have virtually nothing to do with genuinely promoting democracy. What’s more, conservatives make a bad problem worse by practically sneering at the idea that anyone should take seriously the idea of greater energy conservation or alternative energy sources. Squawking endlessly about ANWR — which contains a minute amount of oil — just trivializes the whole problem.

You’ll note that I’ve said nothing about the humanitarian case for intervening (or not intervening) in the Middle East. One thing at a time. I think the first step is for some credible liberal to construct the most compelling argument they can that an aggressive, militant policy toward Islamic totalitarianism is necessary simply because any other policy will end up with a lot of dead people. If that argument is successful, then we can argue about means and methods.

I’ll skip the requirement for ‘a credible liberal’ to make the case, and suggest that as much as I’m willing to push for a Democratic Party that burns the phone numbers of the MoveOn folks, I’m also willing to face the legitimate question of ‘why’?

I’ve criticized Bush in the past for doing a bad job of articulating the ‘why’.

So I decided to spend a couple of minutes and try and make an argument.

I wanted to start with the numbers, because I think they’re significant, so I went to the Department of State, and looked up a page on ‘Significant Terrorist Incidents, 1961-2003: A Brief Chronology.’ Then I loaded it into Excel and started to do some quick numbers. I removed all the incidents in Iraq – arguably those are part of an ongoing war.

Just for starters, from 1961 to 2003:

|Total Terrorist Incidents|229|
|Total Fatalities|7,071|
|Total Islamist-Sponsored Incidents|136|
|Total Islamist-Sponsored Deaths|5,921|
|Total Palestinian-Sponsored Incidents in Israel|49|
|Total Palestinian-Sponsored Deaths in Israel|381|
|Total Islamist-Sponsored Incidents Outside Israel|87|
|Total Islamist-Sponsored Deaths Outside Israel|5,540|

*edited ‘Muslim’ to ‘Islamist’ and ‘Palestinian’; that was careless on my part – A.L.

I’m going to work up a time series, and obviously the numbers are rising. But – and it’s an important one – as a public health issue, terrorism (as defined on this particular list) barely registers a blip. Worldwide, approximately 8,000,000 infants die before their first birthday.

So why is it, exactly, that terrorism deserves such an expensive (in blood, treasure, and goodwill) response?

I think it does, and will try and set out some arguments why. I think that our team – the ‘pro-liberation’, ‘pro-intervention’ team – needs to make these good arguments, and that we probably need to acknowledge – as I think the left needs to acknowledge it’s flaws – that we haven’t done a good enough job on this yet.

…to be continued…

Global Guerillas posts that the attack on the Saudi Consulate was a ‘shaping’ attack in preparation for the infrastructure attacks he expects at Ghawar and other Saudi oilfields and distribution hubs.

He sees this as a great risk because of “highly optimized tolerance” … i.e. systems that are tolerant of the risks they are designed to tolerate.

The Christian Science Monitor agrees, calling the attack “evidence of the militants’ ability to regenerate quickly in the face of concerted government efforts to disrupt their networks, and then target some of the country’s most closely guarded installations.”

It’s going to be an interesting December.

Jinderella commented below that Wizbang’s Weblog Awards had become a playground for script kiddies – which is apparently true, using a design laid out on Wampum’s site – [Update – see below] that’s Wampum who hosts the Koufax Awards – and code actually published on Kos’ site.

This is interesting beyond the “Liberals cheat” cry that’s going up at LGF and elsewhere (yes they do, and so do conservatives – humans cheat and both, last time I checked, were human).It’s interesting because it’s a nice example of the role trust – as opposed to regulation – plays in real communities (think Weber).

It’s particularly critical in nonauthoritarian communities; because we rely on others, the tacit bonds of trust are almost always very strong. The interesting thing about the 405 Freeway isn’t the number of accidents that do happen, but the number that don’t. As trust declines, so does responsibility. If I don’t assume that I can trust others to be responsible, why should I be?

What’s particularly grating about this instance is the open contempt for trust and reputation shown by the folks at “Screw Them” Kos’. That’s gonna be a problem for them, because as you try and play in the world, you’ll find that trust, reciprocity, and reputation matter.

As to the contest, I’ll suggest that Kevin ought to pull it down, publicize why it’s being pulled down, and start it again with some mechanism that allows one vote per IP, period. Whether he allows Kos to stay in the contest is up to him; but I’ll point out that the reputation of the Koufax Awards has been damaged by this more than Kevin’s.

Update: I was pointed over to this post at Wampum’s as somehow explaining that he didn’t have responsibility for the script kiddies.

I went over and looked, and left this comment:

You know, I’ve also been in the tech biz for more than a few years and recall the early standards of behavior – back when admins would email each other privately about vulnerabilities rather than broadcasting them wholesale.

One of my commenters linked to this post as exculpatory…sheesh.

A.L.

The wailing and gnashing of teeth over the election continues apace.

But among the “we wuz robbed!” complaints, I’m seeing more and more acute commentary on what the left and the Democratic Party needs to do to reverse the slow slide toward irrelevance.

Let me explain why this matters to me.

On my post on the Bienert article, regular commenter and critic SAO notes:

If only you were ask concerned with the neo-cons as you seem to be with the moonbats… alas.

SAO, it’s a team sport, and for me to get to play, I need a team to play alongside. I’m deeply uncomfortable playing alongside the current left, and the current Democratic Party, and if you want to know why here’s something by Michael Lind from the Nation (via Marc Cooper) that nails the central disconnect I’m trying to articulate.It’s part of a litany of short essays – blog posts, really – by different leftist thinkers about what the Democratic Party needs to do. Some of the essays are embarrassingly stupid, some are not.

But I actually had a flash of envy when I read this one because it sums up the gap between the progressive community and the rest of us so damn well. The policy implications of some of the points he makes here make me squirm, but click through to the Nation and then to Cooper and read this as well as the comments (some less useful than others):

In an era in which most U.S. population growth is occurring in the South, West and heartland, American liberalism is defined by people in the Northeast. At a time when rising tuitions are pricing many working-class Americans out of a college education, the upscale campus is becoming the base of American progressivism.

In a country in which most working-class Americans drive cars and own homes in the suburbs, the left fetishizes urban apartments and mass transit and sneers at “sprawl.” In an economy in which most workers are in the service sector, much of the left is obsessed with manufacturing jobs.

In a society in which Latinos have surpassed blacks as the largest minority and in which racial intermixture is increasing, the left continues to treat race as a matter of zero-sum multiculturalism and white-bashing.

In a culture in which the media industry makes money by pushing sex and violence, the left treats the normalization of profanity and obscenity as though it were somehow progressive, making culture heroes of Lenny Bruce and Larry Flynt. At a time when the religious right wants to shut down whole areas of scientific research, many on the left share a Luddite opposition to biotech. In an age in which billions would starve if not for the use of artificial fertilizers in capital-intensive agriculture, the left blathers on about small-scale organic farming.

In a century in which the dire need for energy for poor people in the global South can only be realistically met by coal, oil and perhaps nuclear energy, liberals fantasize about wind farms and solar panels.

And in a world in which the greatest threat to civilization is the religious right of the Muslim countries, much of the left persists in treating the United States as an evil empire and American patriotism as a variant of fascism.

American progressivism, in its present form, is as obsolete in the twenty-first century as the agrarian populists were in the twentieth. If you can’t adapt to the times, good intentions will get you nowhere. Ask the shade of William Jennings Bryan.

The progressives are trapped trying to refight the battles of the mid 20th century in the early 21st.

…we were only nominated in Best Group Blog in Wizbang’s 2004 Best Weblogs event.

We’re up against Volokh, and The Command Post, so I’m not expecting a win. But like a scrappy small school playing one of the Big Colleges, we ought to be able to beat up on a couple of them. Right now we’re barely ahead of Hit and Run and behind Tech Central Station by 4%. You could click through here and vote for us, and prove Ted Stein wrong…we ought to be able to beat those libertarian geeks at TCS!

…and remember, you can vote every day!! Other Winds of Change.NET team members nominated for awards include:* Nathan Hamm, The Argus (Central Asia -stans Summary), Best Asia Blog
* Robert Koehler, The Marmot’s Hole (Eyes on Korea), Best Asia Blog
* Simon World (China & E. Asia), Best Asia Blog
* Randy Paul, Beautiful Horizons (Latin America), Best Latino, Caribbean, or South American Blog.
* Colt, Eurabian Times (Th. Winds of War), Best UK Blog
* Andrew Olmsted (Mo. Iraq Report), Best Essayist
* Bill Roggio (Th. Winds of War), Best New Blog
* Dave Schuler, The Glittering Eye, Best of the Top 1000-1750 Blogs

UPDATE: Why aren’t we surprised to find that DailyKos published scripts designed to stuff the ballot boxes. The implementation of automated ballot stuffing measures has now forced the awards to change their voting procedures.