{"id":509,"date":"2004-09-02T01:06:17","date_gmt":"2004-09-02T01:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:45","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:45","slug":"expertise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=509","title":{"rendered":"Expertise"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, I decided not to reply to one of Matt Yglesias’ sillier posts<\/a> (hey, it happens to everyone – I just seem to find them on his site more often than others), in which he suggests that the mass of American people are sheep; idiots fit only to be led by anointed experts. In his own words:<\/p>\n

The reality, of course, is that any major party presidential candidate attracts the votes of millions and millions of people. The overwhelming majority of these people have no idea what they’re talking about. Public ignorance in the United States is massive — and exists on both sides. Ideology aside, the base of either party would be an absolute disaster if put in charge of the country — they wouldn’t have the foggiest idea what to do. That’s why the government is run by professional politicians, professional political operatives, and professional policy analysts, not by random members of the public. It’s like how movies are made by professional filmmakers, not by movie fans.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, for some reason, the first thing I thought about when I read that was Clerks<\/a>. Or the short film “What Are You Having?<\/a>” that a co-worker of TG’s is showing in West Hollywood this weekend – selected in order to qualify for the Oscars as a short. But don’t go see it – he’s only a temp worker at a nonprofit, not a ‘professional,’ so of course we have to treat his work as suspect. Actually, the worst movies I’ve ever seen – and I’ve seen a lot of bad self-produced drek – were mindless Hollywood fare, made with the utmost in professionalism. Like Torque<\/a>, Baby Genuises 2<\/a>, and, of course, Battlefield Earth<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But I felt that I’ve already killed too many electrons dinging Yglesias for the unwise things he says, and was going to let it go.<\/p>\n

Until I read this gobsmacking bit of nonsense<\/a> (via Volokh<\/a>):<\/p>\n

We represent the Historians’ Committee for Fairness, an organization of scholars and professional researchers. Michelle Malkin’s appearance on numerous television and radio shows and her comments during these appearances regarding her book IN DEFENSE OF INTERNMENT represent a blatant violation of professional standards of objectivity and fairness. Malkin is not a historian, and she states that she relied almost exclusively on research conducted or collected by others. Her book, which purports to defend the wartime treatment of Japanese Americans, did not go through peer review before publication. <\/p>\n

…<\/b><\/p>\n

It is irresponsible of your producers to permit Michelle Malkin\u2019s biased presentation of events to go unchallenged as a factual historical presentation. We therefore respectfully demand that you formally apologize to the Japanese Americans who have been slandered by Ms. Malkin’s reckless presentation and invite a reputable historian to present a more even-handed view of the evidence.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wow. There are just so many things wrong with this, I’m hard-pressed to figure out how to begin<\/b>.<\/p>\n

First, as a disclaimer, let me mention that I think that Malkin’s thesis<\/a> in her book is a) historically inaccurate as to the threat posed by the Japanese community; b) mistaken in promoting racial profiling as a sound tactic in the defense against terrorism; and c) mistaken in her interpretation of the social context involved in the decision to intern the Japanese.<\/p>\n

But as wrong as I think her book may be, I think that the free and open response which her book has garnered – including responses by Eric Muller, blogger at ‘Is That Legal?<\/a>‘ and one of the signatories of the letter<\/b> who ought to know better – is the answer to any ‘harm’ which may come from allowing a book written by a non-academic historian to open a discussion of history.<\/p>\n

I think that using their professional stature to attempt to coerce media outlets – and, one would assume, readers – into either passing Malkin’s book by or granting equal time to an ‘approved’ responder is the most pernicious kind of nonsense.<\/p>\n

And it ties neatly into Yglesias’ naked elitism. <\/p>\n

They suggest that “We, the anointed, will tell you – how to run the country, how to live, what to watch, what to read.”<\/p>\n

I’ve got a simple response to that: “Fuck Off<\/b>“.<\/p>\n

I made a slightly more complex one<\/a> a while ago:<\/p>\n

The most important thing is actually the simplest, which is that the genius of the American system is that there certainly are experts on game theory, diplomatic history, and policy who have substantive and valuable expertise in these areas.<\/p>\n

And they all work for guys like me<\/b>. Our Congress and our President are typically business men and women, lawyers, rank amateurs when it comes to the hard games that they study so diligently at ENA (Ecole Nationale d’Administration). And that’s a good thing, in fact, it’s a damn good thing.<\/p>\n

It is a good thing because the unique power of the United States comes from our willingness to diffuse power down into the ranks – to act in ways outside what a small cadre of mandarins sitting at a capital can envision.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now Yglesias will reply “but those politicians are professionals! I think it’s OK to give them power!”<\/p>\n

And I’ll remind him that they have that power on loan from the women and men of this country who choose to give it to them, and whose choices must be respected.<\/p>\n

American politicians don’t go to Little League games or Rotary breakfasts<\/a> because they like dropped flies or because they miss rubber pancakes and cold sausage. They go because that’s how they show respect for the people who elect them. French politicians preside over parades and large ceremonies; they don’t need to show that respect because they rule without it.<\/p>\n

There’s a long discussion to have about how we’re slowly slipping in that direction; I’ll leave it for others for now. But we’re not there yet, and I’ll even provide a theoretical base for my argument. I’ll suggest that formal expertise – proven in solutions to tame problems – is often outweighed by wisdom and judgment in solving wicked ones.<\/p>\n

Or have we all forgotten the lesson of Robert McNamara<\/a> so soon?<\/p>\n

[Update:<\/b> Go check out the self-correcting nature of ‘non peer reviewed’ systems over at Alex Halavais’ place<\/a>. He tagged Wikipedia with twelve errors; they were corrected within hours.<\/p>\n

I can think of three or four history texts that didn’t fare so well…]<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m tired of attitudes that suggest that “We, the anointed, will tell you – how to run the country, how to live, what to watch, what to read”… and these days, I’m seeing too damn much of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}