Today is Josh Marshall’s birthday, and he has a sweet post and photo up about it and showing him and his son. He says:

I don’t like it when people project their own experiences into a template for other peoples lives. But speaking for myself I do not think I could feel complete as a person, fully accept this boundedness as a person, or fully know what it was to be one without the turned-upside-down experience I’m having as a father. In a few months my wife is going to give birth to our second son. So I’m looking forward to more of this.

My birthday is tomorrow (with a significantly larger number attached to it than his), and I’m less shy about using my experiences as a springboard toward understanding the world. But I’ll completely agree with Josh that having, raising, loving and living with my three sons – Biggest Guy, Middle Guy, and Littlest Guy – has changed me more than anything else I have ever done and far for the better.

I’m blessed in a lot of ways; interesting work, some measure of financial security, the love of TG and our friends and family. I don’t think I’d have any of it if my sons hadn’t made me into a man.

We’ve had an incredible run of muckers with guns lately. Yesterday’s shootings in Illinois, the shootings here in Los Angeles where SWAT Officer Randy Simmons – who will be buried today in Culver City – was killed along with the father and brothers of the shooter, a shooting at a nursing school (!) in Louisiana, a City Hall in Missouri.

People who own guns can’t and shouldn’t just casually dismiss these. They are a part of the moral burden we accept when we choose to own a firearm. And clearly, not everyone should own one.
The question that will be asked – and that should be answered-is ‘should anyone‘?

I have a practical and a philosophical answer.

The practical answer is ‘enough of them do‘ and so we live in a society with enough guns that events like this will happen – often enough to horrify us. No measures that I can imagine – forget live with legally or politically – will get enough guns out of circulation to make sure things like this won’t happen. So we will live in a society with a sufficiency of guns; the question then is how to limit the likelihood that things like these will happen. There are really three things we can do:

* We can secure public areas better – but that means metal detectors and guards and unpacking your bags when you walk into a mall or into schools.

* We can try and ensure that there are enough good people with guns in any population to limit what active shooters can do.

* We can try and identify people likely to do things like this, and try and get them help.

Each of these approaches has drawbacks. Living in a ‘security state’ isn’t something many of us will take well to; when more people have guns more often, there is some likelihood that they will be misused (although the experience of ‘shall-issue’CCW states suggests that is insignificant); and living in a state where the authorities have the right to restrain us because of a thoughtcrime is certainly scary.

Having said that none of them work ‘absolutely’, it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try them on a limited basis.

If the authorities are going to declare an area a ‘gun-free zone’, I’ll suggest they have some obligation to actually make sure that’s the case. Most gun laws and regulations are ‘feel good’ laws in which the distinction between passing laws or regulations and actually changing things in the real world.

I strongly believe that CCW should be a right for law-abiding, moderately well-trained citizens. Not that many will take advantage of it, but enough will that there is some likelihood that an crazy shooter won’t be the only armed person in a room.

And I believe that people who see escalating patterns of confrontational behavior need to say something. I’ve had talks with friends who own guns who were going through trying emotional times, and had the talks gone differently, I would have picked up the phone and called someone. One of the most frightening things I’ve seen lately is the commentary from the Missouri City hall shooter’s brother, who in essence supported his brother’s actions. He should have taken away his guns and gotten him help instead.

And philosophically, I look at these events through teary eyes and the grim realization that they represent the bloody, human cost of freedom.

Freedom that doesn’t leave room for people you don’t like to do things you disapprove of – even things you may find evil – probably isn’t freedom at all. And as much as I try and wish that weren’t so, and imagine my own sons in that Illinois lecture hall, I can’t see a way out of that conundrum.

Living life involves accepting moral burden. We are none of us perfect, none of us moral, none of us with clean hands. I’ve come to think that maturity is based on realizing that.

But I’m certain that the guns in my safe will not be misused. And I’m equally certain that as a gun owner, my hands are dirtier because of the events of the last weeks.

Here’s Spencer Ackerman:

Hanlon went to Iraq, saw that the surge is teh awesomez0rs, and wrote an op-ed suggesting that he was anti-war until he saw the fruits of a successful strategy. Only…Hanlon wasn’t ever anti-war, and he was taken on a Potemkin tour of Iraq. The bloggers started ripping him to shreds, resulting in an embattled O’Hanlon drifting further rightward and becoming more bilious. Call it Joe Lieberman Syndrome. In a different context, he’d be Ja Rule in the middle of the 50 Cent beef that ended his career. Today in the Wall Street Journal, O’Hanlon’s got yet another tendentious op-ed, in which he bravely subdues yet another straw man on the left. As you read it, you can practically hear, “We gon’ clap back… We gon’ clap back…”

Harder to understand is how the foreign-policy establishment doesn’t put him out to pasture. Like the Bolton aide at the barbecue, few are willing to say publicly that O’Hanlon doesn’t know what he’s talking about, no matter how widespread that opinion actually is behind closed doors and over beers. Case in point: a friend passes along this piece of O’Hanlon-related intelligence:

I have a friend who worked on the Iraq Study Group, who told me they brought [O’Hanlon] in, along with the other 20 or 30 other experts on the various working groups. They found his recommendations to be both vacuous and moronic.  The man is an empty shell.

Please, Hanlon, let it go, homie. Call it a day. You’re a young man and it’s a great big wonderful world out there, full of possibilities.

In otherwords, instead of engaging the actual points Hanlon makes – that Bush tried not talking to North Korea and it didn’t work, and he tried talking to Russia – and it didn’t work…suggesting that talking in and of itself may not be the absolute indicator of success in foreign policy…we get this Yglesias-worthy screed.

Nice work, Spencer. Way to add to the national dialog about foreign policy.

The overriding theme seems to be ad hominem attacks on O’Hanlon’s credibility; here’s Moira Whelan at Democracy Arsenal:

So what gives coming from this think tanker who has been a self proclaimed “war critic”?

I have a theory…

Think tanks in DC are traditionally known as refugee camps for the out-of-office team of foreign policy wonks. There’s an expected turn over when new administrations come on as each team goes about grabbing “the best and the brightest” to fill their ranks.

O’Hanlon has by now gotten the message that he’s burned his bridges with his Democratic friends. Those that like him personally even agree that he’s radioactive right now thanks to his avid support of Bush’s war strategy.

So what’s a wonk to do?

Well, one option is pre-positioning yourself for the future. By getting out there and going after the leading Democrats—people that some of his closest colleagues are actively supporting…is he lining himself up to say that he was critiquing the next Administration before it was cool?

Here’s the meat entirety of her substantive critique:

I’d like to think that O’Hanlon really is worried for our country and is pushing his ideas because they think they’re better, but you sort of jump the shark as a foreign policy wonk when you question the concept of diplomacy as he’s done with Obama.

In some ways, O’Hanlon’s attacks on Obama could be an endorsement of sorts. He thinks Obama will win, so better get out there and criticize now so you can get invited to lots of lunches with Don Rumsfeld in the future.

And, ever-substantive, here’s Big Media Matt:

Anyone who’s pissed O’Hanlon off this much is okay in my book. However, as the correspondent who brought this article to my attention observed, this seems like an odd time and place to go after Obama so severely if the intention is really to earn Clinton’s admiration. It looks in some ways more like pre-positioning for pro-McCain orientation in the general election.

It’s a mainstreaming of the old progblog stance – silence the opposition, because that’s so much easier than actually addressing anything that’s said.

Here’s O’Hanlon’s piece in the WSJ:

A central element of Barack Obama’s plan to change American foreign policy is his intention, upon becoming president, to meet with foreign leaders of extremist regimes — the type of rogue-state dictators that George W. Bush has generally shunned during his time as president.

Applied categorically, this would be a bad idea. Meeting with enemy heads of state is neither as original as Mr. Obama implies, nor as promising as he claims. As a specific option for dealing with difficult regimes, it has potential merit on a case-by-case basis, and should always be considered — but only after a careful assessment of what the United States believes it can get out of such meetings and dialogues.

Now I’m supporting Obama in the primaries, and I’ve argued before for direct talks with Iran.

But I’ll also suggest that O’Hanlon raises a key issue that we supporters of Obama shouldn’t ignore – much less try and shout down – which is that Obama says things which need a lot more explanation – things like this:

Throughout the Middle East, we must harness American power to reinvigorate American diplomacy. Tough-minded diplomacy, backed by the whole range of instruments of American power — political, economic, and military — could bring success even when dealing with long-standing adversaries such as Iran and Syria.

and

I will join with our allies in insisting — not simply requesting — that Pakistan crack down on the Taliban, pursue Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants, and end its relationship with all terrorist groups.

and

There must be no safe haven for those who plot to kill Americans. To defeat al Qaeda, I will build a twenty-first-century military and twenty-first-century partnerships as strong as the anticommunist alliance that won the Cold War to stay on the offense everywhere from Djibouti to Kandahar.

and

We must also consider using military force in circumstances beyond self-defense in order to provide for the common security that underpins global stability — to support friends, participate in stability and reconstruction operations, or confront mass atrocities. But when we do use force in situations other than self-defense, we should make every effort to garner the clear support and participation of others — as President George H. W. Bush did when we led the effort to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991. The consequences of forgetting that lesson in the context of the current conflict in Iraq have been grave.

The problem that this faces, of course, is what happens when those who plot to kill Americans are given safe havens in countries that won’t let us come kill them; what happens if Syria is unwilling to yeild to diplomacy and the threat of war; if European allies are unwilling to stand up in combat in the Middle East?

And the broader issue is to place these conflicts into some kind of intelligible framework – one that can be explained to the American people, in order to sustain their support (something Bush has consitently failed to do); explained to the allies we hope to convince to stand beside us; and explained to our enemies…

I will say that if anyone can do it, Obama is likely to be that person. Now he just needs to do it. I’m hoping – and believing – he can. I wish I were certain…

I am certain that the folks cited above need to look in the mirror and do a gutcheck on who, exactly, should be ashamed.

Update: Corrected quote boundaries on Whelan quote.

Our motorcycle helmets are three years old this month, so it’s time to replace them.

The manufacturers say 5 years, but we wear them almost every day, and live in smoggy Southern California, so our white Shoei RF1000’s are headed for the bin in the garage.

We just ordered new ones, and I thought I’d take a moment – for those folks who ride or know people who ride – and make a few comments.

First, let me be really clear. No one should ride a motorcycle without a helmet – in my view, a full-face helmet. Why? The answer is just under the fold.

Here’s the helmet TG was wearing five seven years ago when she crashed on Breckinridge Rd. in central California. She was going about 40 when she hit gravel, tucked the front end, and flew over the bars – landing on the shield and chinbar of her helmet.

She was knocked unconscious and concussed…but imagine what would have happened if she’d been wearing an open-face helmet or no helmet at all. I do, often.

I’ve always bought the best helmets I could afford, and this buying cycle was no different. But our buying decision was also influenced by this article, in Motorcyclist magazine – which pointed out that for street riding, the best helmets – the Arais, Shoeis, etc. – might not be the safest.

Why? Because they are manufactured to meet the Snell standard, which requires an extremely rigid helmet. Rigid enough to pass too much impact on to your fragile brainstem.

Instead, they found that for low-speed (non-racing speed) crashes, the safest helmets were often the cheapest. The highest-ranked helmet they tested was the ZR-1, an $80 helmet I never would have even looked at. After the test, I bought one for Littlest Guy.

The helmet is noisy, not as comfortable as a higher-end one, and probably won’t wear as well. But for the infrequent times he rides on the back of my bike, it may just keep his annoyingly precocious noggin safe.

Yesterday, TG and I bought helmets that meet the European standard for safety – meaning that they are softer. She got an AGV Ti-Tech, and I bought a Shark RSR2.

Once we’ve ridden with them for a while, I’ll give some opinions.

Yes, I know that – in very few cases – people have been injured or killed by their helmets. A few people are killed by drugs that save hundreds of thousands as well; you have to weigh the odds. And for those who say that they can’t see or hear as well in a helmet – I’ll call bull. I’ve ridden once with an open-faced helmet, and even with good glasses, the wind in my eyes meant that I couldn’t see nearly as well as I can in the still air inside my visor. And the wind noise in my naked ears is louder than the noise my ears are subjected to inside a helmet.

So if you know someone who rides…send them this picture and link. I may talk about the issues in making helmet use mandatory some time soon. That’ll get some comments…

You know, I’m just loving watching Sam Zell. He’s old and rich, and always had a certain “who gives a f**k” attitude – which I’ve got to believe has only gotten stronger as he’s gotten older and richer. Here’s LA Observed talking about his latest communications with the LA Times staff:

The specific quote varies in the telling, but I’ve heard from several sources that in defending his decision to allow strip club ads back into the Times, Zell said:

Some of my best friends go to gentlemen’s clubs. It’s unAmerican not to like p***y.

The exactness of the second sentence is the least in question, repeated to me by a senior editor among others.

* Update: Clarification from another Times editor:

He actually used the word twice. He said: “Everyone likes p***y. It’s un-American not to like p***y.”

The comment about some of his best friends going to gentlemen’s clubs was separate from the above line. That came earlier in the talk, when saying that when he learned of the ban on running ads from the clubs, he was stunned because “some of my best friends go to gentlemen’s clubs.” The un-American comment came later, in reference to advertising guns, to which he said hunting is American – and somehow made the leap to the above comment.

He believes that the Times needs to go after advertising from gun manufacturers and the Indian casinos.

I can just picture Patt Morrison fanning herself into a rage here…

Let me take a second be kind of serious and give my theory of what’s wrong with newspapers today, where they might be going, and what someone like me would like to see from them.

(Note that if you’re serious about understanding media, you ought to be reading Jeff Jarvis’ blog.)

Once upon a time, back in the 60’s and 70’s and 80’s, there were giant media companies that controlled the distribution of books, news, music, movies, and television shows. because there were only so many channels, shelves in book and music stores, movie theaters, or places to put your ads for your used car or local store.

Those companies had 99% of the market in their domains, and enjoyed monopoly pricing of their goods – both in terms of what they paid and what they could demand from consumers.

So their margins were high enough that they could build huge headquarters buildings, hire layer on layer of executive management, pay that executive management extraordinarily well, and view themselves as ‘winners’ in the grand lottery of economic life.

Then everything changed, and their stranglehold was broken by Amazon, Craigslist, Netflix and Direct TV. they aren’t going to go away – there will still be huge media brands that will be the dominant entities in their various domains.

But their monopoly pricing power has been broken. That means that their cost structures are unsustainable. So while the LA Times will go on being a major newspaper with 60+ percent of the regional market, they won’t be able to afford floors and floors of executive management, and columnists who make six figure salaries. The social impact on these organizations of those changes may shatter some of the companies; others will retool and survive.

There’s a little bit of personal schadenfreude here. back in the mid-90’s, I interviewed with Harry Chandler for the job of New Media guy for the Times. The interview seemed to be going well, until I asked one question: “What will you do when your classified ad revenue goes away? It’s something like 10% of your topline, and 30% of your profits?” He disagreed – strongly – that that was a possibility, and kind of thought I was a doofus for believing it could happen. Ha, I say.

Now the question is – the ones that retool and come back will retool and come back as what?

I’ve drunk Jarvis’ Kool-Aid, and believe that they will survive as open ‘brand networks’ rather than walled cities.

Look, what is the fundamental business these media companies are in? It’s collecting attention and monetizing it.

They’ve done that within the walls of their brands for a long time. Newspapers were bounded by the edge of their pages.

It doesn’t have to be that way any more. The LA Times is primarily an ad-selling institution; the are great at taking attention and selling it to advertisers. Where they are suffering right now is in getting that attention as blogs like this compete for it.

So – explode the brand. Create networks – some tightly controlled, some loosely coupled – of bloggers who write about local issues, high school sports, national politics, technology, business, women’s issues, men’s issues, raising children, romance – most of the stuff that people are blogging about now. Create a regional focus, and capture the attention on those blogs and market it to your advertisers. There’s a huge arbitrage opportunity between what bloggers can get as CPM for their ads and what major media companies can get for theirs.

Move your columnists and commentators out to their own blog sites, and let them stand or fall on their ability to retain audiences.

Music companies could start to do the same things – and are, as bands are increasingly self-producing and self-promoting.

And finally, as a consumer, one of the critical problems newspapers face is the quality of what they produce. That quality has broken the trust that many of us have in the product that the media companies are putting out – crap movies, bad music, and untrustworthy news.

The news isn’t trustworthy for two reasons, really. The increasingly ‘academic’ path to jobs as journalists has given us a crop of idealistic, committed, inexperienced, green journalists who have little experience in or respect for the messy realities of the real world.

And, most of all, they have an inflated sense of what it means to be a journalist – forgetting that they are citizens, that they live under and are protected by the common bonds of the society that we all share.

Just to save you the clicks, that problem is summed up here:

Then Ogletree turned to the two most famous members of the evening’s panel, better known than William Westmoreland himself. These were two star TV journalists: Peter Jennings of World News Tonight and ABC, and Mike Wallace of 6o Minutes and CBS. Ogletree brought them into the same hypothetical war. He asked Jennings to imagine that he worked for a network that had been in contact with the enemy North Kosanese government. After much pleading, the North Kosanese had agreed to let Jennings and his news crew into their country, to film behind the lines and even travel with military units. Would Jennings be willing to go? Of course, Jennings replied. Any reporter would-and in real wars reporters from his network often had. But while Jennings and his crew are traveling with a North Kosanese unit, to visit the site of an alleged atrocity by American and South Kosanese troops, they unexpectedly cross the trail of a small group of American and South Kosanese soldiers. With Jennings in their midst, the northern soldiers set up a perfect ambush, which will let them gun down the Americans and Southerners, every one. What does Jennings do? Ogletree asks. Would he tell his cameramen to “Roll tape!” as the North Kosanese opened fire? What would go through his mind as he watched the North Kosanese prepare to ambush the Americans? Jennings sat silent for about fifteen seconds after Ogletree asked this question. “Well, I guess I wouldn’t,” he finally said. “I am going to tell you now what I am feeling, rather than the hypothesis I drew for myself. If I were with a North Kosanese unit that came upon Americans, I think that I personally would do what I could to warn the Americans.” Even if it means losing the story? Ogletree asked.

Even though it would almost certainly mean losing my life, Jennings replied. “But I do not think that I could bring myself to participate in that act. That’s purely personal, and other reporters might have a different reaction.” Immediately Mike Wallace spoke up. “I think some other reporters would have a different reaction,” he said, obviously referring to himself. “They would regard it simply as a story they were there to cover.” “I am astonished, really,” at Jennings’s answer, Wallace said moment later. He turned toward Jennings and began to lecture him: “You’re a reporter. Granted you’re an American”-at least for purposes of the fictional example; Jennings has actually retained Canadian citizenship. “I’m a little bit at a loss to understand why, because you’re an American, you would not have covered that story.” Ogletree pushed Wallace. Didn’t Jennings have some higher duty, either patriotic or human, to do something other than just roll film as soldiers from his own country were being shot? “No,” Wallace said flatly and immediately. “You don’t have a higher duty. No. No. You’re a reporter!” Jennings backtracked fast. Wallace was right, he said. “I chickened out.” Jennings said that he had gotten so wrapped up in the hypothetical questions that he had lost sight of his journalistic duty to remain detached. As Jennings said he agreed with Wallace, everyone else in the room seemed to regard the two of them with horror. Retired Air Force general Brent Scowcroft, who had been Gerald Ford’s national security advisor and would soon serve in the same job for George Bush, said it was simply wrong to stand and watch as your side was slaughtered. “What’s it worth?” he asked Wallace bitterly. “It’s worth thirty seconds on the evening news, as opposed to saving a platoon.” Ogletree turned to Wallace. What about that? Shouldn’t the reporter have said something? Wallace gave his most disarming grin, shrugged his shoulders and spread his palms wide in a “Don’t ask me!” gesture, and said, “I don’t know.” He was mugging to the crowd in such a way that he got a big laugh-the first such moment of the discussion. Wallace paused to enjoy the crowd’s reaction. Jennings, however, was all business, and was still concerned about the first answer he had given. “I wish I had made another decision,” Jennings said, as if asking permission to live the last five minutes over again. “I would like to have made his decision”-that is, Wallace’s decision to keep on filming. A few minutes later Ogletree turned to George M. Connell, a Marine colonel in full uniform, jaw muscles flexing in anger, with stress on each word, Connell looked at the TV stars and said, “I feel utter . . . contempt. ” Two days after this hypothetical episode, Connell Jennings or Wallace might be back with the American forces–and could be wounded by stray fire, as combat journalists often had been before. The instant that happened he said, they wouldn’t be “just journalists” any more. Then they would drag them back, rather than leaving them to bleed to death on the battlefield. “We’ll do it!” Connell said. “And that is what makes me so contemptuous of them. Marines will die going to get … a couple of journalists.” The last few words dripped with disgust.

We’re all disgusted.

And beyond disgusting, the quality of work we’re seeing isn’t very good.

I commissioned research from specialists at Cardiff University, who surveyed more than 2,000 UK news stories from the four quality dailies (Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Independent) and the Daily Mail. They found two striking things. First, when they tried to trace the origins of their “facts”, they discovered that only 12% of the stories were wholly composed of material researched by reporters. With 8% of the stories, they just couldn’t be sure. The remaining 80%, they found, were wholly, mainly or partially constructed from second-hand material, provided by news agencies and by the public relations industry. Second, when they looked for evidence that these “facts” had been thoroughly checked, they found this was happening in only 12% of the stories.

The implication of those two findings is truly alarming. Where once journalists were active gatherers of news, now they have generally become mere passive processors of unchecked, second-hand material, much of it contrived by PR to serve some political or commercial interest. Not journalists, but churnalists. An industry whose primary task is to filter out falsehood has become so vulnerable to manipulation that it is now involved in the mass production of falsehood, distortion and propaganda.

And the Cardiff researchers found one other key statistic that helps to explain why this has happened. For each of the 20 years from 1985, they dug out figures for the editorial staffing levels of all the Fleet Street publications and compared them with the amount of space they were filling. They discovered that the average Fleet Street journalist now is filling three times as much space as he or she was in 1985. In other words, as a crude average, they have only one-third of the time that they used to have to do their jobs. Generally, they don’t find their own stories, or check their content, because they simply don’t have the time.

It’s a death spiral – because what they are selling is their credibility, and as that credibility is eroded by social isolation and a workplace that doesn’t allow time to do good work – there is less and less for each of us to buy.

Rebuilding that credibilty – by reconnecting journalists to the citizens of the communities that they want to be reporting for, and by creating a business structure that can give them the space and time they need to do good work – ought to be job #1.

There are two ways to go about it. One is to hire and train people who have deep connections to the communities they serve. Fewer Columbia School of Journalism grads, more CSUN and CSLB. Another is to make the dialog and correction a part of the story – much as we do here in the blogs. (Hint: a network does that inherently).

I’m actually looking forward to seeing how this works out. Los Angeles – the city that I love – and America – my country – both need it. Here’s hoping.

And if it costs me the half an hour every morning that I got back when I cancelled, that’d be a small price to pay.

Abu Muquama’s blog is a year old. Go take pictures while he blows out the candles.

One interesting thing that’s happened in the blogoverse in the last year or so is the rise of ‘professional’ blogs dealing with the issues of the Long War; issues that we – as interested amateurs – started blogging about some time ago.

That’s a good thing, because I’m mostly here to learn, and having resources like abu muquma and others – abu aardvark, Kings of War, the Small Wars Journal, etc. – raises the bar for discussions everywhere.

What’s the place of amateurs like us in discussing these issues, now that the pros have stepped to the stage? That’s a legitimate question, answered in part by something I wrote here a while ago:

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.

And they all work for guys like me. 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.

The broad direction of policy in this country is an amateur’s game – as it should be. But the ability to inform those amateur discussions – whether in the halls of Congress, the mainstream media, the blogs, or barrooms and living rooms – with the informed insights of professionals helps us all.

If you’re not reading those blogs and learning from them – you should be. But if you want to simply hand the keys over to the ‘experts’ – you shouldn’t. From my same post:

The French political system is built on ‘expertise’; it assumes that the intensive study that is required to get into one of these schools and the hard work that students do once there delivers not only a wide array of long-lasting personal connections (see the recent blown French effort to rescue Ingrid Betancourt, a presidential candidate one of de Villipins’ former students from FARC), but a superiority of outlook and knowledge that entitles them to rule.

The results tend to be mixed, at best. The corruption at high levels in France is almost unimaginable, even to me, and I have a good imagination. The current round of Elf-Aquitaine scandals, where the corporate and government interests collude – hidden behind a veil of ‘need to know’ and ‘secret strategy’.

The consequence is a lethargic political culture in France, and an overall disengagement between the average French citizen and their government. Policy and politics are the province of ‘the smart guys’.

In America, the presumption is that we’re all capable of being ‘smart guys’. I like that. But I temper it with a large mug of respect for people who do things for a living and who have hands-on experience in areas that I’ve only chatted with people about.

David Schuster needs to be able to keep his barroom talk in the bar and off TV.

I don’t know why Chelsea is such a magnet for this kind of nonsense; I’ve always felt vaguely protective toward her – she seems like a good kid, and she may be the most-abused Presidential child in my political lifetime – going back to JFK. She’s out plugging for her mom, which is totally appropriate; Schuster needs to spend some quality time covering high school football; he’s no where near ready for national presence.

Ilya Somin, over at Volokh challenges the notion that unity – as proposed by Obama – is a good idea.

One of Barack Obama’s major campaign themes is the promise that he will “unite” America. Obama is an incredibly skillfull campaigner, so I must assume that he wouldn’t be pushing this trope unless there were good reason to believe that it works. Of course, Obama is far from the only politician to promise unity. Remember when George W. Bush promised that he would be a “uniter, not a divider”? That was a fairly successful campaign theme too.

This emphasis on unity for its own sake seems misplaced. After all, unity is really valuable only if we are united in doing the right thing. Being united in doing the wrong thing is surely worse than being divided, if only because division reduces the likelihood of the harmful policies being enacted. And even if the policies proposed by the would-be “uniter” really are beneficial, it’s not clear why broad unity in support of them is preferable to just having enough votes to get them passed.

I’ll suggest that this is a flat misreading of what Obama is saying, and what I think people respond to when Obama speaks of unity.Simply put, the notion I believe Obama is expressing is that we live in a polity – that we share a common political space, rather than a loosely-affiliated set of allied interest groups. I think that the unity that he’s discussing isn’t a unity that suggests common action – marching in step – but the notion that we’re all a part of the same parade.

One trend in modern politics is the relative decline of the nation-state, as smaller communities of interest and transnational bureaucracies, corporations, and religious and ethnic movements become more powerful in their claims to our loyalty.

That’s a dangerous and frightening trend, and one that I believe presents greater risks for the kind of republic that we represent; because we are not a ‘people’ like the French, our attachment to each other is through our shared belief in that common political space and common political project – of liberty, of rights, of equality before the law.

I’d suggest that what people are responding to when Obama speaks of ‘unity’ – what I’m responding to – is his explicit recognition of, and promotion of the simple claim that we’re all in the same boat.

One of these quotes was written by me – in framing up a straw man, said some critics. The other – wasn’t.

Ultimately, a society is judged, not by it’s tag lines or its famous quotes or its declarations of freedom and equality. History judges a society by its behavior, its civility and its morality. How will history judge us? Will history look only at the words in our Constitution or the endearinig poem engraved on our lady of liberty? Will history talk about Truth, Justice, and the American Way and leave it at that? Will it call the US a bastion of world freedom and say no more? I think not.

An accurate history of the US will ultimately include its pervasive corporate and political corruption, its greed, its rampant consumption and waste of natural resources, its unquenchable thirst for drugs and its lust for power and position. It will include its racism and its assumption of being better than anyone else. It will include the increasing plight and numbers of the poor and their desperate struggles to survive. It will include the increasing level of violence and the startlingly cruel methods people use to inflict it upon each other. And it will include the state’s inability and unwillingness to control it.

or

…founded in genocide and theft, made wealthy on slave labor and mercantilist expropriation, to be a destroyer of minorities, women, the environment and ultimately … argue, itself.

…answer below the fold.The first is a quote from this post by expatbrian at The Impolitic; the second a quote from this post by me at Armed Liberal.

Just sayin’. I know, I know – it’s just some blogger, it doesn’t mean anything, bla bla bla. But the rhetoric was so pitch perfect I couldn’t help but share.