Avoiding Epistemology VIII

Order Up
Kelly Schmader
Here.

I present to you a quick tour of some of the day's adventures in procrastination.

I stumbled upon this site in my meandering and meaningless search of the internet today. It's, apparently, an Oberlin blog. It is, unfortunately, somewhat inexplicable. I've never in my life heard of such a thing. Also, I think they've been listening in my thoughts, as I've been cooking up an idea (also by way of procrastination) involving a sort of student-run professional blog.

Think of it this way. It's like law review, where students review professionals' papers, but, instead of being on some kind of dead-tree thing, it's on a blog. We would get, and I'm thinking we'll start with politics, a mix of liberal and conservative bloggers. I'm thinking Digby, Greenwald, Kathy G., and then some non-asshole conservatives (if we can find them...). They would each write an initial post, edited by students, then, let the fireworks begin! What do you think?

But I digress.

Yeah, Oberlin blogs... weird. Also weird as none of the four or five people that actually blog here at Oberlin (that I know of) are involved. I'm thinking it might be a project with the english dept. Actually, my ego's just bruised because they didn't ask me to participate... (kidding on the square).

Moving on.

In other Oberlin news, Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek is getting an honorary degree and delivering the commencement address. That should be interesting.

The Comics Curmudgeon always makes me laugh. Here's the Hi and Lois strip that did me in today. It's just... depressing. Which is, of course, why it's funny. Ah, Gen Pomo:

Now go read what Josh has to say.

Hi, Mom

Happy Mother's Day, mom!

I feel like a bad son; I called, but only got an answering machine, so, happy Mother's Day. I think you did good.

Avoiding Epistemology VII

Meena Hasan
Here.

Ezra Klein, with The American Prospect gives another (partial) explanation for the Media's narrative bias (if you want the history, and have the time, this is narrative bias). In a post, "The Repetition Gap," he writes:

When you're coming up with story ideas, "what's new" is always the first question you're asked. But on a blog, by making the same arguments in response to different news pegs and events, you're actually much more effective at conveying your points. Few writers are so persuasive, and few arguments so instantly convincing, that one bite at the apple will transform the thinking of your audience.

in short, the argument is journalists ought to start giving the context to their stories, instead of assuming that their audience will have read the articles necessary for the context of the story in question. He continues:

If you ask a newspaper reporter why they don't say X (where "X" disproves some political lie or falsehood), they'll point you to an article saying X from two months ago. But that article has been forgotten. The question is why they don't remind voters of X every time candidates say not-X. Testing politician's statements against objective reality should not be an occasional feature. It should be the very point and purpose of campaign reportage, the reason those articles are on page A1 day after day after day.

I agree with this sentiment, but I think by applying this idea to the media's own coverage, we can give the public a chance to directly question the background assumptions implicit in the media's coverage.

If the media is required to explain why they believe a story relevant, in essence, provide justification for their coverage, then the public would be able to assess better if they agree with the normative claims implicit in the media's coverage. Furthermore, by directly addressing those background assumptions, the media might (and this is a big might here) actually see some of the more absurd narratives for what they are: you know, absurd.

Right now the news makes a claim, p, and says, if p then q. But what the media doesn't say is that claims a, b, c, n are needed as support for p. They end up talking about q non-stop, completely skipping over the necessary justification for those claims.

The notion of repetition as a way of holding politicians accountable for what they say is, of course, wonderful and important. And maybe, once journalists get in the habit of recognizing the history of their narratives and reporting on it (for the sake of holding politicians accountable), they'll start applying those same techniques to their own reporting.

More Meta

Kelly Schmader
Here.

Last night, I had the pleasure of seeing the abstract art class's final projects. It was wonderful. Once again, I'd like to make the plug for the Oberlin art department. They do really good work. Not everything was great, of course, but there were a number of breathtaking pieces, including a large rack of lollipops, some girl who out-Chuck-Closed Chuck Close, and oversize doughnuts that made me feel strangely uncomfortable. Also, several Oberliner favorites had their work on display, including the three I most often use: Meena Hasan, Savannah Mirisola-Sullivan, and Kelly Schmader (their website is here).

While on the subject of those three, and their art, for those of you breathlessly waiting, Wilder Voice should--maybe I should write "SHOULD"--be out Monday or Tuesday. I say this because Meena is our art editor, an Savannah and Kelly both did a number of illustrations for it. What's more, Wilder Voice will be on a thick magazine stock, which is quite exciting.

Our quasi-competitors, Vox came out yesterday, and they looked wonderful, and, thankfully, nothing like us. In fact, after reading their magazine, I think it's safe to say that we aren't really competitors at all. Theirs is much more academic (in a good way) than ours. Anyway, I know how much work it is to produce these things, so, congratulations, Vox!

I'm bound by my agreement with Google not to directly promote my advertisment, which makes sense. So, I want to make it clear to the Google powers-that-be, I'm not doing that. I just want to show you a recent screen shot to demonstrate how poor their software is at determining good context-specific advertisements:

No comment.

Lastly, I'd like to point out, I have now actually done some non-philosophy related reading, and it was very good. I'll try to review this, and, seeing as I'm desperately looking for a means of procrastination as the end of school draws nearer, I might actually get to it.

ID and More Meta

Savannah Mirisola-Sullivan
Here.

I need to make a confession: I've hit a wall in my study of scientific demarcation. It doesn't help that I've been reading Laudan (he wrote a rather seminal paper: "The Demise of the Demaracation problem." I would link to it, but, alas, you need access to JSTOR or another academic database).

As you probably know, I'm writing mostly about a new "field of science" know as Intelligent Design (ID). I'm trying to come up with a line of demarcation that excludes ID, while still keeping intact most of what we understand to be science. This may seem somewhat easy, but I assure you; it isn't.

Indeed, it's so difficult that most scientists who have some passing understanding of non-naive demarcation theory have given up on it. In the preface to Why Intelligent Design Fails, the editors, Matt Young and Taner Edis, write:

[Critics] generally presume that the primary mistake in intelligent-design claims is philisophical and argue that non-naturalistic ideas should not be given scientific consideration at all. A concentration on philosophy is understandable, given that intelligent design has been scorned by the mainstream scientific community. Nonetheless, intelligent design presents itself as a respectable scientific [emphasis theirs] alternative to Darwinian evolution and natural selection. Hence, although they intend to exclude intelligent design altogether, philosophical critiques emphasizing naturalism in science have paradoxically given intelligent design a measure of intellectual legitimacy despite its overwhelming scientific failure. TOo often, intelligent design has become a philosophical perspective to be debated in typically [sic] inconclusive fashion with only passing reference to the decisive answers from mainstream science [emphasis mine].

Because demarcation has become such a sinkhole in philosophy of science and because most mainstream scientists hold little regard for that philosophy, philosophical responses are given naive and incorrect treatment at best, and no mention at worst, by the scientific community.

I suppose this is somewhat understandable; there is a certain presumptuousness in philosophers--those armchair thinkers--telling highly trained scientists exactly what it is that they're doing. And of course there is Kuhn and--probably more importantly--Kuhn's concussive cultural effects to deal with.

Tom Kuhn, America's most influential addition to philosophy of science made science out to be a rather irrational exercise. At least, that's what the cultural perception of him is. It's hard to separate the man from the myth. He wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and received a celebrity among diverse academic discourses uncommon in philosophy. Who hasn't, after all, come across paradigm shift, Incommesurability, and Geshtalt images in any serious study of the humanities?

Kuhn postmodernized the sciences, and scientists don't like that (understandably). They hold to the tired Popperian notion of demarcation by falsifiability. Of course, the fact that they're willing to hold to such a flawed view may be evidence itself of the sciences' fundamental irrationality. Kitcher, no friend to creation science or ID wrote in his book--a stunning indictment of creationism--Abusing Science:

The time has come to tell a dreadful secret. While the picture of scientific testing sketched above [falsificationism] continues to be influential among scientists, it has been shown to be seriously incorrect. (To give my profession its due, historians and philosophers of science have been trying to let this particular cat out of the bag for at least thirty years ....) Important work in the history of science has mide it increasingly clear that no major scientific theory has ever exemplified the relation between theory and evidence that the traditional model presents.

I'll put it plainly. To say something is "unfalsifiable" or "untestable" isn't saying all that much, and it certainly isn't saying that something isn't science. There are degrees to which all of science is untestable, unfalsifiable.

I won't dwell to long on why this view has been largly rejected by philosophers of science, except to say that there is a naive sort of appeal (Kitcher actually coined the term "naive falsification" to describe this view" to the notion that science is--at its core--about testing hypothesis. It's naive because it ignore the theory-leaden nature of scientific work. Its naive because of the tenacity with which science holds to "falsified theories."

Enter Kuhn and his world of irrationality. Enter Kuhn and enter the ID movement's greatest weapon. The degree to which scientists hold on to the old, tradional "scientific method" model of science is the same degree to which creationists (and their neo-creationist bretheren: IDers) hold to Kuhn's paradigm model. Both sides are wrong.

I'm not sympathetic--in any way--to ID. It isn't science. And even if it were, it wouldn't be good science, as virtually every claim it has or can make has been refuted by biologists. Darwinism isn't crisis (except in the minds of IDers) and naturalism is as necessary and strong as ever within the scientific community.

I think this will be the beginning of a sort of series here on Oberliner. It is extraordinarily helpful for my work to flesh out ideas by writing, and it seems natural to use this blog as a home for that sketching. But, here's the outline; here's what I'll be saying.

FIRST, claims that ID isn't science because it is unfalsifiable miss the point completely. By the standards used to determine the falsifiability of ID, Darwinism is unfalsifiable as well.

SECOND, the base unit for scientific inquiry is The Scientific Research Program. This is the unit that we must use when considering what is or is not science. As pointed out, I believe by Longino, a biologist could have a hypothesis, say, dogs have a certain number of hairs, then that biologist could count every hair on a dog's body. This isn't science, clearly. We need to smash the notion that we can examine individual hypothesis, without considering the background values, assumptions, and constellations of causal agents when considering demarcation.

THIRD, Science is a fundamentally relative field. This is to say, astrology may have, at some point in time, been scientific. It is not any longer.

FORTH, Conditions for science without bite, such as network unification (inquiry is scientific to the degree to which it coheres well with other scientific fields), progress (certain types of progress are inherently "scientific" while others, well, not so much), psychological concerns (Kither's claim that "the primary division is a psychological one between scientists and pseudo-scientists." [emph. his]), and a host of others, are not enough. They may be necessary conditions, but they do not give a complete enough picture, nor do they effectively defeat ID.

FIFTH, Explanatory goodness plays in important, if not crucial, role in choice between competing scientific research programs (SRP).

SIXTH, The production of novel facts, too, plays an important, if not crucial, role in choice between competing SRP.

SEVENTH, Non-naturalistic causal agents are fundamentally anti-scientific. This is not dogmatic, this is based on epistemically responsible modes of inquiry--and science, if it is anything, is epistemically responsible. This is to say, the presence of a supernatural intelligent designer can never be an appropriate causal agent--even if Darwinism were to one day fail.

LASTLY, Rhetorical attacks, like the Flying Spaghetti Monster (Wiki that shit if you don't know what I'm talking about), while funny etc., do not say anything about the viability of Intelligent Design. There must be a clear, non-ad hominem line in the sand. We must take their claim at face value--that they are not religiously motivated--and still show their "theory" to be the flimsy pseudo-science that it is.

Well, I've got my work cut out for me. But I'd like to end on a less obscure note. Tristero, over at Hullabaloo, pointed out what the actual controversies are in Darwinism:

Russ Doolittle presented an analysis based on individual folds in proteins that clearly resolved the Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukaryotes, while a distant relative, Ford Doolittle, argued that the prevalence of horizontal gene transfer at the bacterial level made any such trees questionable, or at best uninformative. Meanwhile, Thomas Cavalier-Smith argued forcefully that gene-based trees miss out on significant evolutionary events, such as the transition that gave the Archaea a radically different membrane chemistry. Almost anyone who touched on the subject (and there were several speakers that did) gave a confused picture of what the genome of a Eukaryote looked like before it first took a mitochondrion on board.

Yet IDers persist in trying to foist their bullshit on science classrooms. What they're really after is naturalism. What they're really after is science. They want irrationality in science. They want to undermine the epistemic primacy of materialism. And the way to do this is tell children that science can be anything.

I'm reminded of Lakatos, when he wrote, in Science and Pseudoscience:

The problem of demarcation between science and pseudoscience has grave implications also for the institutionalization of criticism. Copernicus's theory was banned by the Catholic Church in 1616 because it was said to be pseudoscientific. It was taken off the index in 1820 because by that time the Church deemed that facts had proved it and therefore it became scientific. The Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party in 1949 declared Mendelian genetics pseudoscientific and had its advocates, like Academician Vavilov, killed in concentration camps; after Vavilov's murder Mendelian genetics was rehabilitated; but the Party's right to decide what is science and publishable and what is pseudoscience and punishable was upheld. The new liberal Establishment of the West also exercises the right to deny freedom of speech to what it regards as pseudoscience, as we have seen in the case of the debate concerning race and intelligence. All these judgments were inevitably based on some sort of demarcation criterion. And this is why the problem of demarcation between science and pseudoscience is not a pseudo-problem of armchair philosophers: it has grave ethical and political implications.

Meta Plea

Meena Hasan
Here.

As you've no doubt noticed (okay, no doubt not noticed), my comments are now being supported by Haloscan. What does this mean? It means I can do Trackbacks and you all can rate my posts. It's a way for me to get feedback without destroying your anonymity or taking time out of your busy, busy lives. So feel free to click away.

Morning Update XI

Savannah Mirisola-Sullivan
Here.

In accordance with my status as a member in good faith of the lefty blogosphere, I have decided to take up Kathy G.'s (of The G Spot and more recently, Crooked Timber) demand that we speak out over Phyllis Schlafly's coming honorary degree from Washington University (in St. Louis, MO).

Kathy G. has written a number of posts (here, here, here, and here) about Schlafly's utter disregard for reason and academia and the insanity of awarding someone like her an honorary degree. I couldn't agree more. Kathy writes:

But very rarely—in fact, almost never—do you see a great university honor someone who, throughout her public life has shown nothing but contempt for the values of the academia, values such as intellectual honesty and integrity, rational discourse, and the dispassionate pursuit of knowledge. Who has been, not a champion of human rights and human progress, but rather, at every turn, sought to thwart the aspirations of millions of female and nonwhite Americans and deny them equal justice under the law. Who has attempted to leave the world a far worse place than it was when she came into it, and in many ways has succeeded at this.

Ouch. At first glance, she would appear to be little more than a usual conservative nut-job, and conservatives--while they may be wrong about a great many things--aren't necessarily so odious as to be disqualified from receiving honorary degree's. I mean, sure, she liked Tom Tancrado for the Republican nomination; sure, she was a major factor in the premature death of the ERA; sure, she hates the UN and the WTO; and sure she was a vocal opponent to arms control agreements with the Soviets, writing that arms control agreements "will not stop Red aggression any more than disarming our local police will stop murder, theft, and rape."But this is just regular run of the mill crazy conservative.

So, why, then do I believe she would make a disastrous choice for an honorary degree? Succinctly put, because she's an advocate of conspiracy theories and anti-science and anti-epistemological norms.

She believes that the Virginia Tech shootings happened--and I shit thee not--because of the English department. That's right, he read some Lovecraft and Foucault and then shot up a school. Now, I would spend some time further debunking this kind of utter stupidity--on par with the beliefs that professional "musician" Manson somehow was responsible for Columbine--but why bother? Her argument just lists of some of the "weird" things being taught, ignoring that its all speculative, as she's not sure which classes he took.

Let me reiterate, people who don't believe that gender is a construct can get honorary degrees from mainstream institutions. People who don't believe that gender is a construct and blame senseless shootings on learning and reading about androgyny (as Schlafly did) should not.

As a student of academia, I can tell you right now, there is nothing more devistating to academic freedom and free speech then this kind of reducto ad hitlerium--turning important ideas into murderous motive. If Schlafy doesn't like postmodernism, that's fine; as something of a foundationalist, I don't much care for it either. But blaming Lacan and gender theory for mass murder is beyond chilling: it's McCarthyism (this makes sense, as she's quite the apologist for McCarthy).

Oh, but it doesn't stop there. In her words, "The question we should ask our Mexican immigrant friends is, are you assimilating or invading?" She--unsurprisingly--is anti-evolution and falls somewhere between young-earth creationist and IDer. Time Magazine revealed this gem:

[S]aid Schlafly, they should keep in mind that "some women have abandoned the commandments against adultery and fornication," and these temptresses pay the price.

And

Sexual harassment on the job is not a problem for virtuous women, except in the rarest of cases. Men hardly ever ask sexual favors of women from whom the certain answer is no. Virtuous women are seldom accosted.

In a speech to Bates College, she said:

By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don't think you can call it rape

And, this, of course, is all ignoring her black-helicopter bullshit over the UN and her insane beliefs about the secret communist leanings of the pre-Goldwater GOP. The notion that someone as blatantly as anti-science and anti-intellectual as Schlafly would receive an honorary degree from a respectable institution of higher learning is a slap in the face to anyone who believes that academia should promote free, intelligent thought and responsible epistemology.

Moving away from outrage, I want to briefly discuss the nature of the lefty blogosphere and highlight a few blogs. I've written before on The G Spot, but I'd like to add Crooked Timber to the list of blogs that I read and appreciate. They aren't just news aggregators like so many blogs, nor do they give rather shallow and small commentary lake a great many more, rather, they're almost like magazines, with long, feature-length posts on a variety of quasi-political subjects, ranging from feminism to political philosophy. Neat-o.

Lastly, Last day of classes today. Woot.

UPDATE: Also add Rutbelt Intellectual to the list of blogs I read and like.

Avoiding Epistemology VI

Kelly Schmader
Here.

A visual representation of analytic philosophy: an open box. Because analytic philosophy is unpacking concepts. Get it? Yeah...

In recent news: The Washington Post is annoying. Two items of note. The first, "Who's more Red, White, and Blue Collar" (here) is an unfailingly inane description of the political process framed in terms of "ordinariness":

The presidential race has turned into a riveting competition for ordinariness, as both campaigns have concluded that whoever does a better job of winning over voters like Winschief--an average blue-collar man in an average American town of 60,000--is more likely to triumph in Tuesday's primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.

Identifying with the common man has been a requisite in presidential elections for almost two centuries. But the stakes are especially high in a race largely defined by an economic crisis, and campaign experts say the candidates have gone especially far in their appeals.

At least, I suppose, the author admitted that he was defining "ordinariness" as an average blue-collar man in an average American town of 60,000. For the record, this isn't necessarily normal. But by couching it as such, The Post is playing into a typically white-bred and fictitious myth: namely, that blue-collar, bowling men are real, ordinary men and others are either effeminate, faggoty elitists or dirty minorities.

Perhaps that's a touch on the strong side, but it isn't unwarranted. I, first of all, enjoy the irony of an undoubtedly well-educated media elite proclaiming that he isn't ordinary. But what I love more is the implication that this is somehow a deservingly unprivileged demographic, one who, by nature of their ordinariness, deserves pandering, whereas, when pandering to other groups, one is elitist and out-of-touch.

This is how a rich white woman became the populist, working-class hero, while the black man, son of an immigrant, who just finished paying down college loans became the out-of-touch effeminate fop.

The Post, not content to just play into one idiotic narrative today, also--probably inadvertently--proved my point by writing a novel and reporting their own analysis of it (to paraphrase Elizabeth Edwards). From "Eight Questions About Today's Primaries," (h/t kid oakland) (here) the author writes:

Barack Obama dealt forcefully with the issue last Tuesday, breaking with his former pastor and denouncing his words in strong language. Many Democrats think he's done the best he can for now, and even prominent Clinton supporters say they doubt that the relationship between Obama and the minister will have much impact on Democratic voters.

Some Democrats think this is now largely a media-driven story[.]

I'm going to break this down. Obama has dealt with the issue, and some think it's a media-driven story. Okay. Want some evidence it's a media-driven story? This article makes no--repeat no--new claims about the Wright business; it says that Democrats think it's media-driven and Republicans are going to try to keep it that way. So the news here is...

I'm stumped to. It seems to me like the author thinks this is important and so he went out and got interviews with people who disagreed over whether or not Wright would effect Obama. They wrote this story; they reported day in and day out over the Wright-Obama connection, then, when Obama "dealt with the issue," they persist in analyzing their coverage, as if their own navel-gazing might somehow be mistaken for real news by their readers.

The second bit of news for the day is the take-down (by digby, here.) of a particularly stupid story in Vanity Fair:

Politics is now about sex. Not just scandalous sex, not just who is having what kind of sex, but what we think about the sex each politician is having, or not having. Sex (sex, not gender) in politics is as significant a subtext as race...

We want to know. That’s a big part of Bill Clinton’s legacy: there’s always a sexual explanation. We’re savvy. Sex completes the picture—it explains so much. Tim Russert and other Sunday-talk-show hosts might maintain the illusion that politics is, or should be, a formal dialogue about impersonal issues, with sex only a topic of surprise, scandal, and shocked-shockedness, but in real life everybody is constantly and openly speculating on the sexual nature and needs and eccentricities of every rising and demanding political personality.

To reiterate a point made elsewhere (here and here), not "everybody is constantly and openly speculating on the sexual nature and needs and eccentricities of every rising and demanding political personality." Really, I've maybe speculated twice or three times: once to say that "wouldn't it be funny if Hillary were sleeping with a hot, young male intern," once again when I suggested that Spitzer mostly cried with his prostitutes, and one last time when I brought up the sexual repression felt by many conservatives might express itself in a somewhat kinky fashion. The majority of my political discussions--the vast majority of them, in fact--revolve around the media's dumb-ass coverage (like this dumb-ass piece) and, you know, the issues.

I'll let Lance Mannion close for me:

[T]he National Press Corps covers politics as if they are writing a novel and interpreting that novel at the same time. Which means they are treating politicians as if they were fictional characters.

And with fictional characters, sex does explain everything.

Ask Hamlet.

Folly

Under the guise of working on my private reading, I went to Ben Stein's new movie, Expelled on Sunday. I left about an hour into it. Here's what I've learned: Ben Stein is not a very good scientist, nor is he a very convincing arbitrator of science debates. He is, however, very funny in Ferris Beuler's Day Off.

Ben Stein is also an academically dishonest hack. Him movie makes the claim that the scientific community stifles free speech and chills discussion--unfairly--over intelligent design. So far so good. I'm willing to buy that the scientific community stifles free speech. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that they should stifle free speech. Scientists are bound to, you know, practice science, so if a scientist isn't practicing science, and, in the case of intelligent design, practicing something fundamentally contrary to science, I'd say they should lose their tenure or not be allowed to keep their cushy grants. Why? Because they're scientists not practicing science.

Ben Stein disagrees, and probably not because he interviewed mostly IDers and made scientists out to be Nazi, atheist hacks (I'm not kidding).

That's my favorite part--and the part I walked out on. Stein was explaining how Darwinism is a necessary condition for Nazism, which is probablly true. And, while, when pressed, he's careful to say that not all Darwinists are Nazi's, he does make the claims that "Darwinism gave the rational for the holocaust," and "Hitler was a lineal descendant of Darwin." Cute, right?

So, if he isn't trying to paint all Darwinists as Nazis, I wonder what his was in taking a little tour of concentration camps in a movie about Intelligent Design. If it were to show that (1) Darwinism "is a necessary condition for Nazism," then that's a pretty weak claim. That's like saying "Catholicism is a necessary condition for the Spanish Inquisition," or "Guns were a necessary condition for the Holocaust. " These statements, you note, don't really say much about the first antecendent. That is to say, what does it matter that "Darwinism is a necessary condition for Nazism?" (It's also a necessary condition for Biology--by the by)

Seriously, though, why bother spending a good chunk of time in a film dedicated to intelligent design comparing Darwin to Hitler unless you were trying to make a stronger claim? Why bother doing it unless what you mean is Darwinism leads to Nazism. He got Dawkins (unsurprisingly) to say that Darwinism led to Atheism. And he followed that up with the Nazi bit.

At any rate, I find it funny that in a movie about the horrors of chilling free speech, Stein would pull out the "Hitler did it" ad hominem bullshit. Seriously, the irony is almost too much to bear.

Lastly, I wanted to take some time to discuss Senator Clinton's new anti-intellectual bent. On the gas tax, The New York Times quotes her as saying:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Sunday dismissed the "elite opinion" of economists who criticized her gas tax proposal, using a term that has dogged rival Barack Obama in recent weeks.

Seriously, this "Obama is an elitist" narrative is just another iteration of the old Democrats are elitist narrative that was used against Carter, Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry. It's getting a little old. For Senator Clinton to be using it against a fellow Democrat is both shocking and, sadly, not so shocking.

Here's my personal favorite bit from The Times's piece:

"I'm not going to put my lot in with economists," the New York senator said when asked to name a credible economist who supported her proposal.

Say what you want about Econ, and I say plenty, but they do sometimes know what they're talking about. I'm impressed that she's turned an utter lack of Economic support for her plan into a positive, which is probably good politics on her part. I'm less impressed that she did it by buying into the old anti-intellectual gambit that has been perfected by the Republicans over the last few cycles.

Why Are We Afraid?

I'm about to run to a staff dinner in celebration of our recent completion of Wider Voice, but, first, I wanted to say a couple of things about the political-going-ons of the day.

The New York Times gives a good context to why there is so much hand wringing in Democratic circles over the whole "Obama is unpatriotic" business here:

Mr. Dukakis defended his patriotism and scoffed at Mr. Bush for wrapping himself in the flag, but, in essence, lost control of the campaign and his own image.

After his loss, in 40 states, many Democratic leaders swore they would never be caught off guard that way again.

I think more revealing, however, is the fact that John Kerry, a veteran was also effeminized and attacked in much the same way Dukakis was. From this, I think it is safe to say that the Republicans are going to attack our candidate's patriotism no matter who it is. What's more, choosing our candidate based on the fear of what the Republican's will do or say about him or her is tantamount to allowing the Republicans to pick our candidate for us. As I wrote earlier, patriotism, according to Republicans, is belief in American Exceptionalism, and, if we choose a candidate immune to these kinds of attacks (a candidate, who, by necessity, would believe in American Exceptionalism), we would get an essentially Republican candidate.

We shouldn't acquiesce, and we shouldn't be afraid. We should fight that framing and fight that narrative.

One more particularly good passage:

Attacks on a presidential candidate’s patriotism are hard for many politicians to take seriously. “Unless you’re talking about the Manchurian candidate, the idea that someone who put their heart and soul into running for president didn’t care deeply for their country is kind of ridiculous,” said Drew Westen, a psychologist and political consultant.

One more thing. Bill Moyers has an incredible statement on Wright-gate; I strongly recommend watching it:

Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the war-mongering Catholic-bashing Texas preacher, who said the people of New Orleans got what they deserved for their sins. But no one suggests McCain shares Hagee's delusions, or thinks AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and asked God to remove Supreme Court justices, yet he remains a force in the Republican religious right. After 9/11 Jerry Falwell said the attack was God's judgment on America for having been driven out of our schools and the public square, but when McCain goes after the endorsement of a preacher he once condemned as an agent of intolerance, the press gives him a pass.

Jon Stewart recently played a tape from the Nixon white house in which Billy Graham talks in the oval office about how he has friends who are Jewish, but he knows in his heart that they are undermining America. This is crazy and wrong -- white preachers are given leeway in politics that others aren't.

Which means it is all about race, isn't it? Wright's offensive opinions and inflammatory appearances are judged differently. He doesn't fire a shot in anger, put a noose around anyone's neck, call for insurrection, or plant a bomb in a church with children in Sunday school. What he does is to speak his mind in a language and style that unsettles some people, and says some things so outlandish and ill-advised that he finally leaves Obama no choice but to end their friendship. Politics often exposes us to the corroding acid of the politics of personal destruction, but I've never seen anything like this — this wrenching break between pastor and parishioner. Both men no doubt will carry the grief to their graves. All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the non-stop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt, who said "beware the terrible simplifiers". [h/t kid oakland]