Power Politics

Though Russia and Georgia have recently signed a tenuous truce, the conflict is likely far from over. I don't have much to say on this, since I'm not very knowledgeable in this area, but it does make you wonder: how useful is it nowadays to have the US as a friend internationally? What can we (alone) really do for Georgia? Russia and the rest of the world knows how thinly-stretched our military is. If Russia pushes back, what power does the US really have left to protect Georgia?

The shareef don't like it (Clash...of Stupidities, Part II)

Two recent articles have recently reminded me how far we've come in the self-fulfilling prophecy of the clash of civilizations. A New York Times Op-Ed columnist, Roger Cohen, recently wrote about the struggle between Islam and democracy in Turkey. Islam is a young religion, he noted, and we should not be too impatient with Muslims cutting their teeth on democracy. But, spare the rod and spoil the child -- he concluded that "[t]he fight for Turkey’s soul is not about to abate: it’s salutary as long as it remains open. The West should do all it can to safeguard that openness — and that may involve an occasional dose of “secular fascism.”"

'Scuse me? When did that become our goal? Fight fire with fire, you might be thinking. Well, before I launch into a discussion about why militant democracy is not the answer, let's unpack this a little more.

First of all, why do we care so much? More than we care about cultural divisions in China, Zimbabwe, South Africa, or any host of other countries? You'll notice that the auto-response to this is familiar: If Islam wins the cultural war, Islamists will be elected. Islamists 1) want to kill us and 2) hate freedom. Ergo, we must fight [the good fight] to stop it.

The first argument is the root of the paranoia that will always make the West's supposed democratic agenda a catch-22. The second is more interesting. It lies in the background of the article - the comments about head-to-toe swimsuits and headscarves. It's an appeal to the liberal humanitarian in every red-blooded college grad. It is not made as an argument -- it sets the background for any story about Islam. But it's often employed to underpin the first argument -- that there is danger.

Today, it seems that we are obsessed with the clash within civilizations. We wait with bated breath to see "which way" Algeria will go. But for all the debate about it, all the articles, in depth analysis, and philosophizing we forget one thing -- it's not our fight. And it's especially not our place to turn it into a battle between good and evil, whatever the disclaimers that we understand the subtlety.

Meanwhile, here at home, cheering for secularism has turned Islam into the demon. The debate is so polarizing that calling a presidential candidate a Muslim is considered a smear that he will risk isolating voters to avoid. We have plenty to deal with here in the US regarding relations with Muslims.

The divisiveness breeds a radicalization of both sides. There is a push and pull going on in Islam, even here. To be a Mulsim in the US today is to be caught between being a haraami and committing cultural suicide; to be considered radical instead of pious or a traitor instead of a secularist. There is plenty of room for improvement and debate here at home.

All I'm saying is, it ain't your job to rock the casbah.

Some Astonishing Numbers from an Important New Book

In my judgment, one of the most important questions about American society is the relationship or compatibility between capitalism and democracy -- the extent to which one threatens or precludes the other. Thus I was drawn to a new book by the Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels, which is described here and discussed here, and which has received a lot of criticism in the blogs of conservative economists, although (as best I can tell) mostly on fairly trivial and unpersuasive methodological grounds. One of them (Will Wilkinson) described the Bartels book as "Krugman for serious people." What I find most striking are the following numbers, which show that the usual descriptions of growing income inequality in the US since 1981 vastly UNDERSTATE the growth at the high end of the income distribution. For example, while the real income (that is, measured in constant dollars) of taxpayers at the 99th percentile doubled between 1981 and 2005 -- a much greater increase than for Americans below that level -- the real income of taxpayers at the 99.9th percentile TRIPLED, and the real income of taxpayers at the 99.99th percentile -- "a hyper-rich stratum comprising about 13,000 taxpayers" -- QUINTUPLED. Bartels argues that this growth was produced primarily by the tax cuts pushed by Republican administrations, and stresses that the fivefold increase was not the average for the 99.99th percentile, but "the LOWEST income of taxpayers in this group," so presumably the rate of increase was even larger for the wealthiest of this highest-income 13,000 households. For the three decades after World War II, "the REAL income cutoff for this hyper-rich stratum was virtually constant, but around 1980 it began to escalate rapidly, from about $ 1.2 million to $6.2 million by 2000" (constant dollars).

Bleak but persuasive summary of the US situation in Iraq and Afghanistan

This is the single best summary I have seen of the current "state of play" in Iraq and Afghanistan. The author (Thomas Powers) is one of the very finest journalists covering US intelligence agencies, and whose excellent review of George Tenet's "I am not the scapegoat" autobiography (AT THE CENTER OF THE STORM: MY YEARS AT THE CIA) produced an exchange of letters published in the NY Review of Books in which Powers wrote this ominous but entirely plausible assessment: "I have thought from the first day of war that it would destroy two presidents—suck up all their energy and attention, while every other matter of importance was allowed to drift. Two presidents, I thought, because the second in the early flush of triumph at winning the White House would look for a new strategy to put off or disguise the reality of failure, much as Nixon did in 1969. Of course the new strategy would fail, and the new president would find him- or herself insisting that the new strategy needed more time, or that someone else—Iran perhaps—was to blame."

Sharon Stone and the Karma Police

So evidently China's chickens are coming home to roost. Evidently she's already apologized for this idiotic comment, but this should just serve as a reminder that even we left-coast liberals have some real ignorance in our ranks. At least 70,000 civilians are dead -- many of them schoolchildren -- and Sharon Stone thinks this is some kind of cosmic retribution?!

I know she's just a celebrity, but I had to vent a little anyway. I just sincerely hope she's not actually "good friends" with the Dalai Lama. A conversation between the two of them would make for a good Maureen Dowd piece I think.

"Some argue that no law should intrude beneath the quilt"

Not unrelated to Rachel's post is this article about sex and Korean soap opera stars.

Quick synopsis: soap opera star Husband accuses actress Wife of having an affair. Under Korean law, extramarital affairs are punishable with a jail sentence. Instead of denying the affair, Wife calls a news conference, admits having an affair, and challenges the infidelity law. She accuses him of being loveless; he calls her a liar. High drama!

There's all sorts of interesting tid-bits in here, including the historical feminist support for the infidelity law, since it gave/gives otherwise powerless women leverage over their husbands. But what I wanted to bring up was governmental "beneath the quilt" interference. [See Justice Minister's comment half way down the first page.] Say what you like about the law's impact on public morality -- maybe ethics will come crashing down without governmental support, maybe they won't, maybe its none of the government's business -- the fact remains that marriage as we currently know and practice it is, at one level, a legal contract. As Rachel notes, since it is a legal contract, the government exercises authority over who can and cannot enter into that contract. Likewise, as long as marriage is a legal contract, it makes some sense that there would be legal ramifications for breaking the contract.

Disclaimer 1: I'm not saying that the government should be able to "intrude beneath the quilt," I'm just pointing out that questioning the government's right to regulate conduct within marriage also brings into question its right to oversee the contraction of marriage in the first place. If marriage is "just a contract," then the contracting parties shouldn't be able to waltz in and out of their contractual obligations willy-nilly without the overseeing entity laying the smack down. But if marriage is something other than (or, if you like, more than) a contract; if it's a relationship that cannot be controlled or regulated just because it involves the signing of a contract, then we have to question the significance, nature, and efficacy of the contractual component.

Disclaimer 2: I don't know anything about marital law, or the line and/or interaction between the cultural and legal aspects of marriage. Therefore I don't know exactly what you sign on to, in legal terms, when you get married. So perhaps infidelity isn't technically a breach of contract? Law students feel free to jump in -- I know the article was about Korea, but now I'm curious about the U.S.

The State and the Union

The supreme court of my possible future home-state, California, recently overturned a law banning same-sex marriage, only the second state (after Massachusetts) to do so. The ruling also suggested that homosexuality may be a suspect class (meaning that laws which discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation will be under strict scrutiny). But for now, that's just in the 9th circuit.

Some have heralded it as an advancement in civil rights; others have condemned it as a departure from the traditional concept of marriage. Comments on the WSJ law blog outline the contours of the debate: "Next people will be wanting to marry their pets, mark my words!" one side wails. The other side retorts something like "We don't live in a Christian state. We live in a secular state so values have nothing to do with it. It's just a contract."

First of all, even if marriage is "just a contract", the state has always wanted to regulate who could enter into that contract. Earlier, interracial marriages were banned (see Loving v. Virginia). Marriages below a certain age are still banned, as are polygamous marriages. Why does the state have an interest in banning any forms of marriage at all? As commentator number 2 points out, there is no state religion. Perhaps for marriages below a certain age, we can argue that some parties do not have the legal ability to consent. But what about polygamy between adults? What about marriages between business partners for tax breaks?

The engines of the state have always had an interest in regulating marriage, because they have an interest in regulating community morals. The fact that we don't live in a religious state does not make the judgments of our judiciary value-neutral. Secularity is not a free space where everyone gets to do as they want. We all make value judgments even in the absence of religion. Judges and legislators do the same. So, why are some people angry? I think it's mostly because the judges are following their set of upper-class educated values, rather than a different set of values followed by those who voted in the ban in the first place.

Either way, there is nothing in the law that will require a decision one way or another. Either way, it's a judgment call being made by elites in the society. Is that a bad thing? Not really. Sometimes the society later comes to adopt those values as normal, in which case we will call these judges "forward-thinking" (think civil rights). Sometimes the society does not come to adopt those values, in which case we will call those judges products of their time, stuck in the skewed view of the past (think eugenics).

Am I saying there is no right and wrong? Not at all. I'm just not sure that's what law is all about.