New Israel Fund

I recently received a very nice fundraising letter from the New Israel Fund, which prompted me to look at the NIF website. I was a donor to NIF in 1979 and several subsequent years, but have become what is referred to in the recent news articles on the site as a “disaffected” Jew. As much as I like NIF’s programs and believe that they help some very needy people, I am not persuaded that sending medications to the Titanic, as it were, is a good use of my very limited funds. I suppose my point is to say why I am so disaffected, although you have no doubt heard it all before, and better said to boot.

I am not disaffected out of any sentiments favoring the Palestinians or their Arab enablers. On any comparative scale they are far worse. But the scale is not comparative. Should the day arrive when Israel is judged the same as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or Syria, it will be a day of shame for the Israeli and Jewish people.

But it is Israel whose survival is being threatened, and the Jewish people who have much to lose by the viciousness and stupidity of Israel's leaders. I truly believe that the policies Israel’s dominant politicians have been pursuing will lead to its complete destruction within a few years or decades. Their approach, imposing gratuitous humiliation and cruelty on the non-Jews subject to their power, is a tragic failure of leadership, and the American Jewish establishment cheers them on as though we Jews had always been the dominant and privileged people of the world, learning nothing about the horrors of cruelty and unkindness, and having gained no empathy for the oppressed. Even apart from their personal criminality, Israel’s leaders since Likkud first came to power have provided an obscene and depressing spectacle (with the exceptions of Rabin and Barak). Jimmy Carter and Meersheimer and Walt are right in the essentials. Israel’s leaders seem to foolishly believe not only that might makes right, but that they will always have the might. In addition, they have used the basest kind of demagoguery to advance fundamentalist agendas, cynicism, and ignorance at home, with a corresponding malign influence on the nature of Israeli society.



In sum, NIF's struggle against these forces is a noble and honorable one, but unfortunately history is replete with societies that have been destroyed or immiserated for centuries by leaders like Israel’s.

Clintonism

Re Matt Bai's NY Times Magazine article about Clintonism: What Bai calls Clintonism is nothing more than smart liberalism, constrained by the art of the possible. Traditional liberalism came to embrace a lot of dumb, bad policies, the faults of which experience and a better understanding of psychology, sociology, and economics have clarified. Clinton rejected the most obvious of those bad policies. He could not implement major replacement programs, however, because of the political climate he faced, a climate partly engendered by the old-line lefties whose advocacy for those stupid policies helped poison it.

Romney vs Hilary

I agree with the posters who believe Romney will be the GOP nominee. I think it was the Washington Monthly that reported, about a year ago, that Jeb Bush had put his staff and donors at Romney's disposal, and that meant to me that R would likely prevail if McCain faltered, as he has done. If the Dems reject Hilary, I predict that Romney will have an excellent chance of winning the Presidency (or getting so close that the Supremes can steal it for him). That's because he's physically attractive, apparently very competent, and despite current pandering to the crazies who vote in GOP primaries, he's not scarily fanatical. He is by far the most dangerous of the Republican candidates, apart from McCain. I like both Obama and Edwards as well as Hilary, but she's the only Dem candidate who can survive the scurrilous Republican campaign tactics that will be coming.

On the other hand, I doubt that anyone who by winning this election has to deal with Iraq and global warming will manage to last more than one term.

14th Amendment and segregation

The school discrimination cases generated five different opinions, but the ones I wish to discuss are Chief Justice Roberts's, with 3 concurring conservative justices, Justice Breyer's, with 3 concurring liberal justices, and Justice Kennedy's, which therefore decides the case.
The case is about efforts by two different school districts, one in St. Louis and one in Seattle, to overcome residential and income segregation by prohibiting certain white students from attending their preferred school. In other words, it's about when the government may engage in racial discrimination. Roberts says this can be done (1) to correct segregation that can be traced to governmental action, and (2) to implement, in the narrowest possible way, a valid and urgent governmental interest in the goal of the discrimination. Breyer says that governmental discrimination can be done to enhance democracy and social cohesion, and that this reasoning has led to many Supreme Court decisions oking discrimination to combat segregation, whether of government action origin or not.
Kennedy agrees with Roberts’ interpretation of the 14th Amendment, but claims that the government could validly discriminate if it uses ways other than identifying and injuring individuals, which is what it was doing in these cases.
It seems to me that most of the objection to this decision is based on the outcome, and some of it is based on the less than completely candid way in which the majority explained its preference for the narrow over the broad interpretation of acceptable discrimination. But from an outcome point of view, Fish’s argument also has a lot of merit: namely, that the majority’s narrow definition of acceptable discrimination is likely to protect liberal interests in the future, whereas Breyer’s broad definition could easily be used to support unfair State action.
Every Supreme Court case results in two decisions. One decision is about the outcome, as above. The other is about the law, and what matters in the legal decision is both the legal principle that is enunciated, and how the Court reasons its way to that principle. In Bush v. Gore, the legal principle was reached by a lunge for the desired outcome, not through any reasoning supported by jurisprudence. It was a corrupt decision reached by morally corrupt judges, and the five who voted for it will be forever infamous. But the decision in the school cases is far from that. The reasoning by Roberts is scrupulous and plausible, whether one quibbles with certain phrases or not. To me, it indicates that at least Roberts and Alito are prepared to play fair with the Constitution, a document which can be interpreted in many different ways.

Democrat Economic Policy

I don't believe it's necessary for Dems to have economic policies, except as illustrations of our principles and standards. I believe ALL Democrats share such principles and standards. We are wholeheartedly in favor of wealth and its fair distribution, as well as the prevention and punishment of economic crime. We don't have to specify how we would implement these goals, except for purposes of illustration. What distinguishes us from the Republicans is the direction we face: forward, not backwards; toward all the people, not just the privileged.

What is Art?

Dear Fred,
I would like to try out on you a definition of art, sparked by the discussions we have had and what you said last night. I think there are four fundamental elements that must be included in a definition of art: as you keep insisting, it is a mode of communication; more particularly, I think, it is an aesthetic communication; it is an extremely well done (artful) aesthetic communication; and it is recognized as such. I would also say that the label “art” is an accolade. In short, art is a term of respect that we give to the aesthetic communications we consider particularly well done.
Respectfully,
Keith

Impeach them!?

There is quite a lot of discusion among our friends here about impeachment. I would love to impeach Bush and Cheney, and the talk of it is interesting. But there are two big problems. First, impeachment aims at the wrong target. It changes the subject from the terribleness of Republicans and their policies to specific personal crimes by two soon-to-be former politicans. Impeachment would not be for misleading us into a disastrous war, winning elections through lies and slander, shredding the Constitution, subverting the rule of law and the judiciary, enriching cronies and other rich people at everyone
else's expense, kicking the poor and the ill when they're down, squandering our resources, leaving New Orleans for dead, ignoring global warming, turning the environment over to corporate goons, destroying federal efforts to protect health and safety, or even authorizing Abu Ghraib. It would be for some specific, provable, and probably relatively minor set of offenses. The Mitch McConnells, Rudy Giulianis, Mitt Romneys, and Newt Gingriches of this world would emerge completely unscathed, although they have been the ones who made Bush-Cheney possible.

The second big problem is that there may well be no impeachable offense. Not every wrong is a crime, and the greatest wrongs are probably neither criminal nor provable. I read through the entire transcript of the Moyers interview looking for an impeachable offense, and the closest to one was "What you need to look for is a pattern of behavior that says that the presidency is superior not merely to Congress but to the laws of the land, to the rules of law. And that is why we ought to be discussing impeachment. Not because of George Bush and Dick Cheney but because we are establishing a presidency that does not respect the rule of law." Impeachment is for crimes, not contemptuous behavior or the assertion of objectionable viewpoints. For example: If Cheney claims that he doesn't have to show certain documents to Congress, that is not an offense. If a court rules that he must, and he continues to refuse, then he can be held in contempt of court, and that would be an offense. Again: If Bush claims the right to waive the Geneva Convention, that is not a legal offense. If a court rules that he must comply, and he continues to waive the Geneva Convention, that is impeachable. N'est-ce pas?