Here we have a map of the United States, colored by county. Blue voted for John Kerry, red for George W. Bush:
There are white splotches from certain counties which had not yet finished counting. Also, Alaska apparently does not tally voting by county, which is why they are white here. In the state-by-state breakdown, Alaska is red.
And now, we have a population density map of the United States:
This map is based on 1990 population information, so it could be slightly outdated - but not, I think, by much.
Rhode Island has a population of 1,076,164.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Wow. areas with less than one person per square mile are cool. Not terribly habitable, but cool nonetheless.
Damn: Dade nad Broward counties are still not finished counting.... I feeel a candal coming on.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Wyoming looks... interesting, square... mostly consists of a population of between 1 and 19 people per square mile! Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
As though getting laid is not tough enough in densly populated areas.... Imagine trying to hook up when the nearest woman is miles and miles away.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
But.. this still means that more than half the Americans voted for the Christian fundamentalists, right?
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: As though getting laid is not tough enough in densly populated areas.... Imagine trying to hook up when the nearest woman is miles and miles away.
Well no wonder Zephram Cochrane from Montana (aka Alpha Centauri) invented warp-drive - he had no other 'hobbies' Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Do you also have a map with the percentage population in each county that actually VOTED?
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
And one with people that wanted to vote but couldn't?
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
I occasionally think David Brooks is on something too....
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
"On something," Jay, or "onto something"?
Posted by Mucus (Member # 24) on :
Hmmm, anyone know what the deal is with south-western Texas?
Posted by Futurama Guy (Member # 968) on :
barren wasteland
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
What Futurama Guy said, Mucus. The Chihuahuan Desert overlaps a bit into southwestern Texas, plus Big Bend National Park takes up a good chunk of area in the S-curve along the Rio Grande. It's a pretty arid area, but things supposedly get greener and more fertile as you get closer to the mouth of the Rio Grande (I wouldn't know, the closest to the mouth I've been is Laredo).
And, on edit, it just occurred to me that Mucus might be speaking about the lake of blue in an otherwise red state. The southern parts of Texas near the Rio Grande are heavily hispanic. With the exception of two congressional districts, the border area is represented by hispanic Democrats (Ortiz, Hinojosa, Cuellar, and Reyes). The two exceptions are Doggett (a white Democrat) and Bonilla (a hispanic Republican).
Interesting sidenote about Doggett: his district used to be the capital city of Austin. Doggett was one of the Democrats that DeLay's redistricting plan targetted, so Doggett's district was redrawn as spanning from the border all the way up a quarter of Austin. The hopes were that a hispanic Democrat would challenge and defeat Doggett in the primaries. A similar scheme worked by redrawing the district of Chris Bell (a white Democrat) to include a much larger black population. A black Democratic challenger defeated Bell in primaries. Fun stuff, Texas politics.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"Do you also have a map with the percentage population in each county that actually VOTED?"
St. Louis County, Missouri had an 80% turnout and Kerry won 54-45. So don't blame us.
Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
quote:Originally posted by David Sands: "On something," Jay, or "onto something"?
Come now, you shouldn't need to have that bit of overt sarcasm explained.
But based on what Mr. Brooks wrote in that article...I'm sticking with on.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 24) on :
quote:Originally posted by Siegfried: And, on edit, it just occurred to me that Mucus might be speaking about the lake of blue in an otherwise red state....
Thanks, thats precisely what I was wondering about.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
I think that article is interesting... thought provoking - lacking in any concrete evidence/substance (but what editorials are?), I wouldn't dismiss his idea out of hand. It is afterall his opinion. Maybe though that is the problem with the media - too much 'opinion', less and less fact?
Andrew
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
Jay: I couldn't tell if you had inadvertantly left out two letters. Sorry.
Andrew: that's why I've largely stopped reading the editorial pages of newspapers. Too little space for ideas too big. Never room for evidence. Give me NRO, TNR, TAP, Slate, TechCentralStation, or Volokh anyday. They're not so confined by imposed brevity.
Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
Well, he is an opinion writer for the New York Times.
So, yes, it is his opinion.
Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
Here�s what the article boils down to:
Mr. Bush --> Rugged Individualism --> Cowboyism --> Good Mr. Kerry --> International Cooperationism --> Pansyism --> Bad
Jay, I think you're being a little unfair to him. Brooks would qualify as the type of conservative Irving Kristol said are neoconservatives (liberals who got mugged by reality), even if there's a small rightward tilt in that he explains the Right with a slightly higher degree of eloquence. E.g., the "law enforcement problem" of stopping Islamofascists. But speaking as someone with more Democratic friends around the country than Republican ones, his description wasn't too far off the mark of how many of them have explained themselves to me.
"I don't think of it as a blog (more a paleo-blog), but have to give props to Drudge."
You, sir, just disqualified yourself from life.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
I would like to kick every person with a weblog with the word "pundit" in the title.
Weblogs I like that are cooler than weblogs you like: Boing Boing Arts & Letters Daily (It feels a little right-wing from time to time, or at least I get a weird vibe off it every now and then, but your PunditPundit ain't got no links to essays about Faulkner.) Beyond the Beyond by Bruce Sterling! WorldChanging (for futuristic green thinking that is TECHED UP TO THE HILT) Metafilter (Unlike A&L Daily links are posted by a community of users, so there is plenty of fun weird political vibes for all. But, I mean, who doesn't already visit Metafilter? Cavemen? Victorian gentlemen-explorers trapped in the Hollow Earth? ((PEOPLE NOT IN THE KNOW IS WHAT I AM GENTLY INSINUATING)))
I won't mention the weblog I get my Firefly news from, and updates on what the dreamy Amy Acker is up to, because, OH MAN, embarrassing.
Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :
Last I heard, Bush still had the advantage of popular vote across the board.
So quit your whining. I may hate the guy, but Bush won fair and square this time around. Kerry, in my opinion, didn't add up at all.
Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
David, I�m not being at all unfair to Mr. Brooks.
Mr. Brooks wrote:
quote:When Bush talks about the world he hopes to create, he talks first about spreading freedom. What he's really talking about is a decentralized world. Individuals would be free to live as they chose, in their own nations, carving out their own destinies.
That is not what's going on in Iraq.
You don't invade another country to bring the people democracy.
And if you should invade another country on the claim of bringing them democracy...if you decide to effect a change of their system of government. In doing so, you use forces external to their system. As a result, you loose the right to high-minded ideological claim that the people you invaded are carving out their own destinies.
No matter how much one might say Iyad Allawi or the Iraqis are in charge, American fingerprints are all over the new system. So their new system turns into something of a version of our system; a version of our democracy; a version of our free-market ideology. These are concepts which one may strongly believe in, and argue for passionately, but that doesn't make the concepts or ideals theirs.
And in an age of terror not connected to the nation-state, international law and police action can and should play an important role in any anti-terror strategy.
You can�t invade everyone.
It�s quite clear that the Bush Doctrine is only for use in Iraq. So we�re not going to invade Iran, or North Korea or Saudi Arabia, or any of the other countries with bad people in charge, with oppressed peoples, or that pose a threat to international peace and security to bring them democracy.
If you can�t invade to bring democracy...then that poo-pooed concept of international cooperation looks better and better.
And I�m unsure what to make of the mugged by reality comment.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
I doubt Bush can pull off another long campaign for a war in Iran. But if Sharon decides to bomb some nuclear installations, I'm sure Bush would be willing to support him.
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
But I read that a computer error in a part of Ohio got Bush 4200 votes where he actually should've gotten 200-something, and Kerry got 400-something and should've won.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
That also still means that over half the population voted for Bush. Which is more astonishing than ANY computer error.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by Nim: But I read that a computer error in a part of Ohio got Bush 4200 votes where he actually should've gotten 200-something, and Kerry got 400-something and should've won.
I read that an alien ship crashed outside Roswell New Mexico...
Believe it when you see proof. This was not that close of an election.
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
Tim: I don�t really think of Drudge as a �fair and balanced� news source, but he�s had the scoops faster than many others before. I know he broke Princess Diana�s death before anyone. He also was the one that got Linda Tripp the attention she needed to blow that whole episode wide open. It�s not an evaluative opinion of the site, I just find it extremely useful.
Sol: I�m a little tired of �pundit� in the titles too. But you won�t share your Amy Acker source with us?
Salth�na: I heard something yesterday that Bush�s lead went up to 52% once they started counting absentees. They didn�t mention how much Kerry�s lead dropped. (You never know how many people voted Nader�.)
Jay: regarding being mugged by reality, I�ll give you a block quote that might explain it:
quote:In Irving Kristol�s famous definition, a neoconservative is �a liberal who has been mugged by reality.� This is to say, certain stubborn facts about the world did violence to the optimistic aspirations of postwar political liberalism. This point is important for two reasons: First, it places the here and now front and center. Upon the (in principle) universal aspirations of liberalism and upon the current goals of liberal public policy, reality impinges, sometimes decisively. The getting from here to there is not a matter simply of will or declaration; rather, it entails resistance of a kind both foreseeable and unforeseeable. A policy that purports to compel a certain behavior en route to a certain outcome may or may not so compel the behavior and achieve the desired outcome. And in accordance with the law of unintended consequences, the most consequential outcomes may be far different from those the policymakers sought. A jobs training program (to pick one policy area out of multitudes discussed, especially in the pages of the Public Interest) does not necessarily result in (1) an individual trained to do a job and further (2) employment for the individual trained.
The essay from which I took this here. I won�t encourage you to read it because I, frankly, thought it got boring and I�ve read most of it elsewhere in snippet articles. But, along with this article you can find one stop shopping for all your neoconservative philosophy needs. (If I were recommending one or the other, read the second.)
Posted by Tora Ziyal (Member # 53) on :
Seriously, it's driving me nuts just trying to understand that paragraph. Here's a definition from Wikipedia (click on "Neoconservativism (United States)"), although from this entry the only thing that's definite about neoconservatives is that it's used for academic name-calling.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"But I read that a computer error in a part of Ohio got Bush 4200 votes where he actually should've gotten 200-something, and Kerry got 400-something and should've won."
Yes, apparently Bush got a four-digit number of votes in a county where the total number of votes was only three digits. So maybe Kerry should have won that county. But since Bush's lead in the state was six digits, that one error wouldn't be enough to change the final outcome.
The question, though, is how many other errors of this sort were there...
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
Tora: thanks. Much better than my example.
Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
This was posted to fark earlier today. Thought-provokey. Yes. Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Too much so.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
((And everywhere else.))
I kid because I love!
(Re: Amy Acker and other unspeakable nerdlike things: A Google search for Joss Whedon yields a useful, if incredibly nerdy, weblog as its first return. Well, useful for certain values of useful. Like, James Marsters is totally a guest star on The Mountain only we're not allowed to like that show because it is on in Angel's former timeslot oh my god! Anyway, that sort of thing.)
And since it occurs to me that I've been a little more. . .enthusiastic than usual, some actual links related to the alleged topic:
For instance, more vote-mapping than one might be ready for here.
Though anything that elicits a comment like "You know about van Kreveld and Speckmann's recent paper on rectangular cartograms, right?" is way over my head. I guess the bulges indicate population.
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
Plenty of free that went red: OH, IA, ID, IN, WV and parts of ND and SD.
And some slave that went blue: DE and MD
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Also this page. Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
You don't invade another country to bring the people democracy.
Germany and Japan would like to have a word with you.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
I'm assuming David's linked image is trying to do the same thing as Simon's linked page, to correlate electoral results with population density?
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
Yeah, that's what it's supposed to do. I thought it was a little easier on the eyes than red vs. magenta vs. indigo vs. purple vs. violet.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
I for one am eagerly anticipating the construction of the Chicago Beanstalk.
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
quote:Originally posted by The_Tom: This was posted to fark earlier today. Thought-provokey. Yes.
Nice, but most Democrats ran on a pro-slavery ballot back then while most abolitionists and anti-slavery voters were Whigs....and dare I say it: Republicans (gasp!). Your comparison shows that the Democrats managed to change their viewpoint on a critical issue (flip-flopping, as it were) and take over another party's territories.
If I recall correctly: it's been a while. Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
I'd have to say that isn't what the comparison is meant to say at all. Suggestion: "Republican" and "Democrat" are not the important factors being considered, though they are the, uh, superficial signifiers.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
My understanding is that, around the time of the New Deal up through the civil rights movement, the Democratic and Republican parties essentially switched sides.
Now, if you want to really get confusing, consider the fact that, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the predecessor to the Democratic party was called the "Republican party".
Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :
quote:Originally posted by Omega: You don't invade another country to bring the people democracy.
Germany and Japan would like to have a word with you.
Then invade Canada. Surely, this country could do better than the so-called "Evil Liberal Army Of Nitwits".
The primary objective to invade a country is to remove a definite threat. Democracy is only a possible byproduct and is almost never considered as a primary goal. This is assuming of course that everything goes well after the fact, like say, the first Gulf War?
Posted by Mucus (Member # 24) on :
*rolls eyes*
Saltah'na, that "invade Canada" schtick might have been funny the first two times you used in on the flameboard, maybe a little bit amusing the third...but this is your fifth rehash of the same old joke.
Not only is it a completely useless and inane contribution, its just a lame rehash of what used to be amusing in, oh, a marginally funny movie five years ago. Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
I assume you mean this movie? Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
quote:Originally posted by Omega: You don't invade another country to bring the people democracy.
Germany and Japan would like to have a word with you.
I actually missed that till I saw Saltah'na respond to it.
Germany and Japan were invaded due to a world war.
Not because some bunch of ideologues took control of policy making and thought it would be good to spread democracy at the point of the sword.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 24) on :
But, yes, that one too...hence my point about it being over done.
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
I'm not familiar with his pre-WW2 thought, but didn't Churchill want to go to war with Germany to strike back against Hitler preemptively when the Rhineland was remilitarized? I'm not sure that's exactly like planting a democracy in another country, but couldn't that lead to that policy result?
Mucus: I figured that was the movie you meant, but I thought I would help out.
Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
I'm not sure I follow your thinking on that Counselor.
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
I think what I was trying to get at was whether Churchill was trying to do something very close to spreading democracy at the point of a sword. By going to war against Germany before an actual blow had been landed on the Allies, but after the Rhineland was remilitarized, a clear violation of Treaty of Versailles (sp?), it would have looked more like a preemptive war to keep Hitler from getting into a position where he could have overrun the entire continent. And maybe, just maybe it might have let the German public know this kind of behavior would not be tolerated and that it should get new leadership if this was the only policy someone like Hitler was going to pursue.
Sorry if I'm making lazy thinking mistakes. Distracted trying to study at the same time...
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Yes, I'm sure Churchill wanted to go to war long before he had an excuse. But he didn't, and it wans't up to him. And when he did have an excuse, it still wasn't his decision, he wasn't Prime Minister.
And while we can be certain that a lot more thought went into what would happen once Germany had been conquered, than went into what would happen to Iraq after Georgie-boy pulled his PR stunt on the aircraft carrier, the main point of invading Germany was to defeat it. For all Churchill knew, the populare and democratic result of the first free German elections could have been "Actually, ve are liking being the Nazis and invading everyone, ja?"
And since when was Japan invaded per se? Wasn't it simply occupied as one of the terms of the armistice?
Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
David, I think you're overreaching.
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
And actually making stuff up. The reason the British Empire went to war with Germany was because Hitler invaded Poland and we really couldn't not any longer. After the Rhineland, Austria, the Sudetenland, the rest of Czechoslovakia, the existance of the Luftwaffe, etc. Hitler actually became leader through perfectly constitutional means rember, and the Nazi party was genuinely popular, at least to start with (Around 30% in the last free elections).
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
Lee: I'll assume you know about the history over there than I do, so I'll take your word on it. You're definitely right on Japan though. We never invaded the homeland islands. The atomic bombs probably saved both sides from a bloodbath of suicidal resistance.
Jay: not trying to overreach, looking for clarification.
Wraith: no, I wasn't making stuff up. I was asking a question about pre-WW2 policy because I didn't know if my understanding of the circumstances was correct. I was looking for clarification. Not stating facts I thought were true. The second statement was only to clarify my earlier question.
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
I know many on this board don't think we should invade other countries to bring them democracy, but I thought this study on political freedom and terrorism was kind of relevant. It would seem that even if you consider imposing a liberal capitalistic democracy on others immoral (an idea with which I strenuously disagree) then at least there is a case that can be made from self-interest for "imposing" democracy on others, i.e., make them democratic, drain the swamp, reduce terrorism.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
I'm not sure anyone is going to argue against self-determintion as a general principle, and the argument about whether you can force someone to be self-determined is probably a paradoxical nightmare; the real issue, or so it seems to me, is whether this ever works as a practical policy in the real world.
Japan and Germany have been the magic words when the White House and others have talked about Iraq and the Bush Doctrine in general. (Those in favor of it, I mean.) Yet they always seem to overlook that both nations were heavily industrialized and had metabolized "Western Culture" pretty thoroughly. In both cases the source of their troubles, at least from our point of view, could be easily quantified: a select party/ideology that had taken control of the government. No one had to introduce the basic principles of a Western-style free society to the average citizen. In addition, Germany, and to a lesser extent Japan, were restored to a community they had formerly been a part of, not thrust into one with which they had had no experience and shared few ties.
In contrast, Iraq and Afghanistan (especially Afghanistan) are not wayward Western or Westernized nations that have succumbed, as if it were the latest fad, to some political philosophy at odds with our own.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
quote:Originally posted by David Sands: The atomic bombs probably saved both sides from a bloodbath of suicidal resistance.
Wow. It's like you have some sort of fetish for jumping in enormous argument causing holes.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Even if we are to allow the BUsh administration to cite Germany and Japan as examples of how to rebuild a former ememy state into an ally based (loosly) on your own doctrines, it would also clearly show how we have NOT followed the example of post-WWII Germany/Japan in Afghanistan.
So far, we went in, toppled a theocracy, looked around for Bin Laden (not real throughly) nad moved on to Iraq- leaving only minimal governmental srtructure in our wake and focusing most of our attention on making IRAQ a better place to live.
If there's going to be a supposed "hotbed of terrorism" springing up, it will be from those most disenfranchised by the US- and that's NOT Iraq.
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
Sol: and that seems to be where the disagreement lies. Prudential judgments and practical reasons fraught with this much risk are seldom not contentious.
Liam: I've been doing some reading lately in Just War Theory and I've seen that example bandied about both ways. I personally think it's a difficult case to make according to jus in bello. Specifically, the principle of discrimination. It turns on what degree the civilians in those cities were combatants. If I remember correctly, many of those civilians were being trained in basic hand to hand combat to resist an invasion. However, even were that true, I think the case narrowly fails because there were people in those towns too old, too young, or too crippled to fight, and the law of war says those who can not resist should not be assaulted. No argument on that principle from me.
However, my statement wasn't meant as a moral endorsement of the decisions. It was meant as a statement of counterhistorical probability. My reading of what was going on in the Imperial Palace indicates that using the devices removed the will to fight of Hirohito who set in motion the surrender. It's a ongoing debate, though, whether the half million who died or were injured would have been a lower figure than the collective casualties that the two sides would have sustained in Operations Olympic and Coronet. (Estimates range from 50,000 to 2 million. But the invasions would have involved more men than Normandy for comparison.) It's counterfactual, so it's necessarily speculative. The probability weighs in favor of one side in my view, but that's why I qualified my statement with "probably." I don't know.
Jason: my response would be that they've had a peaceful election in Afghanistan, and thecountryissteadily improving. Rome wasn't built in a day. But waiting until we were completely done bringing one country up to modern industrialized standards before moving onto the next would slow the process down to a glacial pace.
Allow me to put something else out here. This article by Stanley Kurtz puts out what he think is an example more analogous to Afghanistan and Iraq than the post-WW2 reconstruction of Germany and Japan. Anyone else have opinions on it?
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Jason: my response would be that they've had a peaceful election in Afghanistan, and the country is steadily improving. Rome wasn't built in a day. But waiting until we were completely done bringing one country up to modern industrialized standards before moving onto the next would slow the process down to a glacial pace.
Slow and steady wins the race: better to have a solid- independant- ally in the region than to endlessly maintain US military presence there to keep the new government from collapsing.
Sure, we'd have had to wait for Iraq: not that it would have been a bad thing, it just would have stymied Bush's chance at what he felt would be an "easy victory".
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
I have a question. I have heard many different opponents of the war complain one of two things: (1) we should not be operating in Iraq because we have not finished the job in Afghanistan, or, alternatively, (2) we should not be in Iraq because we should be taking care of North Korea and Iran also.
Which is it?
Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
Why either/or?
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
Part of it is that I'd like to see some rhetorical consistency.
The rest because the only two other optinons I can think of, (1) the neoconservative option of bringing democracy to the rest of the world or (2) the isolationist option of pulling out of everything and creating a Fortress America, don't seem to have much support among the four I can think of. Unless you have a fifth I'm overlooking this moment.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"Part of it is that I'd like to see some rhetorical consistency."
And we'd like to see some consistency in action. What consistency is there in invading a country on the premise that it is a potential threat (and then, incidentally, proving that it was not), but then ignoring a country that is known to be a current threat?
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
I'll give a short response to this, though there is more that I could say. A lot of people criticize President Bush for going into Iraq when there were no WMDs. That was not the only justification, but it was the primary one. And people feel entitled to having the primary justification vindicated. However, there has never been a major governmental decision made that did not have some degree of uncertainty. Critics are judging this issue ex post when all anyone had ex ante was a probability that they were there. To hold the president to a standard of iron-clad evidence is fundamentally misguided because there is never such proof. Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
David,
I don�t see this as the dichotomy you apparently see it as.
Bringing democracy to the people of the world is a laudable goal. And yet if that goal is not pursued through a strategy of invasion, there is no reason to suggest that the only alternative is the creation of an isolationist fortress America.
As an alternative, keep in mind that American economic power and cultural influence are strong influences that have recreated the face of world culture in recent years.
The logical extension of this ideology-spreading policy is that we take self-determination away from the people of the world.
We Americans know what�s best for them. You can go all Francis Fukuyama on me and argue that liberal democracy and a free market economy is the best and there is no real progressing past it...you might believe that passionately, but who gave us the right to remake everyone else in our image?
I'm waiting for a member of the spread-democracy-by-the-sword contingent to show me the public debate where we as a nation decided this ideology-spreading policy was the thing to do.
Personally, I think of what has transpired in Iraq as the actions of the cabal that has taken over American foreign policy decision making and includes the likes of Dick Chenney and Donald Rumsfeld from the Project for the New American Century. Mr. Bush couldn�t be straight with the American people about the cost and long-term entanglements of such policy, so he talked up the WMD and Saddam is a bad man angle. Now we�re there and losing soldiers in Fallujah, its all democracy-creation-all-the-time.
I wonder when the conservatives who didn�t want us the be the policeman of the world in the 2000 election, are going to wake up and realize that this new ideology-spreading policy makes us what they didn�t want us to be.
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
Jay: yes, economic and cultural power can be great methods of changing the world. I think they have been instrumental to the effort in some areas (Eastern Europe) but also co-opted and perverted by others (China). Because that method is slow and fallible, I am uncomfortable limiting our efforts to only those means.
I do happen to believe that liberal democratic capitalism is the best arrangement of order and liberty that man has wrought. And I trace several of my conclusions to the work of Francis Fukuyama. I think his reading of history and the political economies of nations has been more accurate than most any other commentator on the Left. But I also take a lesson in historiographical humility from the work of Lee Harris. I think that both have taken supra-tactical views of this clash of worldviews and have put forth lasting visions that rise above the tactical criticisms that opponents of the war level. And I think that many of the paradigms we have relied upon in such a stabilized manner since WW2 ought to be questioned; those that are inadequate ought to be cast away. And I think that the crypto-pacifism (not you, Jay, necessarily) that has gripped many commentators has weakened the moral lesson of St. Augustine that war can be both an instrument of evil and good. It is a context-dependent, prudential consideration that must proceed with the moral maturity necessary lacking in many on the Left to say that sometimes a war saves lives, that it is good to wage those wars, and that we should not apologize for ignoring peaceful alternatives when those resorts are as unlikely to be availing as many have judged.
The morality from which I derive my decision to support our actions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and possibly Iran, North Korea, and Syria one day, demands a confrontation with the cultural filth that Islamofascists seek to impose upon the world. I have not forgotten the importance of the always-to-be-striven-for-never-to-be-fully-achieved effort to domesticate international norms into intrastate laws. However, given that the conditions inside those nations are unripe for such adoption, and the insidious resistance by those in power that prevents that development, I see little choice but to proceed with our strategy of instilling democratic orders before they destroy us with any number of civilizationally wrecking weapons. Such a strategy does not exhibit the metaphysical consistency of personal or societal choice like we see at the end result of a democratic order. But I am comfortable with that. Future millions will benefit more from imposed democracy than the totalitarian stasis that has survived for centuries and that shows no sign of imminent collapse. And it is an open question among theologians to what extent just wars are an extension of the drive towards Augustine's tranquillitas ordinis.
I�m not sure what ethics you use as your touchstone for formulating international policy. Perhaps, it is a species of secular humanist ethics, which I am not proficient enough to argue within. I know you, Jay, and I have not spent enough time trying to whittle down our arguments to their fundamental assumptions. However, I can sense we probably don�t share several core beliefs, so at some level, I think agreement between the two sides we represent is impossible.
With need for editing for expression, revision for clarity, and reflection for more congruent consistency than I can provide in 30 minutes, that is the snapshot reason why I think it is right to change the world to be more consistent with the image of democratic capitalism we see in North America, Europe, and East Asia.
My own views have developed over the years on past interventions. My opinions changed as a wrestled with alternative philosophies by which our nation would live in the world. At the time, I was neither enthusiastic nor opposed to our involvement in the former Yugoslavia. Part of my hesitation undoubtedly came from the difficulty I was having navigating to firm stance in between the four historical camps of American foreign policy. (They�re towards the bottom.) However, despite my arguments with tactical failures past administrations suffered in foreign policy interventions, I seldom found that the other side�s worldview was wholly meritless. Therefore, I never found critics of our actions in the Balkans completely convincing, and I am comfortable with our engaging in wide-scale nationbuilding again, especially where it�s necessary for the world�s security.
This will have to be my last post on this topic since I�ve started a new job. I�ll lurk and post once in a while, but I�m too busy until the bar exam in February to do too much online chatting. It has been enjoyable. I�ve appreciated the chance to debate. (Most especially you, Jay!) It�s refined my thinking and helped me come to grasp with many more issues than I was able to thinking alone. My thanks to everyone.
Posted by Jay the Obscure (Member # 19) on :
Good luck in your new job.
Posted by David Sands (Member # 132) on :
Thanks, Jay.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
I believe we've just had a moment, people.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
invented warp-drive - he had no other 'hobbies' ![[Smile]](smile.gif)