Civility and the Leiter Reports

Eugene Volokh at Volokh.com cites this post: Leiter Reports: On Rhetoric, "Persuasion," and Tone...or Knowing the Difference Between Hard and Easy Questions for an interesting discussion of the pros and cons of civility in blogging. To boil down the argument, Leiter says on serious questions civil argument is appropriate, but not in the blogosphere, which he believes is not a realm for persuasion.

"What always strikes me in debates about 'tone' and 'civility' is that the critics, without fail, will abandon civility and adopt a harsh tone in the presence of the views that they deem 'beyond the pale.' Invariably, it turns out that they simply draw the line somewhere else (a good example is here--see the last paragraph, and the second comment), and that what really galls them is not the fact of my harshness and dismissiveness--they are equally capable of that when it comes to, e.g., Noam Chomsky or Ralph Nader or me--but rather that it is directed at the views they've been taught to take seriously, to think are serious, the views they've been led to believe are entitled to respect, even if one disagrees."

He has a point--certainly most of the popular blogs I've seen have a lot of heat, whether from the posts or the comments. But I'd draw the line differently, at least for myself. On the one hand you have the gibes and snarky remarks; on the other you have posts that try for reason. The former are just spray off the water; the later should aim for persuasion. We may not achieve what we aim for, but as someone said somewhere if we don't aim for it we're unlikely to achieve it.

Fourth of July Legends

Humans almost always idealize their group and their bigshots. One example of that is our urge to glorify the Founding Fathers. Snopes.com has a good analysis of a recurrent urban legend here.

Exclusion and Inclusion

Lots of commentary on the Supreme Court's Ten Commandments decisions. I won't go there directly but will instead pick up from a line in George Will's column this morning--observing that Quaker, Anglican, Methodist and Baptist clergymen officiated (where, he's not clear--it may have been over Congress, or just over religious ceremonies held in the Capitol in the early 1800's).

I think we have always had a four-way divide: first there's the one true religion (which is the one I believe); second there are other religions believed by people who are good at heart, even though misguided in views on theology, organization, or other points of religious belief; third are the unbelievers, those who don't believe; and finally the believers in false religions.

Over the years Americans have come to include more and more religions/denominations/sects in the second category. It shows when we have public ceremonies, like inaugurations or funerals of bigshots or the services after 9/11. It does vary by time--Catholicism was a false religion, the whore of Babylon for the Puritans, got acceptable in the revolution, then lost that status as Catholic immigrants came in during the 19th century, and finally regained it by 1960 with JFK. Jews have made it into the other category, but Islam hasn't (witness Franklin Graham) quite yet. But we're getting close to the point where people say "we all worship the same God" (even though named Jehovah or Allah).

That leaves out the non-monotheistic religions. Will we say: "many paths to enlightenment" as the new euphemism? When will we have a Wiccan officiate at some national ceremony? (I suspect the rule is you have to have 2 percent or more of the electorate to qualify. But that should mean that Mormons are overdue for representation.)

As for the third category--unbelievers--I think some people, like Madalyn Murray O'Hair or Robert Ingersoll (famous agnostic circa 1890) probably are seen more as category 4, but many people tolerate them. Not that any representative of unbelief will ever appear on a national stage.

Tierney Disses Bureaucrats

John Tierney, the new conservative columnist at the NYTimes, shows that he's no slouch at dissing bureaucrats in today's column. This is the second column on the West, channeling the writings of Terry Anderson (see below for links). Apparently the Indians were in good shape making treaties with civilians until 1840's, when we got a standing army after the Mexican War. (This would be news to Generals Anthony Wayne and William Harrison (who got to be President based on his fame as an Indian fighter.) Then the Bureau of Indian Affairs (their predecessor agency) came along and really put the kibosh on them. The Times requires registration but here's a quote:

"They were consigned to reservations and ostensibly given land, but it was administered by another bureaucracy, the agency that would grow into what's now the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The agency, in addition to giving some of the best land away to whites, allotted parcels to individual Indians with the goal of gradually transferring all the land and ending federal supervision. But what self-respecting bureaucrats work themselves out of a job?

As the land under their control dwindled, they presumed that Indians were not 'competent' to own land outright. It had to be placed under the agency's own enlightened trusteeship. They kept allotting parcels of this 'trust land' to individual Indians, but an Indian couldn't sell or lease his parcel without permission from the Bureau of Indian Affairs."

I hold no brief for either the Indian policy of the British, the Founding Fathers, or the U.S. government nor for the BIA as an effective organization. But the BIA doesn't set policy, Congress does that based on input from citizens. The Dawes Act of 1887 was based on the best thinking of the time--make Indians property owners and good things would follow. See this PBS page. The "competence" test was not an invention of BIA--it was in the law. Granted that BIA screwed up, we can't blame the agency for the failure of the policy, nor for the failure of the libertarian/conservative economics embodied in the law.

References appended to Tierney's column.

The Wealth of Indian Nations: Economic Performance and Institutions on Reservations by Terry L. Anderson and Dominic P. Parker, June 2004, 42 pp., working paper. [Note--based on a quick skim, this paper isn't a good support for Tierney's thesis, at least as I understand it. The paper looks at recent economic performance, not history.]

The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier by Terry L. Anderson and Peter J. Hill, Stanford University Press, 256 pp., May 2004.

Property Rights: Cooperation, Conflict, and Law edited by Terry L. Anderson and Fred S. McChesney, Princeton University Press, 448 pp., 2002.

For more information, go to: www.perc.org.

Sign of the Time--Bigger Miata

Warren Brown in the Post writes on Mazda's redesign of their Miata:

"There were two seemingly contradictory needs in the Miata's redevelopment. The car had to be bigger. That is because people have gotten bigger, especially in America, the global automotive industry's most lucrative market, which also is the home of McDonald's, Wendy's and Burger King."

(He doesn't say whether they had to add more cup holders.) Bigger houses, bigger clothes, bigger cars--the world is going to pot says this old bureaucrat.

Idea--Variable Pricing for Events

If I recall, pricewatch.com introduced the idea of selling airline seats and hotel reservations on-line. The idea was the airline or hotel would gain from selling otherwise vacant seats or renting rooms.

This weekend I ran into three different scenarios where the idea might be applicable. In the Post magazine they ran an article on the Washington Nationals, which included a comment on some empty seats that might be filled by charity. My wife and I went to Wolf Trap Saturday for the NSO concert, again some empty seats. Then Sunday night we went to Kennedy Center for the Suzanne Farrell Ballet (the performance was better than the review led me to expect), also empty seats. I know DC has (or had) a half-price day of performance outlet down on F Street. But why not line up some membership organizations--the Scouts, PTA's, etc. to buy tickets on short notice for real low prices. One thing ballet, classical music, and the Nats share is an interest in building their audience. Maybe they'd attract a return buyer for each 10 tickets they sell.?

Dining With Jeff - New York Times

Patricia Nelson Limerick, a prominent historian of the West, is a guest op-ed writer for the Times. Today she mentions (registration required) the John Adams/Thomas Jefferson reconciliation and correspondence over the 12+ years before they died. She goes on to cite her husband, now dead:

"When I find myself puzzled and even vexed by the opinions and beliefs of other people, I invite them to have lunch. Multiple experiments have supported what we will call, in Jeff's honor, the Limerick Hypothesis: in the bitter contests of values and political rhetoric that characterize our times, 90 percent of the uproar is noise, and 10 percent is what the scientists call 'signal,' or solid, substantive information that will reward study and interpretation. If we could eliminate much of the noise, we might find that the actual, meaningful disagreements are on a scale we can manage."

Acting on this rule, she's invited Bill Moyers and James Watt (Reagan's Interior Secretary) to lunch. Will be interesting if it comes off. I suspect many, perhaps most, Americans of the non-political class would want to believe in the hypothesis; I certainly do. I remember one of the management classes I had focused on eliminating noise from communication--one exercise was to "confirm" what you heard; try to restate in your own words what you thought the other party was saying. It often works, at least in work contexts. We often jump to conclusions. I often drove my employees up the wall by asking them to take baby steps--describe a little piece of a problem until I was sure I understood it, then go on to the next. Surprisingly often the problem would disappear or the fix would appear in the process.

But it's easy to over-estimate this. If Gerry Adams and Rev. Paisley sat down for lunch in some Belfast pub (Paisley might well be teetotal), even under the guidance of the best possible facilitator they'd still have irreconcilable differences.

Doing Things the First Time

My Harshaw's rule about not doing things right the first time has another corollary--it takes an extra effort to try new things. That comes up from two things:

1. piece in the Post about a woman of a certain age (50+) trying something new, spurred on by the question: "when was the last day you did something new?" I haven't bothered looking up the link, but it's a good question. I never was an adventure seeker and am less so as I've gotten older. Indeed, my wife and I have a mantra, somewhat self-mocking: "change is bad". I suspect that's true of most people; we seek the comfort of the familiar and have less emotion (less love, less hate, less fervor) prompting us.

2. Safeway's store in the local shopping center. When first designed in the 1960's, the center had a different design than the usual strip shopping mall--a central plaza with the stores around it, hidden from the parking lots. The Safeway store was, I guess, standard-size for the time. The center didn't do well. Over the years there were lots of failed stores. Finally (late 80's maybe?), a new outfit bought the center, got approval to redevelop, entered into long negotiations with Safeway over a new store, bulldozed down all the great trees, tore down all the buildings, and then built new, pretty much the standard 1990 strip mall design with a much larger Safeway. While the overall center seems to do okay, I don't think the new store's been a real success for Safeway--lots of people got into the habit of shopping at the Fox Mill Giant while the store was under construction.

Safeway has recently renovated the store, redoing the floor and lighting, changing the produce area and putting in more little stands and displays. (I believe the Post said they were doing that in lots of their stores, trying to compete with other chains, particularly Whole Foods.)

Anyway, the point (at last) is today is their big day, lots of real bargains, lots of extra people, chances to win up to 300 mini-DVD players, etc. etc. It seems all a plot to get people into the store for the first time. I say "plot", but it's really the standard tactics business uses to introduce new products or new stores. Of course, Tom Cruise may be introducing a new wife to sell a new movie. In any case, it shows how to overcome consumer inertia--appeal to greed.

My Morning Run

This morning in Reston is one of the last good days before the summer heat and humidity. I set off on my morning run about 9:15, temperature about 70, air clear. Ran down Freetown Drive, a very pleasant street now, a mixture of modernist homes from the early 70's and more traditional homes from around 1980, backing up to strips of woods behind the houses. The mix of styles reflects Reston's history. I remember driving out from Ft. Belvoir with fellow recruits in late 65 or very early 66 when there was an open house at Lake Anne. I'd read about the plans in the paper, sounding very modern. Develop for people, not cars; keep high enough density in apartment buildings and townhouses to save trees and keep open space; encourage people working in the same community they lived in. Lake Anne was an example, modeled after a European village sited around the end of Lake Anne, very cosmopolitan.

Over time those plans changed. Robert Simon, the original dreamer, had to sell out to Gulf Oil. Townhouses didn't sell as well as detached homes, so the planned size went from 75,000 to 55,000. Modern architecture showed some problems and lacked some sales appeal so designs became more conventional. Despite all the compromises, Reston is still a good place to live. And this summer day it's pretty--Freetown has lots of plantings around the homes, most of which are now blooming.

As I ran, I thought I noticed a new lawn ornament on the lawn across the street. Then an ear twitched and I realized it was a doe. I may have interrupted its breakfast on tasty hostas. We stared at each other for a while, then the doe took off between two houses and into the trees. Growing up on a farm in New York we rarely saw deer. But while Robert Simon didn't dream of having deer in Reston, what remains of his dream Reston is fine habitat for Bambi.

Blair Witch Project, Afghanistan, and Irrational Exuberance

[Note: I started this yesterday and should have posted it with the movies/war post--would have better explained my meaning.]

What the discussion over the Downing Street Memos lacks (see Crooked Timber, Dan Drezner, Kevin Drum) is the climate of opinion in summer 2002. This is how I remember it, without doing any research in old papers.

Remember that the history of Afghanistan was up and down, just enough to be suspenseful. Bush gave the Taliban a time limit to get rid of bin Laden, it expired, we saw some military moves, there was some speculation on the left and in the media about how the Northern Alliance and we were bogged down, then all of a sudden the air campaign took effect, the Taliban collapsed and everything seemed rosy. Speaking for myself, I exhaled a big sigh of relief. I don't remember significant opposition to the war, there were just enough problems for us all to feel relieved and joyous when Kabul fell.

What lessons did we draw from Afghanistan? Perhaps the same sort of lessons we learned when Netscape had its IPO--irrational exuberance. Particularly in the Pentagon--we had a new way of war, precision munitions, low casualties, and devastating effectiveness. So Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld justifiably felt their judgment was vindicated, their arms powerful. Liberals like me, who had been ready to leap on Bush for miring us in another Vietnam in Afghanistan, lost confidence. There was a new conventional wisdom abroad.

In sum, the Afghanistan war was an exception to Harshaw's Rule no. 1, you always fail the first time. But maybe I can get a reprieve for my rule, by adding a corollary: "but if you do succeed the first time, you'll get a big head." Witness the Blair Witch Project. Perfectly amazing success. But what was the name of the sequel? Very often in the history of movies the sequel is much inferior to the initial success (the Bridget Jones and Ocean's 11 sequels are examples).

Anyhow, in this theory Bush and Rumsfeld, enthused by their Afghanistan hit (pun intended), decided for a sequel in Iraq. I think it's true, as most of the bloggers on the Downing Street papers say, that they believed that Iraq had some WMD and wanted WMD and was bad and should be taken down. I also think they screwed the planning because of the euphoria from Afghanistan. They thought it'd be easy because Afghanistan had been easy. I'd also blame us liberals--I don't remember any vigorous opposition. There was a sneaking suspicion that Bush might be right, at the very least the country mostly was behind him. The most Congressional Democrats could do was to push for going to the UN. But that was just a slower road to the same destination. (No one ever came up with an alternative to war that seemed reasonable--doing nothing rarely seems reasonable.)

As E.J. Dionne said in yesterday's Post the administration fooled themselves. (Just as the producers of the Blair Witch sequel fooled themselves.)