"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
30.8.04
LINKS: Dan Drezner on David Brooks' article on progressive conservatism. Maybe it's just my own anecdotal example, but Brooks lays out a program for government I can really get behind, which is probably another step on my slow march to permanently joining the republican party*.
In a similar vein, I'm one of those people who sees the next 10-20 years of American politics being dominated by the democratic party. But in the same way that Brooks points up the schism between conservatives and libertarians, it seems like the Democratic party has, within the last year, sown the seeds for it's own eventual fall--a lot of moderate and conservative democrats are taking a fall on some pretty important policy issues in order to get behind Kerry and the more traditionally liberal candidates this year. That's not going to last forever.
*I managed to move myself solidly into the 'independent' category, which is a pretty big step for someone who self-identified as a social democrat until about three years ago.
In a similar vein, I'm one of those people who sees the next 10-20 years of American politics being dominated by the democratic party. But in the same way that Brooks points up the schism between conservatives and libertarians, it seems like the Democratic party has, within the last year, sown the seeds for it's own eventual fall--a lot of moderate and conservative democrats are taking a fall on some pretty important policy issues in order to get behind Kerry and the more traditionally liberal candidates this year. That's not going to last forever.
*I managed to move myself solidly into the 'independent' category, which is a pretty big step for someone who self-identified as a social democrat until about three years ago.
LINK: Now I'm not 100% sure who writes this blog (she commented on this blog under a pseudonym), though it's very well done, but I presume that if I told her I were definitely interested in the Ibsen, she'd know what I was talking about.
WELL: Interesting because the results are different than the last time I took the quiz, and a little odd anyway (give it a try yourself, if you like):
1. Eastern Orthodox (100%)
2. Roman Catholic (100%)
3. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (96%)
4. Seventh Day Adventist (92%)
5. Orthodox Quaker (88%)
6. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (80%)
7. Orthodox Judaism (77%)
...though I guess the organization here does kind of make sense (I have changed my answers on some of the morality questions and my position is now much closer to that of the Catholic Church. You cna probably guess which issues I've changed my mind on and what the new answers are). Like all good Reformed Christians, I'd make an exceptionally good Catholic, if it weren't for that whole Pope thing.
1. Eastern Orthodox (100%)
2. Roman Catholic (100%)
3. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (96%)
4. Seventh Day Adventist (92%)
5. Orthodox Quaker (88%)
6. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (80%)
7. Orthodox Judaism (77%)
...though I guess the organization here does kind of make sense (I have changed my answers on some of the morality questions and my position is now much closer to that of the Catholic Church. You cna probably guess which issues I've changed my mind on and what the new answers are). Like all good Reformed Christians, I'd make an exceptionally good Catholic, if it weren't for that whole Pope thing.
LINK: OxBlog highlights some foreign-policy insanity. Let's run through this once again, people: fewer dictators in the world is good, even if the means of getting rid of them is sometimes bad: eggs and omlettes and all that.
LINK: I was going to object to what norm quotes here, but I find instead that the idea involved is largely incomprehensible. Those crazy Anglicans...
27.8.04
LINK: In the spirit of my general anti-autocratic, anti-fascist beliefs, I link to this bit of news with what I can only describe as unrestrained glee.
LINK: Dan Drezner has a post up discussing, among other things, whether Wall Street-Washington conservatives are a good measure of generalized conservative disaffection with the Bush Administration. Being as big a believer as I am in the importance of partisan affiliation and the relative increase in GOP GOTV effectiveness in the last few electoral cycles, I think Bush is far from toast, though next week will probably clarify that situation very well.
LINK: Joe has an amazing post up on poverty in America, and Christian responses to it, which I encourage you all to read. One quibble:
"The fact that the government has to have a “safety net” to catch those who would slip between the cracks of our economic system is evidence that Christians fail to do God’s work. The government cannot take the place of Christian charity. A loving embrace isn’t given with food stamps. The care of a community isn’t provided with government housing. The face of our Creator can’t be seen on a welfare voucher. What the poor need is not another government program but Christians who are willing to honor their savior."
Not that I'm arguing with the thesis here, but we take it as true that there are many ways in which God can reach the person he wants in the church, that there are many ways a Christian can do good works; why can it not also be that government-supported assistance fits into a Christian conception of charity? Casting out demons is casting out demons, after all, and it seems like the government is in a position to do comparatively more than even a large number of individual people can do.
But, again, as I say, not to disagree with the main point.
"The fact that the government has to have a “safety net” to catch those who would slip between the cracks of our economic system is evidence that Christians fail to do God’s work. The government cannot take the place of Christian charity. A loving embrace isn’t given with food stamps. The care of a community isn’t provided with government housing. The face of our Creator can’t be seen on a welfare voucher. What the poor need is not another government program but Christians who are willing to honor their savior."
Not that I'm arguing with the thesis here, but we take it as true that there are many ways in which God can reach the person he wants in the church, that there are many ways a Christian can do good works; why can it not also be that government-supported assistance fits into a Christian conception of charity? Casting out demons is casting out demons, after all, and it seems like the government is in a position to do comparatively more than even a large number of individual people can do.
But, again, as I say, not to disagree with the main point.
POLITICAL THEORY AS A VACATION II:
"These personal experiences and values often provide the motivation to become a social scientist and, later, to choose a particular research question. As such, they may constitute the 'real' reasons for engaging in a particular research project--and appropriately so... From the perspective of a potential contribution to social science, personal reasons are neither necessary nor sufficient justifications for the choice of a topic. In most cases, they should not appear in our scholarly writings. To put it most directly but quite indelicately, no one cares what we think--the scholarly community only cares what we can demonstrate."
-King, Keohane and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry
If you really want to get down into why political theory is ghettoized within political science, I think you ultimately have to deal with the argument of Keohane et al above. In addition to the normative issues discussed previously, I've occasionally gotten something resembling surprise when I express no desire to have whatever work I might do in the future have some deeper societal impact. I'm not against letting your political and ethical positions determine what you study (things must be kept interesting, after all), but I do believe one starts to cross the line when one has not just research interests, but conclusions, in mind before beginning a project, and I think that's a big problem with 'issue-in' analyses. My interest in theoretical responses to fascism and totalitarianism is, in large part, an outgrowth of my own political interests in the same, but I'd like to think that should I do work on humanitarian intervention or liberal anti-communism, I'll be happy to embrace whatever conclusions my sources would cause me to embrace (that is, for example, if it turns out my hypothesis about the allure of authoritarianism for anti-fascists turns out to be false, I'd still like to believe I'd be willing to be wrong and write in support of that conclusion just as forcefully).
Then again, it occurs to me that maybe I was pedagogically raised towards an overly austere belief in what a political science does--many of my professors at Michigan made a big show about keeping politics out of the classroom at all costs, which has maybe skewed my view of what the profession as a whole should be like. Then again, it'd be only one of many ways in which michigan has made me stick out like a sore thumb.
"These personal experiences and values often provide the motivation to become a social scientist and, later, to choose a particular research question. As such, they may constitute the 'real' reasons for engaging in a particular research project--and appropriately so... From the perspective of a potential contribution to social science, personal reasons are neither necessary nor sufficient justifications for the choice of a topic. In most cases, they should not appear in our scholarly writings. To put it most directly but quite indelicately, no one cares what we think--the scholarly community only cares what we can demonstrate."
-King, Keohane and Verba, Designing Social Inquiry
If you really want to get down into why political theory is ghettoized within political science, I think you ultimately have to deal with the argument of Keohane et al above. In addition to the normative issues discussed previously, I've occasionally gotten something resembling surprise when I express no desire to have whatever work I might do in the future have some deeper societal impact. I'm not against letting your political and ethical positions determine what you study (things must be kept interesting, after all), but I do believe one starts to cross the line when one has not just research interests, but conclusions, in mind before beginning a project, and I think that's a big problem with 'issue-in' analyses. My interest in theoretical responses to fascism and totalitarianism is, in large part, an outgrowth of my own political interests in the same, but I'd like to think that should I do work on humanitarian intervention or liberal anti-communism, I'll be happy to embrace whatever conclusions my sources would cause me to embrace (that is, for example, if it turns out my hypothesis about the allure of authoritarianism for anti-fascists turns out to be false, I'd still like to believe I'd be willing to be wrong and write in support of that conclusion just as forcefully).
Then again, it occurs to me that maybe I was pedagogically raised towards an overly austere belief in what a political science does--many of my professors at Michigan made a big show about keeping politics out of the classroom at all costs, which has maybe skewed my view of what the profession as a whole should be like. Then again, it'd be only one of many ways in which michigan has made me stick out like a sore thumb.
26.8.04
LINK: I direct you over to Norm, and reprint the vital part here:
Noah Trugman for The American Anti-Slavery Group (email):
The American Anti-Slavery Group and other human rights groups are organizing a rally to protest the UN's inaction in Darfur and to stop the genocide in Sudan. The rally will be held outside the U.N. in New York City at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 12, which is just prior to the reconvening of the UN's General Assembly.
We are issuing a special call to action to the blogging community to publicize this rally on their sites. We hope to bring together a grassroots movement to hold world leaders accountable and force the UN at last to take strong action on genocide. [Emphasis added.]
The website for the rally is here:
Black people across Sudan are under threat of annihilation. The mass murder of Blacks in Darfur is the first genocide of the 21st century: 50,000 have been slaughtered, 2 million forced into the desert as refugees, and thousands raped and enslaved.Stop genocide in Sudan.
Stop genocide in Sudan."
Noah Trugman for The American Anti-Slavery Group (email):
The American Anti-Slavery Group and other human rights groups are organizing a rally to protest the UN's inaction in Darfur and to stop the genocide in Sudan. The rally will be held outside the U.N. in New York City at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 12, which is just prior to the reconvening of the UN's General Assembly.
We are issuing a special call to action to the blogging community to publicize this rally on their sites. We hope to bring together a grassroots movement to hold world leaders accountable and force the UN at last to take strong action on genocide. [Emphasis added.]
The website for the rally is here:
Black people across Sudan are under threat of annihilation. The mass murder of Blacks in Darfur is the first genocide of the 21st century: 50,000 have been slaughtered, 2 million forced into the desert as refugees, and thousands raped and enslaved.Stop genocide in Sudan.
Stop genocide in Sudan."
LINK: AAIO* goes apeshit over a Jonah Goldberg column pointing out that young people tend not to be especially well qualified on most measures of what we'd want voters to have. Not surprising stuff, nor is the reaction, but part of it deserves a little comment:
""Less money, less property" - we won't argue there. If you're a supporter of a white-male-landowner voting system, this is a compelling line of reasoning indeed."
Actually, this is probably the most important reason 18-24 year olds don't vote--politics is primarily set up along economic issues, not social ones. If you're not making much money and/or not particularly focused in your finances (I imagine marriage and children tend to bring those issues into sharpest relief), you shouldn't be surprised that there's at least some correlation between non-voting and being young.
Suffice to say, I think I can be relatively certain in guessing AAIO is not in the political science department at U of M.
*Incidentally, I was once asked if I was going to start a "Durham is Overrated" website. I would, but I think someone would have to overrate it first.
""Less money, less property" - we won't argue there. If you're a supporter of a white-male-landowner voting system, this is a compelling line of reasoning indeed."
Actually, this is probably the most important reason 18-24 year olds don't vote--politics is primarily set up along economic issues, not social ones. If you're not making much money and/or not particularly focused in your finances (I imagine marriage and children tend to bring those issues into sharpest relief), you shouldn't be surprised that there's at least some correlation between non-voting and being young.
Suffice to say, I think I can be relatively certain in guessing AAIO is not in the political science department at U of M.
*Incidentally, I was once asked if I was going to start a "Durham is Overrated" website. I would, but I think someone would have to overrate it first.
25.8.04
POLITICAL THEORY AS A VACATION: Dan Drezner writes:
"Which is the other dirty secret about my profession -- there's a difference between political science and politics. Most of the presentations and papers given at APSA do not address normative debates about the way politics should be. Instead, they are more detached analyses of why things are the way they are. Sometimes the answers can be ideological, but most political scientists just care about whether their answer is correct -- or more precisely, whether someone else can demonstrate that their preferred answer is wrong."
One of the more interesting discoveries I've made in the last couple of weeks is that my conception of political theory is radically different than that of most of the other people in my program. It's not that I'm uninterested in normative questions*, but it seems like there's enough as-yet-undone analytic and conceptual work in theory itself that's a preqrequisite for doing normative theory.
*though in some ways, I am. It seems like before you even get to questions of what the political order should be like, you have to have a pretty good idea of how and why things got to be the way they are. I've heard a couple of normative arguments that I don't think would pass serious muster because it's unclear, for example, what their underlying theories of social and individual choice are not very robust.
"Which is the other dirty secret about my profession -- there's a difference between political science and politics. Most of the presentations and papers given at APSA do not address normative debates about the way politics should be. Instead, they are more detached analyses of why things are the way they are. Sometimes the answers can be ideological, but most political scientists just care about whether their answer is correct -- or more precisely, whether someone else can demonstrate that their preferred answer is wrong."
One of the more interesting discoveries I've made in the last couple of weeks is that my conception of political theory is radically different than that of most of the other people in my program. It's not that I'm uninterested in normative questions*, but it seems like there's enough as-yet-undone analytic and conceptual work in theory itself that's a preqrequisite for doing normative theory.
*though in some ways, I am. It seems like before you even get to questions of what the political order should be like, you have to have a pretty good idea of how and why things got to be the way they are. I've heard a couple of normative arguments that I don't think would pass serious muster because it's unclear, for example, what their underlying theories of social and individual choice are not very robust.
LINK: When I actually can be bothered to post, I generally disagree with Will Baude about everything, so I suppose I should note that I find his posts of the last week or two on Czeslaw Milosz to be particularly good.
22.8.04
Fear not, gentle readers, Anti-Climacus has only been on temporary hiatus, what with a decided lack of internet access for the past month, as well as a full schedule's worth of orientationeering activities (several hundred pages of reading, a couple of parties (including one thrown at our house), various houseguests and church co-attendees, more visits to Carrboro than one lifetime should hold, and one trip to Wilmington that involved some pretty rough driving) which have kept me distracted. Nevertheless, classes start tomorrow (or, at least, they do for people with Monday classes, of which I am not one), and internet comes on Wednesday, so with any luck, I'll be back in the swing of things in no time.
16.8.04
13.8.04
TODAY'S INTERESTING MOMENT: Our discussion of international relations segues into (I kid you not) a discussion of free will and determinism. Always knew that philosophy seminar would come in handy.
Also, I was challenged to explain why it is that planets don't have free will. Oddly, I had a hard time finding an answer.
UPDATE: I did eventually figure out an answer: OCD.
Also, I was challenged to explain why it is that planets don't have free will. Oddly, I had a hard time finding an answer.
UPDATE: I did eventually figure out an answer: OCD.
12.8.04
4.8.04
1.8.04
STRAUSS HOUSE: So the epic migration begins in earnest tomorrow (cliches, anyone?). Troesterean proverb #3:
No matter how hard you try, when you move, you will look like the Joad Family.
(I once told that to a friend who hadn't read The Grapes of Wrath. Even after I explained it to her, she didn't get it).
So fun grad school-type things will be beginning to happen, and they'll probably take up a larger portion of the blog than previously, since the linker thing is becoming much less fun (as I read more blogs though, oddly), and my thinker bits are likely to start looking a lot like me fishing for paper topics.
The above, just in case you're wondering, is what we decided we would call our house when we were all in Durham in March. None of us are actually Straussians, which is why it's funny (well, that's why we think it's funny, anyway).
No matter how hard you try, when you move, you will look like the Joad Family.
(I once told that to a friend who hadn't read The Grapes of Wrath. Even after I explained it to her, she didn't get it).
So fun grad school-type things will be beginning to happen, and they'll probably take up a larger portion of the blog than previously, since the linker thing is becoming much less fun (as I read more blogs though, oddly), and my thinker bits are likely to start looking a lot like me fishing for paper topics.
The above, just in case you're wondering, is what we decided we would call our house when we were all in Durham in March. None of us are actually Straussians, which is why it's funny (well, that's why we think it's funny, anyway).
LINK: Chris Lawrence has a nice little post up on Friday night's shenanigans. A few things to point out: I sort of deferred to the Chatham House Rule as there were some people involved who were not aware I have a blog and conversations might be potentially bloggable. I didn't make it to the ICPSR picnic mostly because I was busy packing (no, really), and I felt sort of like a pathetic undergrad since I could only keep up until midnight, though I later realized the evening had started at 7:00, and I'm pretty sure I was pacing everyone else, though I could be wrong. Anyway, it was much fun, and should probably happen again with similar company at some appropriate future point.
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