MUSIC BLOGGING: How did I make it through my IR Core mock prelim today? Three words:

"Disorder" -Joy Division

...there's just something about hearing Ian Curtis bellow "I've got the spirit!" (especially in live versions) that makes writing about international political economy just a little bit more tolerable.

LINK: I wonder what liberal institutionalists would have to say if this happened?

LINK: If you, like me, have an awful lot of work you're supposed to be doing this week (stats exam tomorrow, IR mock prelim on Wednesday, lit review due Friday), and share my love for all things British, do go and visit English Cut. It's pleasantly entertaining, and much better than trying to remember how to fix heteroskedasticity.

THE SOCIALISTS HAVE ALL THE GOOD SONGS:

"Is and Ought in the Western World" -Scritti Politti
"To Hell With Poverty!" -Gang of Four
"Park Inn" -The Futureheads

LINK: Andrew Sullivan freaks out about the new Pope, yet another sign I should like him. What's not to like?

"We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires."

One would think that someone who's inheriting such a position of power who seems to be so aware to the potential for self-corruption would be a good thing.

QUOTE: Also on the below, Oliver Kamm:

"The most abject failure in British foreign policy in my lifetime was the abandonment, under the Conservative Government of John Major, of Bosnia's multi-ethnic democracy to Serb aggression in the early 1990s. The issue - and the state of transatlantic relations - reached a nadir between 1993 and 1995 in the person of Malcolm Rifkind, then Defence Secretary, later Foreign Secretary, now Tory candidate in the safe seat of Chelsea (he lost his Edinburgh seat in 1997, and failed to win it back in 2001), and probable future Tory leader. As related in Brendan Simms' superb book Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia, 2001, p. 96, Rifkind refused to countenance a policy of 'lift and strike' (i.e. lift the arms embargo, so Bosnia could defend itself, and for Nato to strike Serb positions directly) being proposed by critics of UK inactivity. At the end of 1994, when Mrs Thatcher was pressing for a pro-Bosnian stance, Rifkind condemned her "emotional nonsense". He also remarked to despairing American senators that, "You Americans don't know the horrors of war." The particular senator he was addressing was Bob Dole, who was permanently disabled and nearly killed in WWII. Dole replied, with commendable restraint, "Don't talk to me about sacrifice." Simms also records that Senator John McCain, a POW in the Vietnam War, became so heated in meeting Rifkind that he almost hit the man (according to a staff member).

I have argued in earlier posts that the Conservatives' position on the Iraq War - first supporting it, and then engaging in embittered criticisms of Tony Blair's supposed duplicity - does not even reach the level of honest opportunism: it's just cynical. But in fact it does have some parallels with this earlier history of Tory indifference to an aggressive dictatorship. In the Bosnian debacle, Rifkind and then-Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd espoused a Conservative tradition of pessimism about the limits of political action in the international order. The consequences were appalling from a humanitarian point of view. It is an approach that would be still more destructive when dealing with theocratic totalitarians who have attacked the American mainland and who seek the literal destruction of western civilisation."

LINK: Nick Cohen has a go at the polls for the upcoming British parliamentary elections:

"But the real problem isn't intellectual or moral but the practical possibility that political sophisticates are nowhere near as wised-up as they like to imagine. All the calculations and the striking of daring positions stand on a reckless gamble that the polls are right."

There's actually quite a bit of this going on in leftist British circles at the moment, and as someone who finds polling inherently suspicious and also can't imagine why anyone would vote strategically against the people they want to win*, I wholeheartedly support both parts of it. Polls about elections are really fickle things, and it's never a good idea to plan your actions around those someone else (or a great number of other people) might take; but if you want a Labour government--even if you buy into that "Bliar" stuff and think he's an awful man and hate the war with Iraq and in spite of all this, you still want a Labour government--vote for Labour.

*I grant that the Labour-Lib Dem alliance functions pretty well in some otherwise Tory constituencies, but in that case, you're still voting for whom you want to win (in this case, it's just not the Conservatives)

LINK: Brendan points out, and I think quite rightly, that there's been some slippage in the conservative message regarding separation of powers. Long before I was myself a conservative, I was of the opinion that the Supreme Court has probably arrogated to itself far more of the legislative power than it ought, and I'm certainly supportive of various attempts to remedy that problem (the most obivous answer to me seems to be more legislation on the relevant questions, and a light use of Congress' ability to determine jurisdiction and scope of federal courts (Article III, Section ii)). But, well, I think that in pretty much any imaginable situation, appovingly quoting Stalin = good sign you need to rethink your argument. The current rhetorical flare-up is wrong for all of the obvious reasons.

LINK: There's an interesting (partial) discussion on the death penalty going here, in which a commenter points out the practical effects or implementation of the death penalty are (at least sometimes, anyway) not really apposite to consider when mulling over the normative merits.

However, I'd like to carry on with respect to this issue a little further, and note the post in which Chris explains his philosophical objections to the death penalty. Thus:

"I am suspicious of the death penalty not for legal or practical reasons, but philosophical ones; namely, that the state should not have the power to kill its own citizens, whether or not they are of some arbitrary age."

But it seems to me that even theorists as deeply skeptical of granting the state the right to do anything (and I'm thinking quite explicitly here of Robert Nozick in Anarchy, State and Utopia), have to grant the state the right (at least sometimes) to kill its own citizens, because this seems like a necessary precondition to having a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Chris, I would guess, thinks that police officers, acting in their official capacity as agents of the state, should be able to shoot-to-kill if they themselves are being shot at, or other innocent people are being shot at. Now, I suppose you could argue that the death penalty is different than the above scenario (I'm also pretty sure that a principle limiting when it's okay for the state to kill someone should be in play, but presumably that's addressed positively through the law), but not, it seems to me, on the basis of the principle that the state should not have the power to kill its own citizens.

But I also could be missing part of the philosophical support for the argument...

FUNNY, IT'S NOT SNOWING OUTSIDE...:

In a preview of the beginning of the apocalypse, I'm sure, Matt Yglesias writes something I kind of agree with:

"Polls show all kinds of stuff, and the main thing you can learn from studying polling about voters' stances on the issues is that the average person doesn't really understand what he's talking about."

Now, of course, there's a lot more that could be said on this topic (such as whether it matters if people are 'confused' about what they want, or if perhaps polling doesn't reflect how people normally think of political issues and so captures all sorts of odd results), but I'll defer on that for the time being...

SNAP!: Martin Peretz:

"There was one discordant note in the opening ceremonies, and it was the participation of Kofi Annan. He had taken time out on his way to Jerusalem to pay homage at the Ramallah grave of Yasir Arafat, a certified legatee of the anti-Semitism of the Nazis. How diplomatic! The secretary-general's very presence evoked the offending memory of his predecessors: U Thant, who removed U.N. troops from the Sinai--a decade-old barrier to war between Israel and Egypt--on the command of Gamal Abdel Nasser, which unleashed the Six Day War; and, most grotesquely, Kurt Waldheim, whose personal role in the Final Solution to "the Jewish problem" was suppressed by the great powers and the U.N. bureaucracy. And what were Annan's qualifications for this ceremony? Well, he is an expert on genocide, an expert of a certain sort. In his diplomatic practice of the 1990s, in various U.N. posts, he became a genocide-denier, since he refused to act against the extermination wars in Bosnia, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sudan. If the history of our time is written honestly, it will record that Annan stood passively by as the new exterminators went to work. Shame will be his memorial, his everlasting name."

LINK: The Moose on the current state of the Democratic party, including some of of that much disliked (by me) polling.

LINKS: Three items for your entertainment:

1. I couldn't make it through this without laughing:

""He isn't John Paul II any more," Leon said. "From now on, he's the Incredible Popeman.""

2. The List of Things a guy would do if he were evil overlord. I especially liked #142:

"If I have children and subsequently grandchildren, I will keep my three-year-old granddaughter near me at all times. When the hero enters to kill me, I will ask him to first explain to her why it is necessary to kill her beloved grandpa. When the hero launches into an explanation of morality way over her head, that will be her cue to pull the lever and send him into the pit of crocodiles. After all, small children like crocodiles almost as much as Evil Overlords and it's important to spend quality time with the grandkids."

3. Scene:

A conference room somewhere in Perkins, Fall of 2006: my International Relations oral defense:

Professor: "What do you think about the realist assumption that all states can be treated as like units?"

Me: "Well, there's a little song I find helpful when thinking about this..."

Professor: "I especially liked the way you discussed how liberal intuitions about harmony of interests might fit into a realist perspective. Very astute. You pass!"

End scene.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

"This looks like something Snow White would wear on laundry day"

I WANT YOU TO TAKE FIVE MINUTES AND THINK ABOUT THAT ANALOGY A LITTLE MORE CAREFULLY:

From Coalition of the Dark Side:

"... I hope the reminder that they are still the David to New York's Goliath will bring them back to earth"

IT'S FUNNY BECAUSE IT'S TRUE: Jonah Goldberg:

"Also, how could one possibly claim that the leading philosophers of contemporary liberalism are empiricists? John Rawls? One feels the need to offer Gregorian chants and swing incense every time one opens his books."

LED ZEPPELIN IN 1969?: From ASV:

"Already we see signs of stardom going to his head. Eight months? Who releases two albums in the same year?"