Ponnuru and Goldberg on Torture and Killing

THE BLACK BOX OF TORTURE [Jonah Goldberg]

Okay, I finally got my thoughts organized enough to write a short piece for the mag on what really bothers me about the torture debate, so maybe I can do it even more briefly here.

The anti-torture absolutists take it as self-evident that torture (variously defined) is self-evidently evil. Context doesn't matter. Context cannot justify it. Further, they argue that torture is what defines our enemies in an existential way. We cannot become "like our enemies." And no matter what the circumstances, employing torture would make us like them.

But nobody to my knowledge has demonstrated why torture holds this unique status.

For their argument to be true, torture must be worse than killing, indeed it must be worse than the killing of innocent people. Ask any educated person if war will result in killing innocent people and they will say yes. That’s the nature of war. If taking innocent lives was always and everywhere an unconscionable evil that could not ever be tolerated in American law, then war would have to be illegal. And yet, it is not illegal. We even speak openly about “collateral damage” and the need to “minimize” it, not eliminate it.

It seems to me that one could quite easily argue that killing many innocent people is worse than torturing one evil person, particularly if doing so will save many innocent lives. This may not be the case, but if so nobody has explained why it is so to my satisfaction.

Instead, torture has been made into a moral black box, a stand-in for “something existentially and self-evidently evil.” Thus, in effect, the torture issue has succeeded where all other efforts at moral equivalence have failed. During the Cold War, the left (and some segments of the Right) claimed moral equivalence between the United States and the Soviet Union because we had many of the same tools. The Soviets had nukes, so did we. We put people in asylums, they put people in asylums. We went to war to defend our way of life, the Reds went to war to defend their way of life. And so on.

Morally serious people saw through this. We put crazy people in asylums and murderers in prison. They locked-up Solzenytsins and Sharanskys. We went to war to fight oppression and defend liberty, they fought to oppress liberty and defend oppression. These are, to put it mildly, significant differences. An ambulance driver and a hit-and-run killer both have driver's licenses, but a serious person doesn’t claim the two are therefore morally equivalent.

But torture seems to be the one thing that changes all that. Suddenly, no matter what the context, no matter what the reason, torture is a stand-alone context-killer. Whereas even many liberals accepted that in some cases dropping atomic bombs on civilian populations could be morally acceptable given the right circumstances, torture never, ever, can be. Again, I'm willing to be persuaded that this makes sense. But as of right now, I can't get my head around the idea that it might be morally acceptable to nuke untold thousands or millions, leaving many to endure vastly greater agony than involved in 2 to 3 minutes of waterboarding but it is absolutely morally unacceptable to humiliate and hurt a terrorist in order to gain information that might help us stop just such an attack on our own citizens.


TORTURE AND KILLING [Ramesh Ponnuru]
Jonah writes: "For [the anti-torture absolutists'] argument to be true, torture must be worse than killing, indeed it must be worse than the killing of innocent people" (emphasis his). It must be worse because none of these absolutists think that war should be outlawed even though it results in the death of innocents. I think Jonah's argument goes seriously awry at this point, because it neglects intention. It isn't absurd, and I think it is indeed right, to regard the deliberate torture of a person as worse than the unintended, though foreseen and accepted, killing of an innocent. Launching a just war might very well cause many noncombatants to lose their limbs or their eyes. That the war might still be justified, even given that cost, doesn't mean that you can pluck out someone's eye during an interrogation to get him to talk.


RE: TORTURE AND KILLING [Jonah Goldberg]

Maybe, Ramesh. (And again for the record, I'm horrified by the idea that we would pluck anyone's eyes out). And I agree with you that intent matters a great deal. There's a reason you've had to spend so much time dealing with the ticking time bomb scenario -- because a scenario involving torturing someone for the fun of it is unpersuasive on its face.

But again, what is it specifically about torture that is demonstrably more evil than all these other things no matter what the context? I understand that aesthetically torture shocks the conscience. But so do thousands of maimed children from, say, the Dresden bombing. We all have access to the moral arguments -- just war, etc -- that help us accomodate the gruesome realities of war. But nobody has put forward a similar argument about torture, at least not that I've seen.

I have one partial explanation. The rights explosion. We have come to accept that human beings -- all human beings -- have certain immutable rights. This isn't new or bad. But what is new is that for some these rights cannot be forfeited based upon the actions we take. I have a right to life and free movement. If I murder someone, I forfeit my claim to those rights. But more and more it seems the idea that you can forfeit rights is falling out of favor.

Some pro-lifers take this view toward the death penalty. They argue that it simply doesn't matter what a person has done, the state has no right to execute him. I disagree, obviously, but it's an honorable position. It seems that torture is a stowaway in this worldview. Again, I am open to the argument that torture (real torture) deserves to be off limits but I want to know why. Is it because of the essential dignity of all life? Is it because cruelty -- even when the intent is to prevent greater cruelty -- is always wrong? Is it because in the long run it will corrupt our natures?

There's a bit of an echo to the animal rights debate here, I think. Animal rights activists want to argue that animals have inviolable right to certain humane treatment. Many of us sympathetic to the plight of animals still reject the idea that they have rights. Instead we've argued that animals don't have rights but humans have obligations. A decent person is not needlessly cruel to animals because cruelty to animals is at odds with our conceptions of decency.

I don't know about others, but this is where I'm most persuadable on the issue of banning torture always and everywhere. I don't think Osama Bin Laden has any rights. There isn't an ounce of kindness the man deserves. He doesn't deserve fair treatment under the Geneva Convention or any other custom of law because he's rejected those customs willy-nilly. Our rules are set up to protect the innocent, not the guilty. If we had some sort of God-given super-computer which could tell us with 100% who was guilty of murder, there would be no need for trials.

But, what Bin Laden and other murderers deserve isn't the issue. It's what we owe to ourselves and the kind of civlization we want to have. That's why I favor all sorts of things which on a practical level might make war -- and law enforcement -- more difficult. That gets me pretty close to your position. But that still doesn't quite get me to thinking it'd be wrong to waterboard Bin Laden all day long if that was the only way to prevent the next 9/11 -- or worse.

Jonah Goldberg in Seattle!

How'd I miss this? I've gotta start reading the corner every half hour, I guess. Anyway, here's what he has to say:

I'm heading back to DC in a few hours. I always have such mixed feelings about Seattle. On the one hand, there's a lot to like about this town and this region. It's my kind of weather, my kind of food, etc. But I'm always amazed at how pre-Giuliani so much of the downtown is. I'm baffled at how the business community and the tourist industry can cave to the drug-addict romanticizers and panhandler enablers. There is so much skeeviness and bummery going on right at the heart of why people come to this town in the first place. And, it's not just to prey on the tourists, there are half-way houses, methadone clinics, etc all near Pike's. I don't folllow Seattle politics so I don't know how the arguments play out, but I'd have to guess there are West Coast versions of the same jackasses who thought drug dealing, transvestite hookers, and robbery were what gave Times Square its authenticity and "charm."

Sorry you didn't have a better time, Jonah. Yeah, you're right about the bums. I think what's happening is a growth in shopping districts such as the University Village, just north of Husky stadium, which is privately owned and is therefore free to boot out anybody who doesn't have a latte in their hand. Which leaves the SPD mounties free to loaf around on top of their horses and watch the homeless vomit in the streets.

What I've noticed are the hordes of mentally ill staggering about the streets, and somehow I think that's connected to a lack of public funding for mental hospitals. But that's a whole nuther story. Anyway, give us some advance warning next time. Would like to buy you a drink or three next time you're in town.

Rick Brookhiser Goes On Killing Spree

from the Corner

"My Thanksgiving was dominated by the killing of my first deer--not with a manly rifle, though it is deer season (WELCOME HUNTERS say the signs on all the bars in my neighborhood) but with my car. The accident happened on Wednesday. The doe ran across a busy two lane road an hour before dusk. Didn't quite make it across the second lane--I struck her with the right side of my car (a Subaru Outback Impresza, going about 50-55). I saw the impact with my own eyes, and yet I can't remember where exactly she was hit. I have an impression she spun, or sprang up, but that may be an illusion. She fell in the front yard of a house along the road, as we pulled over, and lived for perhaps five minutes.

911 summoned the county sheriff. The only other mourner was an old man in hunter's camo who came out of one of the houses and tapped her with his shoe. The cop, young and businesslike, dispatched the matter in a few minutes. He did not inform us that we could have taken the creature for our own consumption; perhaps it went to charity, or the PBA.

The hood was crumpled, and there was a dent in the right fender. But the car drove--for 30 hours. The next day we had Thanksgiving dinner at the best restaurant I know of in the Hudson Valley, The Depuy Canal House in High Falls. We had driven about ten miles and were three miles from home when the engine began making noises, and the temperature shot up. Pulled into the parking lot of a bank, spread with snow and empty as the moon. At 10 PM in the country things roll up pretty tight. Steam billowed from the hood. Called our friend Doug, who was home and awake. He came with a bottle of Benedictine and two glasses, and his knowledge. The radiator hose had been pushed back against the fan belt, which had finally frayed a leak. We rolled the car to the side of the lot and called it a night.

Next morning we went back with Doug, who made a quick fix with duct tape, the philosopher's stone of home repair. Drove down the hill to a body shop, where the couple ahead of us had brought in a van, totalled from swerving to avoid a bear. Detroit should look into it--hunting could be their salvation."

John Henry Cardinal Newman

God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission—I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.

I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place while not intending it—if I do but keep His Commandments.

Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. He does nothing in vain. He knows what He is about. He may take away my friends, He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me—still He knows what He is about.

The Peanut Butter column

This has always been one of my favorites. I think it's the poem.

For many years I have labored under the burden of an unrequited passion. What have I done for it, in return for all it has done for me? Nothing. But I have wondered what I could use as what the journalists call a "peg."

I have found one. This may strike some of the literal-minded as attenuated, but it goes as follows: This is the centennial year of the Tuskegee Institute, which was founded on the Fourth of July, 1881, by Booker T. Washington. Tuskegee continues to be a remarkable institution, and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is the head of a committee of illustrious men and women who are devoting themselves to raising $20 million to encourage it in its noble work.

What noble work? We have arrived at step two. It was, among other things, the principal academic home of George Washington Carver, and it was G. W. Carver who to all intents and purposes invented the peanut. What he did, more specifically, was document that the cultivation of the peanut despoiled the land far less than the cultivation of cotton, and then he set out to merchandise the peanut in order that there might be a market for it.

He discovered an estimated three hundred uses for it, many of them entirely removed from the peanut's food value. But it is this, of course, that is the wonder of the peanut. The Encyclopedia Britannica informs us that "pound for pound peanuts have more protein, minerals, and vitamins than beef liver, more fat than heavy cream, and more food energy (calories) than sugar." And George Washington Carver discovered — peanut butter.

I have never composed poetry, but if I did, my very first couplet would be:

I know that I shall never see
A poem lovely as Skippy's peanut butter.

When I was first married and made plain to my wife that I expected peanut butter for breakfast every day of my life, including Ash Wednesday, she thought me quite mad (for the wrong reasons). She has not come round, really, and this is a source of great sadness to me because one wants to share one's pleasures.

I was hardened very young to the skeptics. When I was twelve I was packed off to a British boarding school by my father, who dispatched every fortnight a survival package comprising a case of grapefruit and a large jar of peanut butter. I offered to share my tuck with the other boys at my table. They grabbed instinctively for the grapefruit — but one after another actually spit out the peanut butter, which they had never before seen and which only that very year (1938) had become available for sale in London. No wonder they needed American help to win the war.

You can find it now in specialty shops in Europe, but I have yet to see it in anyone's home. And it is outrageously difficult to get even in the typical American hotel. My profession requires me to spend forty or fifty nights on the road every year, and when it comes time to order breakfast over the telephone I summon my resolution — it helps to think about peanut butter when you need moral strength — and add, after the orange juice, coffee, skim milk, and whole-wheat toast, "Do you have any peanut butter?"

Sometimes the room service operator will actually break out laughing when the request is put in, at which point my voice becomes stern and unsmiling. Often the operator will say, "Just a minute," and then she will turn, I suppose to the chef, but I can hear right through the hand she has put over the receiver — "Hey Jack. We got any peanut butter? Room 322 wants some peanut butter!" This furtive philistinism is then regularly followed by giggles all around. One lady recently asked, "How old is your little boy and does he want a peanut butter sandwich? To which I replied, "My little boy is twenty-eight and is never without peanut butter, because he phones ahead before he confirms hotel reservations."

I introduced Auberon Waugh to cashew butter ten years ago when he first visited America, and although I think it inferior to peanut butter Auberon was quite simply overwhelmed. You can't find it in Great Britain so I sent him a case from the Farmer's Market. It quite changed his writing style: for about ten months he was at peace with the world. I think that was the time he said something pleasant about Harold Wilson. In the eleventh month, it was easy to tell that he had run out. It quite changes your disposition and your view of the world if you cannot have peanut butter every day.

So here is yet another reason for contributing money to the Tuskegee Institute. For all we know, but for it we'd never have tasted peanut butter. There'd be no Planter's, no Jif, no Peter Pan — that terrible thought reminds us of our indebtedness to George Washington Carver.

VDH on Bush's Critics

Happy Blogiversary to J.W. @ Korrektiv!

This is the mantra of the extreme Left: "Bush lied, thousands died." A softer version from politicians now often follows: "If I knew then what I know now, I would never have supported the war."

These sentiments are intellectually dishonest and morally reprehensible for a variety of reasons beyond the obvious consideration that you do not hang out to dry some 150,000 brave Americans on the field of battle while you in-fight over whether they should have ever been sent there in the first place.

Consider the now exasperating (and tired) argument that almost anyone who looked at the intelligence data shared the same opinion about the threat of weapons of mass destruction — former presidents, U.S. congressmen, foreign governments, Iraqi exiles, and numerous intelligence organizations.

The prewar speeches of aJay Rockefeller and Hillary Clinton sparked and sizzled with somber warnings about biological and chemical arsenals — and, yes, nuclear threats growing on the horizon. Politicians voted for war at a time of post-9/11 furor and fear, when anthrax was thought to have been scattered in our major cities and the hysteria over its traces evacuated government buildings. In response, the Democrats beat their breasts to prove that they could out-macho the "smoke-em-out" and "dead-or-alive" president in laying out the case against Saddam Hussein, especially after the successful removal of the Taliban.

To argue recently, as Howard Dean has, that the president somehow had even more intelligence data or additional information beyond what was given to the Senate Intelligence Committee can make the opposite argument from what was intended- the dangers seemed even greater the more files one read attesting to Saddam's past history, clear intent, formidable financial resources, and fury at the United States. If the Dean notion is that the president had mysterious auxiliary information, then the case was probably even stronger for war, since no one has yet produced any stealth document that (a) warned there was no WMDs, and (b) was knowingly withheld from the Congress.

A bewildered visitor from Mars would tell Washingtonians something like: "For twelve years you occupied Saddam's airspace, since he refused to abide by the peace accords and you were afraid that he would activate his WMD arsenal again against the Kurds or his neighbors. Now that he is gone and for the first time you can confirm that his weapons program is finally defunct, you are mad about this new precedent that you have established: Given the gravity of WMD arsenals, the onus is now on suspect rogue nations to prove that they do not have weapons of mass destruction, rather than for civilization to establish beyond a responsible doubt that they do?"

Even more importantly, the U.S. Senate voted to authorize the removal of Saddam Hussein for 22 reasons other than just his possession of dangerous weapons. We seem to have forgotten that entirely.

If the Bush administration erred in privileging the dangers of Iraqi WMDs, then the Congress in its wisdom used a far broader approach (as Sen. Robert Byrd complained at the time), and went well beyond George Bush in making a more far-reaching case for war — genocide, violation of U.N. agreements, breaking of the 1991 armistice accords, attempts to kill a former U.S. president, and firing on American aerial patrols. It was the U.S. Senate — a majority of Democrats included — not Paul Wolfowitz, that legislated a war to reform and restore the wider Middle East: "...whereas it is in the national security of the United States to restore international peace and security to the Persian Gulf region".

So read the senators' October 2002 resolution. It is a model of sobriety and judiciousness in authorizing a war. There are facts cited such as the violation of agreements; moral considerations such as genocide; real worries about al Qaeda's ties to Saddam (e.g., "...whereas members of al-Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq"); fears of terrorism (" ...whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of American citizens."

No doubt many Democrats in the Senate who voted to authorize the war took their cue from Bill Clinton's own November 1998 indictment of bin Laden (still, how does one indict an enemy that has declared war on you?) that explicitly stressed the connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein: "In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq."

Thus the honest and moral argument for the now contrite would be something like: "I know now that Saddam did not try to kill a former president, did not commit genocide, did not attack four of his neighbors, did not harbor anti-American terrorists, did not ignore U.N. and 1991 peace accords, and did not attack Americans enforcing U.N.-mandated no-fly zones — and so I regret my vote."

Or if the former supporters of the war had character, they would be more honest still: "Yes, Saddam was guilty of those other 22 writs, but none of them justified the war that I voted for, and I should not have included them in the resolution."

Or they could be more truthful still: "I didn't really want a war, and only threw in the bit about al Qaeda and Saddam. So I just voted for the authorization in case some crisis emerged and the President had to act swiftly."

I doubt any will ever say, "I voted to cover myself: If the war proved swift and relatively low-cost like Bosnia or Afghanistan, I was on record for it; if it got bad like Mogadishu or Lebanon, then I wasn't the commander-in-chief who conducted it."

Given such an incriminating record, what then is really at the heart of the current strange congressional hysteria?

Simple — the tragic loss of nearly 2,100 Americans in Iraq.

The "my perfect war, your messy postbellum reconstruction" crowd is now huge and unapologetic. It encompasses not just leftists who once jumped on the war bandwagon in fears that Democrats would be tarred as weak on national security (a legitimate worry), but also many saber-rattling conservatives and Republicans — including those (the most shameful of all) who had in earlier times both sent letters to President Clinton and Bush demanding the removal of Saddam and now damn their commander-in-chief for taking them at their own word.

In the triumphalism after seeing Milosevic go down without a single American death, the Taliban implode at very little cost, and Saddam removed from power with little more than 100 fatalities, there was the assumption that the United States could simply nod and dictators would quail and democracy would follow. Had we lost 100 in birthing democracy and not 2,000, or seen purple fingers only and not IEDs on Dan Rather's nightly broadcasts, today's critics would be arguing over who first thought up the idea of removing Saddam and implementing democratic changes.

So without our 2,100 losses, nearly all the present critics would be either silent or grandstanding their support — in the manner that three quarters of the American population who polled that they were in favor of the war once they saw the statue of Saddam fall.

In short, there is no issue of WMD other than finding out why our intelligence people who had once missed it in the First Gulf War, then hyped it in the next-or what actually happened to all the unaccounted for vials and stockpiles that the U.N. inspectors swore were once inside Iraq.

So the real crux is a real legitimate debate over whether our ongoing costs-billions spent, thousands wounded, nearly 2,100 American soldiers lost-will be worth the results achieved. Post facto, no death seems "worth it". The premature end of life is tangible and horrendous in a way that the object of such soldiers' sacrifices-a reformed Middle East, a safer world, enhanced American safety, and freedom for 26 million-seems remote and abstract.

Nevertheless, that is what our soldiers died for: a world in which Middle East dictators no longer murder their own, ruin their won societies, and then cynically use terrorism to whip up the Arab street and deflect their own self-induced miseries onto the United States. This is the calculus that led to 9/11, and the reason why Saddam gave sanctuary to 1980s terrorists, the killer Yasin who failed in his first attempt to take down the twin towers, and the likes of Zarqawi.

While the U.S. military conducts a brilliant campaign to implement democratic reform that is on the eve of ending with an Iraqi parliament, while there has been no repeat of promised 9/11 attacks here at home, and while the entire dictatorial Middle East from Lebanon and Syria to Egypt and Libya is in crisis — baffled, furious, or impressed by a now idealistic United States pushing for something different and far better — our intellectual and political elite harp on "WMD, WMD, WMD..."

Sadder still, they stay transfixed to this refrain either because polls show that it is good politics or it allows them a viable exit from an apparently now unpopular war.

But no, not so fast.

History has other lessons as well — as we know from the similar public depression during successful wars after Washington's sad winter at Valley Forge, Lincoln's summer of 1864, or the 1942 gloom that followed Pearl Harbor and the fall of the Philippines, Singapore, and Wake Island. When this is all over, and there is a legitimate government in the Middle East that represents the aspirations of a free people, the stunning achievement of our soldiers will be at last recognized, the idealism of the United States will be appreciated, our critics here and abroad will go mute — and one of the 23 writs for a necessary war of liberation will largely be forgotten.

http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200511180818.asp

Korrektiv Appearance

Happy Blogiverary, Korrektiv!

Jonah Goldberg on the Battle of Gaulistan

I tried. I really did. I wanted to deal dispassionately with l'affaire francaise. I even resolved to refrain, until my Schadenfreude wore off, from commenting on the situation in the country formerly known as "France." (Possible future names include: Paristine, Gaulistan, Frarabia, and the Algerian North Bank.)

Schadenfreude is a German word meaning to take pleasure at the misfortune of others. And much like La Resistance in '40 (and '41, '42, '43, '44 and '45), I just can't shake off the Germans in this case. Since my Schadenfreude seems inextricably linked to the duration of the French intifada, I can't wait any longer. After all, the troubles promise to go on long enough for the French to lobby the International Olympic Committee to add the "Peugeot Burn" to the summer games.

To be fair, which I have not been so far, I don't actually believe the current riots are about Islam. This puts me to the left of a great many conservative Nostradamuses who've prophesized for so long that France's north African and other Muslim "immigrants" are going to bring jihad to the home front. I don't think their predictions are necessarily wrong, I just believe that this is at best a dress rehearsal.

I put "immigrants" in quotation marks for the simple reason that most of the rioters are no such thing — they were born in France and hold French passports. Their parents or grandparents were from former French colonies. But the French establishment — a term I use in the most catholic sense possible, so as to include Katie Couric and her colleagues — has had a very hard time coming up with a useful vocabulary to describe these events. French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy came out of the blocks with "scum," but the uncharacteristic lack of nuance didn't go over well in a culture that has always believed there are two sides of the story for every murderer, never mind every window smasher.

Goldberg and York on Plagiarism

PLAGIARISM: TWO VIEWS [Jonah Goldberg]
From a reader:

This is not a big deal, and I think conservatives will look silly if they try to make it one.
I think it is completely fair to say this guy deserves ridicule because he can't come up with his own ideas, or even language. But this is not the same as journalistic or academic plagiarism. This guy was not (a) using it for commercial purposes (as a journalist or other published writer is), which would be theft, or (b) defrauding himself and others re: his education (remember, the victim in academic plagiarism is not the professor; it's the student (and his peers if they are being graded on a curve)).

Should he have sourced it? Of course. But this is neither theft nor fraud; it's just laziness and discourtesy. And the victim of the discourtesy doesn't even seem to care.

And from another:

Jonah,

I am an academic, and so the plagiarism issue weighs heavily with me.

The issue is not whether or not Newman cares if his material was attributed. The problem is that by publishing or signing a letter, Brown is claiming that the work is his own. I care if my students cite works in the public domain because I want to know what is original thinking on their part and where they are following someone else (even if that work is in the public domain). It is a question of whether or not the ideas (and words) are the author’s own or not. I assume that when someone writes something, the ideas and words are their own if there is no attribution. In academic circles, that is the normal assumption. Why it should be otherwise for politicians (or, as you note, construction workers) is beyond me.

If you should choose to post any of this, please withhold my name and institution.


IT'S NOT PLAGIARISM! IT'S NOT! NOT! [Byron York]
Judging from emails received, a number of people on the left are working furiously to find a distinction that will allow them to exempt Democratic Rep. Sherrod Brown from charges of plagiarism. After an initial group of "it's OK if a politician does it" emails came a group of "dailykos disclaimer" emails like those sent to Jonah. "Don't you get it?" writes one. "Bloggers *want* their ideas to be adopted by politicians!" Still another cites Nathan Newman's embrace of the dailykos disclaimer as proof that anything lifted from a public domain source is fair game:
The reporter saying that Brown's letter "was plagiarized" is flatly inaccurate. The reality is that politicians used public domain sources in a whole host of ways and using my blog post was no different.

PLAGIARISM CONT'D [Jonah Goldberg]

This, I didn't know. From a reader:

While I condemn the laziness that simply quoted Newman's paice, calling it theft when it was cross-posted to Kos's site (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/11/1/91136/3637) where it explicitly states that "Site content may be used for any purpose without explicit permission unless otherwise specified." strikes me as wrong. It isn't theft if it is given away.
Me If true -- and if this is why Brown felt free to copy a blog -- it strikes me as a fair point (though I have to assume it was a staffer who wrote the letter in the first place). But I think my point about the nature of plagiarism stands nonetheless.


Update The reader who sent me the above, adds:

To be honest, I don't think Newman remembered it at first himself. He added the comment as an update to his original post: http://www.nathannewman.org/laborblog/archive/003529.shtml

Goldberg on Plagiarism

That's what every college Freshman is taught whether they become journalists, scientists, lawyers or construction workers. Construction workers are more likely to steal power drills than they are to steal words. Journaists are more likely to steal words. Wouldn't it be odd to argue that it isn't theft for a journalist to steal power drills?

Construction sites create special procedurs to protect the theft of power tools, because the temptation is so much greater. Similarly, journalism (like science) creates special rules for plagiarism because the temptation and risk is so much greater, not because it's a sin unique to journalists.

I'm not a huge stickler about plagiarism. I've never done it intentionally mind you, but I've made a mistake once or twice and I can see how it happens, which is why I've usually not made a big deal when people have plagiarized me. One Canadian writer lost her job because she ripped me off, for example. I never made a stink about it. But one can be easygoing about enforcement of a principle whithout arguing the principle doesn't exist.

And there's a special irony here. I think all reasonable people can agree that plagiarism is a theft of intellectual property. Well, I did a very quick Nexis search and it seems Sherrod Brown's been out front in opposing trade deals because they don't provide enough protections for intellectual property.

Brown has said this sort of thing more than a few times:

I'm still waiting to see this administration take or even propose actions to pry open the Chinese market for U.S. goods, combat import surges from China, and protect the intellectual property of America's knowledge-based industries from Chinese theft.

There seem to be a lot of similar citations.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day

By John Derbyshire

Around this time of year, my American friends ask me about Guy Fawkes night. What’s that all about, they want to know? Is it really a big thing over there in England? Well, I am totally out of touch, but when I was a kid, Guy Fawkes Night — November Fifth — was a huge thing, second only to Christmas on the fun scale. There were fireworks; there was a bonfire; on top of the bonfire was a Guy — a dummy, of course, not an actual person — who got burned up when you lit the bonfire. In the days prior to the Fifth, you trundled your Guy around the neighborhood in a wheelbarrow for the appreciation of passersby, appreciation expressed by the giving of “pennies for the Guy.”

When we were tots, the actual burning was done in the family backyard. Catherine wheels were nailed to the clothes-line posts, rockets were fired off from empty milk bottles, and we little ones were given “sparklers” to hold — wires coated with something like magnesium, that burned with a fizzing white brilliance for a minute or two. The fireworks were sold in boxes at the local store, the same store we got our newspapers, candy, and soda from.

When we were older, enjoying the liberties that older boys enjoyed then — the liberties boys had enjoyed forever, back through Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, to the beginning of time, but which were abolished around 1980 as part of the general girlification of postindustrial society — the focus was the neighborhood bonfire, a 12-foot pile of old wood, painstakingly gathered over several weeks, and jealously guarded, so far as supper-time and bed-time rules permitted, against the danger that some sociopath, or a commando squad from some envious other neighborhood, would torch it prematurely. On the great night the whole thing would burn gloriously, with us boys standing round tossing squibs at each other, trying to smoke cigarettes, and failing to make ourselves appealing to the few girls present. Older yet, we made general civic nuisances of ourselves, as teenage boys always will, by roaming the streets in small packs, singing bawdy songs, and throwing fireworks into people’s front gardens.

From the surge of excitement when, sometime after supper, you heard the first fireworks go off, to the sight of burned-out rockets littering the streets on our way to school the next morning — I remember it so well. I hope it still goes on in some fashion over there; though I am sure that the new, lawyered-up England does not permit barely adolescent boys to buy boxes of minor munitions for their own amusement, or to assemble great towers of waste wood for combustion in public places. But what was it all about, actually?

Guido Was the Guy
Guy Fawkes — his baptismal name was Guido — was one of a group of plotters who, in 1605, schemed to blow up the House of Lords while the king was in it. The cellars and basements of the House were used for storage of firewood and coal. In among all this, the plotters hid 36 barrels of gunpowder, to be ignited by Guy Fawkes when the king arrived. These plotters — there were at least 13 of them — were, in short, terrorists. (Though Fawkes was no suicide bomber. The gunpowder was to be ignited by a slow fuse.) To give the thing an even more contemporary cast, they were inspired by religious zeal, or at least were disgruntled because of religious persecution.
The persecution was real. The plotters were Roman Catholics, at a time when England’s throne, parliament, and most of her people, had turned away from Rome. Many English people had gone all the way to Puritanism. Others had accepted, and got used to, Anglo-Catholicism — the Old Faith, but minus allegiance to the pope, and with the great monastic orders broken up and dispossessed.

There were still a good many Englishmen in communion with Rome. It wasn’t actually illegal (though public celebration of Mass was). In fact, there were many Lords still adhering to the Old Faith. That was what led to the discovery of the plot. The plotters sent a letter to one of these Catholic peers, Lord Mounteagle, to warn him, and to tell him to pass the warning to his coreligionists. The peer, a patriot, showed the letter to the King’s Privy Council, and the uncovering of the plot followed.

Though legal, however, the Roman faith was deeply unpopular. This was a legacy of the previous 70 years, from the time of King Henry’s break with Rome in the 1530s. Those decades had seen the brutal campaign of dimwitted Mary Tudor (reigned 1553-58) to return her country to the Old Faith, the consolidation of Anglo-Catholicism under Elizabeth (who was circumspect about her own beliefs, but was none the less excommunicated by the pope), the plotting to replace Elizabeth by the Catholic Mary Stuart, the attempts by Philip II of Spain, one of history’s greatest troublemakers, to annex or destroy the English monarchy, the Irish rebellion (with the assistance of the Catholic powers, including a body of 4,000 Spanish troops) of 1601, and the terrible religious wars and persecutions in France, England’s ancient enemy — most especially the St. Bartholomew’s Eve massacre of Protestants by Catholics in 1572.

Probably most English people who clung to the Old Faith were, like Lord Mounteagle, patriotic and harmless. Many kept very quiet about their faith, worshipping in privacy and secrecy. Some scholars believe, on circumstantial evidence, that William Shakespeare, 41 years old at the time of the Gunpowder Plot, was one such. (According to our best guesses about when the plays were written, the Gunpowder Plot probably came in between King Lear and Macbeth.) At any rate, there were severe laws — the Penal Laws — restricting the activities, property, and careers of citizens unwilling to swear allegiance to the national Church. Some of these laws were specifically anti-Catholic. Some applied to Puritans as well as Roman Catholics — that is why the Puritans eventually left for the New World. Heavy fines were imposed on these “recusants,” and some of the November Fifth plotters were well-born gentlemen who had been bankrupted by these fines.

When Elizabeth died in 1603, King James of Scotland came to the English throne. He was a clever man — an intellectual, in fact, author of several books. Unfortunately, like many intellectuals, he was seriously deficient in common sense and what we would nowadays call “people skills.” The Spanish Ambassador came up with a tag that stuck to James because it fitted so well: “the wisest fool in Christendom.” James had no grasp of political science, and could not understand the function of England’s parliament, once opining: “I am surprised that my ancestors should have allowed such an institution to come into existence.” He was foul-mouthed, had a speech impediment, and was physically unattractive. (He was, for example, extremely hairy, and had his clothes made a couple of sizes too big, so that their looseness would permit him to scratch freely. The early 17th century was not a high point in the progress of English personal hygiene.) James was also a homosexual, and his court degenerated at last into a whispering, bickering nest of favorites.

James’s defects did not really show up until later in his reign, though. For the first few years, the masterly statecraft of Elizabeth’s court survived, most notably in the person of the brilliant Robert Cecil, son of the equally gifted William Cecil, a remarkable case of great political wisdom running in a family. Unfortunately, cold Cecilian statecraft was at odds with the intellectual idealism of the new King. James was sympathetic to the Old Faith. His wife and his mother were both devout Catholics. He personally favored relaxation of the Penal Laws, and made this known. His advisers dissuaded him, believing — probably correctly — that the religious situation was not stable enough to permit open toleration without major problems of public order arising. The hopes of English Catholics, briefly raised, were dashed. The Gunpowder Plot was a natural consequence.**

The uncovering of the plot led to a surge of anti-Catholicism. New life was given to the suspicion that every Catholic was a traitor. The first “Guys” burned were actually effigies of the pope. (This was still the case in some parts of England well into the twentieth century.) These prejudices echoed down through the centuries in England and her offspring nations, like the U.S.A. They could be heard in the 1960 presidential campaign, when it was wondered aloud whether a Catholic like John F. Kennedy, owing allegiance to a large international church, could be a true patriot. A character in one of Evelyn Waugh’s novels (Waugh was a Catholic convert) grumbles that still, in the 1940s. English Catholics dwelt under the suspicion of being spies.

By the middle 20th century, though, anti-Catholicism already seemed a little quaint in England. English Catholics had redeemed themselves in the eyes of their fellow-countrymen by good citizenship and dogged patriotism, with particular attention to serving, like Waugh’s Guy (!) Crouchback, in England’s wars with valor and distinction. (Perhaps with this as their model, English Jews followed suit, so that England is now one of the least anti-Semitic nations in the world.)

Today & Tolerance
Does any of this offer lessons to the many Muslims now living in Britain and America? Some commentators think so. Writing in the London Daily Telegraph a few days ago, Philip Johnston drew a parallel between the English Catholics of 1605 and the Muslims of present-day England. He congratulates his countrymen on their refusal to follow the jihadist bombings in London this year with a general persecution of Muslims: “As we remember once more the Fifth of November, let us also not forget what a frightened and intolerant society we once were and how far we have come in the intervening 400 years.”
I think Mr. Johnston’s self-satisfaction is misplaced. Muslims in present-day Britain enjoy full civil rights, and always have. The plotters of 1605 came from a background of decades of persecution, when Catholics had been dispossessed, exiled, hanged, and burned at the stake. Whatever you think of religious terrorism, Guy Fawkes’s grievances were real.

Those grievances were more intense, too, from being nursed against the plotters’ own fellow-countrymen. Religion aside, there was no difference between a Catholic Englishman and a Protestant one. So far as the Church of England was concerned, in fact, even the doctrinal differences were trivial — the supremacy of the pope and the use of Latin in liturgy being the only points of any substance so far as non-intellectual worshippers were concerned. Roman Catholic Englishmen and Anglo-Catholic Englishmen looked the same, dressed the same, spoke the same language, practiced the same folk customs, ate the same food, shared the same national memories and culture, and worshiped the same God in very similar styles. Not uncommonly they were spouses, or siblings. It is a remarkable thing, in fact, that even with these advantages, it yet took three hundred years for English Catholics to convince other Englishmen that they were worthy of full citizenship and respect. The introduction of large colonies of third-world Muslims into Anglo-Saxon societies is a phenomenon of a completely different kind, bringing a degree of foreign-ness that simply was not present in the religious divisions of 1605 England, and leading to psychological tensions of the sort described by Theodore Dalrymple.

On the other side of the balance, the patriotism of an island nation like Britain defines itself in part by strong opposition to old and familiar enemies. From the point of view of an Englishman in 1605, these enemies were all colored purple. They were Catholic powers. Most hostility was directed at Spain; Anglo-French relations were actually going through a sunny spell (though this did nothing to prevent Shakespeare filling his plays with traditional anti-French quips); the Hapsburg (i.e. Holy Roman) Empire was too distant to occupy much space in English minds. Anti-Catholicism could be justified by an appeal to patriotism. Real nations, peer powers, were intent on bringing England back into the Papal fold. This was not paranoia; they really were.

This does not apply to the Muslims of today. Nobody, in England or America, takes Muslim nations that seriously. We regard them as backward, corrupt, unstable, and militarily insignificant. Jihadist terrorism is a great nuisance, of course; but no Englishman of 2005 envisages a Muslim fleet sailing up the Channel in Armada style, to put a Muslim ruler on the throne of Westminster. The thought is absurd. Even less do Americans fear forcible incorporation into the dar al Islam. An American Muslim may fall under suspicion of working for a nuisance terrorist group, but he can’t plausibly be seen as a spy for a peer nation, one that might overthrow and occupy our own. The only real Muslim nations are Egypt, Turkey, and Iran. The first two are friendly, or at any rate non-hostile. Iran is too far away, and too poor, for Americans to perceive her as a real nation-scale threat. The rest are pseudo-nations, ramshackle no-account tribal condominiums of no importance to us, except as suppliers of oil.

In respect of Iran, this may change. If that nation becomes a nuclear power, that will be one big step closer to peer status in the American public mind. Like the handguns of the 19th-century American frontier, nukes are “equalizers.” If it sinks in to the minds of Englishmen, or Americans, that some Muslim power, or powers, is a real threat to our nationhood, the tolerance that Philip Johnston boasts of so proudly may undergo some slippage. Jihadist terrorism has not seriously upset our modern national ethic of infinite tolerance. A Muslim Guy Fawkes, seen as the agent of a hostile peer nation, might do so.

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** There is, inevitably, a revisionist theory about the Gunpowder Plot, arguing that it was all, in fact, a frame-up by Robert Cecil to stop the liberalizing pro-Catholic trend. My own opinion is that this is Grassy Knoll stuff, but there is a substantial literature on it. Interested readers could do worse than begin with the Wikipedia article headed Gunpowder Plot, with the usual caveats about Wikipedia taken as understood.

Hero of the People by Kerry Dupont

In 1976, Saddam Hussein ordered the execution of one Mithal al-Alusi, a member of a Sunni family in the Fallujah area.
Al-Alusi escaped execution through a series of ordeals, and finally landed in Germany, where he became a businessman in the textile industry. In his German exile, he became active in the Iraqi opposition party led by Ahmed Chalabi. After Iraq was liberated by Coalition forces, he returned to his homeland.

Then he performed a truly courageous act: He went to Israel — the first Iraqi politician to do so — and spoke there about peace between all nations of the Middle East.

Nothing could have prepared him for what was to come. First, he was expelled from the Iraqi National Congress. Chalabi and the party deserted him after the backlash of threats started coming in. His party broke ties with him, and he was now a prime target for terrorists — who saw his remarks in Israel as the ultimate betrayal of Baathism and pan-Arab nationalism. Attempts were made on his life. He had every reason to leave Iraq — but he would not leave. And, to the dismay of some in the government, he would not be quiet either.

What he did instead was found the Iraqi Nation party. The premise of this party, says al-Alusi, is that "Iraqis must consider themselves Iraqis first" — before they consider themselves Muslims, Sunni, Shia, or anything else. In the elections last January, his party received about 4,500 votes; its campaign had been run on a bare-bones budget from al-Alusi’s personal funds and donations from Iraqis and others who shared the vision of an Iraq at peace with all of its neighbors.

Then, on February 8, this man bore the brunt of the attack that every Iraqi fears. The attack was meant for him, but instead killed his two sons and his guard. Just hours after his sons were killed he spoke to Radio Free Europe:

Again, the ghosts of death are going out. They are ready to kill a person, ready to kill the peace, ready to kill the victory of Iraqis and their right to life. Again, henchmen of the Ba’ath [party] and dirty terrorist gangs, al-Qaeda and others, are going out convinced that they can determine life and death as they desire. Iraq will not die. My children, three people [in all] — one of my bodyguards and two of my children — died as heroes, no differently from other people who find their heroic deaths. But we will not, [I swear] by God, hand Iraq over to murderers and terrorists.
Mithal al-Alusi was not backing down. The terrorists had made him only more determined.

There would be more attempts on his life. And he would not apologize for his views. In fact, he is known in Iraq for his unyielding position of not dealing with anyone who has ever been a true supporter of the Baath party or has supported or dealt with terrorists of any sort. Recently Iyad Jamal al-Din — an outspoken political activist who says that in order for religion to be protected, Iraq must be ruled by secular laws — tried to arrange an alliance between al-Alusi and the also-secular former head of the interim government, Iyad Allawi. While the two men had much in common, Mithal refused to bring his party into alliance with Allawi unless every former Baathist were removed from Allawi’s party.

Al-Alusi believes strongly that only America, Britain, and the other countries that have proven their allegiance to the Iraqi cause should be rewarded with Iraqi contracts and business. He has said that "without a strategic alliance with America, Iraq will be no more than another second-rate nation."

Recently, al-Alusi was called to the U.S. embassy in Baghdad to speak with U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. Only when he arrived at the embassy did he find out why he had been called there: A poll had been conducted, which found that approximately 30 percent of the Iraqi people now expressed sympathy for him and his party positions.

Since that meeting, al-Alusi has been working on how to turn that sympathy into votes in the upcoming elections. The Iraqi government recently insisted on moving him into the International Zone (formerly called the Green Zone) because of the threats to his life. Al-Alusi was against the move, but the government prevailed: It did not want to be held responsible for the inadequate security if one of the attempts on his life were successful. (He nonetheless escapes the International Zone by spending most of his days in his office in the Karada district of Baghdad.)

A politician as principled and outspoken as Mithal al-Alusi offers hope for Iraq's future. Consider some of his words to Radio Free Europe:

As for the advocates of religious intolerance willing to kill the [Iraqi] identity, or those who now imagine they might establish a [new] state in Iraq, be it religious or non-religious, I tell them, "Brothers, verily you have made a grave mistake." I tell them, "There can be no state in Iraq except for one founded on institutions and law. . . . I will continue to call for peace — even [for peace] with Israel. And may all the world hear that there will be no war if the Palestinians, Syrians, Egyptians, and Jordanians do not want war. I am not prepared to allow Iraqis to be turned into kindling for the flames of terrorists and ghosts of death.
Radical clerics such as Muqtada al-Sadr get most of the global airplay with their violence and their threats. But it's people like Mithal al-Alusi who are working to build the new Iraq.