Left-Leaning Academics: "Were We Wrong?"

What happens when postmodern cultural and literary criticisms fall into the wrong hands?

Anyone who has been paying attention to the fault lines of academic debate for the past 20 years already knows that the "science wars" were fought by natural scientists (and their defenders in the philosophy of science) on the one side and literary critics and cultural-studies folks on the other. The latter argued that even in the natural realm, truth is relative, and there is no such thing as objectivity. The skirmishes blew up in the well-known "Sokal affair" in 1996, in which a prominent physicist created a scientifically absurd postmodernist paper and was able to get it published in a leading cultural-studies journal. The ridicule that followed may have seemed to settle the matter once and for all.

But then a funny thing happened: While many natural scientists declared the battle won and headed back to their labs, some left-wing postmodernist criticisms of truth began to be picked up by right-wing ideologues who were looking for respectable cover for their denial of climate change, evolution, and other scientifically accepted conclusions. Alan Sokal said he had hoped to shake up academic progressives, but suddenly one found hard-right conservatives sounding like Continental intellectuals. And that caused discombobulation on the left.

"Was I wrong to participate in the invention of this field known as science studies?," Bruno Latour, one of the founders of the field that contextualizes science, famously asked. "Is it enough to say that we did not really mean what we said? Why does it burn my tongue to say that global warming is a fact whether you like it or not? Why can’t I simply say that the argument is closed for good?"

The reason it burns is that there is a whole lot invested in the idea that we can't simply reason from observations of the facts of nature to objective conclusions that should guide our actions.

It would be a terrible mistake for the right to adopt the 'winning strategy' of refusing to recognize truth based on objective facts, however. Play stupid games, as they say, and you'll win stupid prizes.

Shooting for E-Zero

This Google link will take you to a non-firewalled WSJ article about the supreme post-modern condition now reached by our ethanol fuel policy:  from now on, we're going to subsidize corn production for ethanol, not because we can better achieve our environmental goals that way, but because subsidies are a goal in their own right.  My husband's view:  we'd probably do less damage if we just started sending the checks with no strings attached.

Reading Lists

Went by the local used bookstore tonight, and picked up a few things to read this summer.

Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers. This was my introduction to economic theory many years ago, but I haven't re-read it since I was a teenager.

Wippel and Wotler, O.F.M. Medieval Philosophy. I don't expect surprises in this volume, but it'll be interesting to read another perspective of the topic in summary.

Lupack, Alan and Barbara, eds. Arthurian Literature by Women. I bought this one because it was mostly Medieval and 19th century, but there is a substantial section of 20th century contributions.

Waco RUMINT

This guy is an attorney in Las Vegas who has been contacted, he claims, by many of the bikers arrested in the Waco shootout. Easyriders magazine found him credible enough to pass the clip, given what they're hearing from their own connections.



The way he tells the story, most of the bikers inside were there for a meeting of a community of non-outlaw clubs considering bills before the state assembly that deal with motorcycle issues. The Scimitars and Cossacks showed up uninvited to this meeting. A handful of Bandidos showed up later, and the Cossacks/Scimitars decided to press their substantial numerical advantage to force the Bandidos to a loss of face. This escalated, so that one Bandido was shot, and one-two more shots were fired without issue.

Then the police, who had their SWAT team on site, opened fire into the crowd with rifles. He estimates they killed all 9 dead, and injured 26 of the 27. Then they arrested everyone, and got a justice of the peace rather than a proper judge to slap that $1 million dollar bond on everyone.

Now of course this is in no way official, and is just the word of people arrested at the time. The police have all the forensics and video, mostly unreleased to the public so far. Perhaps a FOIA request from a Texas media outlet will generate more information. Perhaps the police will choose to release more. Presumably there are some official procedures of inquiry in process as well.

We'll just have to see how the facts shake out in time.

Five Medieval Tales

Via Medievalists, a set of charming (or not) stories from the Middle Ages.

The first story may strike a contemporary reader as grotesque, not merely for the cannibalism but for the prospect of having your actual heart cut out and sent to someone you love. Yet this practice was regarded not as grotesque but rather intensely romantic, in the old sense of the word, in the High Middle Ages. Robert the Bruce had his heart removed after his death and sent on Crusade, as his heart had always longed to go, but his duty to Scotland kept him from it. His greatest friend carried the heart, and died crusading against the Moors in Spain.

Story number four may or may not be practical, but it is a common story. The Icelandic Heimskringla has Harald Hardrada, the Thunderbolt of the North, carrying out a similar plan to destroy a city in Sicily while campaigning in the mercenary service of the lords of Byzantium. In that case they supposedly gathered up flying birds and set them ablaze, causing them to fly home in a panic to their nests within the walls of the city.

As for the third tale, just last night I finished the chapter of Barnaby Rogerson's The Last Crusaders that deals with the Portuguese kings. This sort of deep love attachment and flamboyance sounds very much in character for the family. That, by the way, is proving to be an entertaining history. I recommend it.

Another from D29

The May jobs report was strong... from a certain point of view.

...in May's far stronger than expected report, the two for the first time were almost identical: the Establishment Survey reported an increase of 280K jobs, while according to the Household survey 272K jobs were added. ...the biggest surprise came from Table 7, where the BLS reveals the number of "foreign born workers" used in the Household survey. In May, this number increased [by a] monthly jump of 279K...

So, the number of new jobs and the number of new immigrant workers is just about identical? Normally you'd only expect to see that if we had reached structural unemployment levels, so that the only way you could grow the workforce was by bringing new people in from outside the country. Instead, we have a U-6 unemployment rate of 10.8%.

Economist Tyler Cowen suggests that maybe it just isn't going to get better. I think we can all think of ways that would make it better -- a vast deregulation, starting with repealing Obamacare, would be my first suggestion -- so I don't accept the idea that we would be powerless were we able to form a unified political will as a polity and act upon it. Still, I do agree that there are some problems that won't just smooth out and get better, because they were allowed to fester for so long.

Speaking of which, how's that national debt problem?

Get Some, Rabbi

The Case of the 11 AM Beer

The Drudge Report picked up a Daily Telegraph story asking, "Why is Barack Obama drinking beer at 11 AM?"

I was prepared to defend the President on this one. It's a local custom for Sunday mornings.

Eleven in the morning might be considered a little early for a beer in some parts of the world, but in Bavaria breakfast is not complete without a weissbier, as the local wheat beer is called. It’s not quite as hard-drinking as it sounds: Bavarians don’t down a quick pint before heading to the office every morning. It originates in Frühschoppen - a local tradition of meeting for a drink late in the morning on Sundays and holidays.

According to Bavarian custom, the sausages cannot be eaten after 12 noon, because no preservatives are used and they are made fresh every day. Therefore those who wish to wash their sausages down with a beer must get supping before that time. The local saying is that the sausages must not be allowed to hear the church bells chime noon.

Besides, if he just flew in from D.C., it's not 11 AM in any meaningful sense for him anyway. So I was going to say that he should be given full pardon for this alleged offense.

Until the last line of the article, I was convinced of this position. But:

A local farmer told reporters Mr Obama had in fact drunk non-alcoholic beer at the breakfast.

Non-alcoholic beer in Germany? There's simply no excuse for that.

The Case of the Casbah and the Offensive American Dancer

A group in Morocco is suing American dancer Jennifer Lopez for "tarnishing women's honor and respect" with her racy performance in country. I have little doubt that the charges are fully justified by the local community standards, but the group is probably out of luck. Morocco has no extradition treaty with the United States, so the potential jail time will certainly never be served.

Last week I related The Tale of Scott Rothstein and His Golden Toilets, and mentioned among other things that Rothstein had "fled to Morocco" along with 16 million of his closest friends when it looked like the proverbial jig was up for him and his Ponzi scheme....

Not coincidentally, Morocco is one of the countries that has no extradition treaty with the United States, something that Rothstein knew because -- and this is possibly my favorite detail of the whole story, short of the golden toilets -- he made somebody in his firm research that issue for him. The project was supposedly on behalf of a "client," but he was in fact having someone research the question of where he should flee to avoid prosecution.

I was sort of hoping he called in an associate and just made that person do it, but it turns out he sent an email, apparently to everyone in the firm, saying he had a rush project for an important client. "We have a client that was a United States citizen until about 6 months ago," Rothstein wrote in the email, probably able to resist making air quotes around "client" only because he was busy typing the word. "He became a citizen of Israel and renounced his United States citizenship. He is likely to be charged with a multitude of crimes in the United States including fraud, money laundering and embezzlement." (I'm trying to imagine what people at the firm were thinking upon reading this.) Rothstein wanted them to research whether the client could be extradited from Israel, or could be prosecuted for the crimes in Israel. "This client is related to a very powerful client of ours," Rothstein continued, "and so time is of the essence. Lets [sic] rock and roll....there is a very large fee attached to this case. Thanks Love ya Scott," he concluded.

That works both ways. They get our Ponzi scheme artists, but they don't get our... er, "artists."

Who Talked?

"Dozens" of people, apparently.

Almost everything about SEAL Team 6, a classified Special Operations unit, is shrouded in secrecy — the Pentagon does not even publicly acknowledge that name — though some of its exploits have emerged in largely admiring accounts in recent years. But an examination of Team 6’s evolution, drawn from dozens of interviews with current and former team members, other military officials and reviews of government documents, reveals a far more complex, provocative tale.

Loose lips, boys.

Catholic Social Teaching, For Catholics

H/t D29:

The Church has long taught that defrauding a worker of his wages is one of the four sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance (CCC 1867). In his landmark encyclical Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII echoed the words of St. James:

Doubtless, before deciding whether wages are fair, many things have to be considered; but wealthy owners and all masters of labor should be mindful of this – that to exercise pressure upon the indigent and the destitute for the sake of gain, and to gather one’s profit out of the need of another, is condemned by all laws, human and divine. To defraud any one of wages that are his due is a great crime which cries to the avenging anger of Heaven. “Behold, the hire of the laborers… which by fraud has been kept back by you, crieth; and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.” Lastly, the rich must religiously refrain from cutting down the workmen’s earnings, whether by force, by fraud, or by usurious dealing; and with all the greater reason because the laboring man is, as a rule, weak and unprotected, and because his slender means should in proportion to their scantiness be accounted sacred. Were these precepts carefully obeyed and followed out, would they not be sufficient of themselves to keep under all strife and all its causes?

Again, Pope Pius XI took up the cause in Quadragesimo Anno. He made an important distinction, however, when it came to those businesses which themselves were deprived of enough revenue to pay their workers justly:

[I]f the business in question is not making enough money to pay the workers an equitable wage because it is being crushed by unjust burdens or forced to sell its product at less than a just price, those who are thus the cause of the injury are guilty of grave wrong, for they deprive workers of their just wage and force them under the pinch of necessity to accept a wage less than fair.

OK, so that's a lot of backstory. We know the Church believes this. So what?

First, there is the problem of working for the Church herself. There is no surer path to financial insolvency than for a hard worker to direct their energies towards some form of full-time Catholic apostolate, or to slave away for long hours as a Director of Religious Education, or to teach at a Catholic school.... This becomes a particular problem if they embody the Catholic ethos of “oppenness to life” and have a large family.

I suspect few individuals have ever had aspirations of becoming wealthy while working for the Church, but by the Church’s own teaching, the worker in a Catholic apostolate or school should expect to “be paid a wage sufficient to support him and his family.” (QA 71) It is inexcusably hypocritical that the same clergy who wield the Church’s social teaching as a weapon against the titans of industry — often claiming that this is a non-negotiable moral imperative — often fail so completely when it comes to applying this standard to those under their own employ.

Emphasis added. This is a good point. Some religious orders require a vow of poverty, but a large part of the work is done by people who do not labor under such vows. How much stronger the moral argument would be if it were joined to practical example.

Triple Crown

First in 37 years.

A French Car

A British/Hollywood ideal, American CGI, and Soviet opponents. But a French car.

Ah, New York

Actual headline: "Minnie Mouse And Hello Kitty Arrested In Times Square Brawl."

D-Day

Libertarian-Hating Day

I think we understand here that I am not personally anything like a Libertarian. However, we also know that at least two of my co-bloggers are. Half of that sample is female, which apparently makes it hugely unrepresentative. Today there's a mini-festival of hate aimed at the ideology around that fact.

Jeet Heer:

This type of yearning for the America of the Robber Barons has little to offer most women (who might not want to return to a world where they couldn’t vote and had severely restricted social lives) or for that matter most non-whites (who might recall Jim Crow segregation). As Brian Doherty notes, “American blacks or women … might find libertarian complaints about government growth silly. Most of them certainly feel freer in many important ways than they would have in the nineteenth century.”

Ann Althouse:

To put it very plainly and simply, to me, the libertarians lacked humanity and they were using their pride in their commitment to abstract ideas to resist examining the reasons why they liked the ideas they were wedded to. I think people like that would be very dangerous if they had political power. Intellectually, as people to converse with, I found them cold and rigid, not interested in talking about anything on the level that I am seeking, and creepily eager to insult me for being on the wrong level.

Kevin Drum:

Jeet Heer investigates a burning question today: why are most libertarians men? He offers several plausible explanations, but I think he misses the real one, perhaps because it's pretty unflattering to libertarians.

So here's the quick answer: hard core libertarianism is a fantasy. It's a fantasy where the strongest and most self-reliant folks end up at the top of the heap, and a fair number of men share the fantasy that they are these folks. They believe they've been held back by rules and regulations designed to help the weak, and in a libertarian culture their talents would be obvious and they'd naturally rise to positions of power and influence.... Few women share this fantasy. I don't know why, and I don't really want to play amateur sociologist and guess. Perhaps it's something as simple as the plain observation that in the more libertarian past, women were subjugated to men almost completely.

It's not a great argument, I will suggest. The argument can be pointed equally at any political philosophy that draws inspiration from any past era. But the past is the only place from which we can draw concrete examples to criticize the present approach. We can imagine the future, but we have no way to know if our imaginations of what the future might be like are just moonshine. The past really happened. The cases aren't exactly like our present cases, but they offer concrete analogies that can help us see where we are going wrong, or where we might do better.

Althouse aside -- she's arguing ad hominem against men she really didn't like -- these arguments are rooted in a frame whose purpose is to prevent concrete criticism of the current governing approach. That's no surprise: these are all supporters of the party in power, of the governing President, and of the philosophy he embraces. The sneering at a philosophy because it draws its examples from an imperfect past is really an attempt to disable a whole line of criticism of the present.

On vacation for the next week

Driving to Meridian to spend time with the in-laws and other family.  Y'all be good to each other.

Just Out Of Curiousity...

...how do you do that?

Hillary Clinton proposed Thursday that Americans be automatically registered to vote when they turn 18, unless they opt out, one of a series of voting-law changes she said would expand access to the ballot box.

So, if you're a man -- and not a male-leaning female-born whatever -- you have to register for the Selective Service at 18. They'd love to automate this process, since the concept is zero-noncompliance. But you actually have to go down to the Post Office and send them a card, or at least I did at 18. I assume there are other options now, but they all require you to do something. Because they assume you won't do it for free, there are significant legal penalties for failing to do it.

Most Americans like to drive. So states everywhere have passed "Motor-Voter" laws, requiring the DMV or MVA or whatever they have in their state to ask you if you want to register to vote while you're obtaining a license. Clearly, this doesn't get everyone because we're still talking about it.

Public libraries serve lots of the folks we are hoping to reach, at least we hope they do. It'd be great if they were taking advantage of free opportunities to educate themselves. So when you apply for a library card in many states, they automatically ask you if you'd like to register to vote. But there's no guarantee you go to the library, and if you do, you only need a card to check out books -- not to use the free computers.

We've chased this concept a long way already, and as far as I know we don't have a good idea of how to do what she's talking about. Maybe someone will ask her how she intends to accomplish what Selective Service, Motor-Voter and the Public Library plans haven't managed to do. Assuming, that is, that anyone is allowed to ask her a question.

The rabbit hole

Better than the Avengers.

Jobs and justice for the non-binary

Roger Kimball reports that Bryn Mawr has taken steps to address the increasingly vexing question of which of its applicants are female.  Some, of course, were "assigned female at birth," so that's smooth sailing.  The university will open its arms as well to "transwomen and . . . intersex individuals who live and identify as women at the time of application." In fact, you can get in if you're a member of that shadowy group known as "intersex individuals who do not identify as male." The gates are resolutely shut, however, against "those assigned female at birth who have taken medical or legal steps to identify as male."

What new opportunities for padding the administration the new policy offers! You may have a dozen deans of diversity, but how many administrators looking into the “legal or medical steps taken to affirm gender” do most campuses have? It is an opportunity for growth at a time when many colleges are facing cutbacks.

The one thing we can be sure of is that Bryn Mawr will continue to celebrate its vital role as a women-only institution.