Stupid alert -- yesterday Andrew Sullivan wrote,

Is Bush making America safe for liberalism? You betcha. Bush has legitimized a huge expansion of the welfare state, liberalizing immigration, and using force for democratization abroad. All the next Democratic president has to do to finish Bush's hard work is to raise taxes to pay for it all. And by the time Bush is done, the deficits will be so enormous, tax hikes will seem defensible. Advantage: the left.

Whenever I run into a statement like Andy's I find myself overwhelmed by the imperviousness of the rightie mind. I believe I speak for most liberals when I say we don't want tax hikes or anything I would call a "welfare state" yet it is fundamental to rightie groupthink to believe that's what liberalism is all about.

(And, of course, "liberalizing immigration" and "using force for democratization abroad" are code words for (1) Bush's proposed guest worker program and (2) the  Neocon Empire, neither of which is much beloved by liberals.)

In the February 28 issue of The New Republic, Jonathan Chait wrote that one distinction between liberals and conservatives is that liberals propose policy to achieve a desired outcome (e.g., reducing the deficit), whereas conservatives design policy to conform to ideological principle (e.g., raising taxes is bad).

So, to a liberal, raising taxes is not an end unto itself, or something to be done for the sake of doing it. Rather, it is something that sometimes needs to be done, like it or not, for the sake of making sure the government has the funds to fulfill its obligations. And liberals don't like "big government" for the sake of "big government." Instead, liberals think that government has a legitimate role in enabling a better quality of life for citizens, while conservatives, apparently, don't.

Chait writes that if there were empirical evidence (or a note from God) showing that beneficial outcomes like saving the environment or feeding hungry children can be achieved by cutting taxes, then liberals would have no qualms at all about cutting taxes. But no matter how much evidence piles up about the long-term damage caused by irresponsible tax cuts, the righties will continue to call for tax cuts.

Chait writes,

We're accustomed to thinking of liberalism and conservatism as parallel ideologies, with conservatives preferring less government and liberals preferring more. The equivalency breaks down, though, when you consider that liberals never claim that increasing the size of government is an end in itself. Liberals only support larger government if they have some reason to believe that it will lead to material improvement in people's lives. Conservatives also want material improvement in people's lives, of course, but proving that their policies can produce such an outcome is a luxury, not a necessity. 

The contrast between economic liberalism and economic conservatism, then, ultimately lies not only in different values or preferences but in different epistemologies.

Last April, Juan Cole wrote that "the two-party system in the US has produced a two-party epistemology." Epistemology is "The branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge, its presuppositions and foundations, and its extent and validity," says the dictionary.  I'm not sure the two-party system is entirely to blame, but the two-party epistemology is a sad fact.

It isn't just that Left and Right in America hold different opinions; it's that we're living with different knowledges, assumptions, and frames of reference. This is why we can't talk to each other, especially when "debate" is limited to sound bytes and shouting.

Some of this comes from mental rigidity. Take, for example, the widespread perspective that if you don't support pre-emptive war you are "soft" on national defense. To me, this is a bit like saying that if you don't own earmuffs you must not like to ice skate. 

But most of our differences are not from being closed minded, but from not thinking at all.

Matt Taibbi wrote that for most Americans the words left and right have slipped their philosophical moorings entirely and have only symbolic meaning. And it's hard to pin down exactly what those symbols are.

When I see someone called a leftist or left-leaning in print, I'm never sure whether they're talking about an actual communist, or just some timorous capitalist yuppie whom David Brooks spotted drinking a latte, or standing in line to see Cinema Paradiso. Politically, it's just not a very concise definition.

But of course we all know exactly what left means, when we're talking about social labels. In common parlance, left is clearly code for "feckless, pseudo-intellectual wiener," while right is code for "winner" and "the people who are actually running things while you assholes are reading James Joyce." Left also emphatically stands for "wrong side of history," while right is explicitly understood to mean the only remaining legitimate vision for future social organization. All ambitious politicians run screaming from the word left, understanding it to be a fatal electoral contagion, whereas being labeled right-wing even adds a winner's aura to an openly drooling political psychopath, like Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning.

...

Obviously there's no way to really stop a group of people bent on demonizing dissenters by the tireless use of some all-encompassing, Satanic label. When even Nancy Pelosi can be described as a "left-wing torch-thrower" (a small California paper used that term last week), it's pretty clear the word is more meant as an insult, to describe a fuzzy-headed refusal to accept patriotic orthodoxy, than it is to refer to a concrete set of political beliefs.

Taibbi calls for lefties to fight back and not let the symbols stick. I'm not sure that's possible. Someone who's thick enough to believe that liberals want tax increases for the sake of tax increases is probably unreachable.

The irony of our current symbolic situation is that liberals, I genuinely believe, are on the edge of rediscovering themselves and a unified vision of what America can be. This is in spite of some of the numbskulls who allegedly speak for us, like Christopher Hitchens (who, truth be known, has also slipped his philosophical and other moorings in recent years), Peter "let's love war" Beinart, and Martin "liberalism is dead" Peretz. Judging by the Left Blogosphere, liberalism is alive and strong and ready to make a comeback.

Conservatives, on the other hand, are actually a fragmented bunch. The major fault line of the Right is between social conservatives and libertarians, and there is further fragmentation within those groups -- between pro-war and anti-war libertarians, for example, and fundamentalists vs. neocons.

What is it that is really holding those groups together, other than a dislike of "lefties"? Does anyone know?

Ironically, were another state to attempt to invoke the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ under the Optional Protocol against the US during the next twelve months, the body that would have to decide when (if ever) the US withdrawal became valid is … the ICJ itself.

The decision to walk away from the Optional Protocol is thus revealed as being only one of three things: (1) It could be an act of simple petulance; (2) It could be a studied move of retaliation against the ICJ for other decisions in other areas, a retaliatory act whose subtlety would seem to exceed the capacity of the people who wish to make paleoconservative John Bolton our ambassador to the UN; or (3) most likely, it is an invitation to the states to take it easy on compliance with our legal obligations under the Consular Conventions, obligations which endure past our withdrawal from the Optional Protocol.

That third option is of course another poke in the eye, a destructive thrust aimed not at international system, but at the domestic commitment to the rule of law. That it emanates from people who do not, in their hearts, speech and writings really consider international law to be law in any binding way, and who see the basic sinews of international legality – the Geneva Conventions, for example – as at most annoyances, only makes it worse. And it further calls into question their belief in domestic law.

President Bush might be concerned that the withdrawal will piss off Mexico, since it was the plight of 51 Mexican citizens under sentence of execution in the U.S. that triggered the whole flap. Mexico says that U.S. state courts have a nasty habit of executing Mexicans without notifying the Mexican embassy. Like most of the industrialized world, Mexico does not sentence people to death (except in military courts). Like most of the industrialized world, Mexico considers capital punishment to be barbaric. So the execution thing is a major sore point.

Condi was in Mexico yesterday trying to smooth things over. In a typical Condi statement, she said (in effect) that the U.S. understands the importance of the protocol but believes it was "inappropriate" for the ICJ to expect the United States to enforce it. Also:

She and [Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Enrique] Derbez also attempted to push aside several weeks of back-and-forth criticism between the two governments that has created new irritants in the neighbors' always complicated and sensitive relations.

The State Department has criticized Mexico recently for heightened violence on the border and continued human-rights violations. Last week, U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza rebuked Mexico in a speech, saying Washington wants better border security before agreeing to freer immigration and that Mexico's economy depends too much on remittances sent home by immigrants.

Fox and his aides responded angrily, saying Mexico wants an equal partner across the border, not a neighbor who always is second-guessing it.

I'm sure the Mexicans enjoyed that part about human rights violations. Executing foreign nationals without allowing them to contact their embassies would be a human rights violation to most rational people.

In a two-paragraph letter dated March 7, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice informed U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan that the United States "hereby withdraws" from the Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. The United States proposed the protocol in 1963 and ratified it -- along with the rest of the Vienna Convention -- in 1969.

 

The protocol requires signatories to let the International Court of Justice (ICJ) make the final decision when their citizens say they have been illegally denied the right to see a home-country diplomat when jailed abroad.

With a view to facilitating the exercise of consular functions relating to nationals of the sending State:

(a) consular officers shall be free to communicate with nationals of the sending State and to have access to them. Nationals of the sending State shall have the same freedom with respect to communication with and access to consular officers of the sending State;

(b) if he so requests, the competent authorities of the receiving State shall, without delay, inform the consular post of the sending State if, within its consular district, a national of that State is arrested or committed to prison or to custody pending trial or is detained in any other manner. Any communication addressed to the consular post by the person arrested, in prison, custody or detention shall also be forwarded by the said authorities without delay. The said authorities shall inform the person concerned without delay of his rights under this sub-paragraph;

(c) consular officers shall have the right to visit a national of the sending State who is in prison, custody or detention, to converse and correspond with him and to arrange for his legal representation. They shall also have the right to visit any national of the sending State who is in prison, custody or detention in their district in pursuance of a judgment. Nevertheless, consular officers shall refrain from taking action on behalf of a national who is in prison, custody or detention if he expressly opposes such action.

And later, it says that if a signatory to the protocol thinks another signatory is not abiding by the protocol, the matter can be brought before the International Court of Justice.

Lane of WaPo explains,

The United States initially backed the measure as a means to protect its citizens abroad. It was also the first country to invoke the protocol before the ICJ, also known as the World Court, successfully suing Iran for the taking of 52 U.S. hostages in Tehran in 1979.

But in recent years, other countries, with the support of U.S. opponents of capital punishment, successfully complained before the World Court that their citizens were sentenced to death by U.S. states without receiving access to diplomats from their home countries.

According to Adam Liptak in the New York Times, the withdrawal from the protocol came about because last year the ICJ ordered new hearings for 51 Mexicans under sentence of execution in the United States.  The ICJ said that the U.S. had violated the Vienna Convention by failing to notify Mexican officials when Mexican nationals were arrested and charged with serious crimes.

 

My first reaction to this story is that the death penalty is more important to the Bushies than the rights and safety of American citizens traveling abroad.

 

And my second reaction is that, if I were in jail in a foreign country, I sure as hell would want the U.S. embassy to be notified. In fact, I would want the bleeping ambassador himself to camp out in my cell and hold my hand.

 

But that's the problem with us liberals. We take the Golden Rule seriously. Real patriotic nonliberal Amerkins are not supposed to treat others as we would want to be treated. We got a right to treat bleeping furriners any bleeping way we goddam bleeping well please.

 

Rightie blogger Captain Ed says we lefties should look at the bigger picture. Which is:

 

1. The protocol only applies to the nations that signed it, which leaves out a lot of nations. Only 30 percent of nations signing on to the rest of the Vienna Conventions on consular protocol signed the 1963 optional protocol. Other nations that did not agree to sign the optional protocol include Brazil, Canada, Jordan, Russia, and Spain.

 

2. Agreement with this protocol allows the ICJ to interfere with state courts in ways that even a U.S. federal court could not. Writes the Captain,

Bush has sent a message to the world that we will brook no further interference in our sovereign government, especially with the independent judiciary. The method in which the World Court implemented this clause required the executive branch to interfere with the judiciary in an inappropriate manner, or for the judiciary to start separate foreign-policy contacts, neither of which passes Constitutional muster. Those separations of power have served us well for over two centuries, and they shouldn't be sacrified on the altar of multilateralism.

To which I reply: The Constitution of the United States, Article VI, second paragraph --

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

This says that state courts are bound by U.S. treaties, does it not? And if state courts defy the Constitution and refuse to honor U.S. treaties, does the President not have the authority to step in and order the courts to comply? That last question is a technical one, and perhaps someone can argue that such an order should come from the Supreme Court or some other part of the federal government. But the righties seem to be arguing that states are not bound to honor treaties entered into by the federal government and/or cannot be compelled to honor such treaties, and I think the Constitution says otherwise.

 

The other matter, that only a few nations honor the optional protocol anyway, so why bother, doesn't seem all that compelling to me, either. Being underdressed may not be ideal, but it is often preferable to being buck naked.

 

So, having looked at the big picture, I still say it looks like the death penalty is more important to the Bushies than the rights and safety of American citizens traveling abroad.

 

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Bush is a historic figure, the Ronald Reagan of the Middle East, whose heroic invasion of Iraq is a historic turning point for worldwide democracy tantamount to the fall of Berlin Wall.

But the counter-melody can be heard as well: Bush is falsely taking credit for the pro-democratic movement in the Middle East, some of those moves are insignificant and transitory, the long-term impact of the Iraq war will be disastrous, and Bush is engaging in unseemly saber rattling.

The largely Shiite crowds were huge compared to the smaller anti-Syrian demonstrations held for the past week.

The anti-Syrian protesters had mostly been Christians, with some Druze and Sunnis. But Lebanon is probably only now 20 percent Maronite Christian (the most anti-Syrian group), and may be as much as 40 percent Shiite.

Juan Cole continues,

The simplistic master narrative constructed by the partisans of President George W. Bush held that the January 30 elections were a huge success, and signalled a turn to democracy in the Middle East. Then the anti-Syrian demonstrations were interpreted as a yearning for democracy inspired by the Iraqi elections.

This interpretation is a gross misunderstanding of the situation in the Middle East. Bush is not pushing with any real force for democratization of Saudi Arabia (an absolute monarchy) or Pakistan (where the elected parliament demands in vain that General Pervez Musharraf take off his uniform if he wants to be president), or Tunisia (where Zayn Ben Ali has just won his 4th unopposed term as president), etc. Democratization is being pushed only for regimes that Bush dislikes, such as Syria or Iran. The gestures that Mubarak of Egypt made (officially recognized parties may put up candidates to run against him, but not popular political forces like the Muslim Brotherhood) are empty.

Please read the rest of Juan Cole's post. It's very informative.

 

In other goddam bleeping rightie developments: Via Memeorandum, I found this rightie blogger who says of the bankruptcy bill,

This bankruptcy bill has been flying under the radar, so I don't know much about it. However, I do have confidence that the House New Democrats [who are said to support it] know enough about it, and are right. The venom spewed by Atrios and MaxSpeak only make me more inclined to think so.

Truly, the stuff that sheep are made of. This poor lamb even admits he doesn't know what he's talking about. But if lefties are agin' somthin', he is fer dern sure gonna be fer it.

 

The implication is that the CIA is sending people to Egypt, Jordan or other Middle Eastern countries because they can be tortured there and coerced into providing information they wouldn't give up otherwise.

 

The problem with this argument is that it assumes that the CIA believes that torture works. But in 30 years of writing about intelligence, I've never encountered a spook who didn't realize that torture is usually counterproductive.

Since the most notable charactistic of the penal systems in the chosen countries is the skill, imagination, and enthusiam with which they practice torture, and since the officials cited go to great pains to emphasize that we made really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really sure that the torturers would be good this time, and since there is no point to sending a prisoner to a country that practices torture unless you want him tortured, I think it's safe to assume that "interrogation" is something of a euphemism.

What's gained by transferring a prisoner to his home country for interrogation is emotional leverage, according to Arab and American intelligence chiefs. A hardened al Qaeda member often can't be physically coerced into giving up information, no matter how nasty the interrogator. But he may do so if confronted by, say, his mother, father, brother or sister.

The transfers were portrayed as an alternative to what American officials have said is the costly, manpower-intensive process of housing them in the United States or in American-run facilities in other countries.

Suppose the FBI had captured Mohamed Atta before Sept. 11, 2001. Under U.S. legal rules at the time, the man who plotted the airplane suicide attacks probably could not have been held or interrogated in the United States. Would it have made sense to "render" Atta to a place where he could have been interrogated in a way that might have prevented Sept. 11?

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the provision "goes right to the heart of what America is all about. It says those who use violence to achieve their political goals cannot get a benefit, in this case bankruptcy."

... over the past three decades the lives of ordinary Americans have become steadily less secure, and their chances of plunging from the middle class into acute poverty ever larger. Job stability has declined; spells of unemployment, when they happen, last longer; fewer workers receive health insurance from their employers; fewer workers have guaranteed pensions.

Some of these changes are the result of a changing economy. But the underlying economic trends have been reinforced by an ideologically driven effort to strip away the protections the government used to provide. For example, long-term unemployment has become much more common, but unemployment benefits expire sooner. Health insurance coverage is declining, but new initiatives like health savings accounts (introduced in the 2003 Medicare bill), rather than discouraging that trend, further undermine the incentives of employers to provide coverage.

Soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Brigade - the same military unit whose troops fired on the car carrying the freed Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena - were under investigation last year for raping Iraqi women, US army documents reveal.

Four soldiers were alleged to have raped the two women while on guard duty in a Baghdad shopping precinct. A US army investigator interviewed several soldiers from the military unit, the 1-15th battalion of the 3rd Infantry Brigade - but did not locate or interview the Iraqi women involved - before shutting down the inquiry for lack of evidence.

Transcripts of the investigation, obtained by the Guardian from the American Civil Liberties Union, show only the most cursory attempts by the investigator to establish whether the women were raped.

But White House counselor Dan Bartlett defended the administration's policies, saying it was important after the Sept. 11 attacks to take a ''hard look at our entire apparatus -- militarily, intelligence, diplomatic -- to see how we were going to fight and win the war on terror."

... The Bush administration has publicly said the United States did not hand over people to be tortured. ''At every step of the way, President Bush and his administration has made very clear that we abide by the laws of our land and the treaty obligations we have," Bartlett told CNN.

In recent years, well over 100 people have disappeared or been "rendered" all around the world. Witnesses tell the same story: masked men in an unmarked jet seize their target, cut off his clothes, put him in a blindfold and jumpsuit, tranquilize him and fly him away.

They're describing U.S. agents collaring terrorism suspects. Some notorious terrorists such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the mastermind of 9/11, were rendered this way.

But as Correspondent Scott Pelley reports, it's happening to many others. Some are taken to prisons infamous for torture. And a few may have been rendered by mistake.

Remember the essay by Philip Agre that defined conservatism as the domination of society by an aristocracy? He's saying the same thing Lakoff is saying, except Lakoff says "paternalistic authoritarianism" instead of "aristocracy."

Update: A couple of regular readers have drawn conclusions from the Lakoff quote that are entirely the opposite of what Lakoff says in the article linked. These are bright readers, and so the fault for not making the point correctly is mine. I assumed that readers would understand where Lakoff was coming from without quoting the entire article (which is copyright infringement), but now I see this was an assumption I should not have made. I apologize.

Lakoff's "thing," which he's articulated in many articles and books, is that liberals (which is what he is) believe government should be beneficial and protective, whereas conservatives (which he is not) want government to be like a strict father who punishes children who misbehave but otherwise let's them sink or swim.

I'll write something else about this later today.

The fact is, Americans don't believe in government of, by, and for the people any more. Ronald Reagan's “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem,” was the obituary of government of, by, and for the people. If government is not a solution, not a means for the people to better their lives, then it is no longer of, by, and for the people. It has been surrendered to corporations and special interests. Reagan's words were a signal to the people: Don't expect government to do anything for you. 

And a couple of days ago I wrote,

... we left government "of the people, by the people, for the people" behind somewhere in the 20th century. I don't know exactly where we lost it, but it's sure as hell not here now.

We've all been conditioned to not look to government for anything any more. Makes me wonder why we bother to still have one. The Republicans are determined to "starve the beast" so that there is no government, just a powerful political oligarchy in service to big money interests. We, the People will be left to our own devices.

But Americans didn't use to think this way. Americans understood that government has a genuine role in the real lives of real people. But now as soon as somebody opens his mouth to say "the government should ..." he gets hooted down. Unless, of course, he's about to propose that government outlaw abortion or establish religious indoctrination in public schools.

Here Digby traces this no-government development from Goldwater. And he continues,

... there can be no doubt that what was once a national consensus that the government’s purpose was to deliver for its citizens is no longer operative. Instead we have a puny incrementalism that passes for li