last thought on metaphysically neutral. seems to me better to say that the issue of abortion was not one that could have been thought of or envisioned by the document itself. There are various elements of the Constitution that can be deployed to support either view--I think legitimately. So it's not perhaps the Constitution is neutral so much as pre-differentiated on this point. Which is probably why it's such a divisive one.

Which again leads me back to the idea that it probably isn't the proper context in which to be having the debate.

Actually I should have fisked that part of the argument, thanks for flagging it. Because I don't by the metaphysically neutral part either. I don't think his argument rests on the point. Or at least has to. To me all one has to say is that it was a matter for legislatures not courts. I think his sub-point about how compromise works makes sense from there.

I'm not sure that automatically makes him an opponent of abortion--he might be i don't know either way--as much as it might make him someone in that ambivalent (i.e. pulled in both directions) middle.

Also, I'm not sure the content/procedural distinction while in theory very separate i don't see how in practice (at least in this case) they get so easily separated. If someone believes that the courts weren't in the position to be making a decision on the matter in the first place, they may or may not agree with the content or even the logic behind the content-conclusions, but basically it's full stop before that point. That content train doesn't even leave the procedural station.

I'm also not sure there is automatically inoculation at work. I see what you mean and that does happen, but I can think of counterexamples. Andrew Sullivan comes to mind who says flatly he thinks abortion is wrong but also thinks we live in a plural civil society and therefore something along the lines of the non-restricted abortion in the first three months is something he thinks is a fair compromise with that order.

As far as the actual argument/content of Roe v. Wade if you one were going to argue for it as right in the Constitution, seems to me it would be much better argued from the equal treatment clause than right to privacy.

I wonder if something is up with the radio button. This is the 2nd time this has happened. I put in the modern-postmodern thing. Went back and edited it and somehow a number showed up in the "assign a number" place. This time it was four. Which automatically made it fourth in whatever series needed a number 4, which turned out to the adieu to Culture11. Weird. I used the back button to go back to the edit function--maybe that was it?

Will,

You had me at "bunch of Culture11 groupies."

truly tragic.

fixed--thanks for the heads up. .

A question that often occurs to those of us who are concerned with what is clumsily referred to as “the postmodern” is how the hell anyone is actually taught about or exposed to this stuff at all.

In my case, I have a graduate background in philosophy, so for me it came in that way. Which is not the norm I suppose. I would disagree that pomo wasn't fashionable in the 90s (and still is)--at least within humanities departments of many of a major US university.

Another topic for another day would be how postmodernism is really caught up in US culture wars. In the European context, where most of the original thinkers came from, the majority of them are better labeled post-structuralist, and have more to do with a kind of post-Marxist analysis of the Euro left in the 60-80s.

While they are some relations they are very different beasts. Derrida's work is much more political, social, philosophical and got interpreted somehow in the US as literature. (Where postmodern theory dominates in academia). Mostly I guess because there are basically two wings to one party in the US and the social-political element of the US can never be deconstructed. But some fiction could be.

iow, postmodernism in the US I think is much more built around aesthetic sense ("fashionable" or not), identity, posture, and therefore it is communicated primarily through the media.

good point. if the left wants to make some longer term hay out of this crisis then they are going to have to get at that resistance. one way is by showing that the right-wing ideology of late that claimed the mantle of free-marketdom was far from. Paulson's bailing out of his Goldman Sachs buddies (while leaving his rival Lehman to fail) being a classic example.

I'm not really sure Obama is that guy though. He's instinctively more market-oriented. Cass Sunstein called him "University of Chicago liberal." But we'll see. If it gets as bad as I'm worried it might, then he'll do whatever he thinks he has to do to prevent collapse.

good point. i was thinking more cultural, moral, philosophical patterns, but social technology is one that easily calls for new traditions or re-invented/re-upped practices to be sure.

I have no thoughts really on the topic. I just wanted to say tip of the bowler hat for the use of Yardarm. That was possibly the greatest use of that word I've ever seen. That gets Word of the Day.

Roque,

I don't want to get into the history argument on this one. Else we end up in the never ending abyss and then Godwin's Law will probably be proved right yet again.

I'll just say my general schpeel on all this. And this is not taking the Palestinian side, 'cuz I think it's a nearly infinite number of errors on all sides. But The Palestinians really have never had a group that they choose to represent them--from all sides, factions, and constituencies of theirs--at the table since the peace process started. [Open question I suppose on 1947]. Even if Clinton was right that Arafat betrayed him, then Bill (and Dennis Ross & Crew) has no one really to blame but himself since he engineered a coup essentially bringing Arafat in and declaring him the legitimate broker on the Palestinian side. The idea that you will negotiate with Fatah and not Hamas to me is just more of that.

So in other words, I think Ross is basically telling the truth in what was offered, but he fails to grasp that the process was ultimately flawed from the get go (on both sides) and then he and Clinton are basically just trying to cover their butts in history. Which I can understand mind you, I can even understand how they feel that way (from their pov), but I wouldn't take it as gospel truth. There is another side to the story.

Freddie,

I agree with you that Israel has a huge nuclear arsenal and has mass deterrence against any country (including I would say a hypothetically nuclear armed Iran in the future). Country to country warfare is precisely where Israel is the strongest--which is why since '73 there really hasn't been one. Only these low-intensity conflicts that make use of their military vulnerabilities. Certainly, as I was pointing out with West Bank occupation and Gaza bombing, the Palestinians are also imperiled in many ways. Ways that are not often covered enough in US media. But when I talk on the Israeli side, when I say existential threat I mean the long term loss of political legitimacy of the state. (What I called losing the war, which is maybe the wrong metaphor). Jimmy Carter called it apartheid, which I'm not sure is the right word for it, but does get at the reality of the decreasing legitimacy of the state. Look at the israeli political scene. It is increasingly deadlocked and logjammed. Israel had more emigration out than immigration in this year. It has got itself (again rightly or wrongly) into increasingly militarized society, which is undercuts the moral of a liberal constitutional order.

I guess what I should have made clearer is that some state may continue to exist but my fear is that it slides further and further into the loss of its democratic nature. It was founded to be a Jewish liberal democracy. If it ceases to be the latter, whatever husk remains (even if it retains the name of Israel and still is based on Jewish citizenship), then in my mind it will have gone out of existence. Does that make sense?

What's the implication? S--t I don't know. War is hell. The only implication I draw from all this is that (as I said in the Hamas piece quoting Creveld):

When the strong fight the weak, the strong become weakened.

For me all the attempt to defend Israel from some doctrine of proportionality is completely useless relative to what is actually going on long term (strategically) in this fight. Israel continues to win battles only to be losing the long term war. Because the strong, esp. if it is a liberal constitutional democracy like Israel, begins to erode its own political legitimacy being drawn into these conflicts.

And I say this as someone who thinks Israel has a right to exist (in the pre-67 borders). If they continue on this path, they are in serious existential trouble. They will have won the armchair debate about proportionality to no practical avail.

The reason groups like Hamas embed themselves in civilian populations is that since WWII it is clear that liberal democracies will target civilian populations/infrastructure. e.g. The US firebombed Dresden, Tokyo even without using nukes. Whether that was right or not, is not a question I want to get into now, just that Hamas-like gropus are trying to use what they know will happen militarily to redound (morally) back on the strong power.

Like I said this is particularly, horribly brutal stuff. But it does have a logic. It's not Western versus Muslim or whatever. It certainly takes certain cues and is justified within those worlds by recourse to their own traditions, history, and such. But to me that is more the way it shows up, not the underlying structure. As Mark correctly pointed out this stuff goes back to Ho Chi Minh and Mao, not exactly Muslims either one of them.

But back to the Israel-Palestine version of this for a sec.

This is not a justification but rather simply an observation. From the Palestinian view the choice seems to be don't fire rockets (Fatah) and continue to have your land colonized--the "settlements" continue on in an ad hoc but pretty well unabated fashion in the West Bank. Choice #2: Fire rockets (Hamas) and get bombed. Either way the potential for ever creating a state continues to decline and Israel is left having to face the question of whether it can be a liberal democracy as it has to embed further and further into this occupation.

Roque,

Your point on propotionality to me, in its correctness, shows why the whole concept itself is now meaningless in an era of low-intensity conflict. That notion of proportional or disproportional assumes nation state to nation-state warfare. I have a long post as to why I think that Here if you are interested.

The proportionality doctrine comes out of Clausewitz's theory of warfare. And I think Martin van Creveld has demonstrably argued that the Clausewitzian paradigm of war is basically over.

As to the question of what replaces something like proportionality as a kind of rules of war for this new Low-Intensity Conflict Era I have no idea. I think they are basically brutal, with all sides committing all kinds of horrible acts.

Roque,

Some of the Sunni groups in Anbar are Islamists, some I would say are not. So on that point Roy is mistaken imo. And by Islamists there I mean his Islamo-nationalists. The al-Qaeda in Iraq group represented an actual attempt--albeit one that will never have any chance of success--of a new caliphate. A real rejection of nation-state basis of world order. A man like Zarqawi hated Hamas. But Roy is I think correct that the surge issue was accepting the reality of a series of distinct actors, many of whom were armed and had committed acts we would generally label as terror. And yet somehow they had some nationalistic/local political fight and had local/national aims. Unlike again AQI.

When you cite Tibi (describing the meaning of Islamist), I think that is their rhetoric, but in actual political practice (Roy's point) they look more like nationalists. The rhetoric to be sure is still there. It is still there in Iran. But in practice, Iran has to emphasize Persian nationalism, anti-Western imperialism because large swaths of the populations have rejected the revolution and while they still use the language, they are cynical enough to realize it ain't gonna happen. All these groups become conservative, once they get some hold on power. The hardcore revolutionaries will always be living in the caves in other words.

As to how will we know Hamas will be sincere? I don't know. How did they know with the Sunni groups in Iraq? Is there some element (even there) of groups playing both sides? Of course. This is politics. If they do play both sides then they are ferreted out, only proving it would seem to me your sense of their intentions.

My own sense is that Hamas could be pressured by other Arab groups. When the other Arab countries signed on to the Saudi-led Road Map in Riyadh in 2007, Hamas interestingly did not comment. The first time it was done (2002), they publicly rejected the document. The first go round there was still a major split among many Arab countries. The second time it was far more unanimous and Hamas had to keep quiet. That to me signaled a huge amount.

FYI: Hamas' exiled political (more radical leader) Meshaal has called for the West to finally engage Hamas.
Story here