Commenter Archive

I actually think what just happened with the attempt to repeal and replace the ACA has done a lot to expose the weakness of that argument. It's something some vocal Republicans and some libertarians believe in theory but which has pretty limited traction when people start to contemplate how it would actually play out.

@saul-degraw @pillsy @leeesq

I agree that it's the harder fight but I also try to follow a first do no harm principle. Failing to do that is what gets us carceral feminism and a lot of the other policy failures libertarians rightly criticize.

It reminds me of the issues with pay day lenders. On the one hand I do agree it's predatory but I think just banning it could be worse for the people it's trying to help by trading one evil for another. Instead of dealing with the lender who is at least subject to some oversight they now get to decide between not buying groceries or taking their chances with Bobby the loan shark. Better to attack the poverty that puts people in these situations to begin with.

There's a lot of this in our politics where we fight symptoms instead if diseases.

To me the better response to situations like this is a robust social safety net to ensure that people entering into these types of arrangements really are doing it of their own free will. The problem isn't unusual or taboo sexual relationships, the problem is economic insecurity.

Banning it is another trip down the road of trying to pass laws and use law enforcement and the criminal justice system to save people from themselves which has a pretty sorry history in this country, including for the people who are supposed to be receiving the protection. It also rests on a lot of retrograde and questionable assumptions about sex and power dynamics.

@leeesq I think what you and @pillsy are saying is true as far as it goes. What it doesn't account for is the fact that political Islam does exist. We live under a government that's encouraged it to exist when it's AK-47s and RPGs were pointed at enemies (the USSR) or governments we don't like (Assad). That's without even getting into the long standing Shia v. Sunni feud or the situation in Gaza and the West Bank.

I have a lot if criticisms of the far left in this country (the obsessions with identity politics and related dogma will never be my bag). But I don't think they're the ones feeding radical Islam. It's our intelligence community and military intervening on their side.

That's exactly what I mean though. It isn't only about drinking wine and eating pork, it's about what a culture that defines itself in no small part by it's secularism does with a minority that defines itself in large part by religion. And not religion in the watered down mainline Protestant, post Vatican II Catholic way, but a way that looks to them like something that was left behind in the bad old days.

If only it were that easy. And that's not even getting into the French take on organized religion.

I think like Pillsy said below you need to treat them as fully enfranchised citizens and provide adequate economic opportunity. It could still take multiple generations and will certainly have all kinds of hiccups. But then this is why I don't think animosity in Europe to more immigration from certain parts of the world is so crazy. It isn't an easy thing to do well and it's hard to known if you're succeeding.

America has a certain set of founding myths and principles about immigration. Now we've been grossly hypocritical and failing to live up to those things in very profound ways from day 1, but it's still part of our cultural DNA. I'm not sure it's fair to hold other countries to that standard, especially when they were founded on myths and principles of self governance for people who shared certain linguistic and cultural traits, or in the case of modern France about particular political principles arising out of rebellion against absolute monarchy.

Now I know that France is a bit more flexible about what it means to be French, than say, Germany, but I also know that official secularism is one of the things hard wired into their cultural DNA. It's possible that Islam without a major reformation of some kind will never be compatible with that.

No disagreement. It lacks popular legitimacy and is therefore an easy punching bag. I do think it could work but it would need to be done very slowly with very limited goals. All the talk about a United States of Europe in the early aughts was premature by decades. It would still be premature if it was just starting to bubble up now.

Well that's one of the many parts of the platform I don't agree with. Once they're there I think the only acceptable answer is to enfranchise and assimilate as best you can.

@pillsy

I won't argue that there isn't hypocrisy on the part of these populist movements or that xenophobia has nothing to do with it. When Jean-Marie Le Pen was leader of the National Front the party was the unapologetic home of France's skinheads. All I'm saying is that the reconstructed party wouldn't be a contender if that was all this was about, and that centrist liberal parties and politicians wouldn't be getting pinched by populists if they'd done a better job managing these issues. It's not like they don't have all of the structural advantages in the world's advanced democracies.

The legacy of France's empire is something they'll be living with for generations, that's true. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to pack more, similarly situated people into the ghettos they already have.

The shooter in this instance was a French national. Not seeing anything else yet that's definitive on his background.

On the broader issue I don't think it's controversial to say that European countries have not done a good job at integration. You see it with the descendents of the Gastarbeiters in Germany, you see it in the Banlieus in France.

Failed public policy has already turned these places into breeding grounds for extremism and I see no reason to think the latest efforts will go better. If I was a tax payer over there I'd ask why my government that's already mucked this up is intent on throwing more fuel into the fire.

I dunno about that. The populist answer to these issues isn't the one I agree with but I understand the parts of the appeal that don't involve attacks on civil liberties (i.e. let's stay out of these conflicts, and especially in Europe, let's stop importing culturally hostile people from backwards, war torn places).

Those level headed centrists didn't exactly create Islamist extremism but it's a monster they've been feeding raw meat to for the last 35 years or more. Until they reckon with what theyve done they have no sympathy from me.

If she wins I predict disintegration of the EU. They can get along without the British who were never fully committed to anything beyond lowering trade barriers. Loss of France (and I think that would follow) makes the entire project look like German imperialism.

Good and interesting read. And now we have another Islamist attack to throw into the mix.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/21/europe/paris-police-shooting-champs-elysees/

I actually strongly disagree with your implicit conclusion that you can take poor on poor violence out of the equation. Most homicides in the US would probably fall into the poor on poor violence category, and a hugely disproportionate number of those homicides are black on black. Meanwhile, despite high profile incidents like Charleston, SC, race based vigilante type murders have become rare.

This isnt to say there arent plenty of differences, but like Brazil we have economically excluded, historically oppressed racial minorities concentrated in blighted and impoverished areas where they commit violence against each other at rates that much of the country would never tolerate, all while violence in general reaches historical lows. The fact that the Brazilians permit that to continue show that they really aren't that different from us, where it arguably counts the most.

There was an article several years ago which posited that from a socio-economic perspective, the US is really much more like Latin America, even if we've become richer and have closer cultural connections to Western Europe (struggling to locate it but will share if I find it). I think it was instructive on this issue.

I took several history courses on South America in college. From what we studied the racial situation in places like Brazil is different but I'd be hesitant to call it less violent. It might be fair to characterize it as more stratified though.

One of the things you also have to keep in mind is that there were far fewer slaves in the British colonies in North America than in Brazil and the Caribbean where the entire enterprise was basically a giant sugar cane plantation. That combined with the relatively sparse and diffuse population was more conducive to African slaves and their descendants being treated as a distinct group in the area that would become the US.

I thought this was a good piece. Watching my wife go through pregnancy has made my views on abortion much more complicated. On the one hand I get why people would want to prohibit it in a way I never quite understood before. I could never imagine doing anything or wanting to terminate her pregnancy and I regularly worry something out of my control would cause that to happen. On the other I've also developed a much better appreciation for the physical labor of carrying a child and women's medical needs more broadly. I get why you wouldn't want far away legislators, bureaucrats, and law enforcement involved in personal decisions. I certainly wouldn't want them there.

I think the best practice in a world of imperfect options is to remain pro choice on public policy grounds, but support efforts to minimize unplanned pregnancies, including making contraception widely available.

That part of in house actually isn't so bad. Everywhere I've been has had a tacit acceptance that Legal is different. You go through the same motions as everyone else but it isn't what you're judged on.

The parts I struggle with have more to do with the human interactions. There are good business people and I actually find them a pleasure to work with. They take legal advice seriously, their risks are calculated, and you can really learn from them as much as they do from you. Unfortunately these people are few and far between. Most of your interactions are with big egos, bullshit artists, lousy salesmen, mindless box checkers, and people whose primary objective is to fly under the radar. You spend more time navigating personalities and trying to interpret nonsensical, vaguely positive corporate speak than doing actual legal work.

Granted this is just part of being a lawyer. I had plenty of stupid experiences when I was hanging out with Sean the weed dealer instead of Bob from Business Development.

The inane culture satirized in Office Space still holds pretty true though even that's gotten worse. Office Space predates Enron so doesn't include the massive CYA bureaucracy, trainings, and and enforced cultural norms/focus on 'optics' that have followed. Also even though Wall Street has done well since 2008 the world is still precarious for a lot of people whereas Office Space came out during boom times. Now you'd need to throw a lot more paranoia and buck passing into the mix (among plenty of other things).

A former colleague of mine and I referred to the company we worked for as Initech. Office Space is actually kind of gentle compared to the reality of white collar corporate America.

This is exactly right. It isn't MST3K that killed middle tier films, it's the international market. Character driven movies, especially comedies with any level of sophistication are the hardest to translate. The overhead on movies is huge if you're going to use A list actors. Studios produce films most likely to get a big return, which in practice means something that's going to do well in China.

It's really too bad they made that idiotic Bruce Willis movie that took the name and scrapped the story.

Well... if we're going to get blasphemous I thought Mike was the better host. Something about the dumb but affable Midwesterner was perfect. Joel always seemed like he was too smart to end up in such an absurd situation to begin with.