Commenter Archive

I'm with @j-r . I don't support Trump but I really don't see any of the positions covered in this post to be any more disjointed and/or questionable than the platitudes and policies of more establishment candidates. I guess the thing about the Olympics is pretty preposterous but I'm not sure that's so far removed from standard American exceptionalism/"we are the best" rhetoric.

The issue of European contributions to their own defense has been raised for years (Obama made a related point about this in his recent interview in the Atlantic in regards to the failure in Libya). And is it really so crazy to acknowledge that popular uprisings against dictators don't necessarily result in better governments? Working with Muslim countries to fight extremism has been a regular topic for the last two administrations and investing in all sorts of weapon systems, regardless of the cost or even whether or not the military wants them, has been DoD policy for the last 60 years.

Trump sucks and he's playing to a longstanding jingoistic streak in American culture but this critique is weak.

@saul-degraw my point is not that it will make them social liberals. I went at pains in my post to say that there are some social issues where agreement may be impossible. Thats why the example I used was specifically economic i.e. Medicaid.

@veronica-d I don't see how I'm 'erasing' anything nor do I even understand what that means. As much as I'd like to erase aspects of American politics and replace them with something better, sadly that is not a power I possess. I do not know anything about your personal background or what bigotry you have dealt with and its none of my business. Fight back however you see fit.

My argument is about finding allies where possible and fighting where necessary. It's pretty standard stuff in a democracy. There are other political factions to whom I'd make similar arguments but we're talking about Trump voters and the articles Saul shared so I did not see the need for some kind of everyone does it caveat.

@saul-degraw @greginak I think there will always be some differences on culture, policy, or otherwise that can't be bridged. My point is that the tendency to completely dismiss people in the manner that the upper middle class progressive world does is, at best, counterproductive and at worst a betrayal of principle.

Regarding @greginak's specific point about the welfare state/safety net my view is that you can probably get a lot of people on board who you might otherwise disagree with culturally if you're willing to clamp down on the redneck jokes. Look at the ACA expansion of Medicaid being blocked by state governors. That directly hurts the white working class and thus makes them potential allies at the state level on an issue the left deeply cares about. A lot of them may never be friendly towards certain social causes but democracy requires building coalitions where you can. The same is true about ideas for how we may need to modify the welfare state for a post industrial world where people aren't going to get benefits from their employers the way they used to.

I don't think you need to support Trump voters but I do think it would benefit all of us in urban, blue enclaves to understand them better. In that regard Boie was talking passed the article at Vox.

I think it's fine to acknowledge the historical truth that much of what we'd consider the white working class left the Democratic party for racist reasons and that racism, to varying degrees, plays a part in the cultural attitudes Trump supporters express. That said I also think the world looks very different to people in places where globalization has killed the economy over the last 30 years. For all the talk the progressive post collegiate world does about privilege checking they really seem to struggle with it when it comes to working class white people. In fact I'd say they mercilessly ridicule them in ways they'd see as classist if presented in a lecture hall.

To be clear that doesn't mean that racism, xenophobia, homophobia, etc. should be accepted. However if the left is really about putting in place a safety net and combating inequality then it needs to start re-thinking the hostile cultural attitudes expressed by upper middle class adherents. I think there's a coalition that could be built between people sympathetic to Trump and Sanders. It might even do some good.

It does and historically it's been a pretty obscure institution. The reason it's gotten more attention lately is because of the threats to sanction public universities who don't enact the extreme measures it recommends related to sexual violence on campus. Litigation has started to bubble up on that issue as well.

These are important decisions that shouldn't be left to the whims of unelected bureaucrats. I see this holding as a dereliction of duty by the 4th Circuit.

Which is precisely why it's such an awful decision. The head of OCR is a fanatic with a number of questionable ideas. The fact that this particular instance of her extreme interpretations of Title IX appear to work in favor of the trans community doesn't make it good law. Wait until these agencies are run by conservatives (which they inevitably will be again one day) with their own wild interpretations of the law. Suddenly the deference here won't seem so enlightened.

@chris I can't speak to the history of conversation on the subject at this site but my suspicion is that Kelo changed the libertarian perspective on this issue in a big way. It brought national attention to how local governments collude with developers to push these efforts forward. Previously I think if you weren't familiar with the local politics of a particular metropolitan area where gentrification has happened you might not understand the mechanics of it.

Regardless I do think there's a principled position that says we shouldn't try to hold back development and movement of people but we also don't want the government putting its finger on the scales in favor of the well connected.

Ah the magic Rwanda counterfactual, the greatest war America and its allies never fought. Funny that's always the go-to for warmo- I mean "interventionists." I wonder why they never wrestle with the fact that the Iraqis were able to ethnically cleanse their country just fine even with 100,000 American soldiers on the ground. It's almost like they need a fake war to defend their theories.

I think the difference here is that the government appears to be using its power to replace a business it doesn't like with businesses that it finds preferable for the new and improved district. You're absolutely right thay sometimes private interests need to take a backseat to the public good for expanded and improved infrastructure. However I think there's a legitimate concern that private interests with wealth and connections in government are the ones pulling the strings in an effort to avoid costs and their own inconvenience. It feels less like government making tough decisions about the future and more like private entities using the government to avoid playing fairly.

I have conflicted feelings on this issue. I can understand the annoyance of Japanese and/or Asian-American actors for losing an opportunity in an industry where they have fewer opportunities to score big roles. I also sympathize with the impulse that, as a multicultural society, our popular culture should to some degree reflect our own diversity.

However, I also can't help but see a certain condescension in being wildly outraged on behalf of other people in the realm of art and entertainment. It both fails to grapple with the complexities of another culture (this post was great for bringing Japanese insight into the issue) and assumes weakness in a manner that's at best pretty patronizing. I'm reminded of the Kimono Wednesday debate, and not only because both involve things Japanese.

I wonder if it's really reasonable to expect multi-billion dollar entertainment enterprises to be the bearers of cultural enlightenment. This isn't to say we shouldn't criticize racism when we see it but the mission of these films is to make money, not meet the standards of a race-studies department at an American university. I'm baffled that anyone would ever think otherwise.

I think you're missing where I'm going with this. Traffic stops are treated more like Terry stops under the 4th amendment meaning that the standard is the lower 'reasonable suspicion.' That's the same standard theoretically being used/abused under stop and frisk. Practically speaking it is a very low burden and I don't think the police will have trouble meeting it without moving violations or erratic driving. Instead of California stops they'll start seeing passengers who 'appeared to be in distress' or 'movements that based on their knowledge and experience are consistent with packaging drugs.'

The reason I bring up reasonable expectation of privacy is because the 4th amendment only applies to searches where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. If there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in an autonomous vehicle owned by a third party then probable cause isn't required to search (assuming consent by the vehicle agency).

Now maybe hypothetical autonomous car agencies battle this, but maybe seeking to be good corporate citizens they don't care and it's better PR to be on the side of the cops than the terrorists, drug dealers, etc. Under current law this would theoretically mean that a Terry stop gets the police a short cut to full search of the vehicle without the normal chain of probable cause that needs to be followed from pulled over for failing to signal to full scale search of the vehicle. If the law were to develop this way fishing expeditons would become easier. Think stop and frisk for every vehicle on the road.

@damon I actually think the proposal regarding nuclear weapons itself would fail in almost any evaluation of a just war. If the offending government/army/militia called our bluff and we tried to use nuclear weapons we would quite likely destroy the people we were ostensibly trying to save and render their territory uninhabitable, It's too blunt a tool.

The real problem with @trizzlor 's point is that it assumes we have the capability of intervening on behalf of those being killed in a manner that results in a just outcome. The obvious current example of our inability to do that is Libya, where we kept the people in Benghazi from being overrun and potentially slaughtered by the Libyan army. However in doing so we caused the state to collapse and now the country is run by warlords and stuck in a cycle of violence and economic chaos with no end in sight.

To me a war needs to not only be just (which in my opinion is limited narrowly to self defense) but also the U.S. government and tax payer need to be willing to own the outcome on the level we did with post war Germany and Japan. That means a commitment over a few generations and long term investment. I think that type of scenario is unlikely to ever happen again. It was the product of a very specific historical moment and it won't be repeated in some messy third world civil war.

The paradigm I'm envisioning is fully autonomous. I like your proposal but I have the feeling that will never fly with policy-makers and law enforcement. I figure once the technology gets good car ownership will go into a decline until it becomes the realm of a few hobbyists and the super rich. The courts will have to determine what expectation of privacy an individual has while traveling in an automated vehicle owned by some third party company. I predict the answer will be 'none.'

I'm not sure how it works in Europe but in the United States it would be hard to make a case for libel (libel is written, slander is spoken) when the falsehood was about a group, especially a group so large and amorphous as the Polish nation. My reading of the article is that he said Poles generally, not a particular Pole or even group of Poles who could be identified as being libeled.

This sort of thing is a disgrace. If the guy's numbers are wrong or his research is flawed then that's for other scholars to expose and dispute but even the threat of prosecution serves to stifle inquiry. The Polish government needs to put on its big boy pants.

I see your point but I still think it rests on big assumptions about who the Johns are. My suspicion is that the ones who really have a lot to lose aren't seeking the services of desperate street walkers and the Johns who do have their own issues with addiction and poverty. Under the Swedish model high class hookers who could leave the game any time are treated as victims with no agency. Meanwhile across town some junkie gets arrested and harshly punished for giving another addict 10 bucks for a blow job under the bridge.

I think treating this as a criminal issue is the wrong approach to begin with so any policy that relies on it doesn't have my support.

[Cr5] is my biggest fear about self-driving vehicles along with the inevitability that they'll be one more means of tracking people's movements and private activities. My view is that the police should not be given the power to stop vehicles. Allowing it is based on the assumption that the police are always in the right and would never engage in misconduct or abuse the power.

Regarding Sweden I think it depends on what you consider "success" to be. My opinion is that the policy is sold as progressive and feminist but in reality is based on a lot of really patronizing and backward assumptions about female sexuality.

@j-r There's a whole movement out there online dedicated to unmasking the 'law school scam'. The dearth of information about things like rates of enrollment and post law school success is probably their biggest gripe. It's gotten a bit better over the past few years due to people like Paul Campos taking their criticisms mainstream. The problems that effect law school are the same that effect higher education generally, just magnified due to the cost.

Again anecdotal but there are/were a lot of people who ended up in law school because it seemed like a good way of making their humanities degrees more practical. Whenever people ask me if they should encourage their kids to go I say very likely no. Maybe if they work at a law firm for a few years, love it, and make some connections it's worth it but otherwise they're likely to take on a small mortgage for the luxury of temp work clicking doc review software or maybe nothing at all.

@kazzy she still hasn't responded to my friend request.

This is anecdotal but number 2 definitely rings true based on my Facebook feed. I can't tell if it's a testament to America's challenges with childcare or if it's something sociological (or something else) but I'm consistently astounded at how many women I graduated law school with who now appear to be stay-at-home moms.

@densityduck I think youre wrong. It would be accurate to say that it's gotten more complicated from there. What you're referring to is a lack of support and in some instances resistance to policies which would force integration. Thats not the same as mainstream political parties advocating for a return to separate but equal.

While we have become more racially segregated than we were immediately post Brown due to a mix of socioeconomic and cultural factors (of which I'm sure racism plays a part) its absurd to say that its worse than when we had de jure segregation. I mean, do you really think it's worse now than when black people had to use separate bathrooms and couldn't eat at the same restaurants as white people? If so I think you lack perspective.

My point was the the prohibition on discrimination based on race is well established in numerous federal and state laws and legal precedent and I'm not aware of any realistic effort to change that. On the other hand, if Roe were overturned quite a few states would establish burdensome restrictions on aborion. The challenge we have now with race is tougher because it comes mostly from things like disparate impact, the cycle of poverty, and choices freely made about association. Thats a much harder nut to crack.

I think it was probably the worst type of victory the pro-choice side could have won, in that by attaching the right to votes on the Supreme Court it's made it virtually impossible for the country to reach a compromise most people can live with. That said I don't want to criticize taking the path of the courts universally. There are times like Brown v. Board where, after an initial cultural and political battle, support for racial segregation was removed from the political mainstream. Roe on the other hand resulted in total war and entrenched positions. There's a good book to be written on why that is.

I will cop to being in the position @el-muneco describes below. I'm pro-choice in the sense that I think it's better policy for abortion to be legal and generally available but have serious misgivings about the morality of the practice. I'd prefer it happened less often and am on board with expanded access to education, birth control, and whatever else makes women feel less like they have no other choice. Nevertheless I'm uncomfortable with the state determining whether a woman can terminate a pregnancy and even more uncomfortable with the foreseeable results of making it a criminal matter.

This gets at what I think the real issue is, that being that our baseline legal norm is established by the Supreme Court as opposed to legislative debate and compromise. Pro-choicers don't feel they can sufficiently trust pro-lifers because of the suspicion that the real goal is prohibition or extreme curtailment of the ability to obtain an abortion. There's a similar dynamic in the debate over gun restrictions. All concessions are a stepping stone to your side's eventual defeat.