You are confusing the issue. The point I was making is that there is a difference between getting people killed in a war and ordering people killed. It is worth making these kinds of distinctions.

Actually there is a long running and ongoing dispute among French hisorians about Napoleans goals and legacy. In his own mind he seems to have thought he was spreading the revolution outside of France. And weren't Lenin and Stalin motivated by ego and meglomania as well?

Posted at August 25, 2006 10:56 AM in response to Hitler's Cross

But doesn't the fact that people can use communism in an ironic matter say something about the way communist symbols are viewed in this country? Thats the whole point. Nazism really can't be ironic here, because its considered too offensive. Just to highlight the point, try having a resturant with an ironic slavery theme or an ironic segregation theme. You could have retro "no coloreds or dogs" signs and "whites only" signs on water fountains. Cute right?

It doesn't matter how ironic the owner claimed the whole thing was, it would never fly, because no one would share his belief that segregation could be chic.

For whatever reason though Nazism in India seems to have the valence that Soviet Communism has in some circles in this country.

Posted at August 25, 2006 9:45 AM in response to Hitler's Cross

There is a moral difference between deaths caused by Napolean and murders comitted by Hitler and Stalin. I'm sure Napolean committed some murders here and there, but by and large you seem to be talking about deaths caused in wars. He wasn't trying to cause deaths, he was trying to further imperial goals. If this was a trial the crime would be negligent manslaughter rather than murder.

Soviet Communism is a bit different. It was a movement started by people who always believed that mass murder was fine, if it advanced the movement's goals. Stalin was much worse than Lenin, but Lenin was always willing to kill a lot of people when he thought it was conveninet to do so.

Posted at August 25, 2006 9:28 AM in response to Hitler's Cross

I'm not even interested in linking McKinney's views on Israel with her anti-semitism. I don't think McKinney is an anti-semite because she is anti-Israel, I think she is an anti-semite because her father acting as her campaign advisor repeatedly made unequivically anti-semitic statements that she never distanced herself from. All things being equal I would prefer my representative not to believe that I'm part of some secret cabal that hatches nefarious schemes through control of money. I'm not sure why this is so unreasonable.

Posted at August 4, 2006 7:19 PM in response to McKinney

That has to be the most illogical argument I've ever heard, Whiterose. Her opponent Hank Johnson is black too.

Posted at August 4, 2006 12:45 PM in response to McKinney

First of all you seem to have decided I'm a conservative on the basis of...I have no idea. I'm not, so we can dispense with the first half of your argument. Just because we have a dangerously incompetent administration doesn't mean voters in McKinney's district should have to have an anti-semitic Democratic senator who slugs police officers and does nothing for the district. The Republicans seem to embrace all kinds of fools and scoundrels but thats hardly an argument for our party to keep electing our own versions.

As to your weak attempt to make this all about race, that is nonsense. Her district, after all, is majority black. My problem with McKinney is that her father, working as her campaign manager made repeated clear anti-semetic comments and she never distanced herself from any of them. I make the same inference about her as I do about Mel Gibson from that evidence.

I also sometimes get the feeling that people who never lived in my former district have no idea just what a poor representative McKinney is. She has done nothing useful for the district in years, she doesn't bother showing up to the kind of events that representatives customarily attend, she has engaged in a prolonged spat with the sizeable gay community in her district because some gay politicians endorsed Majette 4 years ago. There are reasons that she is doing so badly in a very liberal, majority black district. and they don't all have to do with outside money and support.

Posted at August 4, 2006 12:35 PM in response to McKinney

The thing about the McKinney race is that her failure to get a majority a couple of weeks ago was a complete suprise. Her opponent Hank Johnson wasn't actually very well funded and I saw very little about the race in the Atlanta paper. Of course that all changed when it became apparent he might actually win, but unlike when Majette beat McKinney a couple of years ago, the result wasn't a result of a lot of crossover voting from Republicans.

McKinney has been a terrible representative for her district. She is far more interested in picking fights and saying outreagous things than actually getting anything done. Add in her fathers ridiculous J-E-W-S comments a few years back (particularly irritating because there are actually a fair number of Jews in her district), hitting a policeman with a cell phone and any number of other stunts over the years and she's built up a group of people who have gotten sick of her.

I suppose I'm not actually arguing with your point. I agree that Connecticut democrats and Georgia democrats have the same right to kick out people who they believe have stopped representing their interests and pick canidiates who are going to be less interested in using their offices for personal aggrandizement. However, like Lieberman, McKinney's problems may have been compounded by national groups who don't like her, but her real problem is that she seems to have lost the support of her own district.

Posted at August 4, 2006 10:35 AM in response to McKinney

Sam Chevre writes

I think your causation is too simple. I'm going to use a neologism, "ppoor" here to mean "lacking material goods", to explain why.

Many ppoor people are graduate students; I very much doubt that outcomes for their children are generally damaged by their ppoverty. Many ppoor people have other problems that hinder childraising. For example, someone who is barely literate is very unlikely to read to their children, and reading to children is important in intellectual development. Someone who is barely literate is also likely to be ppoor, but giving them more resources wouldn't help them read to their children.

This is a silly argument you are making. Defining poverty solely by income misses something. Poverty is generally characterized by a lack of support networks, and a lack of skills and often eductation. A grad student who has temporarily chosen to make less money to acquire skills doesn't generally fit these criteria. I'm sure you are right that if all poor people suddenly had the medium income, their children would still lag behind. But its also kind of hard to argue that outcomes wouldn't improve. Given a couple generations, I would imagine the gap would be bridged.

Just to be clear I am talking about groups, not individuals. The whole personal responsibility line seems to get a boost from the occasional sucess story of the dedicatd bright kid and the parent who worked like hell to keep the kid out of trouble etc, etc. I'm sure these things can help a poor kid make it, but the point is that if you grow up either middle class or wealthy, your parents don't need to be nearly as dedicated and you don't need to be nearly as talented to suceed . There is a much greater margin of error.

Posted at July 25, 2006 9:55 PM in response to Clear Enough

I suppose if we are going to split hairs, its not exactly homophobic. (why are people who hate gay people described as homophobes anyway? We don't call people who hate black people afrophobes or something. It is kind of inaccurate, you can hate something without being afraid of it.)

It is however, a pretty revealing ad hominem attack. What in god's name does the fact that Sullivan disagrees with him about Kant have to do with Sullivan's sexuality?

Its kind of odd how Sullivan always gets accused by conservatives of being fixated on gayness. As a gay, politically engaged guy why shouldn't he have lots of thoughts and opinions on gay issues. You might as well accuse Daniel Drezner of spending too much time talking about academia.
But, of course, all this discussion of gayness is obviously just too icky and he should stick to talking about things that don't make conservatives uncomfortable...

Posted at July 21, 2006 2:02 PM in response to Nihilism Continued

It seems like a lot of press coverage tends to confuse personal weirdness and detestable views with "craziness." The dear leader is obviously a strange guy, but that doesn't mean that he thinks warheads crashing down on Pyogong would be fun. You would have to assume he's a true believer in an ideology that is out of fashion for pretty good reasons, but there isn't any evidence that he isn't interested in self preservation for both himself and his regime.

Ditto for the Iranian regime. Just because the country is run by anti-semites who would like to kill jews and hang people for homosexuality doesn't mean they are likely to nuke Tel Aviv. They know what the consequences would be.

Posted at July 9, 2006 10:40 AM in response to The Madman Theory of World Politics