In the comments to the post on assuming that your opponents don't really believe what they're saying, a commenter requests a post I did a while back on egotistical bias and the fundamental attribution error. Ask, and ye shall receive:
As usual, blogging about abortion is producing a lot of heated and very emotional debate. There are a few categories of this: some very good posts about philosophy, which make me sad, because they are so interesting, and yet so pointless, because the main figures in the debate seem to me so clearly to be looking not for a well-thought out position, but for a philosophical premise which will tickle the crude moral intuitions of a public which does not and will not read moral philosophy. Nor can I say that I've found a well-reasoned answer to the abortion question; my only defense is that I'm well aware of it.Then there are the personal anecdotes. Pro-choicers waving around the abortions they've had to say "See! I needed that abortion!" and (currently) pro-lifers waving around the abortions they've had to say "See! It was the worst thing I ever did!" Pro-choicers talking about their children to prove that they do too like kids, and pro-lifers showing cute pictures of Jimmy and asking "What if he'd been aborted?" Paul Campos has pointed out the futility of these demonstrations: everyone's seen the coathanger pictures and the fetuses with the faces and the fingers and toes, and everyone's still disagreeing. The premise that the other side would agree with you if you could just use provocative images to call forth some emotion on the topic seems particularly odd in the case of abortion; if there is one thing that the debate is not suffering from, it is a lack of emotion.
My favourite, though, are the posts where everyone speculates on the motives of the other side. You see, pro-lifers don't care about babies at all, because that would make their points something you might have to listen to and we can't have that, can we? So what they obviously really care about is screwing up women's lives so that they'll have to spend the rest of them barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen making lemonade for Pa and his friends when they come in from a hard day of plowing and oppressing colored people. And pro-choicers don't actually care about women; all they're really interested is enforcing a radical feminist agenda on the rest of us so girls won't be able to wear dresses and lipstick any more and boys will have to have their genitalia surgically removed at puberty and replaced with a copy of The Feminine Mystique. Also, while we can't be totally sure, it's reasonable to assume that many of them enjoy baby-killing, and would sacrifice live infants if not restrained by the hard work of good, Christian folk.
I was recently at the University of Chicago graduate school of business interviewing professors about their work, and got a chance to spend half an hour talking to Nick Epley, who is a psychologist. He's done a lot of fascinating work, but one of the first things we talked about is a simple concept he didn't invent: egotistical bias. We tend to use ourselves as a model for everyone else's behaviour, even when doing so is wildly inappropriate. This is the source of fundamental attribution error, among other things.
We actually spoke specifically about abortion in reference to this, and he pointed out something I hadn't noticed up until then, but which now leaps out screaming at me from these posts and comments: people involved in a debate tend to assume that their opponents are disagreeing with them about the aspect of the debate they themselves care most about.
Pregnancy is a fundamentally unique situation in which there is no possibility of Coasean bargain; the rights of the mother to things like control over her own body conflict directly and irreconcileably with the rights of the fetus-as-potential-human. There is no good metaphor for it, no parallel where we can try to work out the ancillary issues. It's a toughy. The pro-choice end up thinking the rights of the mother are more important; the pro-life think that the rights of the baby that will be here in nine months are more important. Neither of these positions is obviously wrong, as far as I can see. As I say, it's a toughy.
But the really committed pro-choicers I've seen commenting act as if what pro-lifers were doing were considering the rights of the mother over her own body, and rejecting that principle, rather than curtailing it after weighing it against other principles; hence the accusations that pro-lifers hate women, or women with careers, or freedom, or whatever. And pro-lifers respond by calling pro-choicers baby killers. Nice.
Admittedly, there are some crazy people on both sides who really do cherish a vision in which [women leave the workforce and get back to having like, a zillion babies/men and women merge into a single androgenous species]. This is not, however, the majority. It is fair to say that there is quite a lot of reasoning from the result to the premise on both sides: people who think that it is of surpassing importance for women to take their place at the helm of half the world's institutions notice that this would be much more difficult in a world containing both frequent sex with people you don't intend to spawn with, and restricted access to abortion; they therefore reason that abortion must be moral. Conversely, the pro-life side notes that if you deny the obligation of a woman to carry her pregnancy to term, all sorts of other family obligations become harder to logically support, and therefore conclude that abortion must be wrong. Since the pro-life side generally does not care so much about total workplace parity, and the pro-choice side generally does not care so much about preserving traditional family structures, they conclude with some truth that there is a somewhat questionable moral discounting going on across the divide. But the sin is sufficiently equally distributed that this is not enough reason to dismiss the moral heft of the other side's arguments. Pregnancy and parenthood are HUGE DEALS. So is not existing. That's why so many people are so frightened of doing either.
This practice is, obviously, not limited to abortion. Hence the number of liberals who accuse libertarians of hating poor people, because they simply cannot believe that anyone could frame questions of property and economic liberty in any other way than "What do these do to the poor?"; and of course, the conservatives and libertarians who accuse liberals of hating freedom, for the same reason.
Hence the number of liberals who accuse libertarians of hating poor people, because they simply cannot believe that anyone could frame questions of property and economic liberty in any other way than "What do these do to the poor?
I think that "what would this do to the poor" is a fine basis for a moral discussion of any system. The debate that is typically skipped is about just what effect, backed with evidence and not speculation, a particular practice does have on poor people over the long term. For instance; we could reduce the debt of poor people through inflation. But over the long term, is inflation good for the poor? Over the long term, is a welfare system that helps unwed mothers but actually increases their numbers via incentives to unwed motherhood actually moral? And so on.
There's another tendency, whose name escapes me at the moment, to exagerate the extremisim of those who disagree with you. I.E. The use of the phrase "Tyranny" during the American Revolution, when it was actually parliment and not King George doing the nasty taxing without representing.
I recall a discussion thread on Crooked Timber where the issue was why it is that Israel-Palestine threads get so heated so quickly. And someone proposed that it's the immediate imputation of bad faith to the person arguing on the other side. So I think the phenomenon you're outlining here extends there too.
Getting sucked into abortion argument....must resist...ahh...resistance is futile.
"The pro-choice end up thinking the rights of the mother are more important; the pro-life think that the rights of the baby that will be here in nine months are more important."
On one hand we have a dead baby or at the bare minimum a dead developing baby, depending on your verbage.
On the other hand we have a mother who for possibly 8-9 months, or for many women who don't get morning sickness and don't have a difficult time until the end, 1-3 months of difficult inconvience and sometimes misery, in order to bring a life into the world.
Ya, killing something forever vs. a few months of sacrafice (you just gave the baby up for adoption if you don't want your "career" or personal life to be saddled). It's easy to see how you'd get confused about which to pick.
Hence the number of liberals who accuse libertarians of hating poor people, because they simply cannot believe that anyone could frame questions of property and economic liberty in any other way than "What do these do to the poor?";
I would say instead that we ask "What do these do to those least able to mitigate the damages that will be done to them? Do the consequences for the least powerful outweigh the benefits for those with more power? To what degree can society tolerate good for the majority that is derived from hardship for the poor minority?"
It's interesting to me that you pose the question as one of rights. Utilitarianism, after all, is antithetical to some of the most basic ideas of individual liberty. I believe that if you think about it, asking "what does this do to the poor" doesn't trample freedom, it instead refuses to privilege the freedom of the majority at the expense of the few.
On the other hand we have a mother who for possibly 8-9 months, or for many women who don't get morning sickness and don't have a difficult time until the end, 1-3 months of difficult inconvience and sometimes misery, in order to bring a life into the world.
Ya, killing something forever vs. a few months of sacrafice (you just gave the baby up for adoption if you don't want your "career" or personal life to be saddled). It's easy to see how you'd get confused about which to pick.
From Wikipedia:
"Many questions, also known as complex question, presupposition, loaded question, "trick question", or plurium interrogationum (Latin, "of many questions"), is an informal fallacy. It is committed when someone asks a question that presupposes something that has not been proven or accepted by all the people involved.... Thus, these facts are presupposed by the question, and if it has not been agreed upon by the speakers before, the question is improper, and the fallacy of many questions has been committed."
My favourite, though, are the posts where everyone speculates on the motives of the other side.
By the way, this is precisely what you engaged in with Dan Drezner on Bloggingheads, when you both were certain that your critics couldn't actually be motivated by a constructive criticism of your views, or the strength of the arguments that you present to defend those views.
Isn't this really a question of what will we let our neighbors, well, not exactly our neighbors, but some folks who might be our neighbors, the greater society let's say, decide about the things we do in private, and/or with our children?
Perhaps it would be best to first remember that peoples' notions of morality are not uniformly shared by people of different geographies, cultures and times. Aren't the things that happen quietly and privately between a woman and her doctor, or between parents and their children simply nobody else's business? It is an interesting matter to consider how it happens that someone outside a family gets involved in the decision making of that family.
When you can see abuse, say the apparent abuse of a child by it's parent, and it is obvious, it seems easy enough to understand the urge of an otherwise disinterested party to want to step in and do something. But other than when abuse or any form of unacceptable behavior becomes open to some kind of public scrutiny, it seems very hard to see how there can be any discussion of intrusion on the decision making of others without it becoming a slide down the treacherous slope to bigger and bigger big brothers.
I'm glad Megan reposted this because attribution error is an interesting topic. I'll add a few personal observations.
First, the merit of a position, IMHO, cannot be judged by the amount of attribution error made by its proponents. That is because bad arguments in favor of a position don't preclude good arguments in favor of a position.
For instance, I am pro-choice. However, I will readily concede that pro-choice advocates are just as guilty of attribution error as their opponents.
Second, given that there are hundreds of millions of Americans and billions of people on the planet, you can always find someone who will say something that "proves" the bad-faith of the opposition. Call this the Inevitable Ward Churchill Theorem.
Third, (and arguably least provable) the amount of attribution error that you see on either side of an argument is often asymmetrical.
On Iraq, war proponents have shown little restraint in accusing anyone, from Democrats in Congress to liberal pundits to critics in the military to average Americans of "wanting America to lose."
But war opponents seldom accuse anyone outside of a narrow group (i.e. Bush, Cheney, energy and military contracting executives, etc.) from acting with genuinely ill-motives.
Lastly, the amount of attribution error can change over time. For instance, the classic insult by conservatives was that opponents were "bleeding-heart liberals." Interestingly enough, the very term suggests that liberals are merely misguided and not acting with malicious intent. However, you seldom here that anymore. Now liberals are terrorist-loving, islamo-fascist-abetting Marxists who want to undermine American values and destroy the country. Personally, I preferred to be called naive.
One test of the hypothesis that the FAE is involved in the abortion debate, etc. is to look for parallel "toughies" in political debates in Asian countries, and then examine the discourses in which those debates take place. Since the psychologists Richard Nisbett, Kaipeng Peng and others have shown that Asians are much less prone to the FAE -- Nisbett has joked that it should be called the "Fundamentally Western Attribution Error" -- this would give us some window into what effect it might or might not be having.
Much of the above seems to assume that attribution error is a flaw in that it prevents one from achieving one's ultimate goal, which is finding accord with the opposition.
I rather strongly suspect that attribution error is a fundamentally sound strategy to persuade those with no set opinion to adopt your policy. Likewise many other attributes that discourage finding philosophical solutions are almost requirements to successful policy promotion.
So, Megan, I don't think you should find it too surprising that these occur here. You'll should expect and do find (1) people who have managed to recognize and manage to avoid their attribution error (2) those who don't recognize and thus practice attribution error, and (3) those who recognize attribution error, but realize its usefulness in the real struggle, which is to get one's desired policy enacted.
Of course, as someone who makes their living as a blogger, Megan had better be careful. The number of people who are interested in seeking reasoned philosophical discussions to establish differing base assumptions and preferences is almost certainly not enough to sustain commercial interest. It's the human biases that *prevent* this from occurring that generate interest and traffic.
For instance, the classic insult by conservatives was that opponents were "bleeding-heart liberals."... Now liberals are terrorist-loving, islamo-fascist-abetting Marxists who want to undermine American values and destroy the country.-space
I don't know how many conservatives are calling liberals "terrorist-loving" or "Marxists." Maybe a handful of nuts like Michael Savage. But mainstream conservatives like Geoge Will and Charles Krauthammer just don't use rhetoric like that.
They do, however, generally agree that liberals tend to put a premium on feelings, on sympathy--even at the expense of rational judgment. So you still get liberals upset about welfare reform, though that helped to reduce unemployment and get people out of s squalid life of dependency. The policy has been a success, but it just doesn't feel compassionate--so liberals oppose it. So too, it just seems cruel to liberals to keep people detained in Guantanimo Bay, so they opposes it, though a moment's rational thought would make it clear that the terrorists must be detained somewhere and that Gimto is as good a place as any.
There are some real radicals out there who hate America and what it stands for, but the bigger problem are the ones who earnestly think that the welfare state at home and appeasemnt abroad are the right policies for the country--that they are good for the country. Such people can passionately declare themselves patriots, even while they (unwittingly) drag their country down.
I don't know how many conservatives are calling liberals "terrorist-loving" or "Marxists." Maybe a handful of nuts like Michael Savage. But mainstream conservatives like Geoge Will and Charles Krauthammer just don't use rhetoric like that.
So, Cheney's a nut is he?
Where's the quote Jeff? Please provide a link so I can see it in contest. If Cheney said anything like that (and not just in jest), then, yeah, he was talking like a nut.
I must say, though, that I very much doubt that Cheney said any such thing, at least not seriously. Many leftists seem implicitly to accept the following invalid syllogism:
1) Cheney is evil.
2) X is evil.
3) Therefore, Cheney did X.
Thus they can accuse him every possible misdeed (the X) without evidence. So he knew about 9/11 beforehand, he knew there were no WMD's, he enjoys torturing people, etc...
"But other than when abuse or any form of unacceptable behavior becomes open to some kind of public scrutiny, it seems very hard to see how there can be any discussion of intrusion on the decision making of others without it becoming a slide down the treacherous slope to bigger and bigger big brothers."
I assume that you would consider the discovery of the dead body of a young woman who had been raped and then subjected by her family to an "honor killing" to be "open to some kind of public scrutiny".
I'm sorry, Isocrates, but you are simply wrong. Mainstream conservative media figures and Republican politicians have accused liberals again and again of "giving aid and comfort" to the terrorists. If you haven't seen that then I don't know what media you've been consuming. If you want the raw quotes, Media Matters has a bountiful archive.
One thing that liberals have noticed over the past 15 years is that if you stop restating your opinions on certain issues because you find the argument incredibly boring, then the public sphere is dominated by the other side's arguments (particularly when they are well-financed and/or possess the intrinsic love of simple repetition of the faith-based), and you suddenly find yourself refighting battles you'd thought long won, just because a group of people who literally call themselves "dittoheads" are willing to say the same stupid goddamn thing over and over and over. Hence the need to redeploy the damn coat-hanger photo every time the damn dead-fetus photo comes into play. Tedious, but necessary.
Also, this:
Conversely, the pro-life side notes that if you deny the obligation of a woman to carry her pregnancy to term, all sorts of other family obligations become harder to logically support,
Wha? Er, no, they don't. This is the first time I've ever heard this completely weird argument, which appears to have sprung in blissful, unworldly ignorance from the mind of someone who has never heard the phrase "Every child a wanted child."
"Mainstream conservative media figures and Republican politicians have accused liberals again and again of "giving aid and comfort" to the terrorists."
Freddie,
You are correct that they have said that; and, they are correct in having said it. That is a far cry from "terrorist-loving". Both Nancy Reid and Harry Pelosi have certainly given "aid and comfort" to the terrorists, although both studiously avoid referring to themselves as liberals.
Before this gets completely out of hand with nasty accusations, let me point out that it is possible to think that someone's actions wrongly help the enemy, without supposing that this person is motivated by a desire to help the enemy. It is true that there are people who throw the latter sort of accusations around, but what a lot of them are saying is "If we're too nice, we'll lose and people will die, so stop advocating that we play by the Marquess of Queensbury rules.
Which is not to say that this is the correct position, but people here are starting to talk past each other, in rather exactly the way that I was writing about.
The struggle against Islamic extremism is going to last a long time. Victory, if that's the right word, will require national unity. Describing your opponents as appeasers and enablers of terrorism is not the way to achieve it. It's a pity that Isocrates and Ed Reid are too angry to understand this.
"...let me point out that it is possible to think that someone's actions wrongly help the enemy, without supposing that this person is motivated by a desire to help the enemy"-Megan
Yes, exactly. Most liberals do want America to prosper economically and to prevail over the terrorists. The vast majority, in fact. The problem is just that they will the ends but not the means necessary to attain those ends.
A prosperous economy will always be a market economy, but a market economy requires that some people be allowed to fail. This is hard for some people to accept. It doesn't seem right. It doesn't feel moral. But it is the truth and, as one philosopher pointed out, "truth is hard."
And it is especially hard in the realm of foreign affairs. There are dangerous people in the world who want to destroy us and we only play into their hands if we allow a kind of squeamishness or sentimentality to prevent us from taking the measures that are necessary to win. Some qualities that are admirable in a nun or a social worker would be disastrous in a President or Secretary of State, who ought to be, as Plato advised, gentle toward friends and ferocious toward enemies.
So that is the main point. Anyone who says that liberals want to destroy the country or help or enemies is a liar or a fool; but he who says instead that liberals are unwilling to take the hard measures that are often necessary to have a free, propserous and secure country is speaking good sense.
I dunno, Stan, the Cold War lasted a long time, and we won, but during the conflict, I believe that liberals frequently accused conservatives of trampling civil liberties, or becoming like our enemies, etc., and conservatives frequently accused liberals of giving aid and comfort to, or even sympathizing with, our enemies. I think that's a pretty unavoidable part of democratic politics.
For that matter, during WWII, there were people (e.g., Charles Lindbergh) whom Roosevelt considered beyond the pale and did not invite to help the war effort.
y81, maybe it's just me, but I think that accusing your opponents of giving aid to our enemies or sympathizing with them is worse than saying that our civil liberties are being trampled. With regard to World War II, FDR brought Republicans into his administration at very high levels and he shelved his New Deal proposals as war approached to get Republican support. Yes, he considered Lindbergh to be beyond the pale for accepting a medal from Nazi Germany and for accusing Jews of pushing the US into war. Do you really think FDR was wrong?
Isocrates, I appreciate your toning down your views, but I still think you're not looking at things objectively. It was clear in the late summer of 2003 that we didn't have enough troops to suppress the insurrection in Iraq. A responsible administration would have sent as many soldiers there as possible from all over the world and would have increased the size of our armed forces as much as possible. Bush didn't do this because it would have hurt his chances of re-election, and he didn't do it after the election because it would have hurt the Republicans' chances of winning in 2006. Nobody on the Republican side complained, not McCain, not Lindsay Graham, nobody. Compare this with FDR's bravery in pushing through conscription in June of 1940 against strong Republican opposition in Congress and with a tough re-election campaign coming up. So when you complain about liberals being unwilling to take the hard measures to protect our country, I think this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Cheney predicted a terrorist attack if Democrats were elected.
Pretty odd bravado for the VP at the time of the 9/11 attack.
"Asians are much less prone to the FAE"
Oh, I don't know about that, but I could be wrong. Seems to me, for example, that the politico-ethnic tensions on Taiwan have a lot to to do with FAE. It seems to me that one of the things that KMT supporters say about the DPP is that they want independence from China in order to snuggle closer to Japan. KMT types, of course, are very suspicious of the Japanese.
"If we're too nice, we'll lose and people will die, so stop advocating that we play by the Marquess of Queensbury rules.
Except that that contains precisely what you're arguing against. That is false attribution. No one is saying play nice with the terrorists. What they are saying is confront the terrorists effectively, which in the real world, the adult world, doesn't mean playing Obi-Wan KeRambo, it means using police action, discretion, intelligent application of resources, diplomacy, and yes, a moral foreign policy that seeks to mitigate the grievances against the United States that fuel terrorism. If the goal is to look tough and play out masturbatory action hero fantasies, then follow Isocrates and Ed Reid's lead. If, however, you're main goal is actually to prevent your people from being killed in terrorist attacks, it's best to let the grown-ups lead.
Otherwise, you end up getting your ass handed to you by the wrong A-rab people in Iraq.
It's also near-impossible to avoid "helping the enemy", too.
For example, we could amend the Constitution to eliminate protections against unlimited search and seizure entirely. Opposition to that could be phrased as "helping the enemy", since it's undeniable that giving the police the power to search anyone's home they wished on a whim would uncover some terrorists. (And, probably, loads of other criminals.) But it would destroy what this country stands for; it wouldn't be the USA anymore except in name.
Tone down the extremism of the previous example, and you have the civil liberties lawsuits against the PATRIOT Act, as one example.
The problem is that "aid and comfort to the enemy" is too emotionally loaded for people to think clearly about it, and that punch is too tempting a weapon for some people to resist wielding.
(And for the record, I support the majority of the controversial provisions of the PATRIOT Act; just not the tactics often used in its defense.)
"...it means using police action, discretion, intelligent application of resources, diplomacy, and yes, a moral foreign policy that seeks to mitigate the grievances against the United States that fuel terrorism."-Freddie
This skirts the real issue. What do you mean by a "moral foreign policy?" If you mean by moral just that which serves our own self-interest, then we can dispense with high-flown rhetoric and discuss self-interest in a rational and sober way.
If, on the other hand, your view of morality in foreign policy is something other than pursuing one's own self-interest, then you ought to be candid with us and admit that you are willing to sacrifice America's interests in pursuit of your own lofty moral vision. I'm not at the moment arguing that this is wrong. Certainly you could point to some formidable thinkers who woud agree with you (Kant for example).
So please just say which it is. Is morality in foreign affairs simply the rational pursuit of one's own self-interest, or does it rather entail sacrificing one's own interest for the sake of some high ideal? Tertium non datur.
Yes, this is a fundamental problem (FAE) and it starts at the top. I stopped watching televised debates among politicians long ago. It's all too obvious that the intent is to attribute negative characteristics to your opponent instead of debating merits of a position. Could our two-party system be partly to blame for this?
I'm particularly fascinated with the attacks on certain Democrats by left-leaning pundits when those Democrats don't vote in a way deemed 'correct'. Are the pundits attributing their beliefs onto all those politically aligned with them? Has the GWB-era produced a system in which you can only pick from two opinions on any topic?
If we're too nice, we'll lose and people will die, so stop advocating that we play by the Marquess of Queensbury rules.
Not sure who said this, but I initially thought it was supposed to describe Democratic attitudes towards people who accuse us of being "shrill".
If, on the other hand, your view of morality in foreign policy is something other than pursuing one's own self-interest, then you ought to be candid with us and admit that you are willing to sacrifice America's interests in pursuit of your own lofty moral vision. - Isocrates
This presumes that America's self-interest is naturally in conflict with the interests of others, and that foreign policy is a zero-sum game in which, for America to win, others must lose. I would ask Isocrates to explain in what areas of interest he thinks that others must lose for America to benefit, and how he would propose to conduct a foreign policy of seeking in general to damage other countries' interests, without incurring retaliation from those countries and their citizens.
Freddie,
Are the "grown-ups" you're talking about the same ones who responded so effectively and so surgically to the Islamist attacks prior to 9/11; and, who failed to accept OBL when he was offered to them "on a silver platter"?
So please just say which it is. Is morality in foreign affairs simply the rational pursuit of one's own self-interest, or does it rather entail sacrificing one's own interest for the sake of some high ideal?
Bad question. The question is: Is conforming to high ideals, in and of itself, part of our interests? I'd argue yes. Part of self-interest is being happy with the outcomes. And I'm not going to be happy with the outcomes *regardless of what they are* if the means are too awful.
If the only way to stop the terrorists is to eliminate all life in the middle east, I'll live with the terrorism, thank you very much. In that (obviously straw man case), my interest in ending terrorism permanently is outweighed by my interest in not thinking about myself as a cold blooded murderer.
In fact, I'd refine the question from "do ideals trump interests", to "how big an interest is conforming to our ideals". I'd argue for Americans that such conformance is substantially in their interest. They're not prepared to trade away their self-image for the purpose of defeating an enemy who most don't feel is a survival threat to them. More to the point, I'd argue that they'll leave any conflict that can only be won by destroying that self-image.
That self-image is *important* and I think you *severely* underestimate its importance to Americans.
I. "Compare this with FDR's bravery in pushing through conscription in June of 1940 against strong Republican opposition in Congress and with a tough re-election campaign coming up. So when you complain about liberals being unwilling to take the hard measures to protect our country, I think this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black."-stan
I agree that Franklin Roosevelt deserves a lot of praise for his recognition of the threat posed by fascism and his willingness to confront. But if you have to go back more than 60 years to find a liberal who was willing to take tough measures to combat our enemies, then you are making my case for me.
II. "This presumes that America's self-interest is naturally in conflict with the interests of others, and that foreign policy is a zero-sum game in which, for America to win, others must lose."-brooksfoe
I wrote a response earlier, but it got caught up in the annoying spam filters. I'll try again, briefly. I suggest reading the following article from the Washington Post: Japan-China Dispute Escalates
It seems fairly clear that China and Japan have conflicting interests. China wants to grow more prosperous and to gain in influence, while Japan cannot help but see China's rise as a threat to its own security and influence in Asia. Does this mean that nations always have conflicting interests? No. Free trade agreements are an example of mutually beneficial engagements between countries. But sometimes, yes, countries will clash.
III. "Bad question. The question is: Is conforming to high ideals, in and of itself, part of our interests? I'd argue yes. Part of self-interest is being happy with the outcomes. And I'm not going to be happy with the outcomes *regardless of what they are* if the means are too awful."-Tom West
Tom, American foreign policy cannot be based upon what makes you personally happy. The crucial question is whether we should ever sacrifice our own material and security interests to aid other countries or to abide by some kind of supranational law. Your response seems to be a clever way of saying "yes, we should." That's fine, as long as you are frank about it. For the doctrine you are espousing impies that American policy-makers should sometimes be willing to implement policies that make America poorer and less safe.
Isocrates, you ignored my argument about George Bush's handling of the Iraq war. In late 2003 he and his advisors knew that we didn't have enough troops in Iraq. At this point a responsible president would have increased the size of our occupation force. Bush didn't, and the notion that he didn't because of Rumsfeld's theories about warfare is not worth refuting. Bush downplayed our problems for political reasons, and John McCain and all the other tough as nails supporters of the Iraq war kept quiet, also for political reasons. I think it was disgusting. Our troops are dying because of George Bush's political cowardice. If you think I'm wrong, say so, and explain why. If not, have the decency to stop bloviating about how tough the Republicans are.
brooksfoe -
Conversely, the pro-life side notes that if you deny the obligation of a woman to carry her pregnancy to term, all sorts of other family obligations become harder to logically support,
Wha? Er, no, they don't. This is the first time I've ever heard this completely weird argument, which appears to have sprung in blissful, unworldly ignorance from the mind of someone who has never heard the phrase "Every child a wanted child."
I'm not so sure. I've seen the rise of abortion linked by commentators to the rise of unwed motherhood, and also to the rise of unplanned pregnancy relative to the general population (people tell themselves that they'll have an abortion, then don't). There are men who deny their parental obligations because "she 'chose' to have the child".
I'm still opposed to government regulation of people's private medical choices, including forcing someone to bring a child to term. I just don't see this so much as "a woman's right to choose" as I do "an individual's right to privacy." The difference is important for a variety of reasons.
Stan, calm down. I agree with you that George Bush's conduct of the war has been far from admirable. Indeed, I didn't comment on that part of what you said becuase I largely agree with you about that. One part I'm not sure about is your analysis of Bush's motives. You say:
"At this point a responsible president would have increased the size of our occupation force. Bush didn't, and the notion that he didn't because of Rumsfeld's theories about warfare is not worth refuting."
How do you know that? Donald Rumsfeld was a man with a great deal of experience in military matters and he was the Secretary of Defense. It doesn't surprise me, then, that the President took Rumsfeld's advice. As you allude to, Reumsfled wanted a lighter, faster military and believed a "light footprint" would make the occupation seem less oppressive to the Iraqi people. Rumsfeld turned out to be wrong, and it's unfortunate that the President stood by him for so long.
As for your contention that John McCain and other Republicans refused to criticize the Bush/Rumsfled strategy--my recollection is quite different. As I recall, McCain has been saying for a long tim that we should have had more troops there and has been joined by many conservative and neoconservative intellectuals--William Kristol of the Weekly Standard if you want a name.
Finally, it was never my claim that all Republicans are profiles in courage. Far from it. I was rather arguing that, in general, conservatives are much more willing than liberals to countenance unpleasant but necessary measures to fight this war against Islamo-fascism. I remember seeing Bill Clinton admit on camera that he was offered Osama bin Laden by Sudan and refused him because he couldn't find a basis in international law to keep him. A conservative President would have been much less concerned about international law (which really has no binding force) than Clinton was. I think that's undeniable. The Clinton story was also in the Washignton Post (hardly a bastion of conservatism):
U.S. Was Foiled Multiple Times in Efforts To Capture Bin Laden or Have Him Killed
My second paragraph above should be in italics. apparently a line break closes the tag?
"...and John McCain and all the other tough as nails supporters of the Iraq war kept quiet, also for political reasons."-stan
Here Stan. Here is a link showing John McCain criticizing Don Rumsfeld's strategy in 2003.
NEWSMAKER: SEN. MCCAIN November 6, 2003
Isocrates, I stand corrected about McCain. He's an honorable man, even if I don't agree with his views.
I've seen the rise of abortion linked by commentators to the rise of unwed motherhood
There are about a million confounding factors in there, and, at a minimum, one has to ask oneself how solid and supportive shotgun marriages are likely to be.
There are men who deny their parental obligations because "she 'chose' to have the child".
This argument is unrecognized by United States law, and while such men are free to argue it, it will not get a cent cut from their child support payments. Men do not require legal abortion to attempt to evade supporting children they have fathered; we have been doing so for as long as there have been men.
in general, conservatives are much more willing than liberals to countenance unpleasant but necessary measures to fight this war against Islamo-fascism. - Iso
Like refusing to send in more than 150,000 troops, even though the Army heads said it'd take 300,000 minimum? Like refusing to raise taxes to pay for the war? Like saying it would pay for itself? Like failing to deliver more than 10% of the reconstruction aid Iraq was promised? Like refusing to prosecute US corporations for war profiteering and shoddy half-finished contracting in Iraq?
This is a joke. The Iraq War has been an idiotic mistake and a distraction from the struggles to break Al-Qaeda (which was in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Europe) and to battle radical Islamicism on the ideological front (which should be done through intellectual, cultural and educational outreach and through aid and development programs, which this Administration continues to stiff). Conservatives supported this foolish war because a. it fits their ideological preconceptions, which are ill-suited to the post-Cold War world and b. it gained them temporary political advantage. It has indeed been a painful sacrifice, as would cutting off one's own nose to spite one's face.
The Clinton story was also in the Washignton Post (hardly a bastion of conservatism
That gag has been worn through. Times change. Papers change. The Post isn't the Post that was there under Katherine Graham. Any winger comment that cites a media source with "Even X" means that the source has declined since its liberal glory days. We've all seen how Cheney et al primed a POV they wanted to get out by leaking it to the Times or the Post then mentioning the Times or the Post on the talk shows. The Times and the Post have more than their share of conservative stooges in place.
This practice is, obviously, not limited to abortion.
I think that the easier it is to drag an ethical principle into the debate, the more likely this is to happen.
You must support X, because people who oppose it are evil!
I must be seen to support X, because otherwise my allies will think I am evil.
I am good, therefore people who disagree must be evil.
And so on...
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