Amitai Etzioni Notes

State of Confusion

President Bush’s last state of the union replaces unrealistic democratic dogmatism with strategic and ideological confusion. This is especially evident in his statement about Iran.

Once upon a time, Bush held that it made no sense to expect or ask a rogue regime to change its behavior; such regimes could not be trusted. What was instead needed, he argued, was to make them into democracies—which do not wage war on one another. But as it turned out, such regime change is extremely difficult to come by. So the president is now willing to support oppressive regimes—as long as they give up their weapons of mass destruction and cease supporting terrorism. Merely a 180 degree turnabout.

Inside Track: Finding the Exit

As violence has declined in Iraq, the question of how U.S. troops will disengage from the country is becoming increasingly acute. The best answer lies in the same communitarian thinking and strategies that led to many of the recent security advances on the ground in Iraq: The United States should work with the tribal communities rather than rely on the national government’s police and army.1 In much of Iraq, communal militia groups—Kurds, Sunni and Shia of one faction or another—are the main source of local security (as well as security risks when they are deployed in, or penetrate, other communities’ turf). Further increasing the cooperation with these local, tribal militias would allow a great reduction in the footprint of foreign troops, who could then be largely limited to enforcing the "borders" among the various communities and providing security in the relatively few (and ever decreasing) remaining heterogeneous areas.

Stereotyping Muslims

It’s sad to see a highly regarded scholar holding to his neo-con misbegotten worldview, despite mountains of new contradictory evidence pilling up on top of old ones. Fouad Ajami, a leading scholar at Johns Hopkins University, just stated that he has come to agree with Sam Huntington: there is a clash of civilizations, between our free world and the brutal Muslim one.

Sickening Meds: Rather Depressing

In a series of previous postings (which start here), I bemoaned the fact that not one of the political candidates has picked up the issue raised by the fact that drug companies often hide data about side effects caused by medications they peddle, and do not report adverse reactions, even when these include fatalities. A new round of such sickening conduct is not as grievous, but is troubling enough. Where is the voice?

Supreme Court to throw another election?

Gloating about doing wrong is a higher degree of venality than just committing evil. Several Republican judges openly acknowledge that the Indiana law—and 23 others like it, enacted in other states—will hurt the Democrats, but nevertheless champion such laws. Judge Richard Posner, who wrote in the majority opinion upholding the Indiana law for the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, affirmed that “no doubt most people who don’t have photo ID are low on the economic ladder and thus, if they do vote, are more likely to vote for Democratic than Republican candidates” and that “the new law injures the Democratic Party by compelling the party to devote resources to getting to the polls those of its supporters who would otherwise be discouraged by the new law from bothering to vote.”  Now the Republican-dominated Supreme Court seems inclined to follow suit —and rule that these laws are constitutional.

A Communitarian in the White House?

If the current lineup holds, the Democrats will be represented in the forthcoming national elections by a communitarian.  Hillary’s communitarian leanings have been long known.  They are especially well spelled out in her book It Takes A Village.  She also delivered the keynote address at the 1996 meeting of the Communitarian Network, met frequently with communitarian thinkers, especially William Galston, and read Michael Sandel  (and even yours truly).

The Economists’ Dirty Little Secret

My colleagues in economics (and many others, including quite a few liberal ones) tend to scoff at the majority of the public that is troubled by globalization.  Never mind the false medications, poisoned toys, and pirated goods, you just don’t understand—these economists say—free trade is good for you, me, and the man behind the tree. Economists are quick to argue that free trade reduces the costs to consumers and thus ensures an ever higher standard of living. Citizens of nations like the United States that are losing jobs to India and China (and scores of other nations) are told to not fret, that these are menial jobs, that off-shoring allows more Americans to specialize in high tech, well-paying, “clean” work. Often disregarded is that neither God nor anyone else set aside these choice jobs for Americans, and that Indians, Chinese, Finns, and Israelis—among others—can do these jobs too, and often for a fraction of what Americans charge. (One economist, Alan Blinder, suggests that hence Americans should specialize in those jobs that are hard to ship overseas—cutting hair, policing the streets, and flipping hamburgers. How many such service jobs there are, and how well they pay, remains to be determined).

You need cartoons to read?

Two serious publications have recently fallen to the trend of larger print, more colors, more illustrative drawings -- and less text. As of Christmas, the Economist, arguably the best English-language weekly (strong ideological bias notwithstanding), has joined most other publications in coming ever more to resemble an old-fashioned comic book. The Wall Street Journal, which used to serve its texts straight, now also seems to hold that, if I am to read an article about this year's wines then it must draw me a picture of a person drinking from a wine glass, and so on. At the rate we are going, by the year 2020 every newspaper page (assuming that there still be such a thing) will carry one word, six colors, and at least two cartoons. By the way, thanks Arianna, for keeping the Huffington Post relatively free from such infantilization.