Jay Reding.com

U of M law student and blogger Ivan Ludmer has an interesting piece on the University’s decision to hire former Office of Legal Counsel attorney Robert Delahunty. Prof. Delahunty was one of the authors of a controversial memo that stated that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to captured al-Qaeda prisoners.

In the spirit of full disclosure, Prof. Delahunty is a professor at the University of St. Thomas, and will be my Constitutional Law professor in the spring.

At The Volokh Conspiracy there is also a lengthy series of posts on the controversy as well.

There are two arguments generally getting bandied about here, the first being a violation of academic freedom and the other a questionable determination of legal scholarship.

The first argument is that Prof. Delahunty’s position on the torture issue makes him unfit to be a member of the legal academy. That argument doesn’t fly with the notion of academic freedom. If we are to have an open and inclusive academy, then unpopular, controversial, or difficult opinions must not be shunned on expressly ideological grounds. As one opponent to the Prof. Delahunty hiring has said, this is an issue about ideology. (UPDATE: The student was misquoted. However, the arguments being made are generally ideological ones, regardless of the stated intentions of the petitioners.) Some people have a deep-seated opposition to the use of coercive interrogation methods. They have a right to that opinion, but that does not mean that they have the right to determine who can be a member of the legal community merely on the basis of their ideological beliefs.

The second argument is that the OLC memo was simply sloppy legal work that’s unbefitting of a member of the legal academy. That’s a plausible argument, but as David Bernstein notes, the view espoused by that memo is shared by at least one member of the United States Supreme Court. Looking at the memo doesn’t seem to support the contention that it’s such a sloppy piece of work that it’s completely invalid or a sign of bad faith.

The real test here is this: would there be any controversy if Prof. Delahunty had authored a memo of equal legal scholarship in support of a massive new expansion of federal government powers on environmental issues? Something tells me that the level of controversy would be practically nil. My impression is that the scholarship argument tends to be little more than a façade for the real ideology basis for opposition to Prof. Delahunty’s hiring.

The University of St. Thomas is a Catholic law school that tries to integrate Catholic values into the curriculum whenever appropriate. I don’t think one can make a strong argument that the interrogation methods advocated in the OLC memo are at all compatible with Catholic legal tradition — in fact, Catholic legal theory is quite explicit in its opposition to torture. Yet UST did what I believe was the right thing: brought in someone with an excellent record of legal scholarship who can challenge those beliefs. That’s what the academic community should do.

The University of Minnesota has the right to uphold whatever standards they want in hiring their faculty. However, if the grounds for withdrawing Delahunty’s offer is one of ideology, that the U of M is abrogating their obligation to support academic freedom. The position of the OLC memo may be morally questionable, but the overheated rhetoric that some have used to attack it is pure hyperbole. The memo may be sloppy legal work — I don’t find that to be particularly persuasive — but if the issue is that Prof. Delahunty supported a position that some find morally reprehensible, that’s still not enough.

UPDATE: The Minnesota Daily has updated the quotation from Mr. Taylor to say that the issue isn’t about ideology. However, that seems to be a less than persuasive arguments based on the attacks being used. Still, the correction should be noted.

Jonah Goldberg excerpts from an article advocating that the Democrats abandon the South and concentrate their fortunes elsewhere. The article posits:

Schaller builds this conclusion on one of the most impressive papers in recent political science, “Old Times There Are Not Forgotten: Race and Partisan Realignment in the Contemporary South,” by Nicholas Valentino and David Sears. Running regressions on a massive data set of ideological opinions, Sears and Valentino demonstrate with precision that, for example, a white Southern man who calls himself a “conservative,” controlling for racial attitudes, is no less likely to chance a vote for a Democratic presidential candidate than a Northerner who calls himself a conservative. Likewise, a pro-life or hawkish Southern white man is no less likely—again controlling for racial attitudes—than a pro-life or hawkish Northerner to vote for the Democrat. But, on the other hand, when the relevant identifier is anti-black answers to survey questions (such as whether one agrees “If blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites,” or choosing whether blacks are “lazy” or “hardworking”), an untoward result jumps out: white Southerners are twice as likely than white Northerners to refuse to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate. Schaller’s writes: “Despite the best efforts of Republican spinmeisters … the partisan impact of racial attitudes in the South is stronger today than in the past.”

What’s more, if Republicans have succeeded by openly baiting a region of the country not really American (the latte-swilling Northeast), Schaller says, “The Democrats need their own ‘them,’ and the social conservatives who are the bedrock of Southern politics provide the most obvious and burdensome stone to hang around the Republicans’ neck.” Democrats should cite “Southern obstructionism as a continuing impediment to the investments and progress the country must make in the coming century.”

Not only is it bad political strategy, but it reflect a profound arrogance. I believe that Goldberg’s analysis is right on in explaining why that “screw the South” strategy is a political loser:

One quick reason why I think demonzing the South the way the GOP demonizes the coasts won’t work, particularly for the Democrats, is that the coasts aren’t merely regions of the country, they are bastions of the economic and media elite. An economically populist party would find it hard to attack poorer regions of the country in ways that didn’t sound simply snobbish. And, let’s face it, while anti-racism surely plays a significant part in Northeast and West Coast liberalism’s anti Southernism so does plain snobbery.

Furthermore, if one looks at successful Democratic politicians, many of them are Southerners. Bill Clinton comes to mind as the most successful Democratic politician since Kennedy. Jimmy Carter was a Southerner. So is John Edwards. And James Webb. The list could go on for some time. A party that refuses to be a national party is not a party that can win in a system with an Electoral College. Accusing an entire region of the country of being a bunch of whitebread bigots is not a way to build a successful political movement.

It’s another example of the latent fault lines in the Democratic Party these days. As Goldberg points out, you can’t be an economic populist like John Edwards while calling the poor people you’re trying to save as a bunch of racist boors who are too stupid to know their betters. At the same time, the liberal coastal elites are terminally out of touch with Middle America. (Note how well John Kerry does in popularity polls - you don’t get more Boston Brahmin than Senator Kerry.)

The Democrats are in control of Congress right now because the Repubicans screwed up their leadership, but the Democrats won thanks to managing to eke by candidates in conservative districts. If the Democrats go far left and embrace the regional sectarianism that many would like to see them do, it will ensure that the Democrats lose power as quickly as they took it. The Democrats didn’t win in November, the Republicans lost. This election wasn’t as much an affirmation of the Democrats as it was a plebiscite on six years of poor leadership from the GOP. If the lesson the Democrats wish to draw from that is that they should abandon and insult an entire region of the country, they are welcome to do so, but it remains a spectacularly arrogant and foolish thing to do.

It looks like the Democrats have already broken one of their major campaign pledges. Remember how the Democrats were going to implement all of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission? Now it appears that they have no interest in doing so.

The Democrats have rejected the recommendation that the Congressional oversight of intelligence be overhauled. The 9/11 Commission recommended that the House and Senate Select Committees on Intelligence be given both oversight and budgetary control — a plan which would mean that lawmakers on the powerful Defense Appropriations Committees would lose a significant amount of authority. Coincidentally, Rep. John Murtha happens to sit on the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee.

For those wondering why Nancy Pelosi’s failed political maneuvers matter, the Post makes it clear:

Democratic leadership dust-ups this month severely limited the ability of House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) to implement the commission’s recommendations, according to Democratic aides.

Pelosi strongly backed Murtha for House majority leader, only to see him soundly defeated by Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (Md.). That chain of events made it difficult for her to ask Murtha, a longtime ally, to relinquish control of the intelligence budget from his consolation prize, the chairmanship of the Appropriations defense subcommittee, according to Democratic sources.

Likewise, a controversy over the choice of a new chairman of the House intelligence committee proved to be a factor in the decision. The Sept. 11 commission urged Congress to do away with traditional term limits on the intelligence committees to preserve continuity and expertise, a recommendation the House implemented in 2003. But in her search for a reason to drop the committee’s most senior Democrat, Jane Harman (Calif.), from the panel, Pelosi fell back on the tradition of term limits. She has decided to pass over the intelligence committee’s second-ranking Democrat, Alcee L. Hastings (Fla.), as well.

To the Sept. 11 commission, the call for congressional overhaul was vital, said former New Jersey governor Thomas H. Kean (R), the commission’s co-chairman. Because intelligence committee membership affords lawmakers access to classified information, only intelligence committee members can develop the expertise to watch over operations properly, he said. But because the panels do not control the budget, intelligence agencies tend to dismiss them.

“The person who controls your budget is the person you listen to,” Kean said.

The Democrats are going to take a lot of political flack for this, especially since the reasons are so clearly political and the breach of the promise so great. The Democrats promised time and time again that they would implement all of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, and now they’re going back on their word when it comes to one of the more vital recommendations. The former Commission members are going to push back on this one, and it’s already put the Democrats in a weakened position before they even formally take power.

At this point, one wonders if the long knives aren’t already being drawn for Speaker Pelosi. Her political allies keep suffering defeats, and with the influx of Democrats coming from relatively conservative districts, being tied to a San Francisco liberal is hardly beneficial. With this latest maneuver, the Democrats have made their first truly high-profile mistake. The leadership battles that Pelosi has lost are mainly inside baseball — most voters don’t care. However, when it comes to failing to keep a key campaign promise, that’s hard to spin.

Captain Ed notes that the Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso has said that Japan can go nuclear at any time should the need arise. It’s an open secret that Japan has a de facto nuclear capability. They have all the technology needed to create a working nuclear weapon, and may have some warheads that simply haven’t had their nuclear cores put into place yet. The Japanese could assemble such a weapon on very short notice.

The postwar Japanese constitution has limited the amount of military force that the Japanese are allowed to use, but there’s a new movement within Japan to become more of an actor on the world stage. The US should welcome that development — the Japanese have proven themselves to be a responsible actor that will ensure that the balance of power in Asia doesn’t end up on the side of totalitarian states. With the threat that North Korea poses to Japan, it’s more important than ever that they have a defense against a North Korean attack — which is why the US and Japan are partners on creating Aegis warships capable of intercepting and destroying enemy missiles. They’re more vulnerable than we are, and they don’t want to allow the North Koreans to use nuclear blackmail against them.

A more muscular Japan is a good thing for regional and global stability. The reasons for the disarmament of Japan are no longer present — the Japanese aren’t interested in conquest. They have much to contribute, and the consensus of the Japanese people seems to be that now is the time for Japan to become more than just a regional power. With the world being what it is, the more responsible actors that stand up on the side of democracy, the better off we all are.

Victor Davis Hanson has a brilliant and important essay on what he sees as a loss of confidence in the values of the Enlightenment. As he puts it:

But our newest foes of Reason are not the enraged Athenian democrats who tried and executed Socrates. And they are not the Christian zealots of the medieval church who persecuted philosophers of heliocentricity. Nor are they Nazis who burned books and turned Western science against its own to murder millions en masse.

No, the culprits are now more often us. In the most affluent, and leisured age in the history of Western civilization–never more powerful in its military reach, never more prosperous in our material bounty–we have become complacent, and then scared of the most recent face of barbarism from the primordial extremists of the Middle East.

I think he’s right. The enemy is using our own institutions against us, and they’re getting away with it precisely because we don’t want the burdens of defending those institutions anymore. Radical Islamists in Great Britain talk of freedom of speech but carry placards reading BEHEAD ALL THOSE WHO INSULT ISLAM. It’s not that they don’t see the contradiction, it’s that they know we willfully ignore it. We’re so inured into the politically correct mythos that we’re unable to state the plain truth right in front of us.

Hanson also reminds us of why culture matters:

There has of course always been a utopian strain in both Western thought from the time of Plato’s “Republic” and the practice of state socialism. But the technological explosion of the last 20 years has made life so long and so good, that many now believe our mastery of nature must extend to human nature as well. A society that can call anywhere in the world on a cell phone, must just as easily end war, poverty, or unhappiness, as if these pathologies are strictly materially caused, not impoverishments of the soul, and thus can be materially treated.

Second, education must now be, like our machines, ever more ambitious, teaching us not merely facts of the past, science of the future, and the tools to question, and discover truth, but rather a particular, a right way of thinking, as money and learning are pledged to change human nature itself. In such a world, mere ignorance has replaced evil as our challenge, and thus the bad can at last be taught away rather than confronted and destroyed.

Third, there has always been a cynical strain as well, as one can read in Petronius’s “Satyricon” or Voltaire’s “Candide.” But our loss of faith in ourselves is now more nihilistic than sarcastic or skeptical, once the restraints of family, religion, popular culture, and public shame disappear. Ever more insulated by our material things from danger, we lack all appreciation of the eternal thin veneer of civilization.

We especially ignore among us those who work each day to keep nature and the darker angels of our own nature at bay. This new obtuseness revolves around a certain mocking by elites of why we have what we have. Instead of appreciating that millions get up at 5 a.m., work at rote jobs, and live proverbial lives of quiet desperation, we tend to laugh at the schlock of Wal-Mart, not admire its amazing ability to bring the veneer of real material prosperity to the poor.

We can praise the architect for our necessary bridge, but demonize the franchise that sold fast and safe food to the harried workers who built it. We hear about a necessary hearing aid, but despise the art of the glossy advertisement that gives the information to purchase it. And we think the soldier funny in his desert camouflage and Kevlar, a loser who drew poorly in the American lottery and so ended up in Iraq–our most privileged never acknowledging that such men with guns are the only bulwark between us and the present day forces of the Dark Ages with their Kalashnikovs and suicide belts.

He’s right. Our culture has become unmoored from itself. How else can one explain the news media and political culture that constantly insinuates the worst about our troops in Iraq — accusing them of atrocity on the word the enemy and thinking of them as stooges too dumb to know they’re being treated like sheep to the slaughter? It’s as though our intelligentsia has forgotten that our very freedoms depend on the actions our men and women in uniform. We sit idly by in our golden castle while the foundation that supports us shifts underneath.

After 9/11, commentators said that it would be the death of irony and self-obsession. Yet here we are just over five years later still obsessed about Britney’s crotch and arguing that it’s our government we should fear while our enemies continue to plot the deaths of as many of us as they can kill.

As an avid reader of history, the precedent here is all too depressing. Hanson draws parallels between Demosthenes’ Athens, late imperial Rome, 18th-century France and Western Europe of the 1920s. A society so obsessed with panem et circenses tends not to be one that lasts long. The Democrats want to ignore the threat out there, the Republicans have failed to lead and been thrown out of the majority, and the rest of us have just stopped caring. Our political culture has never been so divorced from any concept of the national good as they are now. The idea of patriotism, having had its renaissance in the weeks and months after 9/11, has become nothing more than a hollow shell. Some still salute the flag, while others have gone back to the old cynicism and conspiracy. How could it be radical Muslims who attacked us on 9/11 when Noam Chomsky tells us that the real enemy is the one that the left has been fighting for decades now?

Eric S. Raymond calls all this “Gramscian damage” after Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist who provided much of the intellectual foundation behind modern leftism. It is the battle between the liberal individualism of Locke, Mill, and the Founders of the American experiment and the transnationalist, postmodern vision of the left that defines the ideological war within the West. Ultimately, the real winners of that war could be the radical Islamists who know that they don’t need to defeat the West, they merely need to allow us to defeat ourselves.

He also worries about a scenario I still consider all too possible:

The U.S., fortunately, is still on a demographic expansion wave and will be till at least 2050. But if the Islamists achieve their dream of nuking “crusader” cities, they’ll make crusaders out of the U.S., too. And this time, a West with a chauvinized America at its head would smite the Saracen with weapons that would destroy entire populations and fuse Mecca into glass. The horror of our victory would echo for a thousand years.

If the Islamists truly started fulfilling their fantasies — and they are working diligently to do precisely that, we will see a war the likes of which have never been witnessed by humanity. A nuclear war, with all the horrifying scenarios that come with it, is become more and more likely with each passing day. If Iran gets the bomb, and the West is powerless to stop them without making it quite clear that we will use all force necessary to stop them, there’s a very strong chance that the madman Ahmadinejad will use it — either against Israel or the United States. At that point, the demand for retribution will be overpowering.

It all starts with us losing our will. We won’t fight for our ideals in Iraq. We’ll dismiss the bravery of our troops. We’ll forget our culture. We’ll drain concepts like loyalty, honor, and self-sacrifice of all of their meaning and put pleasure above all else.

Decadent civilizations tend to fall, and the question we have to ask ourselves is whether our civilization has become so decadent that we cannot see the Visigoths once again pounding at our gates.